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Walter Dean Burnham

Is America in the Midst of a Political Realignment? (Guest Post)

Is America in the Midst of a Political Realignment? by Jeremy C. Young* The tumult of recent political events – from the surprising Sanders movement and head-scratching Trump nomination in the U.S. to the shocking Brexit vote in the UK – underscores the continued relevance of a thinker often overlooked by modern historians.  Walter Dean Burnham (born 1930) is a political scientist who taught at MIT, Washington University, and UT-Austin.  Burnham’s Critical Elections and the Mainsprings of American Politics (1970) was one of the last triumphs of traditional political history; it appeared just as that subfield was eclipsed by the Read more