Michael A. McCarthy

I study the power of capitalists as both a driver and outcome of policy.

I am 2021-2022 Berggruen Research Fellow at University of Southern California’s Center on Science, Technology, and Public Life and Associate Professor of Sociology at Marquette University. I received my Ph.D. in Sociology from New York University and spent a year as a postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies.

My book, Dismantling Solidarity: Capitalist Politics and American Pensions since the New Deal, published with Cornell University Press, explores the causes of the current crisis in retirement. It makes contributions to the theories of policymaking, developing the concept “structural contingency” to explore patterns of political causation that feature the indirect influence of business. It was awarded the Paul Sweezy Book Award and an honorable mention for Labor and Labor Movements Distinguished Book Award, both through the American Sociological Association.

My second book, under contract with Verso Books, explores competing proposals for democratizing finance as not merely economic projects that can redirect risk and wealth, but also political projects that might upend and transform current configurations of business power. It is tentatively titled The Master’s Tools: The Politics of Democratizing Finance.