How can we conceptualise and make sense of the epistemic space – the ‘grey zone’ – inhabited by the former Second World, and how does it relate to the dominant framings of the ‘Global North’ and ‘Global South’? This paper explores the epistemic and geopolitical ambiguities left in the wake of the Soviet collapse, arguing that this ‘grey space’ resists conventional spatial and temporal categorisations. By engaging with and problematising existing conceptual frameworks, it proposes an alternative approach: understanding global easts—in the plural—as distinct epistemic spaces shaped by intertwined histories of imperiality. The paper contends that conceptualising global easts through the lens of imperiality enables a more nuanced theorisation of ongoing dependencies, asymmetries, and epistemic entanglements shaping the region’s place in the contemporary global order.

The Balkan Peninsula has long been a crossroads of civilizations, languages, and ethnic identities, yet dominant scholarship and policy discourse have simultaneously cast it as Europe’s conceptual cul‑de‑sac—an exceptional or problematic periphery that reinforces the continent’s broader narrative “stuckness.”

This paper critiques the historical inaccuracies of this prevailing narrative and demonstrates how its revision can sharpen our understanding of wider European developments. By revising and reinterpreting the current historical narrative, as well as by offering new and original interpretations for some historical events, we try to show how this more accurate illumination of the key historical processes in the Balkans can inform effective European policy-making. Along with that, we show that re-examining overlooked or misinterpreted facts can position the region not as a problem zone but as a critical analytical site where past dynamics clarify present challenges, and in the same time that misframing the Balkans has adversely shaped European historiography and policy—homogenizing curricula, fragmenting archives into national silos, and legitimizing reactive approaches to diversity, mobility, and minority governance.

In the same time, we argue that the clarification of these processes can show that mixture, overlap, and negotiated identities were not Balkan anomalies but shared European patterns, underscoring Europe’s joint rather than separate historical development. Accordingly, we try to present that the adaptation for an entanglement‑focused, cross‑border, minority‑centered methodology can transform a perceived weakness into a continental asset.

In this way, the paper proposes a new framework for European policy by using the Balkan historical narrative as a case study: illuminating historical facts that can guide future European policies in a constructive manner—just as their earlier misinterpretation shaped past policies negatively—and promoting a perception of European heritage as shared rather than separate.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has once again transformed sovereignty protection into a particularly urgent and pressing concern on the European continent. This war has become an object of intense academic scrutiny and—coupled with other raging armed conflicts around the world—turned into an analytical battlefield of its own, involving competing explanatory traditions, most notably political realism and postcolonial critique. The former has presented Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as the Kremlin’s attempt to protect its sphere of influence from NATO encroachment—an angle which has effectively sidelined Ukraine’s agency. Postcolonial analyses have sought to remedy this flaw by centering Ukraine’s struggle as a form of resistance against Russia’s resurgent imperialism. In my contribution, I will provide a critique of this popular postcolonial interpretation of the Russo-Ukrainian war, specifically as regards Ukraine. Postcolonial analyses of Ukraine’s response to Russia’s invasion often replicate a Eurocentric, Westphalian understanding of sovereignty as something that a state under assault seeks to reclaim vis-à-vis its subjugator and protect at all costs. After all, it was precisely the struggle for sovereignty that has informed decolonization processes after the WWII. This vision, however, underappreciates scenarios where the state delegates much of its sovereign powers to domestic and foreign non-state actors, thus questioning the precedence of sovereignty in its decision-making amid war. Drawing on a case study of Ukraine’s response to Russia’s invasion of 2014 and 2022, I will show how Kyiv’s decentralization strategies defied common conceptions of sovereignty informed by the Eurocentric tradition and replicated in postcolonial studies. Instead, using ontological security theory, I will demonstrate that state identity may take precedence over state sovereignty, hence such sovereignty, which postcolonialism has venerated as the goal of decolonization, can be paradoxically sacrificed in order to make said anticolonial struggle more effective.

Since its early stages, European integration has been shaped by an unresolved tension between logics of competitiveness and projects of solidarity. As Warlouzet (2019) has shown, this tension was not accidental, but a core element shaping different visions of Europe’s economic governance, cohesion, and the role of its member states. It remains unresolved and continues to influence debates on the meaning and direction of European integration. European regional policy, especially the use of structural funds, offers historians an important field for understanding these dynamics, particularly from the perspective of Europe’s peripheral regions.

This paper presents a historical analysis of Andalusia in the late 1980s and early 1990s, during the preparation of the Single Market and major reforms in European regional policy. At the time, Andalusia was one of the poorest regions in the European Economic Community, with underdeveloped agriculture, industry, and infrastructure. Nevertheless, it experienced rapid growth of around 5 percent per year and prepared to host the 1992 Seville World Expo, the largest mega-event ever held in the region. Along with the Barcelona Olympic Games, Expo 92 was part of a wider public diplomacy effort aimed at improving Spain’s position in Europe and the global economy.

The combination of European integration, economic growth, public investment, and symbolic projects makes Expo 92 a valuable case for understanding how a peripheral region sought to redefine its development path. Rather than judging the success of this model, this paper examines how these processes shaped the ideas and strategies of Andalusian political elites. It explores how European integration was seen not only as a limitation but also as an opportunity to reduce dependency and integrate Andalusia into international economic networks.

The paper draws on archival research in the General Archive of Andalusia, the archive of the Expo 92 organising body, and the personal papers of regional president Rodríguez de la Borbolla. These sources allow an analysis of how European structural funds, at a moment of reform, supported concrete policies and investments such as the Cartuja 93 technology park and Spain’s first high-speed rail line.

By focusing on Andalusia’s engagement with European integration, this paper contributes to critical European studies by foregrounding peripheral agency and by examining how “Europe” was understood and put into practice in regional policy-making. It argues that Southern European regions actively negotiated the tension between competitiveness and solidarity, offering an alternative perspective on the evolving foundations of European integration.

The recent crises, from the global financial crisis to the Covid-19 pandemic, have renewed interest in capitalist diversity and evolution in Southern Europe. Comparative Political Economy (CPE), especially Varieties of Capitalism (VoC) and more recently the Growth Model (GM) perspective, has offered important analytical tools and concepts to explain capitalist diversity in the region. However, the Varieties of Capitalism’s concept of Mixed Market Economies (MMEs), which has been widely used to analyse economies in Southern Europe, offers a limited account to understand the domestic factors and the international dynamics which affect capitalism in the region. To address these limitations, the article builds on the recent efforts to synthesise the VoC and GM perspectives, analysing both supply- and demand-side growth patterns in explaining modern capitalism. It also goes beyond the focus on domestic institutions and analyses the role of these countries in Global Value Chains (GVCs), bringing an international dimension into modern CPE. Through this approach, the article introduces the concept of ‘intermediate’ economies—not as a new ‘variety’ of capitalism, but as a concept that enhances our understanding of the position of these economies in the global capitalist system. The concept of ‘intermediate’ economies brings CPE into a productive dialogue with International Political Economy (IPE) and could serve as a reference point for both CPE and IPE scholars.