ABSTRACT
Thinking institutionally enables us to discover the values that are the foundation of taken-for-granted leadership practices that provide leaders with the ability to connect the past to the future and that give these practices legitimacy through time. The passage of the Pendleton Act of 1883 and the creation of a civil service merit system institutionalized the best thinking of the day about how to correct the abuses of the spoils system. Institutional legacies include the council-manager form of government, systematic budgeting and accounting practices, research bureaus and in general the transformation of public service into a modern-day profession. Institutions are responsible for embedded practices of racism, sexism and other forms of exclusion, marginalization and oppression that undermine the public good. Jacksonian democracy provides public service leaders with a vision and a strategy for securing the economic well-being of their community and the larger nation state.
