[2] Orren's research considers political questions in broader historical settings and in the context of institutional change.
In her first book, Corporate Power and Social Change (1974), she studied corporate investment in housing over a century to illuminate the range of possible authority relations between government and business and account for the prevailing form.
In Belated Feudalism (1991), Orren overturned the Hartzian proposition that American history is characterized by the "absence of feudalism," through an investigation of the labor movement’s prolonged confrontation with ancient master-and-servant laws.
[3] In 1998, Orren won the Franklin L. Burdette Award for the best paper presented at the previous year's APSA annual meeting.
[8] In 2006, she was selected to deliver the UCLA Faculty Research Lecture, an honor reserved for "the university's most distinguished scholars.