Political Parties and the Collapse of the Old Orders

John Kenneth White · Philip John Davies

Jan 1999 · State University of New York Press

About this ebook

With the passage of the Cold War, political parties in nearly every corner of the globe have undergone a vast upheaval. Old ideas have become obsolete, electoral maps have been redrawn, party structures have been rebuilt, and new leaders have emerged. Political Parties and the Collapse of the Old Orders describes these changes using several countries as laboratories: the United States, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Canada, Australia, Mexico, Israel, South Africa, and Russia. While the nature and extent of the political upheavals vary from place to place, the transformations in each nation's party system have been extraordinary. In this "new world order," the old political arrangements and old ways of doing things have disappeared. The altered states of political parties in the post-Cold War world pose a central question: what does change look like? The answers given here illuminate our understanding of why the world has changed and how political parties are attempting to cope with it.

About the author

John Kenneth White is Professor of Politics at Catholic University of America. His previous books include Governing New York State, Third Edition (edited with Jeffrey M. Stonecash and Peter W. Colby), also published by SUNY Press, Still Seeing Red: How the Cold War Shapes the New American Politics; Political Parties in the Information Age (co-written with Daniel M. Shea); The Politics of Ideas: Intellectual Challenges to the Parties after 1992; The New Politics of Old Values; and The Fractured Electorate: Political Parties and Social Change in Southern New England. Philip John Davies is Reader in American Studies at De Montfort University, Leicester, United Kingdom.