How Congress Lost, Part IX: Resilient Corruption and an Emerging Progressive Critique in the Late 19th Century

Jay Cost, How Congress Lost, Part IX: Resilient Corruption and an Emerging Progressive Critique in the Late 19th Century, American Enterprise Institute, December 2025.

This is the ninth installment of Jay Cost’s “How Congress Lost” series of short reports. Here he argues that the decline of Congress’ power vis-a-vis the executive branch flowed from reforms to curb corruption. Passage of the The Pendleton Act of 1883 curbed and greatly diminished the Democratic and Republican parties’ from filling government jobs with partisans. This disrupted the economy of the “spoils system” that enriched party bosses and their allies in Congress and the White House. The parties redesigned their machines around control over state and municipal operations, and Republicans in particular allied with corporations, whose interests they advanced in the US Senate. This “resilient corruption” stoked a backlash against Congress and in favor of a more potent and progressive presidency. Woodrow Wilson emerged as an intellectual leader of this movement and got to put his views into action upon winning the White House in 1912.