[5] Weir has written widely on social policy and politics in the United States.
In Politics and Jobs: The Boundaries of Employment Policy in the United States (Princeton University Press, 1992), she addresses the power of ideas in policymaking and the politics of interest formation in order to explain the persistence of lacking employment policy in the United States.
[6] With Ira Katznelson, Weir coauthored Schooling for All: Class, Race, and the Decline of the Democratic Ideal (Basic Books, 1985),[7] which focuses on public school systems in Chicago and San Francisco in order to examine equal access to education as a dwindling civil right.
Weir has also edited several volumes, including The Politics of Social Policy in the United States with Ann Shola Orloff and Theda Skocpol (Princeton University Press, 1988).
[10] In 2004, Weir received an Investigator Award from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation for work on American health policy reform.