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Home , Attack (political party), Economic liberalization, Petar Stoyanov, Zhelyu Zhelev

An improbable success story in the

Bulgarian Democracy’s Organizational Weapon M. Steven Fish and Robin S. Brooks

ne of the most remarkable—and least Muslims, and relations between the two groups in celebrated and understood—political stories were much worse during the Soviet era than Oof the postcommunist region is the relative those between the two groups in . In short, success of in Bulgaria. Not only has Bulgaria did not enter the postcommunist era as a democratization taken place but democracy has taken leading candidate for robust democratization. Yet hold. Bulgaria has avoided the slide toward democracy came nonetheless, and it appears to be authoritarianism that occurred in Russia, Ukraine, holding, perhaps even deepening. Belarus, Albania, Armenia, and all the countries of After the beginning of the regime change Central Asia in the second half of the 1990s. at the end of the 1980s, Bulgaria did develop one Explaining Bulgaria’s experience is difficult. Most of noteworthy asset: an array of reasonably strong polit- the usual explanations for success do not work. ical parties. Like and Mongolia, arguably Bulgaria does not have a hardy democratic tradition. the postcommunist region’s two other pleasant The brand of Sovietism practiced in Bulgaria was surprises in the realm of democratization, Bulgaria similar to that found in the USSR. Dissent was dealt has had a relatively high rate of popular participation with harshly. In contrast with Hungary or Poland, no in parties. Seven percent of voting-age , 12 substantial political or economic percent of Romanians, and 20 percent of Mongolians occurred during the 1970s or 1980s. At the onset of belong to parties. The numbers are all high by post- the regime change, Bulgaria was poor even by regional communist standards and are far greater than in standards, and the economic trauma it endured during Russia and Ukraine, where rates of party member- the early years of transition was as severe as that ship are one or two percent (Marc Howard, experienced by Russia and Ukraine. Neighborhood Demobilized Societies: Understanding the Weakness of effects cannot be considered particularly auspicious. in Post-Communist Europe [Ph.D. disserta- Bulgaria shares a long border with Serbia, and is tion, University of California, Berkeley, 1999]; M. located close to that border. To its south, Bulgaria is Steven Fish, “Mongolia: Democracy without bounded by Greece and Turkey; it is the only country Prerequisites,” Journal of Democracy 9, no. 3 [July to share a border with both. Bulgaria does not border 1998]). In Bulgaria, as in Romania and Mongolia, a West or Central European country. Nor does it have the communist-successor party or parties account for an ethnically homogeneous population. It has a large a substantial proportion of overall party membership, Turkish minority, geographically concentrated in the but major liberal or otherwise noncommunist- south, as well as substantial populations of Roma and successor parties emerged as well. It is difficult to Pomaks. The precommunist history of relations locate anything other than political parties to account between Bulgarians and Turks was bloodier than that for the Bulgarian (or for that matter, Romanian and between Serbs and the people now called Bosnian Mongolian) advantage in democratization.

SUMMER 2000 63 In Bulgaria, the most impressive party to emerge identified with the UDF’s essentially liberal agenda. since the dawn of open is the Union of The fruits of these efforts showed in November 1996, Democratic Forces (UDF). It is not only the strongest when , the UDF candidate and former party in Bulgaria; it is arguably the mightiest right- deputy minister of justice during the UDF’s brief spell center party in postcommunist Europe. Only Vaclav in power early in the decade, soundly defeated his BSP Klaus’s Civic Democratic Party even compares to the rival in presidential elections. The presidency, the UDF in terms of membership magnitude, organiza- powers of which are strictly limited in Bulgaria’s tional coherence, and depth of rootedness in society. parliamentary regime, had previously been occupied by , the courageous former Where the UDF came from who had enjoyed UDF’s support. After over a year and The UDF started life as a mélange of over a dozen a half of organization building, UDF finally held its diminutive groups that coalesced loosely during the founding conference as a political party in February early phase of the regime change. It lost the first parlia- 1997. Kostov was elected chairman. mentary elections to the Bulgarian Socialist Party The party’s inaugural conference took place just (BSP), the main communist-successor party. It fared a week after the BSP government, under the pressure better in the 1991 elections and from November 1991 of mass demonstrations, agreed to hold early until September 1992 enjoyed a brief stint as the parliamentary elections. The UDF did not organize or leading party in government. It also did well in races initiate the torrent of civil unrest that swept Bulgaria for local offices, especially in urban areas. It subse- in early 1997. The demonstrations occurred in quently underwent hard times. It lost control of the response to economic disaster as well as the corruption government to the BSP in the fall of 1992 and ineptitude of the BSP government and were and was drubbed by them at the polls in 1994, locking largely spontaneous. But the UDF reacted quickly and it out of government for nearly a half decade. In local established some mastery over the unrest. The party’s elections in 1995 it suffered setbacks as well. During parliamentary leaders successfully forged a coalition of the early 1990s, the UDF was the major liberal force all parliamentary factions opposed to the BSP. In addi- in Bulgaria, but it did not succeed in either holding tion, UDF activists mobilized crowds, displaying power or building a sturdy organization. sympathy with the demonstrators and amplifying their This situation began to shift during the summer demands. Party leaders also restrained the mobs, of 1995. The leading force for change was Ivan successfully persuading a huge crowd not to invade the Kostov, an economist who had served as minister of parliament building in order to attack the hapless finance in the short-lived UDF government. Socialist politicians holed up inside. Thus the UDF Kostov intended to create a centralized, disciplined helped convert mass discontent into political power. In mass-membership political party out of the band of late April, in alliance with several tiny parties, the bantam groups that constituted the UDF. This UDF captured 52 percent of the popular vote and 57 involved inducing these groups to submerge their percent of the seats in parliamentary elections. The identities in a larger, hierarchical organization that Socialists and their partners, the Ecoglasnost move- identified itself as a right-center political party rather ment, finished with 22 percent of the vote and 24 than as a “democratic movement.” While building a percent of seats. The election ended an era of stulti- party apparatus and identity, Kostov and his allies also fying, sclerotic Socialist rule and established the UDF inserted their organization deeply into society. They as Bulgaria’s dominant political force and one of the founded party clubs around the country to boost most dynamic parties in postcommunist Europe. popular participation. They opened UDF cafés for young people, sports facilities for children, and reading How the UDF did it rooms for older folks. They forged close contacts with Other right-center parties in the postcommunist nonstate associations, including journalists’ groups, region have managed to win elections, but few human- organizations, and other groups that have ever established the rootedness in society and

64 EAST EUROPEAN CONSTITUTIONAL REVIEW political dominance that the UDF did in Bulgaria. Poland and Mongolia, have semipresidential regimes; How has the party done it? More specifically, how still others, such as and Lithuania, have can one account for the rise of so formidable a moderate presidential systems. All systems that adopted right-center party in Bulgaria? “superpresidential” constitutions—those that invest As with the emergence of democracy in general, modest capacity in the legislature and give the UDF’s emergence is not readily accounted for overwhelming powers to the president, such as by the standard explanations or expectations. The Russia, Kyrgyzstan, and Armenia—subsequently failed UDF is not a historical party. Unlike ’s to develop strong party systems. liberal Democratic Party and nationalist Slovak Institutional stimuli are important, but they National Party (SNP), Bulgaria’s UDF cannot clearly are also present in many other postcommunist claim precommunist lineage. It cannot draw on a polities whose party systems do not include a right- ready-made name, symbols, or other sources of center organization as formidable as the UDF. identification. Unlike Hungary’s liberal Alliance of The UDF’s prosperity is due largely to two other Free Democrats and Federation of Young Democrats, phenomena. The first is the character and trajectory of the UDF does not enjoy roots in a communist-era political since the beginning of the informal dissident movement. Nor has the UDF, in regime change. Specifically, it is found in the UDF’s contrast with Poland’s and Hungary’s loss in the initial elections and exclusion from conservative Hungarian Democratic Forum (HDF), power for most of the 1990s, combined with the main- ever enjoyed a popular confessional basis and the tenance of enough political openness within the advantages of close association with a church. As a country to allow for a vigorous opposition. In the center-right organization committed to , countries where noncommunist forces won the initial participation in European institutions, and the protec- elections, they subsequently faced two disadvantages tion of human rights, the UDF may be considered a from the standpoint of party development. First, they “bourgeois” party. Indeed, as one would expect, it were blamed by electorates for the trials of the draws support from more-urban, younger, and better- transition. This led to these forces’ losses in second- educated citizens, while the BSP’s base is more rural, generation elections in many countries, including older, and less well educated. In cross-national terms, Lithuania, Poland, and Hungary. The victory of however, the UDF’s relative strength remains noncommunist forces in the first elections was, enigmatic. The UDF has thrived in a society with one however, usually sufficient to ensure the renovation (or of the most-diminutive and least-developed middle “democratization”) of the communist-successor classes in postcommunist Europe and with a per parties, as happened in all three of the countries just capita GDP that is the same as Guatemala’s and mentioned. Thus, when they returned to power in substantially smaller than that of Russia, Belarus, either parliamentary or presidential elections (or both), Croatia, or Poland. as happened in these countries (from 1992 through The UDF’s success derives from three factors. 1995) the former communists were indeed truly The first is institutional, and the fact that Bulgaria “former.” The early whipping convinced them of has a parliamentary regime in which seats in the the need for total reformation and cured them legislature are allotted by party lists according to of whatever residual delusions of achieving a proportional representation (PR) is of central monopoly on power they still might have harbored. importance. Most (but not all) of the countries of The noncommunist (usually liberal) parties that had the postcommunist world with reasonably substantial won the first elections and lost the second ones were political parties assign parliamentary seats completely allowed, therefore, to continue competing and were or largely in terms of PR. All countries with not suppressed after they lost. But these same parties substantial parties have legislatures that enjoy were still associated in the popular imagination with all meaningful authority. Some, such as Bulgaria and the blunders and hardships of the early phase of tran- Hungary, have parliamentary systems; others, such as sition. They were, as a result, not particularly good

SUMMER 2000 65 candidates, as the 1990s wore on, for exploiting mass office’s lack of power. The UDF’s reasonably strong public discontent and rallying opposition to evils such showing in parliamentary elections in 1991 also as corruption, economic mismanagement, and steeply revealed the breadth of the noncommunists’ popular rising income differentials. support and showed the BSP that the costs of What is more, their early experience in power repression would be high. As the legal secretary of in many cases spoiled liberal parties as organizations. Bulgaria’s Helsinki Watch Committee remarked in In his fine study, Angelo Panebianco argues that one early 1998, “The two major political blocs, the should expect “parties that gain national power Socialists and the liberals, have been fairly well immediately after their formation—thus undergoing balanced from the beginning. Neither has ever really organizational consolidation while in power—to been strong enough to crack down on the other side” become weak institutions.” Parties that form while “in (interview by M. Steven Fish with Yonko Grozev, power” have at their disposal “a multiplicity of public January 2, 1998, Sofia). resources in political competition, and these Indeed, Bulgarian politics in the 1990s, in some resources are often an efficient substitute for supporter respects, resembled the deadlocked “hot family feud” mobilization” (Political Parties: Organization and Power that Dankwart Rustow, in his highly influential article [Cambridge University Press, 1988], p. 69). on the theory of democracy’s genesis, posited as a One indeed sees this dynamic at work in necessary first step in successful democratization postcommunist polities. It was starkly evident in (“Transitions to Democracy: Toward a Dynamic Russia in the early and mid-1990s, when each of the Model,” Comparative Politics 2, no. 3 [April 1970]). In two successive “parties of power” under the Yeltsin Romania and Mongolia, the situation was less administration, Democratic Choice of Russia and Our obviously Rustowian in the initial years, since the Home is Russia, failed to undertake serious organiza- ascendancy of the custodians of the old regime was tion building and were subsequently decimated in more pronounced. But in these countries, too, the elections and wiped off the political map. Hungary’s postcommunists in power were unwilling or unable to initially mighty HDF suffered a similar fate, and, in quash their opponents. part, for the same reasons. In all three countries, these circumstances Liberal parties that did not win their country’s conduced to the development of liberal parties. The initial elections, by contrast, neither bore the brunt of UDF emerged as described above. In Romania, the blame for the traumas of the early phase of transition dominance of the presidency and the parliament by nor grew fat and lazy on state largesse. In places where forces closely associated with the old order helped the initial electoral victory of forces associated with stimulate the rise of the Democratic Convention the old order led to a continuation of closed politics (DC) of Romania, led by the Christian Democratic– and the repression of opposition, noncommunist National Peasant’s Party and the National Liberal opposition parties naturally stood little if any chance of Party. These parties’ efforts bore fruit in November flourishing. Serbia and Uzbekistan both illustrate 1996, when the DC’s presidential candidate, Emil this phenomenon. But where politics remained Constantinescu, defeated the incumbent, , competitive the conditions for the development of and the DC won a plurality in parliamentary liberal parties proved auspicious. Such a situation elections. In Mongolia, the opponents of the post- obtained in Bulgaria, Romania, and Mongolia. In communist Mongolian People’s Revolutionary Party Bulgaria, as in Romania, the vigor of anticommunist (MPRP) were eclipsed in the early and mid-1990s forces in the early years of the regime change, despite and spent their time organizing two strong liberal their defeat in national elections, itself helped keep parties, the Mongolian National Democratic Party politics open. This state of affairs was particularly and the Mongolian Social Democratic Party. These pronounced in Bulgaria, where the liberals, with two parties came together in the Democratic Zhelyu Zhelev, did win the presidency during the Coalition and in 1996 stunned the country and transition—a significant show of strength despite the outside observers by capturing over two-thirds of the

66 EAST EUROPEAN CONSTITUTIONAL REVIEW seats in parliamentary elections and throwing the above-named Russian leaders. His approach to MPRP out of power. organization building showed that he regards such The parallels between Mongolia and Bulgaria are specimens as potential foot soldiers in—or at least particularly striking. In both countries liberal supporters of—his own party, not as unlettered and politicians responded to humiliating defeats in early intrinsically illiberal hazards to his own political elections by sternly dedicating themselves to the fortunes and his country’s advancement to democracy unglamorous grind of party building. In Mongolia, as and the market. in Bulgaria, this process involved getting out of the city and organizing support in provinces, taking What the UDF has done the message directly to the people, and creating As it took over government in the spring of 1997, the organizational structures that did not eschew hierarchy, UDF inherited an in collapse. Under its discipline, or the label and ethos of “party.” Socialist governments, Bulgaria was the very beau idéal These efforts required and depended on the of gradualism. After an initial round of rapid price quality of party leadership. This pesky, unpredictable liberalization, the BSP slowly reintroduced price factor is the third component of the explanation for controls. The proportion of products subject to these the UDF’s success. The UDF had within its ranks controls crept up from 16 percent in 1992 to over 40 several capable organizers who judged party building percent in 1995. was carried out with to be the path to personal power and national progress. great deliberation, and nurturing the public sector One was Stefan Sofijanski, currently the mayor of took precedence over both privatization and Sofia. Others included President Petar Stoyanov, who facilitating new private entries. The result was began his political career in the early 1990s as a UDF the complete interpenetration of the political class and activist in , and Asen Agov, the suave but blunt- the owners and managers of enterprises. By spoken journalist who chairs parliament’s foreign mid-decade, the roughly 700 sizable enterprises in affairs committee. Kostov, however, was the father of Bulgaria had corrupted the political elite completely. the party. He did not found it, but it was he who Influence flowed both ways, since politicians, forged a genuine party out of a motley coalition of especially given the dearth of other inducements, quarrelsome groups. His part in building the UDF was offered their supporters directorships and other not entirely dissimilar to ’s role in management positions in the big enterprises. converting the German Christian Democratic Union By 1995, the government often did not even try (CDU) from a clubby association of notables into a to conceal the extent of corruption. One deputy mass membership party and an electoral powerhouse prime minister sat on the boards of six major in the 1970s and early 1980s. enterprises and collected handsome sums for his In contrast with Kohl, however, Kostov is not a invaluable services. This behavior became entirely jocular, amiable figure. By temperament he more normal, even as public outrage mounted. By 1996, closely resembles Vaclav Klaus. He shares Klaus’s tax-collection capacity had virtually evaporated, with irascibility and organizational acumen, as well as the tax revenues falling to about 8 percent of GDP; both Czech leader’s inability, sometimes, to prevent the foreign and domestic investment fell from sluggish former from undermining the benefits of the latter. to virtually nonexistent; and a new round of hyper- Like Klaus and the leaders of Mongolia’s Democratic inflation engulfed the economy. With the economy in Coalition, but in stark contrast with Russian liberals a tailspin and enterprise managers and government such as Grigory Yavlinsky, Yegor Gaidar, and Anatoly officials in a mad scramble to make off with every asset Chubais, Kostov did not regard painstaking they could lay hands on, the mass demonstrations organization building in every nook and corner of the mentioned above gathered steam, leading to the country as beneath his dignity. Nor did early electoral elections that swept the UDF to power. defeats produce in him lasting contempt for the Once in office as prime minister, Kostov quickly average unwashed voter, as was the case with the eliminated price controls, invited the IMF

SUMMER 2000 67 to establish a currency board, and launched a crash purged, with officials known to be corrupt, and privatization program. The UDF’s formidable disci- particularly those involved in the insurance business, pline in parliament ensured the enactment of these dismissed en masse. reforms and thwarted three BSP-initiated votes of no In a remarkable reassertion of state power, confidence, with the most recent in June 2000. the then–minister of the interior, Bogomil Bonev, Hyperinflation was stamped out quickly. Foreign direct called the leaders of the main criminal syndicates into investment rose to nearly three-quarters of a billion his offices for personal consultations. In discussions dollars in 1999, three times the level of 1996. By the with each, he essentially offered the option of moving end of 1999, over 70 percent of all state property into legitimate operations and submitting to the law subject to privatization had been sold off, with the rate or facing bankruptcy and other even more unpleasant of privatization in 1999 outstripping all previous years. consequences. The government sacked the BSP- The financial system, which was virtually destroyed in appointed managers of most public enterprises and the crash of 1996 and the austerity program introduced replaced them with new personnel. To attack in 1997, began a slow resurrection in 1998. Sweeping smuggling, which had spun out of control by banking reforms helped clear the way for the nascence 1997, the government transferred border control from of a system of private banking. In 2000, the economy the Interior Ministry and the state-security services to will grow by about 4 percent, an unspectacular figure the army and reorganized and retrained army but one that is respectable from a regional perspective units responsible for border patrol. The refurbished and that helps make the disaster of 1996–97 seem like Interior Ministry cracked down on car-theft rings, a distant nightmare. which had come to constitute one of the biggest The UDF could not have accomplished such sectors of the economy. At the beginning of 2000, in reforms by means of economic policy alone. a fresh effort to boost tax collection, a new law took Corruption and organized crime of Russian effect that requires all street vendors and taxi drivers to proportions (and often with the participation of provide customers with receipts and to work only with Russia-based criminal organizations), as well as bad cash registers with “fiscal memory.” economic policy, choked the Bulgarian economy As of mid-2000, most of the criminal during the era of BSP rule. The UDF came to power syndicates that had dominated the economy and full of bluster about its intentions to transform this that, in alliance with corrupt officials, had engaged in situation. Kostov regularly invoked the language of wild rent-seeking, have either gone out of business or war to describe his posture toward crime and transformed themselves into legitimate operations. corruption. Agov told one of the authors of this paper Few of the old nefarious behemoths have continued in early 1998 that “organized crime will be smashed to evade the law with impunity. The insurance in Bulgaria” (Fish interview with Asen Agov, January have either gone out of business or become 13, 1998, Sofia). legitimate companies. The government requires them Remarkably, Agov’s prediction proved prescient. to maintain reasonably high levels of capital on hand In late 1997 and early 1998, the UDF government and regulates them in a manner that ensures that they launched a multifaceted and authentic anticorruption pay their clients’ claims as prescribed by law. Tax campaign. In a clever stratagem intended to decrimi- revenues have risen steeply. Street crime has declined. nalize the economy’s commanding heights, the Thugs restrained only by the formidable weight of government raised the initial capitalization require- their gold necklaces no longer lord it over city streets ments to start an insurance by over 10 times. as they did in the early and mid-1990s. Since illegitimate business conglomerates in Bulgaria Corruption has by no means disappeared. relied on insurance companies for cover (much the Cronyism and favoritism in competition for way their counterparts in Russia have relied upon government contracts, patronage-based job distribu- banks), the move yanked the roofs off of a host of tion, and tax evasion remain severe. Nevertheless, criminal syndicates. The Ministry of Interior was these are the types of pathologies that corrupt political

68 EAST EUROPEAN CONSTITUTIONAL REVIEW and economic life even in the West. Prior to 1997, would yield handsome political dividends and guar- with organized crime in control of the economy and antee the UDF’s continuation in power. But with virtually the entire government locked in a bear public-opinion polls taken in mid-2000 show that the hug with rent-seeking monopolists, bribe taking and UDF is no longer more popular than the BSP. In the tax evasion hardly even registered as infractions. October 1999 local elections, the UDF performed Attacking organized crime and official corrup- below expectations. Kostov’s previously high approval tion has helped establish some rudiments of the rule of ratings have slipped. The possibility of a UDF defeat in law. This achievement has been the UDF’s greatest the next parliamentary elections cannot be excluded. contribution to democratization. The UDF came to The decline in support for the UDF may be due in power in a deeply troubled but nevertheless open part to the common phenomenon of growing public polity. To their credit, the previous Socialist govern- weariness as years pass with the same old government ments did not pursue a Serbian- or Uzbek-style and faces in power. But the UDF’s popularity deficit is strategy of maintaining a monopoly by force and fraud, rooted in real problems as well. and the UDF took over a country that had already First, despite the success of the UDF’s macroeco- undergone substantial democratization. But the BSP nomic stabilization policy and the return of respectable governments hardly established norms of operation growth rates, unemployment is stuck at nearly 20 befitting a democracy. They habitually violated their percent, roughly the same level as in Poland and own laws and sometimes dealt coercively with the Slovakia. Second, while organized crime has been press and with public demonstrations. The UDF has suppressed and official corruption reduced, public preserved the gains of the past while bolstering state standards for what constitutes openness and fair play autonomy and laying the groundwork—however have risen steeply, and the UDF government’s wobbly—for a law-based regime. behavior often falls short. The UDF has not engaged Finally, the UDF has completely reoriented in the brazen, massive theft that the BSP did when in Bulgaria’s foreign policy. The BSP, while professing power, but it has frequently been accused of sacrificing support for closer ties with the West, did not pursue economic optimality to political expediency in the them vigorously and clearly tilted toward Russia. The privatization program. The UDF has greatly acceler- UDF is unequivocally pro-Western and maintains ated privatization, but deals often lack transparency close contacts with several major center-right Western and many have taken the form of management- parties, such as Germany’s CDU and Greece’s New employee buyouts (MEBOs). Democracy. Kostov rarely mentions either his country MEBOs are economically problematic since they or his party without modifying the name of each with do not bring in new capital, expertise, or access to the adjective “European.” In his public statements he new markets. They are politically suspect since the often refers to “Europe” more frequently than to winners are often the beneficiaries of the “blue purge” “Bulgaria.” And he constantly chides the BSP for, in of the old “red directors” that the UDF undertook his view, failing to “orient itself toward European after coming to power. In 1999, MEBOs accounted values” (Trud [Sofia], May 6, 2000). The UDF’s effu- for about one-third of all privatization deals. The sive Euromania may grate on many Bulgarians, but it government claims that MEBOs are necessary to does exhibit the party’s liberal, right-center character accelerate state divestment of assets. The rise of a and distinguish it clearly from right-nationalist parties UDF-friendly “blue elite” within the business such as SNP, the Romanian National Unity Party, and class nevertheless smacks of clientelism. A number of Hungary’s Independent Smallholders’ Party. corruption scandals, as well as a recent personnel shake-up and a suicide at the Interior Ministry, Hazards and prospects have further tarnished the UDF’s reputation for One might expect that reforming the economy, probity. Inevitably, some scandals have a decidedly reducing crime and corruption, advancing democrati- political flavor and seem to reflect intraparty rancor. zation, and pulling the country closer to the West In December 1999, Kostov dismissed Alexander

SUMMER 2000 69 Bozhkov and Evgenii Bakardjiev from ministerships discourse reveals a growing public wariness on grounds of corruption. Both Bozhkov and concerning overconcentration of power. The percep- Bakardjiev were also forced to relinquish their high- tion is only exacerbated by a recent proposal coming ranking positions within the UDF party hierarchy. from the UDF to raise the threshold for representation To some extent, the UDF also suffers from in parliament from the current 4 percent barrier to 6 public wariness prompted by the party’s own success. percent. Doing so would endanger the representation The UDF controls all state agencies on the national of the Movement for Rights and (MRF), level. It has been sufficiently disciplined to thwart the main party of the Turkish minority. Given the three no-confidence votes and to realize most of the crucial role of the MRF in integrating Turks into goals that it set for itself in 1997. The UDF has forged mainstream political life, such a change in the electoral a political system in which elections actually create system could endanger the remarkable interethnic power. Elections have not done so in many other post- peace that has prevailed in postcommunist Bulgaria. communist countries. The debility of political parties The proposal is a transparent and arrogant threat aimed in many other places means that the electors’ at the MRF, whose relations with the UDF have gone preferences are not aggregated; the elected cannot be from warm to strained during the past several years. held accountable to an identifiable program; no On balance, however, the UDF’s might has powerful political organization monitors politicians’ facilitated political development in Bulgaria rather behavior in order to guard its own reputation; and than retarded it. The UDF controls the levers of sections of the political elite relate to one another power, but it operates in a highly pluralistic system exclusively on the basis of mutual personal interest that it has itself helped to create. It must face the or interpersonal antagonism. Consequently, “govern- threat of elections. Unlike in Russia and Ukraine, ment” has a completely different meaning in Bulgaria there is scant reason for oppositionists to fear fraud in than it does, say, in Russia. Bulgaria has a government. future elections. Information flows freely. In the most A party or coalition of parties controls the state appa- recent Press Survey conducted by Freedom ratus. Russia does not really have a government. House, Bulgaria received the same score as Hungary Instead, it has a state apparatus that attempts—and and Greece and rated much higher than Romania, fails—to govern. That apparatus includes but a single Turkey, and Macedonia (Press Freedom Survey 2000 elected official—the president—and operates on the at www.freedomhouse.org). A private national televi- basis of innumerable bilateral personal links between sion station is already broadcasting in the country, the president and his subordinates. By contrast, real several local private stations operate freely, cable and governments, whether European-style parliamentary satellite television are widely available, and harassment governments or American-style “administrations,” are of journalists is rare. always teams; that is part of what makes them govern- Kostov has achieved an impressive mastery of his ments. Governments in post-Soviet Russia, unlike in organization, but the UDF is in no respects a charis- Bulgaria, have never functioned as teams, since teams matic party; its identity does not depend on Kostov. require not only a captain and subordinates but also a Like Italy’s Christian Democratic Party after Alcide De system of stable roles and players who wear jerseys that Gasperi and Communist Party after Palmiro Togliatti, bear the same identifying color and insignia. the UDF is capable of surviving its leader’s defeat or But the very strength and extent of control of the passing. In fact, like these Italian party leaders and their UDF government raises the specter of partyocracy that organizations, Kostov and the UDF are now shaping, many citizens in postcommunist countries, including perhaps inadvertently, a type of polity common in Bulgaria, abhor. Kostov’s personal predominance, both Europe during the first four postwar decades but as prime minister and as party leader, only feeds unusual in the postcommunist world and in present- unease. For a strong party to provide the means for day Western Europe: a pluralistic partyocracy. The elections to create power may be crucial to the coun- characteristic feature that dominant political organiza- try’s political development, but Bulgarian political tions in such polities seem to share is that they are

70 EAST EUROPEAN CONSTITUTIONAL REVIEW solidly rooted in society. Remarkably, at present all rience also shows that pluralistic partyocracy can spur major political parties are deeply rooted in society. The consolidation of democracy and progress toward UDF’s formidable organization, when combined with prosperity in a poor, peripheral, and demoralized land. the staying power and enduring unity of the BSP and the loyalty of the MRF’s followers and activists, is giving rise to a polity in which parties—rather than M. Steven Fish is an associate professor of political science at the spellbinding leaders, the state apparatus, independent University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of local strongmen, the military, or private oligarchs—are Democracy from Scratch: Opposition and Regime in the New Russian Revolution (Princeton University Press, 1995). the central actors in political life. As the Italian experi- Robin S. Brooks is a Ph.D. candidate in the department of polit- ence demonstrates, pluralistic partyocracy can engender ical science at the University of California, Berkeley. She is writing clientelism, dysfunctional politicization of parts of the her dissertation on ethnic self-identification and nation building in private sector, and political sclerosis. The Italian expe- postcommunist Europe.

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