Elisabeth Clemens's research explores the role of social movements and organizational innovation in political change. Her first book, The People's Lobby: Organizational Innovation and the Rise of Interest Group Politics in the United States, 1890-1925 (Chicago, 1997) received best book awards in both organizational sociology (1998) and political sociology (1999). She is also co-editor of Private Action and the Public Good (Yale, 1998), Remaking Modernity: Politics, History and Sociology (Duke, 2005), Politics and Partnerships: Voluntary Associations in America's Past and Present (Chicago, 2010; winner of the 2012 Virginia Hodgkinson Research Prize from ARNOVA), and the journal Studies in American Political Development. Her most recent book, Civic Gifts: Voluntarism and the Making of the American Nation-State, was published by the University of Chicago Press in 2020.

To learn more about Elisabeth Clemens's research and publications, please see her profile page at the Department of Sociology.