The Palgrave Handbook of Non-State Actors in East-West Relations

The handbook introduces to readers (accessibly for specialist and non-specialist scholars, students and layman audiences) the diverse universe of non-state actors (NSAs) that have played or are currently playing a significant role in the context of East-West relations (from 1945 to the present). With a view to the oft-seen political debates about which non- state actors may be independent or controlled by particular states, and in what ways they may be useful or harmful to the interests of particular actors, this volume is interested in analysing and assessing the relationship of NSAs to key state actors in the context of the politics of East-West relations. Key state actors in this context include more than just the United States (on the one hand) and the Soviet Union or Russia (on the other hand). To offer a structured overview, the volume explores possible typologies of the relationships conceivable between NSAs and states. New concepts and organising principles are presented, tosupport a process-tracing analysis of the evolution of proxyships, partnerships and other types of connections between these actors. Degrees, sources and types of control and influence are considered. Further, the handbook’s chapters also examine NSAs’ impact on the dynamics of interstate conflict and cooperation in the East-West dimension, and will consider a spectrum from cooperation to conflict enhancement whereby we can map a landscape, to see where individual NSAs can be located when situated in it. The systematic examination of the relationship between states and NSAs in East-West relations proposed here is the first undertaking of its kind. International scholarship in political science and strategic analyses have so far neglected to develop an analytical framework and a truly nuanced understanding that could capture the intricate and multilevel relationships that exists between NSAs and states in this context.

Péter Marton holds a PhD in International Relations and is currently Lecturer in International Relations and International Security at Corvinus University in Budapest, Hungary, and Associate Professor at McDaniel College - Hungarian Campus. His fields of research include Security Studies, Foreign Policy Analysis and Global Public Health. He has published, inter alia, in Defence Studies, Communist and Post-Communist Studies, the Journal of Soviet and Post-Soviet Politics and Society, the Journal of Contemporary African Studies and New Perspectives. He is co-editor of the Palgrave Encyclopedia of Global Security Studies.

Gry Thomasen is a Senior Policy Fellow at BASIC (British American Security Information Council) Dr Thomasen holds a PhD in Cold War history from the University of Copenhagen and was awarded a postdoc grant from the Carlsberg Foundation to undertake research into nuclear non-proliferation history at the Danish Institute for International Studies. Dr Thomasen has previously been Visiting Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Cold War History Research Centre in Budapest and a Visiting Researcher at the Centre for Science and Security Studies, King’s College, London. Most recently, she has published in the International History Review and Marine Policy.

Csaba BÉKÉS (1957-) is a Research Professor in the Centre of Social Sciences, Institute of Political Science, (formerly: Hungarian Academy of Sciences), Budapest and serves as Professor of History at Corvinus University of Budapest. He is the founding director of the Cold War History Research Center, Budapest (www.coldwar.hu) and a recurring visiting professor at Columbia University, New York. His main field of research is Cold War history, East-West relations, the history of détente, Hungarian foreign policy after World War II and the role of the East Central European states in the Cold War. He has widely published on these topics in Hungarian, English and German; he is also a contributor of the three volume The Cambridge History of the Cold War (2010). He is a member of the editorial boards of the Journal of Cold War Studies and Cold War History (until 2020). His numerous books include The 1956 Hungarian Revolution and World Politics (1996); The 1956 Hungarian Revolution. A history in documents. (Co-ed.) (2002); Hungary and the Warsaw Pact, 1954-1989. Documents on the Impact of a Small State within the Eastern Bloc (2003); From Europe to Europe. Hungary in the Crossfire of Conflicts, 1945- 1990, (2004) (in Hungarian). His recent publications include: East Central Europe, 1953-1956＂ (2010), Cold War, Détente and the Soviet Bloc. The evolution of intra-bloc foreign policy coordination, 1953-1975 (2014); Hungary, the Soviet Bloc, the German question and the CSCE Process, 1965-1975 (2016), The Long Détente and the Soviet Bloc, 1953-1983 (2017). Soviet Occupation of Romania, Hungary, and Austria 1944/45-1948/49 (Co-ed.) (2015); Enyhülés és emancipáció. Magyarország, a szovjet blokk és a nemzetközi politika, 1944-1991. [Détente and emancipation. Hungary, the Soviet Bloc and international politics, 1944-1991] Budapest, Osiris kiadó - MTA TK, 2019; Békés, Csaba - Kalmár, Melinda [Eds.] Students on the Cold War. New findings and interpretations. Budapest, Cold War History Research Center - Corvinus University of Budapest, 2019.

András Rácz is Senior Research Fellow at the Berlin-based German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP). Dr. Rácz holds a Ph.D. in Modern History from the Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest, Hungary. Before joining the DGAP in 2019, he was Associate Professor at the Pázmány Péter Catholic University in Budapest and Security Policy Analyst of the policy think tank Political Capital. Between 2014-2016, he was a Senior Research Fellow of the Finnish Institute of International Affairs in Helsinki. Earlier, he worked inter alia as senior research fellow at the former Hungarian Institute of International Affairs and as visiting researcher at the Transatlantic Academy of the German Marshall Fund in Washington D.C. His fields of expertise include the security and defence policy issues of Russia and the post-Soviet region, as well as relations of Russia and Central-Europe, in addition to the foreign policy of Hungary.