[1] At Bryn Mawr, she was influenced by Alice Frey Emerson, Paul Brass and Peter Bachrach to pursue political science.

[2] In 1967, she took a class at Swarthmore College alongside fellow students Peter Katzenstein and David Laitin, who would both go on to become prominent political scientists.

[2] From 2014 to 2022, Levi was the Sara Miller McCune Director[7] of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (CASBS) at Stanford University.

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 (1997).

[19] In other work, Levi investigates the conditions under which people come to believe their governments are legitimate and the consequences of those beliefs for compliance, consent, and the rule of law.

[23] Levi started The Brand Responsibility Project—a research project to document the campaign and dispute settlement between Nike, Inc. and the Central General de Trabajadores of Honduras (CGT).

[24] "Margaret Levi's research program addresses fundamental issues concerning the bases for and effects of legitimacy, compliance, and consent in democratic regimes.

Levi's scholarship has made pioneering contributions to understanding enduring questions about the conditions for and consequences of trust and distrust, compliance and resistance, and individual versus collective action.

[1] In 2020 her ideas on "community fate" won recognition as Falling Walls Breakthrough of the Year in Social Sciences and Humanities.