Under Mr. Regan's plan, the New York pension fund would join a national movement of long-term investors who are seeking to use their institutional clout to force poorly performing companies to improve.

Jazz at Lincoln Center, with its institutional clout, has set out to codify one vision of the form, in which blues flavor and swinging rhythms are paramount.

Over the past two decades, as the military has come to dominate America's presence overseas and U.S. foreign policy itself, the institutional clout of State, U.S.A.I.D., and other civilian agencies has eroded.

Regrettably, veterans are not using their institutional clout to hold elected government officials accountable.

It has no theme, was selected by committee and, as the first official curatorial collaboration between P.S. 1 and the Museum of Modern Art, comes with the kind of institutional clout that makes the art world see red.

Veterans have the moral and institutional clout to argue that no one group should be singled out to make sacrifices until all groups are asked to sacrifice.

The exhibition has many stories to tell, and most of them are about power: about 3,000 years of imperial rule, about the amassing of a fabulous collection and about an American art museum with sufficient institutional clout to negotiate an enviable "treasures" show and bring it to New York.

With a whopping 150 artists, it is a themeless, selected-by-committee show with the kind of institutional clout that can make the art world see red.

But Helms was startled to learn that despite Dulles's reputation as "the great white case officer," he came to value one thing even more than a well-placed spy: institutional clout.