The Citadel and the Home Place Under Siege

Abstract

Citadel, published in 1957, was a best-selling exploration of the contemporary U.S. Senate. Journalist William S. White sought to provide his readers with insights into the workings of the institution, a strikingly hierarchical, isolated, and secretive body. This was not an attack but a celebration of the Senate's club-like atmosphere, which White praised for its encouragement of bipartisan cooperation. Southern Democrats, whose seniority earned them special influence through control of committees, won notable praise in White's account for their promotion of stability and compromise.' But what White perceived as the Senate's strengths were antidemocratic weaknesses in the eyes of some politicians and activists who were then coalescing in pursuit of congressional reform. Julian Zelizer's On Capitol Hill is a very successful analysis of coalition's origins, its long quest for reform that reshaped the House of Representatives as well as the Senate, and the unanticipated consequences of its legislative and procedural achievements. By the end of the twentieth century, the House and the Senate constituted a more open and less hierarchical legislature, but the partisan conflict that increasingly characterized Congress fueled new frustrations, including deeper public dissatisfaction with the political process. This was an elite-led impetus to deepen Congress's democratic responsiveness, one that changed the institution dramatically without necessarily strengthening its connections with the people. On Capitol Hill underscores the obstacles to political reform and in particular the strength of an institution's resistance to disruptive change. In the most basic of terms, Zelizer writes, this book posits that reforming government is much harder work than most politicians or pundits admit (p. 3). With its analysis of a successful effort to transform the procedures and structures of Congress, the book compellingly describes the subtle complexities involved in achieving change and the paradoxical nature of its consequences.