Business versus citizens: legislators’ responsiveness in trade policy

Abstract Legislators may consider the preferences of both business actors and citizens when making trade policy decisions. But when business and citizen preferences diverge, what makes legislators more responsive to one side or the other? We argue that when levels of political engagement are kept constant, legislators are more responsive to citizens than business. This effect should be particularly large for left-leaning legislators and legislators who conceive of themselves as delegates. We use three survey experiments with over 1000 legislators from 47 countries across the globe and qualitative evidence from an open survey question and 30 interviews with legislators to test our expectations. Based on this unique evidence, we find strong support for our expectations. These findings contribute to research on trade policy-making, the interaction between elites and the public in international relations, and responsiveness.