Revisiting business associations in trade politics: a large language model scaling approach

Firm-centric approaches dominate the international political economy (IPE) of trade, often implying a weakened role for business associations. Yet, some associations position themselves more often and more decisively on trade than other associations and individual firms. Why? This paper explains variation in the strength and explicitness of business association positions during trade negotiations, using investment protection as a case study. I argue that institutional differentiation across associations allows firms to self-select into organizations that better match their preferences, generating systematic variation in the positions business associations articulate. I further argue that associations with greater involvement of larger and more internationally engaged firms articulate stronger and more explicit support for investment protection. To probe these arguments, I analyze references to investment protection in 1,780 public submissions by business interests during US trade negotiations, using an LLM-based ranking approach. The results are consistent with both hypotheses. They also help explain why business associations may express stronger and more explicit positions than individual firms, and why going solo need not indicate cleavage. Together, these findings are consistent with firm-centric explanations while highlighting the specificity of collective position-taking. More broadly, the paper illustrates the potential of LLMs in IPE.