| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 92.1

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 92.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

On Capitol Hill: The Struggle to Reform Congress and Its Consequences, 1948–2000. By Julian E. Zelizer. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004. xvi, 359 pp. $30.00, ISBN 0-521-80161-3.)
In On Capitol Hill, Julian E. Zelizer has given us a reasoned and thoroughly researched account of congressional reform efforts from the 1930s into the 1990s. He discerns four stages in the evolution of these efforts—the conservative committee era, 1937–1946; building a constituency for reform, 1948–1970; the end of the dominance of the committee system, 1970–1979; and the contemporary era.	1
From the 1930s through the 1960s, the major barrier to change was the control of committees (and thus Congress) by entrenched southern Democrats. Committee chairs dominated Congress, and this hegemony, along with the filibuster, scuttled most reform legislation. From the late 1940s through the mid-1960s, a liberal reform coalition emerged. But, as the author indicates, the waning influence of southern Democrats in the 1960s stemmed not from internal procedural reform, but rather from a series of Supreme Court rulings that forced redistricting in the House, leading in turn to a gradual replacement of the southern old guard. Both the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 passed not because powerful chairs were enfeebled, but rather because of the intense public focus on civil rights.	. . .

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