[1] In democratic theory, Shapiro has argued that democracy's value comes primarily from its potential to limit domination rather than, as is conventionally assumed, from its operation as a system of participation, representation, or preference aggregation.

[7] At Yale, Shapiro was a student of the important theorist of pluralism and democracy, Robert Dahl, though his work also shows the influence of Douglas Rae and Michael Walzer, who served as an external adviser of his thesis.

The book poses the questions: why did particular modes of talking about rights take hold around the English Civil War; how and why have they changed in the ways that they have; and how do they animate and constrain contemporary politics?

Shapiro traces liberal political ideology through four major moments, bound to larger economic and social transformations, which he dubs transitional, classical, neo-classical, and Keynesian.

[13] Skeptical of the claims of postmodernists, like Richard Rorty, that our intellectual commitments are contingent and, hence, subject to voluntary endorsement and revision, Shapiro argues that “[m]any of our most fundamental philosophical beliefs are integral to social practices in which we engage unreflectively every day.

Those beliefs are required, in nontrivial ways, by those social practices, thus generating an important limitation on how we might reasonably expect beliefs to change.... We need to take much better account of our actual circumstances, how they have come to be what they are, and how they influence our own values and actions, if we are seriously to argue for the pursuit of significantly different values in the contemporary political world.”[14] Shapiro argues that “the liberal view of rights evolved via processes of adaptive change importantly conditioned by and functional to the evolution of capitalist markets”.

Here, Shapiro engages political frameworks articulated in opposition to Rawls’s neo-Kantian foundationalism, including the anti-foundationalist work of Richard Rorty, J.G.A.

In these early, primarily critical, books, Shapiro explores the relationship between justice and democracy and with the realities of politics and pragmatic means of overcoming injustice.

But, in addition to these political considerations, Shapiro contends that there is a philosophical link between justice and democracy, rooted in the fact that the most plausible accounts of both ideals involve commitments to the idea of non-domination.

Shapiro spells out the implications of his account for debates about authority over children, the law of marriage and divorce, abortion and population control, the workplace, basic incomes guarantees, health insurance, retirement policies, and decisions made by and for the infirm elderly.

The latter includes a response to critics of the theory of democratic justice and a sketch of additional projected volumes on public institutions and democracy and distribution.

In addition to taking a more theoretical approach to the topic, Shapiro discusses the implications of this work for ongoing debates on electoral systems, independent courts, money in politics, minimum wages, and the vulnerabilities of minorities.

Utilizing evidence from the battle against slavery, the creation of modern welfare states, the civil rights movement, Occupy Wall Street, the Tea Party, and the worldwide campaign against sweatshops, among other sources, Shapiro delves into the making of effective coalitions for political change and how best to press them into the service of resisting domination - culminating in the motivating argument that individuals may reasonably hope to devise ways to combat domination.

[34] This subject also represents an ongoing joint project conducted by Shapiro and Rosenbluth, among others, at the Jackson Institute for Global Affairs at Yale University.

In several articles and books Shapiro has defended distinctive accounts of the nature of social scientific knowledge, the best means of acquiring it, and its implications for political philosophy.

[38] Pathologies generated considerable critical attention from all quarters in the political science discipline,[41] some of which spilled over into the realm of public debate.

[45] Along with a critique of the method-driven strategies embraced by rational choice theorists, interpretivists, and others, Shapiro offers a defense of epistemological realism.

Death by A Thousand Cuts: The Fight Over Taxing Inherited Wealth (coauthored with Michael Graetz) and Containment: Rebuilding a Strategy Against Global Terror.

In Death by A Thousand Cuts, Graetz and Shapiro explore new evidence that bears on the old question: In democracies, why don't the poor soak the rich?

In fact, majorities in democracies sometimes support regressive changes in distribution, which is to say the poor sometimes vote for measures that will increase the wealth of the richest members of society at their own expense.

[48] Yet polls revealed large majorities consistently favored getting rid of it, and the legislation to repeal the tax won strong bipartisan backing in both houses of Congress.

Finding few useful insights in the political science or economics literatures to account for this, Graetz and Shapiro undertook a micro-study of the estate-tax repeal's legislative success.

This provides a partial explanation for the way that democracies can generate upward redistribution, contrary to what we might have assumed were the “objective” interests of the majority.

Shapiro expressed regret over the withdrawal of the award and noted that the administrative law judge dismissed claims against Yale stemming from the 1995 strike, so the allegations against him were never adjudicated.

[52] Beginning from the claim that, “in electoral politics, you can’t beat something with nothing”,[53] Shapiro spelled out an approach to foreign affairs in the post 9/11 age based on an adaptation of George Kennan's cold-war containment strategy.

[54] Containment, rather than aggressive regime change, is preferable from a principled perspective because it is more democratic to leave countries to choose (or refuse) democracy on their own, consistent with Shapiro's insistence on the importance of ‘insider wisdom’ in achieving just outcomes.

Therefore, Shapiro and Graetz posit that the solution to economic insecurity is a return to the hard work of building coalitions around realistic goals and pursuing them doggedly through the political system - providing evidence of the success of this tactic in earlier reforms, such as in the cases of the abolition of the slave trade and the pursuit of civil rights legislation.

[56] Shapiro edited NOMOS, the yearbook of the American Society for Political and Legal Philosophy, for eight years, as well as a number of other collections of scholarly work.

[58] It explores three common kinds of answers to the question: “Who is to judge, and by what criteria, whether the laws and actions of states that claim our allegiance measure up?” Through examining the utilitarian, Marxist, and social contract traditions, Shapiro aims to demonstrate both the common roots of the 20th century's dominant modes of thinking about political legitimacy and the pragmatic consequences of the operationalization of these traditions.

In the final chapters, he engages with contemporary critiques of the Enlightenment, arguing that even if we could reject the ideas and principles that commonly animated the political thought of that time, it would be to our detriment to do so.