Additionally, he was a visiting scholar at the New School for Social Research and the Dayan Center at Tel Aviv University, and he was a visiting professor at the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva, Switzerland.
With Emanuel Adler, he reintroduced the concept of security community to international relations.
In Rules for the World (co-authored with Martha Finnemore), 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").
They list five mechanisms that breed organizational pathologies:[8][9] He is known for his study "Power in International Politics" (co-authored with Raymond Duvall), which is among the most assigned work in international relations graduate training at American universities.