Margaret Levi earned her BA from Bryn Mawr College in 1968, in political science.[1] At Bryn Mawr, she was influenced by Alice Frey Emerson, Paul Brass and Peter Bachrach to pursue political science.[2] In 1967, she took a class at Swarthmore College alongside fellow students Peter Katzenstein and David Laitin, who would both go on to become prominent political scientists.[3][2][4]
She began her PhD studies on urban and regional planning at the Harvard Graduate School of Design.[2] However, she abandoned her studies before returning to Harvard University to do a PhD in political science.[2] During her political science PhD studies, she was influenced by Michael Lipsky, Robert Fogelson and Edward Banfield.
From 2014 to 2022, Levi was the Sara Miller McCune Director[7] of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (CASBS) at Stanford University.[8] After stepping down from director of CASBS, Levi has continued at Stanford as a professor of political science, a Faculty Fellow at CASBS, a Senior Fellow at the Center for Democracy, Development and Rule of Law (CDDRL) of the Freeman Spogli Institute, as well as a Senior Fellow, Woods Institute for the Environment; and co-director of the Stanford Ethics, Technology, and Society Initiative.[8] She is also the Jere L. Bacharach Professor Emerita of International Studies in the Department of Political Science of the University of Washington.[1]
Levi's book Of Rule and Revenue (1988), a study of the institutions of state revenue production, helped pioneer rational choice approaches in comparative politics. She has since "pushed rational choice analysis into new substantive areas", for example, in examining people's acceptance of military conscription in Consent, Dissent, and Patriotism (1997).[12]: 897
She is also the co-author of Analytic Narratives (Princeton University Press, 1998)[13][14][15]Cooperation Without Trust? (Russell Sage, 2005),[16][17]
and Labor Standards in International Supply Chains (Edward Elgar, 2015).[18]In the Interest of Others (Princeton, 2013), co-authored with John Ahlquist, explores how organizations provoke member willingness to act beyond material interest.[19]
In other work, Levi investigates the conditions under which people come to believe their governments are legitimate and the consequences of those beliefs for compliance, consent, and the rule of law. Her research continues to focus on how to improve the quality of government.[20][21][22] She is also committed to understanding and improving supply chains so that the goods we consume are produced in a manner that sustains both the workers and the environment.[23]
Levi started The Brand Responsibility Project—a research project to document the campaign and dispute settlement between Nike, Inc. and the Central General de Trabajadores of Honduras (CGT). CGT claimed that Nike was responsible for providing terminal compensation, benefits and priority rehiring for 1,800 factory employees following the 2009 bankruptcy and closure of two Honduran factories (Hugger and VisionTex) that were part of Nike's supply chain.[24]
"Margaret Levi's research program addresses fundamental issues concerning the bases for and effects of legitimacy, compliance, and consent in democratic regimes. Levi's scholarship has made pioneering contributions to understanding enduring questions about the conditions for and consequences of trust and distrust, compliance and resistance, and individual versus collective action."[12]
While director of CASBS, much of Levi's scholarship focused on political economy, theories of change, and institutional design in what Levi and her collaborators describe as framework for a new "moral political economy."[25]
Competition and Cooperation: Conversations with Nobelists about Economics and Political Science. 1999. Russell Sage Foundation. (edited with James Alt and Elinor Ostrom).
Analytic Narratives. 1998. Princeton University Press. (written with Robert Bates, Avner Greif, Jean-Laurent Rosenthal, and Barry Weingast).
^Carugati, Federica; Levi, Margaret (2021). A moral political economy: present, past, and future. Cambridge elements Elements in political economy. Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press. ISBN978-1-108-87294-2.