VIENNA – New parties with reformist ambitions, such as We pursue change, should seek European legitimacy by joining European political families, policy brief recommends “Citizens against elites: symbolic battles over the uses of political crises in Bulgaria”, published within the WB2EU network.
Anna Krasteva, author of the Policy Brief and professor of political science at CERMES, recommends that protest parties, stronger in opposition, also learn to govern in order to be able to translate the expectations of protesting citizens into policies.
“Active citizens should regularly, and not only, through demonstrations and elections, control the elites by diversifying the forms of accountability for elite responses to different crises,” recommends the author.
The Policy Brief analyzes the symbolic battles between elites and citizens to frame and dominate political crises. Krasteva analyzes four crises in Bulgaria from 1997 to the present.
“The financial and political crisis of 1997 is the only one that reformist elites and citizens managed to transform together into transformative change. The migration crisis of 2015-2016 consolidated the integration of populism. The 2020 protests expressed the maturity of civic activism against oligarchization and state capture. The 2021-2023 political crisis created by the elites has been virtuously used by them for their own benefit to whitewash their image from purveyor of corruption to guarantor of stability,” states the Policy Brief.
According to the author, examination of Bulgaria’s notable crises reveals a non-linearity in the struggles between elites and citizens for symbolic dominance. While reformist elites have turned some crises into catalysts for positive change, recent victories tilt in favor of populist and post-communist groups.
Krasteva explains that currently, Bulgaria is grappling with new protests due to serious domestic violence, exacerbated by inadequate institutional responses that protect abusers. Widespread protests in cities underscore the maturity of citizens to hold elites accountable and demand rapid, citizen-centered reforms. This “protest citizenship” serves as a defense against post-democratic institutions and incompetent leaders, who aggravate crises instead of resolving them.
The author addresses the following question: how do elites and citizens cope, use or lose political crises? The first part of the Policy Brief describes the conceptual history of the crisis from “the end of history” to a mega-metaphor of contemporary society. The second examines four crises in Bulgaria, while the conclusion maps the crises along the axes of democracy/post-democracy and civic activism/populist mobilizations.
According to Krasteva, from election to election, Bulgarian citizens can see the political impasse and the political impotence of the parliamentary elites to form a government and transform the election results into a government. She recalled that in a short period of two years, from April 4 to April 2, 2023, Bulgarian citizens were sent to the polls to vote in six elections: five early general elections and one presidential election.
“In terms of party history, this period is extremely interesting; he saw the emergence of a new protest party, slightly populist, There is such a people (ITN), which in a few months became the main political force, only to plunge in the polls, abandon one National Assembly and rejoin the next. The fate of the newly founded party was no less dramatic. We pursue change, who was elected on a promise to radically fight state capture. He managed to form a government but only led the country for six months between December 2021 and June 2022. GERB (Citizens for European Development of Bulgaria) This party, the personification of the status quo and state capture, which was the target of the 2020 protests, lost some elections but managed to regain the lead in the last elections,” explains Krasteva.
According to her, citizens are overwhelmed and exhausted by the incessant elections. One consequence of this is less energy for activism or mobilizing causes.
“The rise and fall of parties in record time will long be analyzed in political science publications. For the present analysis, the key question is: who wins the symbolic battle for the use of this parliamentary, constitutional and governance crisis? The main paradox is that those who benefit from this crisis, entirely and solely caused by the political elites, are precisely the political elites. Citizens are overwhelmed and exhausted by constant elections; there is no energy for activism or mobilization of causes,” says the Policy Brief.
According to the author, the biggest winner is Bulgarian President Rumen Radev, who uses the result of the parliamentary crisis to consolidate the power of the president, who runs the country through caretaker governments without any parliamentary control and who uses this enormous power to reorient Bulgaria’s Euro-Atlantic geopolitical orientation.
“Rumen Radev is not Viktor Orbán and Bulgaria is not Hungary, but the political crisis is turning into a constitutional crisis as the country moves from a parliamentary republic to a presidential regime,” says Policy Brief.
The Policy Brief is published as part of the WB2EU project. The project aims to establish a network of renowned think tanks, do-tanks, universities, higher education institutes and policy centers from the Western Balkans, neighboring countries and EU Member States that will be the most decisive for the process of enlargement and Europeanization of the European Union. the region in the years to come. The WB2EU project is co-financed by the European Commission as part of its Erasmus+ Jean Monnet programme.
