BOOK REVIEW By MARY REDMOND

Adding to the literature on Illinois state government and politics

Crane, Edgar G., ed. Illinois: Political Processes and Governmental Performance. Dubuque: Kendall/Hunt Publishing Company, 1980.

ONE of the most gratifying products of the information explosion has been the growth of literature on Illinois state government and politics. Some of the important titles of the last 15 years are two editions of Basic Illinois Government by David Kenney (2d edition, Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1974), several versions of a study of the Illinois General Assembly by Samuel K. Gove and others (the latest edition of which is The Illinois Legislature: Structure and Process, by Samuel K. Gove, Richard W. Carlson, and Richard J. Carlson, Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1976), and the monthly and annual publications of Illinois Issues.

The latest addition to this field is Illinois: Political Processes and Governmental Performance, a collection of readings edited by Edgar G. Crane and sponsored by the Illinois Political Science Association. The editor, an assistant professor of political science and public administration at Northern Illinois University and a former staff assistant to the late Illinois Senate President Pro Tempore W. Russell Arrington, has done an admirable job of gathering articles on a wide range of topics by authors who, in many instances, have both academic and practical experience of Illinois government. The result is an informative, readable and sometimes even fascinating anthology.

According to the preface, the volume intends, to reach several audiences and it accomplishes that without being general or shallow. The text is organized into eight categories which address governmental structure and mechanics, the environment of government, local government, money and government, selected issues of government, and the future.

This organization is ideal for the teacher and student since it fosters a piece by piece study of the complexity of government with enough history supplied to integrate the whole. The general reader will find issues soundly investigated and reported which have come to his or her attention in the daily press but which are only briefly dealt with there. Principally the chapters on Illinois as a technocracy, Illinois' energy environment, and zoning plans to save farmland from residential sprawl will catch the eye of the concerned general reader.

Students and general readers alike will profit from the work of the contributors, both those who have already contributed heavily to the field of Illinois governmental literature (including Samuel K. Gove on the legislature and administrative reorganization, David J. Kenney on the Constitution, and Thomas B. Little wood on media-government relationships) and those who are sharing their expertise in specialized areas (e.g., John Ahlen of the Legislative Council on technical information for legislative decisions and Richard Kolhauser of the Bureau of the Budget on the growth of state government). Researchers and scholars will appreciate the extensive footnotes and bibliographies for almost every article. And everyone should find the appendix a useful feature since it contains a ranking of the state's position among the 50 states in selected demographic, economic and governmental policy indicators.

The only fault that I have to find is the woefully inadequate index which has many omissions and inconsistencies. Perhaps the revised volumes, which the Illinois Political Science Association and the editor intend to issue every two or three years, will have improved indexing so that it meets the same high standards displayed throughout the rest of the book.

Mary Redmond is head of the Legislative and General Reference and Information Branch of the Illinois State Library, Springfield.

26/October 1980/Illinois Issues