He has contributed to the research of social movement and resource mobilization theory.
His research and teaching interests include Collective Behavior and Social Movements; Policing of the Public Order; Formal Organizations; and Mass Media Processes.
In recent years he has been a Principal Investigator of projects on Local Poor Empowerment Community Organizations (with Ed Walker); Media Coverage of Washington, D. C. Protest Gatherings; the Evolution of Public Protest in the U.S., 1960-1995 (with Sarah Soule, Susan Olzak and Doug McAdam); the Evolution of Social Movement Organizations in the U.S., 1959-2002 (with Frank Baumgartner); and Public Order Disturbances on College a University Campuses during the past decade (with Pat Rafail, Ed Walker, Andrew Martin and Clark McPhail).
He is co-directing (with Chris Scheitle) a National Science Foundation funded project on “Spiritual Entrepreneurialism.” The Center for the Study of Social Movements (CSSM) at the University of Notre Dame established the John D. McCarthy Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Scholarship of Social Movement and Collective Behavior in 2007 to recognize scholars who have made “outstanding contributions to the scholarly literature concerned with social movements, protest, collective violence, riots, and other kinds of collective behavior”.
Past recipients of the award include Pam Oliver at Wisconsin-Madison (2012), Bill Gamson at Boston College (2011), Doug McAdam at Stanford University (2010), Mayer Zald at Michigan (2009), Verta Taylor at UC-Santa Barbara (2008), and John McCarthy (2007).