Maya Kornberg and Julian Zelizer Discuss 'Stuck'
Political scientist Kornberg and Princeton historian Zelizer examine why Congress has resisted reform for fifty years amid money, media, and political violence.
Why we picked this
If you've ever wondered why Congress seems incapable of fixing itself, Kornberg's Brennan Center research offers the most rigorous diagnosis we've seen — and Zelizer is the ideal conversation partner to put it in historical context.
Maya Kornberg’s “Stuck” is not another book lamenting congressional dysfunction — it is a systematic investigation of why Congress has failed to reform its own structures despite decades of bipartisan agreement that reform is necessary. Drawing on her research at the Brennan Center for Justice, Kornberg examines the specific mechanisms that preserve the status quo: campaign finance dependencies, media incentives that reward conflict over governance, and the rising threat of political violence that makes bipartisan cooperation personally dangerous for members. The diagnosis is structural, not moral, which makes it considerably more useful than most political commentary.
Julian Zelizer is one of the country’s leading congressional historians, with a body of work spanning the transformation of Congress from the New Deal era through the present. His books on Newt Gingrich’s speakership and the rise of partisan warfare in the House provide exactly the historical scaffolding needed to understand why the patterns Kornberg identifies are so durable. He does not romanticize earlier Congresses, but he can trace the specific decision points where different choices were possible.
The conversation at the Center for Brooklyn History gives these two researchers the room to work through where they agree, where their frameworks produce different conclusions, and what, if anything, looks like a realistic path toward institutional change. It is free and open to the public — which is fitting for a conversation about the health of democratic institutions.