Margaret Levi

Margaret Levi (born 1947) is an American political scientist and author, noted for her work in comparative political economy, labor politics, and democratic theory, notably on the origins and effects of trustworthy government.

Levi graduated with a B.A. from Bryn Mawr College in 1968 and completed a Ph.D. degree in government at Harvard University in 1974. Since then, she has taught at the University of Washington in Seattle, where she is presently a professor of international studies in the department of political science. She has a joint appointment as Chair in US Politics at the United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney. Levi has been a visiting professor at numerous institutions, including the Max Planck Institute, Oxford University, the European University Institute, the London School of Economics, and the Australian National University.

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).

Levi was elected as a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2001 and was president of the American Political Science Association for 2004-05. She is the editor of the Annual Review of Political Science, and serves on the editorial boards of several journals, including Politics & Society, Rationality and Society, and Political Studies.

Levi and her husband Robert Kaplan have a large collection of indigenous Australian art, part of which is on loan to and displayed at the Seattle Art Museum.

Select Publications

• "Why We Need a New Theory of Government." 2006. Perspectives on Politics 4(1): 5-19.
• Cooperation without Trust? 2005. Russell Sage Foundation. (written with Karen Cook and Russell Hardin).
• “Organizing Power: Prospects for the American Labor Movement.” 2003. Perspectives on Politics 1(1): 45–68.
• “The Economic Turn in Comparative Politics.” 2000. Comparative Political Studies 33(6/7): 822–844.
• "Political Trust and Trustworthiness." 2000. Annual Review of Political Science 3:475-507. (written with Laura Stoker).
• 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).
• Trust and Governance. 1998. Russell Sage Foundation. (edited with Valerie Braithwaite).
• "Social and Unsocial Capital: A Review Essay of Robert Putnam's Making Democracy Work." Politics & Society 24(1): 45-55.
• Consent, Dissent, and Patriotism. 1997. Cambridge University Press.
• Marxism. 1991. Edward Elgar. (editor).
• The Limits of Rationality. 1990. University of Chicago Press. (edited with Karen Cook).
• Of Rule and Revenue. 1988. University of California Press.
• Bureaucratic Insurgency: The Case of Police Unions. 1977. Lexington Books.

Sources

• Hanson, Stephen, Joseph Jupille, David Olson, and Barry Weingast. 2004. "Margaret Levi: Institutions, Individuals, Organizations, and Trust in Democratic Regimes." PS: Political Science and Politics 37(4): 895-898.