Margaret Levi

Who is Margaret Levi?

Margaret Levi 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 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, 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.