About

Elisabeth S. Clemens is a William Rainey Harper Distinguished Service Professor of Sociology at the University of Chicago. She holds a B.A. from Harvard University (1980), an M.A. from the University of Chicago (1985), and a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago (1990). Her research explores the role of social movements and organizational innovation in political change. Clemens has authored the book 'The People's Lobby: Organizational Innovation and the Rise of Interest Group Politics in the United States, 1890-1925,' which received best book awards in both organizational sociology and political sociology. She is also a co-editor of several volumes, including 'Private Action and the Public Good,' 'Remaking Modernity: Politics, History and Sociology,' and 'Politics and Partnerships: Voluntary Associations in America's Past and Present,' the latter of which won the 2012 Virginia Hodgkinson Research Prize from ARNOVA. Currently, she is completing a work titled 'Civic Nation,' which examines the entanglements of benevolence and liberalism in the development of the American nation-state. Clemens has served as chair of both the political sociology and comparative historical sociology sections of the American Sociological Association, was a member of the Social Science Research Council Program on Philanthropy and the Third Sector, and served as President of the Social Science History Association for 2012-13.

Research topics

• Sociology
• Political Science
• Public administration
• Computer Science
• Public relations
• Environmental ethics
• Political economy
• Epistemology
• Law
• Philosophy
• Law and economics

Selected publications

• Review of “The Loyalty Trap: Conflicting Loyalties of Civil Servants Under Increasing Autocracy”

  Social Forces · 2025-09-11

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• Beyond Efficiency and Public Benefits: Federal Contracting as a Partisan Project, 1979–2018

  Academy of Management Proceedings · 2024-07-09

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  Government contracting reconstitutes boundaries of the public sector through ever-deepening engagement of the contemporary state with business firms and nonprofit organizations. This outsourcing of public functions is frequently characterized as a move to maximize cost efficiency or advance public welfare. Nevertheless, government contracting also expresses ideological commitments and institutional opportunities for harnessing government revenues to partisan objectives. Analyses of the U.S. federal contract data across both granting administrative agencies and grantee states from 1979 to 2018 demonstrate that a federal government’s pro-market standing does not directly translate into public procurement. Instead, we demonstrate that the institutional structure of the government constitutes opportunities for asymmetrical deployment of partisan ideologies, as a conservative federal government uses contracting as a market-based solution to both administrative and political challenges. Specifically, under Republican administrations, compared to their Democratic counterparts, noncompetitive contracting is more heavily used in response to budget uncertainty while competitive contracting turns out to buffer the federal government from electoral uncertainty.

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• Political institutions

  Edward Elgar Publishing eBooks · 2023-12-01 · 2 citations

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  This comprehensive and authoritative Encyclopedia, featuring entries written by academic experts in the field, explores the diverse topics within the discipline of political sociology. By looking at both macro- and micro-components, questions relating to nation-states, political institutions and their development, and the sources of social and political change such as social movements and other forms of contentious politics, are raised and critically analysed.

  PublisherDOI

• Martin Kornberger. Strategies for Distributed and Collective Action: Connecting the Dots

  Administrative Science Quarterly · 2023-04-05

  article1st authorCorresponding
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• The Constitution of Citizens: Political Theories of Nonprofit Organizations

  Routledge eBooks · 2021 · 50 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Sociology
  • Political Science

  A range of political theories and theories of state development make important claims about the role of nonprofit organizations and associations, although their terminology may diverge from the conventions of nonprofit research. Most notably, political theories of nonprofit organizations are increasingly entwined with broad debates over civil society, social capital, and the rights of association within a liberal polity. The increasing delivery of publicly funded programs through nonprofit organizations may obscure relationships of accountability, distort citizens' understandings of how tax revenues are spent, and allow governments to displace the risks of downsizing and policy shifts onto nongovernmental entities. Much of the interest of political theory in associations and nonprofit organizations stems from the presumption that associations are, or should be, embodiments of the constitutional forms, organizational skills, and political virtues required by a liberal democracy. The effects attributed to participatory associations cannot be assumed for nonprofit organizations in general.

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• Polity

  Handbooks of sociology and social research · 2021-01-01

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• Front Matter

  American Journal of Sociology · 2020-07-01

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• Civic Gifts

  2020 · 43 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Political Science
  • Sociology
  PublisherDOI

• 11. Delegated Governance as a Structure of Exceptions

  2020-01-01 · 2 citations

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• 7. Nonprofits as Boundary Markers: The Politics of Choice, Mobilization, and Arbitrage

  Stanford University Press eBooks · 2020-09-09 · 4 citations

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Frequent coauthors

• Julia Adams

  5 shared

• Ann Shola Orloff

  Northwestern University

  5 shared

• Doug McAdam

  University of Arizona

  5 shared

• Kamal Rijal

  4 shared

• Edwin Amenta

  University of California, Irvine

  4 shared

• Minoru Takada

  4 shared

• Kimberly J. Morgan

  George Washington University

  3 shared

• Walter W. Powell

  3 shared

Awards & honors

• best book awards in organizational sociology (1998)
• best book awards in political sociology (1999)
• Virginia Hodgkinson Research Prize from ARNOVA (2012)