[9][10] She is best known for her books National Interests in International Society, The Purpose of Intervention, and Rules for the World (with Michael Barnett) which helped to pioneer constructivism.
Using a constructivist approach, she finds that changing normative contexts led states to conceive of their interests differently.
[11][12] In Rules for the World (2004), Finnemore and Barnett argue that international organizations derive power and autonomy from their rational-legal authority and control of information.
International organizations can develop bureaucratic cultures that result in adverse outcomes (what they call "pathologies").
[16][17][18] Finnemore and Sikkink identify three stages in the life cycle of a norm:[19] In 2009, a survey of over 2700 international relations faculty in ten countries named her one of the twenty five most influential scholars in the discipline, and one of the five scholars whose work in the last five years has been the most interesting;[3] an earlier survey of over 1000 American international relations faculty also ranked her similarly in both categories.