Economic Performance and Regime Legitimacy in Post-Communist Bulgaria
| Published date | 01 May 2004 |
| Date | 01 May 2004 |
| Author | Rossen Vassilev |
| DOI | 10.1111/j.1467-9256.2004.00212.x |
| Subject Matter | Article |
© Political Studies Association, 2004.
Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA
Economic Performance and Regime
Legitimacy in Post-Communist Bulgaria
Rossen Vassilev
Ohio State University
It is commonly assumed that socio-economic conditions strongly influence political attitudes. Since
democratic rule is based on the consent of the ruled, a secure and stable democracy cannot be
established and maintained without broad-based popular endorsement, which is especially impor-
tant for nascent post-communist democracies. Painful economic difficulties may engender deep
anti-system sentiments at the mass level, encouraging anti-regime activism at the elite level. From
this perspective, democratic legitimacy is a function of regime performance. But the Bulgarian evi-
dence fails to validate the hypothesis that system legitimacy depends on regime effectiveness or
that socio-economic conditions determine mass-level political attitudes. In spite of the economic
fiasco, Bulgaria’s democratic regime remains capable of commanding popular support. While the
economic performance deficit of catastrophic proportions has become a source of widespread
popular dissatisfaction threatening regime stability, it has not led to democratic backsliding or
collapse.
Introduction
Available macroeconomic data show that Bulgaria has not fared well in its transi-
tion to capitalism and democracy. Bulgarians have suffered many hardships and
deprivations ever since the Bulgarian economy embarked upon the road to market
reforms. By nearly every macroeconomic standard, Bulgaria is in a worse shape
now than in the pre-transition past (see Minassian, 1998). The short-term effects
of market-oriented reforms have been economic stagnation, inflation, unemploy-
ment, increasing inequality of incomes, widespread impoverishment and even mal-
nutrition. Macroeconomic statistics show that the per capita GNP is sharply down,
the social safety net has all but disintegrated, and even the physical survival of
many impoverished Bulgarians is in peril. Organised crime and endemic corrup-
tion in the form of bribery, influence peddling, smuggling and protection rackets
have exacted a heavy toll on the economy. The major political parties, such as the
anti-communist Union of Democratic Forces (UDF) and the ex-communist
Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP), squandered years by quarrelling over economic
strategies and the equitable privatisation of the economy (see Dobrev, 1998).
Underscoring the volatile and fluid politics of the country, the 17 June 2001 par-
liamentary election abruptly did away with the decade-old political supremacy of
the UDF and the BSP. Created just two months before the election by the 64-year-
old former monarch who had finally returned to Bulgaria, the National Movement
for Simeon II (NMSII) won a landslide electoral victory. By mobilising the protest
vote of the tired, disappointed and impoverished sectors of the population, Simeon
of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha became the first ex-royal to return triumphantly to power
POLITICS: 2004 VOL 24(2), 113–121
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