On Thinking Institutionally by Hugh Heclo
(Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers, 2008)
ANDREW TAYLOR is Professor of Political Science at North Carolina State University. He teachers courses in American politics and is currently finishing a book about the floor in Congress.
Hugh Heclo’s superbly crafted new
book promotes what he admits to be
an unfashionable idea: the institution. The
past half-century has been most unkind to
those discrete cohering entities, both formal
and informal, that “represent inheritances of
valued purpose with attendant rules and
moral obligations.” Today, Americans almost
universally denigrate institutions, including
those of which they are members. Whether
it is marriage, Congress, Rotary clubs, lawyering,
or chivalry, the institution is under
siege.
The reasons are numerous. Heclo provides
a litany of malfeasance within presidential
administrations and Congress since
the late 1950s. Although the rest of American
history is hardly devoid of similar episodes,
he argues that mass communications
and our interconnectedness exacerbate the
public impact of such events and, having
been spun by corporations and politicians
for the last seventy-five years, we are innately
skeptical of the mea culpas and attempts to
account for failure that inevitably follow.
Cumulatively, these kinds of things help
explain the “performance-based” source of
our pervasive distrust of institutions.
Attacks on institutions are “culturebased”
too. They come from our hyperdemocratic
politics that do not respect any
kind of differentiated social role. They stem
from the Enlightenment with its obsessive
focus on the self, its unshakeable confidence
in human reason, and its belief that an institution
has no value beyond that which an
individual can squeeze from it for personal
gain. They have roots in our education
system that has designated institutions
as, at best, annoying encumbrances and,
at worst, oppressive tools of the past. Students
are taught to believe what they like
and express themselves as they see fit. Even
people understood to be conservatives—at
least in the way we conceptualize political
ideology today—assail institutions. Freemarket
economics places a premium on
self-interest and assumes institutions stifle
innovation and entrepreneurship. Indeed,
one of the most interesting implications of
Heclo’s book is a somewhat novel understanding
of the principal cleavage in today’s
conservative movement. It is the esteem in
which its adherents hold institutions that
can be used to distinguish them from one
another.
Despite today’s inhospitable environment,
institutions are indubitably worth
supporting. They provide reference points
in an uncertain world. They tie us to the
past and present and oblige us to think
about others. They furnish personal assistance
and institutionalize trust. They give
our lives purpose and, therefore, the kind
of self-satisfaction that only the wholesale
rejection of them is supposed to provide.
How do we protect and promote them?
Heclo says that first and foremost we must
learn to think institutionally. This is very
different from thinking about institutions
as scholars do. It is not an objective and
intellectual exercise. It is a more participatory
and intuitive one. What is more, it is
not quixotic. To think institutionally you
do not have to live slavishly by an institution’s
rules, become an institution’s chief
supporter, or heroically buffer an institution
from the vicissitudes of the outside
world. Instead, thinking this way means
something less, perhaps something easier.
You should “distrust but value.” To think
institutionally you need a “particular sensitivity”
to or an “appreciative viewpoint”
of institutions. To be more specific, the
exercise moves our focus away from the
self and towards a recognition of our debts
and obligations to others.
Heclo writes with particular reverence
about many of the Founders of this country
when fleshing out the idea of thinking
institutionally. He provides an interesting
analysis of Thomas Jefferson’s and James
Madison’s thoughts on usufruct, for example.
Whereas Jefferson believed strongly
that neither those who lived in the past nor
those who will live in the future can bind
the decisions of a community’s current
inhabitants, Madison addressed the issue
of generational independence using institutional
thinking. To him, past, present,
and future are woven into the same fabric.
Heclo also rejects arguments made by
scholars like Charles Beard who believed
the Framers of the Constitution wrote the
document to advance their own economic
interests. Instead, he asserts, they were
acutely aware of the assistance they had
been provided by those who had pushed
for liberty before them—especially those
Greeks, Frenchmen, and Englishmen who
forged the canonical thought about freedom.
They knew that what they were
doing would influence tremendously the
lives of millions of people who would be
born well after their deaths. They understood
their actions would influence millions
of their contemporaries across the
Western world. In other words, there was
a vibrant sense among the Framers that
their actions had significant implications
beyond the time and space they occupied.
Heclo is highly critical of rational-choice
theory’s understanding of institutional foundation
and development. This school of
thought—believed by many to be regnant
in the social sciences—views institutions as
the product of the interests of a few of the
powerful or a majority of the weak. Institutions
are adapted because they no longer
maximize these interests in the current state
of the world. Rational choice, therefore,
clearly undercuts institutional thinking and
the normative ramifications that come with
it. But it is more problematic than that. As a
matter of theory, Heclo sees it as too reductionist.
As an empirical matter he views it as
frequently just plain wrong.
Moreover, rational-choice theory has
always been presented with the conundrum
of institutional service. Why do institutions
survive when all of their members are selfinterested?
Why would someone join an
institution when its interests will often
be at odds with his own? Why would an
individual powerful enough to establish an
institution permit it to serve the interests
of others? The stock answers have been
that institutional membership and particularly
leadership are incentivized. Seniors
join AARP not for the purposes of fellowship
and participating in public debates
about Social Security and Medicare policy
but for the insurance, pharmacy, and other
subsidies and benefits members enjoy. Professors’
academic careers must essentially be
suspended when they assume the administrative
tasks that a department needs to have
performed if it is to survive. In return, they
are paid more than their colleagues of similar
rank and ability. The Speaker of the
House of Representatives and the chairs
of the body’s committees are better positioned
to raise campaign money, run for
higher office, and get their bills through
the legislative process. This is payoff for
serving the institution and protecting its
powers and prerogatives from competitors.
To think institutionally, then, is to do
something much more than provide individuals
with incentives to be part of and
promote institutions. It calls on them to
modify their behavior. In this way, Heclo
challenges rational choice’s assumptions
about institutional maintenance vigorously.
The second way institutions are supported
is by acting institutionally. One can
only act institutionally if one first thinks
institutionally. Heclo argues that acting
institutionally has three components.
The first, “profession,” involves learning
and respecting a body of knowledge and
aspiring to a particular level of conduct.
The second, “office,” is a sense of duty
that compels an individual to accomplish
considerably more for the institution than
a minimal check-list of tasks enumerated
within a kind of job description. Finally,
there is “stewardship.” Here Heclo is getting
at the notion of fiduciary responsibility.
The individual essentially takes the
decisions of past members on trust, acts in
the interests of present and future members,
and stands accountable for his actions.
Heclo is not particularly optimistic that
we will change and begin thinking institutionally
in a systematic way. Thinking
institutionally is a lonely pursuit. Its practitioners
are unappreciated and considered
naive. They expect to be taken advantage
of by those who care nothing for institutions,
only for themselves. But that does
not mean we should not do it. Heclo
makes it very clear. A world where more
people think and act institutionally would
be a much better place.
On the day I finished reading this
book, the New York Times published an
article about Wootton Bassett in southern
England. The village is on the road
from the Royal Air Force base in Lyneham
to a morgue in Oxford. Every now
and then, hearses drive down its High
Street carrying the bodies of British soldiers
killed in action in Iraq and Afghanistan.
In a spontaneous but conscientious
manner, villagers and the local chapter
of the Royal British Legion have taken
to informing the community about the
date and time of these repatriations—the
official term for the return of these servicemen
to the United Kingdom. Hundreds
of people then drop what they are
doing and stand along the road, in complete
stillness and silence, as the coffins
go by. Participants say they are there to
express their gratitude to their fellow citizens
and reflect upon the sacrifice made
by members of the armed services. They
do not want any attention. According to
the Times reporter, they believe they are
behaving as any decent person would. In
Hugh Heclo’s words, they are thinking,
and acting, institutionally.
