La Californie de Brown à Reagan, ou l'agonie du libéralisme (1958-1966)

Abstract

California from Brown to Reagan or the agony of liberalism (1958-1966), Antoine Coppolani. The most populous state of the United States, the most economically powerful in the 1960s, California is also the spring-board for many shifts of contemporary American history. The election of Reagan to the governorship in 1966 is only the symbol of a deeper movement that seriously upset the American political landscape, the passage of a dominant paradigm, liberalism to its conservative antithesis. Wheras the liberal consensus was prevailing, California had become the testing ground of this political philosophy applied to the government. Although incontestable social and economic progress was accomplished, it didn't prevent internal contradictions and especially adverse and unexpected effects of the liberal policy from blowing away any consensus, throwing liberalism in California, and therefore in America, to the wind.