Ed Samir Saran | Gladden J Pappin

Editors’ Note

As the world begins a second quarter of the current century, there is a clear reshaping of the global balance of power. Yet, it is not only the diffusion of power that is shifting; so is the organising logic of the global system itself, moving toward security and resilience, and carrying implications for economic integration, strategic partnerships, and institutional cooperation. For Europe, this is a moment of strategic reflection; for emerging powers, a moment of assertive arrival.

The essays in this volume probe the tensions and opportunities of a world in transition—the struggle to rebuild credible multilateralism, the race for technological and economic sovereignty, and the search for forms of connectivity and cooperation that strengthen, rather than surrender, national agency. Together, these articles compel a rethinking of inherited assumptions and remind us that legitimacy today is earned through capability, credibility, and the courage to design new compacts. The future will be scripted less by legacy alliances, and more by a wider constellation of actors—from Europe to the emerging powers—with Hungary positioned as a critical bridge in these unfolding conversations.

The Budapest Dossier 2025 captures this moment of inflection, convening scholars across disciplines and geographies to illuminate how a world in flux is recasting its political, economic, and strategic foundations.

Kwame Owino argues that global economic fragmentation—through rising regionalism and stalled multilateral reform—creates new vulnerabilities for sub-Saharan Africa’s lower- and middle-income economies. In a multipolar world shaped by larger emerging powers, Africa’s strongest anchor remains a functioning multilateral system.

Philipp Siegert argues that Europe’s geopolitical comfort zone has collapsed as the global system and global order drift out of alignment. The European Union (EU), caught between globalisation, state agency, and democracy, now confronts an intensified version of Rodrik’s Trilemma that it can no longer evade. He contends that only a shift toward “sovereign internationalism” and adaptive connectivity can restore Europe’s strategic relevance.

Márton Ugrósdy casts Hungary’s worldview as a sovereignty-first doctrine that rejects supranational presumption and globalist orthodoxy, insisting that power and legitimacy rise from the people. Everything else—EU cooperation, global partnerships, foreign policy—follows from that foundational conviction.

Péter Siklósi shows that Europe’s call for autonomy rings hollow in a moment when only NATO underwrites its security. Caught between renewed threats and insufficient capabilities, Europe remains reactive, and not a shaper of the emerging order.

Kimlong Chheng argues that Europe is caught in a crisis of identity and cohesion, where fraying values and sovereignty battles unsettle its political core. These tensions weaken Europe’s regulatory ambition and strategic confidence. Its relevance in a multipolar world, he contends, hinges on restoring trust and a coherent values-driven compass.

Philip Pilkington argues that Europe’s competitiveness crisis is being fundamentally misread: the real rupture is not technological lag but the loss of cheap energy after the eruption of the war in Ukraine. He shows that protectionism, industrial policy, and the Draghi Report all skirt the core issue, leaving Europe to drift toward de-industrialisation. Until the energy question is confronted head-on, Europe cannot reclaim economic strength nor strategic agency.

Victoria V. Panova presents BRICS as a non-Western coalition pushing for an inclusive, law-based global order grounded in equality and respect. As Western structures retreat into coercion, she argues, BRICS offers a more constructive model for a plural world.

Sunaina Kumar casts the Indo-Pacific as the heat engine of global geopolitics—an arena where great-power rivalry collides with the region’s central role in trade, growth, and climate stability. She argues that the challenge for regional actors is to balance security imperatives with deeply interdependent economic futures, using flexible coalitions and minilaterals to navigate an increasingly fractured order. The Indo-Pacific’s ability to shape the emerging system, she observes, depends on inclusive cooperation, resilient connectivity, and a shared commitment to sustainable development.

Lydia Kostopoulos argues that the fusion of AI, data, and converging technologies has turned geopolitics into technogeopolitics, forcing states to reclaim sovereignty in a domain increasingly dominated by private actors. She underscores the need for nations to invest in resilient energy and digital infrastructure, craft trustworthy regulation, and deploy agile policy tools like sandboxes to stay competitive. The future of statecraft, she writes, will belong to countries that wield technology as a deliberate instrument of national power.

Boglárka Ballester-Bólya argues that Europe’s slide in competitiveness is largely self-inflicted—driven by regulatory excess, ideological policymaking, and an energy regime that undermines industry. Hungary’s call for “less red tape, more innovation” is framed as a strategic course correction, restoring productivity, affordability, and ambition. She warns that unless Brussels embraces pragmatism over performative governance, Europe will watch the global race from the sidelines.

Matthias Bauer’s essay portrays a Europe tangled in its own rules — overregulated, under-scaled, and falling behind while others accelerate. He insists that only bold, continent-wide legal harmonisation can restore Europe’s ability to innovate, attract investment, and compete at the technological frontier. Fragmentation, Bauer warns, is not just inefficient—it is a quiet erosion of Europe’s global standing.

Stephen R. Nagy casts infrastructure as the new battleground of sovereignty, where small and medium-sized states craft manoeuvrability through diversified partnerships. Nagy argues that ASEAN and Hungary hedge through connectivity—engaging China, Japan, the United States, and others without surrendering choice or autonomy. In a divided world, he writes, infrastructure is not dependency but agency in physical form.

Jagannath Panda describes the Indo-Pacific as moving from a United States-led hierarchy to a diffuse, coalition-driven order shaped by strategic autonomy, hedging, and competing connectivity visions. As the United States’ centrality wavers and China advances its architectural ambitions, India emerges as the region’s stabilising anchor—democratic, autonomous, and increasingly central to the strategic calculations of major powers. The future, he says, will be written not by hegemonies but by networks of states unwilling to be bound by any single pole.

Szabolcs Pásztor argues that ‘slowbalisation’ has not fully fractured the world into rival blocs but propelled it into a new era of networked connectivity, where emerging economies have become hubs rather than peripheries. South–South trade, digital flows, and value-chain linkages now drive global growth, making decoupling both costly and illusory. He contends that the future belongs to bridges—open standards, cross-regional infrastructure, and cooperative institutions that keep the global system resilient and open.

These essays converge on a simple truth: the international system is being rebuilt in real time. Those who combine resilience, capability, and cooperative ambition will not only endure this transition but help define its architecture.

Read the monograph here.