Hugh Heclo

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Hugh Heclo is Clarence J. Robinson Professor of Public Affairs at George Mason University. He was previously professor of government at Harvard University.

Heclo is perhaps best known as an expert on the development of modern welfare states. He invented in 1978 the concept of Issue Network,used to describe loose alliances between groups of interest, organizations, economic actors that tries to influence policy development. Issue Crawler, an server-side software that locate public debate on the Web, is based on Issue Network concept. In 2002 he was awarded the American Political Science Association's John Gaus Award.