Emilian Kavalski

Why are policymakers, scholars, and the general public so surprised when the world turns out to be unpredictable? World Politics at the Edge of Chaos suggests that the study of international politics needs new forms of knowledge to respond to emerging challenges such as the interconnectedness between local and transnational realities; between markets, migration, and social movements; and between pandemics, a looming energy crisis, and climate change. Asserting that Complexity Thinking (CT) provides a much-needed lens for interpreting these challenges, the contributors offer a parallel assessment of the impact of CT to anthropocentric and non-anthropocentric (post-human) International Relations. Using this perspective, the result should be less surprise when confronting the dynamism of a fragile and unpredictable global life.

50% discount code: 50BNY14N.This book is designed to familiarise students with leading International Relations (IR) theories and their explanation of political events, phenomena, and processes which cross the territorial boundaries of the state. Thus, students will be exposed to the interplay between power, interest, ideas, identity, and resistance, in explaining continuity and change in international relations. Developed to provide students with the analytical tools and intellectual frameworks needed to understand the behaviour of different international actors in contemporary global affairs. This textbook responds to the challenges of a dynamic job market by assisting students to gain both thorough theoretical knowledge and training them to apply this knowledge to real world problems.

This book offers a unique analytical investigation of the international politics of the EU, China, and India in the context of their security strategies in Central Asia. It shows how the interaction between these three actors is likely to change the frameworks and practices of international relations. This is studied through their interactions with central Asia, using the framework of normative powers and the concept of regional security governance. This innovative study does not aim to catalog foreign policies, but to uncover the dominant perceptions, cognitive structures and practices that guide these actors' regional agency, as exemplified through the context of Central Asia. It will be an essential resource for anyone studying international relations, international relations theory, and foreign policy analysis.

At the end of the Cold War, commentators were pondering how far Western ideas would spread in an international environment defined by 'the end of history'. Today, the debate seems to be how far Chinese ideas will reach. This innovative edited volume goes beyond the conventional focus on China's bilateral relations, in a bid to identify the extent to which China's nascent rise has provoked fresh geo-strategic and intellectual shifts within Asia. Offering a unique discussion of the evolution of Chinese schools of International Relations and the reactions of China's Asian partners to the practices of its international interactions, the contributors to this volume seek to explain and understand the relational nature of China's international outreach in the full spectrum of its unabridged complexity, contingency, and contradictions.

The Ashgate Research Companion to Chinese Foreign Policy draws out the full range of topics and issues that characterise China's external affairs. The volume is intended to provide an overview of Chinese foreign policy that will be relevant both to experts in the field as well as those that are just starting to grapple with Beijing's international outlook. The investigation of Chinese foreign policy offered by the volume is divided into seven parts:
- Part I focuses on the historical evolution of Chinese foreign policy by detailing the specific traditions and the altering paradigms of Beijing's external outlook proffered for the explanation and understanding of Chinese foreign policy
- Part II discusses the different analytical perspectives proffered for the explanation and understanding of Chinese foreign policy
- Part III considers the domestic sources of Chinese foreign policy
- Part IV analyses the international impact of Beijing's outreach
- Part V of the volume begins the exploration of China's relations with specific international actors
- Part VI investigates the regional interactions of Chinese foreign policy
- Part VII of the volume draws attention to several issues impacting both the practice and the understanding of Chinese foreign policy

hina’s expanding outreach and diversifying roles have provided a novel context for the ongoing reconsiderations of world politics. As a result, inquiries into how China thinks and in what way its history and traditions inform the idiosyncrasies of China’s international outlook have grown into a cottage industry both in International Relations (IR) and across the full spectrum of the humanities and social sciences. In this setting, Beijing’s external relations draw attention both because of their agency and due to the specificities of China’s individual engagements. What has remained overlooked, however, is that such preoccupation with China has been paralleled by the emergence of a relational turn in IR. One could argue that this is not a mere coincidence. Relationality in IR has become prominent not least because of its simultaneous appropriation by both the so-called Western and non-Western (especially, Chinese) perspectives on world affairs. In this respect, the claim is that the relational turn has become a defining feature of the so-called post-Western IR theorizing – namely, things in global life are not merely interconnected, but they gain meaning and significance within complex webs of entanglements and encounters with others. The relationality lens helps outline the contested terrain of post-Western IR as a space for dialogical learning, which promises a world that is less hegemonic, more democratic, international and equitable.

While formally labelled as ‘strategic’, the European Union (EU)–India partnership is more often than not described as ‘lukewarm’ and ‘reluctant’. Thus, by process-tracing the EU–India relationship, this article reveals the significance of 1999 as a crucial point that has urged both Brussels and New Delhi to significantly alter both their outlook on global life and on each other. The bilateral relationship will be shown to be a story of two actors aspiring to global prominence, who—to their mutual frustration—find themselves consigned and constrained to play a leading role only in their respective neighbourhoods. The bilateral relationship seems only to reinforce this marginalization in global affairs, as neither of the strategic partners considers the other significant enough to develop meaningful relations with them.

Yes, we are hawks. We are the hawks of freedom, humanism and democracy! Solomon Passi Bulgarian Minister of Foreign Affairs 1 1 FocusNews Agency (hereafter Focus), 12 April 2003. Bulgaria's decision to withdraw its troops from Iraq by the end of 2005 offers an opportunity to asses the country's contribution to the 'coalition of the willing.'Viewed from the outside, Sofia's instrumental entrepreneurship in Iraq has tended to confirm that within the Balkan region, Bulgaria has one of the highest levels of institutional development and ...

Who or what is a normative power? In response to this query the article suggests that normative
powers are those actors that are recognized as such by others. This qualifies Ian Manners’s
oft-quoted proposition that normative powers are only those actors that have the ability to
‘shape what can be “normal” in international life’. The proposition is that the definitions of the
‘normal’ are not merely undertaken by normative power, but they emerge in the context of its
interaction with others. Recognition, in this setting, is indicated by the specific reactions of target
states. In this respect, the issue is not merely about being and becoming a normative power,
but also about being recognized as one by others. The article details this proposition through a
parallel assessment of normative power Europe and normative power China. The intention of
such comparison is to elicit the key elements of normative power in global life.

The climate of post-Cold-War interactions remains uncertain. Rather than a
transitory stage, the resilience of the pervasive randomness of international life has
challenged the dominant frameworks for the study of world politics. Some commentators
have therefore advocated the infusion of international relations theory with the conjectures
of complexity theory. This article brings together the claims of the different proponents of
such intersection and suggests the emergence of complex international relations theory.
Although it requires further critical elaboration, the claim here is that this theory outlines
the fifth debate in the study of international life and proffers intriguing heuristic devices
that both challenge conventional wisdom and provoke analytical imaginations.

This article offers a much-needed conceptual analysis of China’s emerging international agency in Central
Asia. In particular it engages with the apparent susceptibility of Central Asian states to China’s normative
power. The contention is that the emphasis on the dynamics of international socialization offers a relevant
framework for evaluating Beijing’s capacity to engage regional states. By relying on its normative power, China
has gradually attracted Central Asia into its sphere of influence through the promotion of various initiatives
for regional cooperation consolidated in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. Such conceptualization of
Beijing’s conditioning propensity reflects upon China’s international role(s) in the region.

Commentators have long insisted that India’s 1998
nuclear tests mark an important juncture in the country’s
international affairs. This paper therefore offers a muchneeded
discursive assessment of India’s post-1998 foreign
policy. The claim is that the country’s international outlook
is largely shaped by the domestic discourse on national
insecurities. Foreign policy statements thereby become
discursive platforms both for the manifestation of national
self-positioning on the international arena and the recontextualization
of historical narratives. Yet, despite the
strategic assertiveness of these narratives, New Delhi has failed
to provide a viable Indian vision for world order. Instead,
there appears to be a palpable uncertainty about what “Pax
Indica” stands for and whether it should be pursued through
the paraphernalia of “Brand India.” As a result, New Delhi’s
international image has few appealing attributes that other
countries might be tempted to emulate.

While the analysis of normative power has dominated the debates in European international relations studies for the past 20 years, this topic has hardly been broached in the analysis of Asian international affairs. This investigation aims to redress this trend by taking stock of the current state of the art. This exploration therefore contends that normative powers are those actors that are recognized as such by others. This qualifies Ian Manners’ oft-quoted proposition that normative powers are only those actors that have the ability to “shape what can be ‘normal’ in international life.” The proposition
is that the definitions of the “normal” are not merely undertaken by normative power, but that they emerge in the context of its interaction with others. Recognition, in this setting, is indicated by the specific reactions of target states. In this respect, the issue is not merely about being and becoming
a normative power, but also about being recognized as one by others. The study will detail this proposition by undertaking an analytical parallel assessment of normative power Europe, normative power China, normative power India, and normative power Japan.

By suggesting predictable and controllable patterns of development, the literature on
global governance seems to simplify the world for decision-making tractability. In this
respect, security narratives often remain analytically frozen, while the dynamics of
global life are not. Relying on complexity thinking, this article both comments on the construction
and potential reconstruction of the concept of security as it relates to the question
of global governance and engages with the cognitive multiplicity of the notion of global
security governance. Such an exploration suggests the need for the complexification of
the discourses and practices of security governance through the adaptive contingency of
“security as resilience”, which rejects the detachment between human and natural
systems and the ability of the former to control the latter. The argument is that the
logic of “security as resilience” ismore appropriate than the conventional logic of “security
as control”. In policy terms, therefore, the complexity of global security governance intimates
an ability to cope with vulnerabilities, defy adversity and construct a new proficiency
in response to the uncertainty, cognitive challenges, complex unbounded risks
and the need for continuing adaptation prompted by the alterations in global life.

The Balkans and Iraq have become emblematic features of the
post-cold war geography of international relations. However, by
concentrating on the current ruptures in the Euro-Atlantic community, most commentators: (i) neglect the macro-historical tendency of the US towards unilateralism in response to ‘existential threats’ and to multilateral approaches whenever and wherever the sense of urgency is not pressing; and (ii) overlook the fact that the Iraq crisis is an aberration in an otherwise persisting transatlantic relationship of co-operation. It can be argued that an exploration of the externally-driven processes of order-promotion in the region indicates that the Iraq crisis did not impact dramatically on the role of either the EU or NATO.This is because the Balkans remains an area of co-operation between the transatlantic partners as a result of their reaction to the Kosovo crisis. Secondly, the current regional perspective suggests that the transatlantic rows offered Balkan states the opportunity to pursue particular agendas. Finally, it can be suggested that, unlike Iraq, the Balkans region is not in fact prone to a relapse into so-called ‘Balkanisation’.

A basic question in current debates of international relations is whether intergovernmental organizations influence inter-state conflict behavior. Since the beginning of the 1990s, the major actors of the West European security community have been socializing Balkan elites in the practices of appropriate behavior with the purpose of affecting their foreign and security policy. The claim of this study is that Balkan state-interaction with Euro-Atlantic organizations (principally the EU and NATO) leads the latter to propagate norms on accepted practices to Southeast European states. These practices relate to domestic politics and also to inter-state relations. The rules and norms are propagated in a number of ways. These are looked at as processes of socialization by and in international organizations, which in turn, can encourage inter-state cooperation by the Balkan states (i.e. because they have adopted similar norms and thus types of practice) and this can initiate the development of a regional security community.

Coming to terms with the nascent international agency of regional powers with global intentions has become a dominant topic in the study of world affairs. This rash of attention to the emergent dynamics of international interactions has been facilitated by the break-up of the Cold War order which has allowed a number of actors to extend their international roles and outreach. India and China feature prominently among those actors and their agency in global life is subject to a growing public, policy, and scholarly scrutiny.

ABSTRACT: The argument of this article is that the post-communist transition in Bulgaria is in fact an institutionalization of the practices of disorder. As a result, there develops a distinct differentiation between the political elite and its electorate. The divergence is one of values.

Abstract The paradox of the Bulgarian post-communist transition seems to be that on the one hand it has succeeded to introduce relatively stable political institutions, which, however, have not been able to address popular values, as is indicated by the erratic voting patterns and public opinion surveys. An explanation for such development can be found in the EU approach to the country, which aims to condition Bulgaria's decision-making practice, but so far has failed to spill over into societal attitudes.

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