Emilian Kavalski
Biographic Data
| ID | 223517 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Emilian Kavalski |
| GIVEN NAMES | Emilian |
| FAMILY NAME | Kavalski |
| SIGNATURE | KAVALSKI E |
| AFFILIATIONS | Western Sydney University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-0364-9599 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 64 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 186 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 59 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 5 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2003 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
From a Buffer Zone to a Frontline Region? Unmapping Eastern Europe in a Multi-Order World
Routledge Handbook on Global China
Global Challenges (FGGA)
A hierarchical vision of order: Understanding Chinese foreign policy in Asia; China's asymmetric statecraft: alignments, competitors, and regional diplomacy; The authoritarian century: China's rise an…
The memory bear
In the late summer of 2018, like many of her students, friends and admirers, I was very glad to see that L.H.M. Ling’s health was improving. In mid-September, we were having exchanges about the publication of a special issue to which both of us were contributing. It felt like it was possible to plan new intellectual journeys together and I asked Lily whether she might be interested to take part in a panel on the ‘yogurt roads’ of Eurasia for the …
The end of China’s romance with Central and Eastern Europe
The 2016 Mandopop hit ‘Prague square’ ushered in a new romance for Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) in China. Such infatuation has resonated not only in popular culture, but was mirrored in China’s newfound boldness on the international stage. Drawing on CEE media accounts, the article demonstrates that China’s romance with the CEE countries was never reciprocated. In fact, the CEE region might present a significant outlier in that media accounts…
Localizing China’s Global Silk Roads through the “17 + 1”
China both participates in the existing framework of European international relations and, through the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), it engages in constituting “a qualitatively different regional relationality”. Under the auspices of the so-called “17 + 1” mechanism, China has been developing relations with sixteen Central and East European (CEE) states: Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czechia, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lith…
Inside/Outside and Around: Complexity and the Relational Ethics of Global Life
It has become expected of policymakers, pundits, and scholars to refer to a whole raft of dilemmas – from the economic downturn to climate change – as complex. The complexity of these challenges intimates a pattern of interactions marked by sharp discontinuities and exponential transformations triggered by incremental changes. How can one act ethically and politically in such a turbulent environment? Drawing on Complexity Thinking (CT), this arti…
Towards global relational theorizing: A dialogue between Sinophone and Anglophone scholarship on relationalism
What is ‘relational theorizing’ in International Relations and what can it offer? This article introduces a thematic section that responds to these questions by showing two things. First, relational theorizing is not a doctrine or a method, but a set of analyses that begin with relations rather than the putative essences of constitutively autonomous actors. Second, relational theorizing has emerged from different geo-linguistic traditions, and a …
The Unexpected Consequences of China’s Cooperation with Central and Eastern Europe
The Central and East European (CEE) region is often overlooked in the conversations on contemporary geopolitics. Yet, owing to China’s growing relations in the CEE countries, the region has been subject to increasing international attention. By process tracing the development of the ‘17 + 1’ mechanism, this article offers a brief overview of Sino-CEE relations. Situated within the broader Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), the ‘17 + 1’ has provided …
China’s Belt and Road Initiative in Central and Eastern Europe
The Central and East European (CEE) part of the Eurasian landmass is often overlooked in the conversations on contemporary geopolitics. Yet, owing to China’s investment in the CEE countries, the region has been subject to growing strategic attention. This article offers a brief overview of the history of this relationship by focusing on the “16+1” mechanism. Nestled within the broader Belt and Road Initiative, the “16+1” has provided a unique reg…
The Guanxi of Relational International Affairs
The Puzzle of India’s Relations with “Central Eurasia”
India’s relations with Afghanistan and the post-Soviet countries of Central Asia have contributed to the growing interest in the country’s rise. By treating them together as “Central Eurasia,” the discourses of Indian foreign policy invoke a contiguous geopolitical locale bound to India by a shared past. Yet, despite the strategic articulation of a manifest Central Eurasian region, the article uncovers a puzzle of bifurcation in India’s foreign p…
Theorizing China’s rise in and beyond international relations
China's rise, like the demise of the Soviet Union, is one of the defining events in the contemporary world. Yet, while the unexpected Soviet collapse and the end of the Cold War sparked the ‘Third Debate’ in International Relations (IR) theory, it is puzzling that the rise of China has yet to generate a comparable process of shell-shock and soul-searching among IR theorists. Just as the end of the Cold War is more than simply the end of a bipolar…
Guanxi or What is the Chinese for Relational Theory of World Politics
The phenomenon of China’s rise has urged some to look for International Relations (IR) theories with ‘Chinese characteristics’. A number of these have been associated with the ‘relational turn’. Yet, attempts to bring the Anglophone and the Sinophone strands of the relational turn have failed to transcend the bifurcating metanarrative of the mainstream. To rectify this trend, the analysis engages the literatures on guanxi, the relational turn, an…
China’s Belt and Road Initiative in Central and Eastern Europe
The Guanxi of Relational International Theory
This book offers a relational theory of International Relations (IR). To show the ways in which the relationality is foreshadowed in IR conversations it makes the following three points: 1) it recovers a mode of IR theorizing as itinerant translation; 2) it deploys the concept and practices of guanxi (employed here as a heuristic device revealing the infinite capacity of international interactions to create and construct multiple worlds) to uncov…
Posthuman Dialogues in International Relations
India and the Responsibility to Protect
Stable Outside, Fragile Inside?: Post-Soviet Statehood in Central Asia
Managing Global Risks in the Urban Age: Singapore and the Making of a Global City
The first full-length exposition of what it terms a global city-global risks nexus, this volume crosses disciplinary boundaries to draw upon research from Security Studies; Geography; Sociology; and Urban Studies. Innovative in its approach integrating theories about Global Cities with those positing a Global Risk Society, Yee-Kuang Heng positions this research in the midst of two concurrent global trends that will gain more significance in comin…
Relationality and Its Chinese Characteristics
China'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 exte…
Power Transition in Asia
World Politics at the Edge of Chaos
We dance to the rhythms of the universe.We dance sometimes alone; sometimes in groups, Each sensing and responding to a slightly different beat in the chaotic rumble; Each encompassing the whole, yet remaining unique.Not random error, or noise, The out-of-step footsteps follow a path charted in the infinity of time, rational and beautiful, if only we could see it from outside ourselves.We live and celebrate life Made possible in the violent death…
World Politics at the Edge of Chaos: Reflections on Complexity and Global Life
Power in a Changing Global Order: The US, Russia, and China by Martin A. Smith
The struggle for recognition of normative powers: Normative power Europe and normative power China in context
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 …
The fifth debate and the emergence of complex international relations theory: Notes on the application of complexity theory to the study of international 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 intersectio…
Towards global relational theorizing: A dialogue between Sinophone and Anglophone scholarship on relationalism
What is ‘relational theorizing’ in International Relations and what can it offer? This article introduces a thematic section that responds to these questions by showing two things. First, relational theorizing is not a doctrine or a method, but a set of analyses that begin with relations rather than the putative essences of constitutively autonomous actors. Second, relational theorizing has emerged from different geo-linguistic traditions, and a …
Shanghaied into Cooperation: Framing China's Socialization of Central Asia
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 a…
The Guanxi of Relational International Affairs
The Shadows of Normative Power in A sia: Framing the International Agency of C hina, I ndia, and J apan
While the analysis of normative power has dominated the debates in E uropean international relations studies for the past 20 years, this topic has hardly been broached in the analysis of A sian 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 I an M an…
Governing Uncertainty in Turbulent Times
From the Cold War to Global Warming: Observing Complexity in IR
Few international relations (IR) experts will challenge the profound effects that environmental degradation has on the relationship between human and non-human systems and on their ability to survive. This article provides an overview of the dominant perceptions of climate change in IR: either as a security concern, as a foreign policy issue or as a task that needs to be addressed via a global governance mechanism. The claim, however, is that the…
The EU–India strategic partnership: Neither very strategic, nor much of a partnership
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…
Whom to Follow? Central Asia between the EU and China
This analysis undertakes a preliminary conceptual assessment of the international agency of the European Union (EU) and China in Central Asia. The contention is that the strategies advanced by both Brussels and Beijing in the region reflect not only their desire to introduce a framework of predictability allowing them to make feasible calculations about future intentions, but also the increasing ‘fragmegration’ of international life. The contenti…
The Unexpected Consequences of China’s Cooperation with Central and Eastern Europe
The Central and East European (CEE) region is often overlooked in the conversations on contemporary geopolitics. Yet, owing to China’s growing relations in the CEE countries, the region has been subject to increasing international attention. By process tracing the development of the ‘17 + 1’ mechanism, this article offers a brief overview of Sino-CEE relations. Situated within the broader Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), the ‘17 + 1’ has provided …
Theorizing China’s rise in and beyond international relations
China's rise, like the demise of the Soviet Union, is one of the defining events in the contemporary world. Yet, while the unexpected Soviet collapse and the end of the Cold War sparked the ‘Third Debate’ in International Relations (IR) theory, it is puzzling that the rise of China has yet to generate a comparable process of shell-shock and soul-searching among IR theorists. Just as the end of the Cold War is more than simply the end of a bipolar…
The Complexity of Global Security Governance: An Analytical Overview
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 gl…
Do Not Play with Fire: The End of the Bulgarian Ethnic Model or the Persistence of Inter-Ethnic Tensions in Bulgaria
The strong showing of the ultra-nationalist party, Ataka, in the 2005 parliamentary elections in Bulgaria on a platform of extreme nationalism and anti-Turkish rhetoric has called attention to the state of inter-ethnic relations in the country. The post-Communist period in Bulgaria has been underwritten by the “peaceful” character of majority–minority interactions. However, this article argues that it is such overexposure that has helped occlude …
Inside/Outside and Around: Complexity and the Relational Ethics of Global Life
It has become expected of policymakers, pundits, and scholars to refer to a whole raft of dilemmas – from the economic downturn to climate change – as complex. The complexity of these challenges intimates a pattern of interactions marked by sharp discontinuities and exponential transformations triggered by incremental changes. How can one act ethically and politically in such a turbulent environment? Drawing on Complexity Thinking (CT), this arti…
Guanxi or What is the Chinese for Relational Theory of World Politics
The phenomenon of China’s rise has urged some to look for International Relations (IR) theories with ‘Chinese characteristics’. A number of these have been associated with the ‘relational turn’. Yet, attempts to bring the Anglophone and the Sinophone strands of the relational turn have failed to transcend the bifurcating metanarrative of the mainstream. To rectify this trend, the analysis engages the literatures on guanxi, the relational turn, an…
Coming to Terms with the Complexity of External Agency in Central Asia
During the 1990s, Central Asia emerged as an idiom for the uncertainty pervading the post-Cold War climate of global life. This paper therefore queries the intertwining of the region in world politics and the ways in which the dynamics of international affairs affect Central Asia. In this respect, the investigation explores the scope and connotations of the “new Central Asia” label. Its framing provides a context for the conceptual engagement wit…
The memory bear
In the late summer of 2018, like many of her students, friends and admirers, I was very glad to see that L.H.M. Ling’s health was improving. In mid-September, we were having exchanges about the publication of a special issue to which both of us were contributing. It felt like it was possible to plan new intellectual journeys together and I asked Lily whether she might be interested to take part in a panel on the ‘yogurt roads’ of Eurasia for the …
The Puzzle of India’s Relations with “Central Eurasia”
India’s relations with Afghanistan and the post-Soviet countries of Central Asia have contributed to the growing interest in the country’s rise. By treating them together as “Central Eurasia,” the discourses of Indian foreign policy invoke a contiguous geopolitical locale bound to India by a shared past. Yet, despite the strategic articulation of a manifest Central Eurasian region, the article uncovers a puzzle of bifurcation in India’s foreign p…
Recognising Normative State Action in International Life
The study of power is one of the defining features of International Relations. Thus, every generation of IR scholars undertakes a reconsideration of the concept of power in an attempt to place its own definitive stamp on one of the oldest conversations in world affairs. What distinguishes current engagements with the consideration of power is that they are happening in the context of a power transition. It is in this setting that the three books …
Balkan Smoke: Tobacco and the Making of Modern Bulgaria
Complexity, Institutions and Public Policy: Agile Decision-Making in a Turbulent World
Civilization and Empire: China and Japan’s Encounter with European International Society
The Hoax of War: The Foreign Policy Discourses of Poland and Bulgaria on Iraq, 2003–2005
An analysis of Poland's and Bulgaria's foreign policy articulations on Iraq provides a discursive platform not only for the manifestation of national self-positioning in the international arena, but also for the expression of national fears and the re-contextualization of historical narratives. The claim is that the Iraq war became a ‘hoax’ for public expressions of the ‘essence of the nation’. Despite the different conditions and historical expe…
Balkan Babel: The Disintegration of Yugoslavia from the Death of Tito to the Fall of Milosevic
The New Diplomacy
Explaining Compliance in a Post-Westphalian Europe
Journal Article Explaining Compliance in a Post-Westphalian Europe Get access Law and Governance in Postnational Europe: Compliance Beyond the Nation-State. Edited by Zürn Michael Joerges Christian. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005. 312 pp., $75.00 cloth (ISBN: 0-521-84135-6), $60.00 eBook (ISBN: 0-511-08137-5). Emilian Kavalski Emilian Kavalski Department of Politics, International Relations, and European Studies, Loughborough Universi…
The Orient Within: Muslim Minorities and the Negotiation of Nationhood in Modern Bulgaria , by Mary Neuburger
Partnership or Rivalry between the EU, China and India in Central Asia: The Normative Power of Regional Actors with Global Aspirations
This analysis undertakes a preliminary conceptual assessment of the international agency of the EU, India and China in Central Asia. The contention is that the strategies advanced by Brussels, New Delhi and Beijing in the region reflect not only their desire to introduce a framework of predictability allowing them to make feasible calculations about future intentions, but also the increasing complexity of international life. The claim is that the…
The Hoax of War: The Foreign Policy Discourses of Poland and Bulgaria on Iraq, 2003–2005
An analysis of Poland's and Bulgaria's foreign policy articulations on Iraq provides a discursive platform not only for the manifestation of national self-positioning in the international arena, but also for the expression of national fears and the re-contextualization of historical narratives. The claim is that the Iraq war became a ‘hoax’ for public expressions of the ‘essence of the nation’. Despite the different conditions and historical expe…
The fifth debate and the emergence of complex international relations theory: Notes on the application of complexity theory to the study of international 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 intersectio…
Whom to Follow? Central Asia between the EU and China
This analysis undertakes a preliminary conceptual assessment of the international agency of the European Union (EU) and China in Central Asia. The contention is that the strategies advanced by both Brussels and Beijing in the region reflect not only their desire to introduce a framework of predictability allowing them to make feasible calculations about future intentions, but also the increasing ‘fragmegration’ of international life. The contenti…
The Complexity of Empire
Do Not Play with Fire: The End of the Bulgarian Ethnic Model or the Persistence of Inter-Ethnic Tensions in Bulgaria
The strong showing of the ultra-nationalist party, Ataka, in the 2005 parliamentary elections in Bulgaria on a platform of extreme nationalism and anti-Turkish rhetoric has called attention to the state of inter-ethnic relations in the country. The post-Communist period in Bulgaria has been underwritten by the “peaceful” character of majority–minority interactions. However, this article argues that it is such overexposure that has helped occlude …
Extending the European Security Community: Constructing Peace in the Balkans
The region of the Balkans has become one of the emblematic features of the post-Cold War geography of international relations. Understanding the extension of the European zone of peace to the Balkans is at the heart of this pioneering work into the post-Cold War socialisation of the region. How is peace (i.e. a security-community-order) initiated in the Balkans? Who are the dominant agents of such peace-promotion? What processes suggest the initi…
Venus and the Porcupine: Assessing the European Union–India Strategic Partnership
This article brings together the diverse suggestions on the nascent strategic partnership between the European Union (EU) and India. Apart from focusing on popular and policy perceptions, this inquiry undertakes a discursive assessment of key documents defi ning the institutional and ideational frameworks of relations between Brussels and New Delhi. Such narrative analysisallows for innovative tracing of the genealogy, distinct grammars and contr…
The Complexity of Global Security Governance: An Analytical Overview
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 gl…
European Security after Iraq
Nature and Power: A Global History of the Environment , by Joachim Radkau
Victorian Visions of Global Order: Empire and International Relations in Nineteenth-Century Political Thought , edited by Duncan Bell
"Victorian Visions of Global Order: Empire and International Relations in Nineteenth-Century Political Thought, edited by Duncan Bell.." Canadian Journal of History, 44(2), pp. 375–376
The Struggle for Power in Early Modern Europe: Religious Conflict, Dynastic Empires, and International Change , by Daniel H. Nexon
Stable outside, fragile inside: Post-Soviet statehood in central Asia
"In the wake of Soviet disintegration, Central Asia became an idiom for the ensuing confusion in the post-Cold War climate of international affairs, characterized by inter-state order and intra-state anarchy. Dynamic changes associated with the end of communism, the 'revival' of ethnic, religious and clan mobilization and the gradual involvement of various international actors, have inspired extensive scholarly and policy engagement with the regi…
Coming to Terms with the Complexity of External Agency in Central Asia
During the 1990s, Central Asia emerged as an idiom for the uncertainty pervading the post-Cold War climate of global life. This paper therefore queries the intertwining of the region in world politics and the ways in which the dynamics of international affairs affect Central Asia. In this respect, the investigation explores the scope and connotations of the “new Central Asia” label. Its framing provides a context for the conceptual engagement wit…
Shanghaied into Cooperation: Framing China's Socialization of Central Asia
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 a…
Civilization and Empire: China and Japan’s Encounter with European International Society
From the Cold War to Global Warming: Observing Complexity in IR
Few international relations (IR) experts will challenge the profound effects that environmental degradation has on the relationship between human and non-human systems and on their ability to survive. This article provides an overview of the dominant perceptions of climate change in IR: either as a security concern, as a foreign policy issue or as a task that needs to be addressed via a global governance mechanism. The claim, however, is that the…
Eurasian Regionalism: The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation
Eurasian Regionalism: The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation." Europe-Asia Studies, 64(10), pp. 1945–1946
L.C. Kumar, Shanghai Cooperation Organisation: Eurasian Security through Cooperation
L.C. Kumar, Shanghai Cooperation Organisation: Eurasian Security through Cooperation." Europe-Asia Studies, 64(2), pp. 387–388
Globalisation and Eurasia
Globalisation and Eurasia, edited by Ajay Patnaik and Tulsiram, New Delhi, Knowledge World Publishers, 2010, xxvi + 454 pp., US$25, ISBN 978-81-87966-82-1 Usually, in their explanation and understa
Political science (54 works) · Law (39 works) · Sociology (33 works) · International Relations and Foreign Policy (30 works) · Law (28 works) · Politics (27 works) · China (23 works) · Economics (20 works) · Political economy (18 works) · Geography (16 works)