Bakis (1987) showed the impact of information and telecommunications networks on political geography, and Peter Taylor's (e.g. 2007) work on World Systems Theory owed much to developments within structural Marxism. However, the recent growth in vitality and importance of this sub-discipline is also related to the changes in the world as a result of the end of the Cold War. With the emergence of a new world order (which as yet, is only poorly defined) and the development of new research agendas, such as the more recent focus on social movements and political struggles, going beyond the study of nationalism with its explicit territorial basis. There has also been increasing interest in the geography of green politics (see, for example, David Pepper's (1996) work), including the geopolitics of environmental protest, and in the capacity of our existing state apparatus and wider political institutions, to address any contemporary and future environmental problems competently. Political geography has extended the scope of traditional political science approaches by acknowledging that the exercise of power is not restricted to states and bureaucracies, but is part of everyday life. This has resulted in the concerns of political geography increasingly overlapping with those of other human geography sub-disciplines such as economic geography, and, particularly, with those of social and cultural geography in relation to the study of the politics of place (see, for example, the books by David Harvey (1996) and Joe Painter (1995)). Although contemporary political geography maintains many of its traditional concerns (see below) the multi-disciplinary expansion into related areas is part of a general process within human geography which involves the blurring of boundaries between formerly discrete areas of study, and through which the discipline as a whole is enriched. In particular, contemporary political geography often considers: How and why states are organized into regional groupings, both formally (e.g. the European Union) and informally (e.g. the Third World) The relationship between states and former colonies, and how these are propagated over time, for example through neo-colonialism The relationship between a government and its people The relationships between states including international trades and treaties The functions, demarcations and policing of boundaries How imagined geographies have political implications The influence of political power on geographical space The political implications of modern media (e.g. radio, TV, ICT, Internet, social networks) The study of election results (electoral geography) Critical political geography Critical political geography is mainly concerned with