Maya L. Kornberg — STUCK: How Money, Media, and Violence Prevent Change in Congress
Political scientist explains why fifty years of reform efforts haven't fixed Congress, tracing the structural forces that block meaningful institutional change.
Why we picked this
Most books about Congress are either insider memoirs or partisan screeds — Kornberg is doing something harder: diagnosing the structural pathologies that persist regardless of which party is in charge.
Maya L. Kornberg is a political scientist whose work focuses on institutional dysfunction — why governments fail to act, even when the problems are obvious and the public wants change. STUCK is her analysis of Congress specifically: the money in campaigns, the media incentives that reward conflict over legislation, and the occasional violent threats that shape what members will and won’t do.
It’s a sobering book, but not a nihilistic one — Kornberg is interested in understanding the constraints precisely because she believes they can be changed. The talk is an opportunity to push on the hardest questions: what would actually work?
Free and open to the public.