Who are you really? A Study on the Institutional Change of the Transparency and Disclosure Mechanism of the Foreign Agents Registration Act

Abstract

This thesis investigates the institutional drift of the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), a transparency and disclosure statute enacted in 1938 that requires individuals and organizations acting on behalf of foreign principals to register with the Department of Justice. Despite its original intent to serve as a neutral, universal disclosure mechanism, this thesis finds evidence suggesting that enforcement and registration patterns of the FARA have instead clustered around countries that are U.S. adversaries. This observation suggests evidence of institutional drift. Using a mixed-method approach including archival research, a hand-coded enforcement dataset, and a panel fixed effects regression using the Department of Justice’s bulk registration dataset, this thesis finds consistent evidence suggesting institutional drift away from FARA’s original universal disclosure intent. This thesis furthermore observes that authoritarian governments have cited the FARA in enacting repressive foreign agent laws stigmatizing civil society and independent media. The end of this thesis features two policy recommendations.