[1] Fligstein's main theoretical works focus on economic sociology, where he has created a "political-cultural" approach to 'markets in corporate control',[2] 'the architecture of markets',[3] and 'markets as politics'.
[4] He has used these ideas to study the European Union's attempt to create a single market through cooperative political means.
From 1980 to 1982, he was at the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago, where he was a NIMH Postdoctoral Fellow and the Senior Study Director.
Fligstein's work has mainly focused on his theoretical approach to how new social institutions emerge, remain stable, and transform.
[8] His book with Doug McAdam, A Theory of Fields, makes a very general set of claims about how such orders operate.
He argues that social skill, and the ability to empathize with others and thereby engage in collective action, is at the basis of gaining cooperation to produce new fields and keep the existing ones going.
He argues that the creation of a market implies a collective stable order that works to mitigate the worse effects of competition.
[5] He has shown how the European Single Market project was mostly aimed at making it easier for businesses already involved in international trade to expand their activities across Europe.