A Postcommunist Transition in Two Acts

doi:10.1017/CBO9780511804939.006

5 - A Postcommunist Transition in Two Acts

The 1996–7 Antigovernment Struggle in Bulgaria as a Bridge between the 1989–92 and 1996–2007 Democratization Waves in Eastern Europe

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012

Edited by

Michael McFaul and

Tsveta Petrova: Affiliation:
Cornell University
Valerie Bunce: Affiliation:
Cornell University, New York
Michael McFaul: Affiliation:
Stanford University, California
Kathryn Stoner-Weiss: Affiliation:
Stanford University, California

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Summary

With the collapse of the Soviet Union, some of its former republics (Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia) and some of the Central European satellites (the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland) quickly entered the ranks of capitalist democracies. The remaining majority of new post-Socialist states have carried on as hybrid regimes or as autocracies with mixed marketization records. Among them Bulgaria stood out with its unique coupling of a quick transition to parliamentary democracy and a lack of sustained commitment to economic reforms. Only at the beginning of 1997 did the country resolve the economic regime question by achieving a consensus on a larger “civilizational” choice to wholeheartedly seek admission to the European Union (EU) as a way to make the transition to a market economy irreversible in the immediate term and to acquire a new liberal democratic home in the international system in the long run.

What explains this critical juncture? How were the country's illiberal incumbents and their antireform agenda defeated? This chapter argues that by capitalizing on public discontent with and mass mobilization against the social consequences of the Left economic governance (the “Socialist third way”), the Right forged a consensus in favor of a prodemocratic, promarket, and pro-Western political agenda. This in effect ended the parity between the ex-Communists (the Left) and their former opposition (the Right) – a balance of power that had frustrated the economic transition and the consolidation of democracy within the country.

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Type: Chapter
Information: Democracy and Authoritarianism in the Postcommunist World , pp. 107 - 133

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511804939.006 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2009

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