On Thinking Institutionally (On Politics)

A brilliant look at institutions as popular as the National Basketball Association and as austere as the Supreme Court, all through the lens of what it means to "think institutionally." The twenty-first-century mind deeply distrusts the authority of institutions. It has taken several centuries for advocates of "critical" thinking to convince Western culture that to be rational, liberated, authentic, and modern means to be anti-institutional. In this mold-breaking book, Hugh Heclo moves beyond the abstract academic realm of thinking "about" institutions to the more personal significance-and larger social meaning-of what it is to "think institutionally." His account ranges from Michael Jordan's "respect for the game" of basketball to Greek philosophy, from twenty-first-century corporate and political scandals to Christian theology and the concept of "office" and "professionalism." Think what you will about one institution or another, but after Heclo, no reader will be left in doubt about why it matters to think institutionally.

Hugh Heclo is Clarence J. Robinson Professor of Public Affairs at George Mason University, a former Professor of Government at Harvard University, and prior to that a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution. His latest book, Christianity and American Democracy, was published by Harvard University Press in 2007.