 According to a recent appraisal, he has become “influential within the world of political theory" by offering “greater concrete political thought than Rawls” and by showing “an atypical grasp, for a political theorist, of the real political world.”

Thompson is a leading proponent of the institutional approach to political ethics, which gives less attention to individual vices (such as greed and sexual misconduct) and more to institutional ones (such as abuse of power and neglect of accountability).His approach has stimulated new work on institutional corruption.Thompson's proposal to establish an independent body to regulate congressional ethics has been widely endorsed, though not by many members of the United States Congress.