Political Change in California A Review Essay

Abstract

As the twentieth century progresses, the more one seeks to understand America and American history, the more it seems necessary to study two things: California and behavioral science. As California events appear to reflect, foretoken, and distort the major trends in the nationat-large, so behavioral science promises to aid us in understanding these complex events and trends. The book under review is, for this reason, doubly valuable, since it utilizes the methodology of modern political science to unearth and to interpret some major facts of California history during the past two generations. Rogin, a political scientist, and Shover, an historian, make an admirable interdisciplinary team in using statistical techniques and behavioral concepts, particularly the idea of the election, in analyzing masses of complex and often contradictory data. Despite certain shortcomings described below, this is a significant work which no competent student of the California scene can afford to ignore. Speaking of shortcomings, it is sad to relate that in certain respects the authors were not well served by their editor and publisher. Some of the tabular and graphic material, particularly on pages 11, 12, 23 and 171, seems so truncated and ambiguous that it tends to obfuscate the textual data which it is supposed to amplify. A typographical error on page 12 confuses the reader by referring him to Figure 2 when Figure 1 is obviously intended. Citation methods are slipshod doctoral dissertations not listed in the bibliography (including Rogin's!) are merely cited Ph.D. dissertation, with dates and granting institutions omitted. And the index is so brief as to be practically useless, even such crucial concepts as critical elections, party realignment, political symbolism, and many others being denied entry. Given the price of