Ivan Krastev is chair of the Centre for Liberal Strategies in Sofia, Bulgaria. He is a visiting fellow of the Institute for Human Sciences (IWM) in Vienna, from June-December 2009

He is also a board member of the European Council on Foreign Relations; a member of the Trilateral Commission; and the academic director of the Open Century Project of the Central European University, Budapest. In 2004-06 he was executive director of the International Commission on the Balkans, chaired by Italy’s former prime minister Giuliano Amato 

Ivan Krastev is the editor-in-chief of the Bulgarian edition of Foreign Policy, and a frequent contributor to Transit – Europäische Revue (edited at the IWM)

His publications in English include Shifting Obsessions: Three Essays on the Politics of Anti-Corruption (CEU Press, 2004); (co-editor, with Alina Mungiu-Pippidi) Nationalism after Communism: Lessons Learned (CEU Press, 2004); and (co-editor, with Alan McPherson) The Anti-American Century (CEU Press, 2007)

Recent articles

The political fallout of the Russia-Georgia war of August 2008 affects far more than the main combatants: it has had a profound impact on the post-Soviet space, the United States, the European Union, even China and Turkey. Ivan Krastev draws up a balance-sheet of a toxic conflict, and looks ahead.

(This article was first published on 30 July 2009)

Russia's flawed understanding of 21st-century international politics means that its military success in the war with Georgia could be followed by its strategic defeat, says Ivan Krastev.

(This article was first published on 19 August 2008)

The real target of a severe European commission report on the failures of governance in Bulgaria contains a deeper message about the European Union's political future - and the mistakes of its past. Ivan Krastev, in Sofia, decodes it.

(This article was first published on 23 July 2008) 

The old continent could once offer itself as the model for a new world. No longer: the European Union's universalism is crashing against rising global states (China, India) and forces (religion, nationalism). The response to Ireland's referendum is a foretaste of serious political crisis to come, says Ivan Krastev.

(This article was first published on 20 June 2008)

A global public-opinion survey reveals increasing support for a redistribution of international power, report Ivan Krastev & Mark Leonard.