Born in Marion Ohio on March 10, 1943 Hugh Heclo is a recognized expert on American democratic institutions as well as the international development of modern welfare states. He has received national awards for his books including Comparative Public Policy; A Government of Strangers: Executive Politics in Washington; and Modern Social Politics in Britain and Sweden. Professor Heclo is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, and he has served in the White House and as a senior fellow at The Brookings Institution. He chaired the Ford Foundation research advisory committee, which published The Common Good: Social Welfare and the American Future, and is co-author of the 1998 Urban Institute volume, The Government We Deserve. Hugh Heclo is senior editor and contributor to the 2003 volume, Religion Returns to the Public Square: Faith and Policy in America and a member of the Scholars Council advising the Librarian of Congress. Also in 2003, he wrote Ronald Reagan and the American Public Philosophy, chapter one in The Reagan Presidency and the chapter, The Political Ethos of George W. Bush, in The George W. Bush Presidency: An Early Assessment. In 2002 he received the American Political Science Association's John Gaus Award honoring exemplary scholarship in the joint tradition of political science and public administration. Each year, Heclo teaches introductory courses on Democracy and on American Government, and he leads interdisciplinary senior seminars on the Philosophy of History and on Religion and Politics in America.
From the guide to the Hugh Heclo government policy collection, 1901-1991, (George Mason University. Special Collections and Archives.)
