My interest in Bulgaria began with long family visits to Sofia from 1992 onwards with my wife and later with children. The summer months we spent in Bulgaria, along with an increasing fluency in Bulgarian, gave me time and the means to reflect on Bulgarian society and culture. The first result was an unpublished guide book to the country and later some published articles on Bulgarian politics and a couple of short stories. Two of them are here.
In 1997, I decided that if I was to continue I ought at least to educate myself on how developments in Bulgaria related to the rest of Eastern Europe and took an MA in East European Studies at Bradford University. After which, I was offered a PhD scholarship at Keele University.
‘Democracy’, that catch-all term for the variety of political systems western politicians and political theorists deem acceptable depends on two characteristics to function, regular elections and the existence of more than one political party. How these parties organise or not, how they cooperate or not, how much they are a transmission mechanism that allows public opinion to be represented in parliament, all these factors decide how much your system is either a variation on an elected oligarchy (think Russia at the moment) or close to the social democratic ideal of the Scandinavian states.
Understanding developing democracies, then, as in post-1989 Bulgaria, is in part understanding how political parties emerge.
- The Street of Heroes (Short story, 1994)
- Sophistry in Sofia (Magazine article,1994)
In 1997, I decided that if I was to continue I ought at least to educate myself on how developments in Bulgaria related to the rest of Eastern Europe and took an MA in East European Studies at Bradford University. After which, I was offered a PhD scholarship at Keele University.
‘Democracy’, that catch-all term for the variety of political systems western politicians and political theorists deem acceptable depends on two characteristics to function, regular elections and the existence of more than one political party. How these parties organise or not, how they cooperate or not, how much they are a transmission mechanism that allows public opinion to be represented in parliament, all these factors decide how much your system is either a variation on an elected oligarchy (think Russia at the moment) or close to the social democratic ideal of the Scandinavian states.
Understanding developing democracies, then, as in post-1989 Bulgaria, is in part understanding how political parties emerge.
Thus in 1998 I began a PhD on the transformation of the anti-communist mass movement that emerged in 1989, the Union of Democratic Forces (UDF), into a political party.
This went swimmingly until 2000.
Up until that point, the movement seemed to be transforming itself smoothly into a unitary Christian Democrat party. Unfortunately for me in that year, Simeon Saxe-Coburg Gotha, Bulgaria’s former king, returned to Bulgaria permanently and set up his own political party. About two-thirds of the UDF’s membership promptly switched to the new party. The remaining membership over a period of two years fragmented into a number of smaller parties. Some grew, such as the last governing party GERB, but the rump UDF remained stubbornly small and is currently, for the first time since it was founded, not represented in the Subranie, the Bulgarian parliament. Conversely, the one party that has remained more or less intact since 1990 is the communist party’s successor, the Bulgarian Socialist Party.
As a consequence, my PhD became more of a narrative about the development of the party system and the internal and geopolitical factors, and the historical continuities that contributed to its formation.
The abstract is here
The one chapter that I was particularly pleased with was that on the historical development of parties in Bulgaria. For those with patience it is here.
This went swimmingly until 2000.
Up until that point, the movement seemed to be transforming itself smoothly into a unitary Christian Democrat party. Unfortunately for me in that year, Simeon Saxe-Coburg Gotha, Bulgaria’s former king, returned to Bulgaria permanently and set up his own political party. About two-thirds of the UDF’s membership promptly switched to the new party. The remaining membership over a period of two years fragmented into a number of smaller parties. Some grew, such as the last governing party GERB, but the rump UDF remained stubbornly small and is currently, for the first time since it was founded, not represented in the Subranie, the Bulgarian parliament. Conversely, the one party that has remained more or less intact since 1990 is the communist party’s successor, the Bulgarian Socialist Party.
As a consequence, my PhD became more of a narrative about the development of the party system and the internal and geopolitical factors, and the historical continuities that contributed to its formation.
The abstract is here
The one chapter that I was particularly pleased with was that on the historical development of parties in Bulgaria. For those with patience it is here.