The Legacies of 1989: Bulgaria’s Year of Civic Anger

Issue Date January 2014
Volume 25
Issue 1
Page Numbers 33-15
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This article offers an analytical interpretation of the various strategies which Bulgaria’s mobilized citizens have recently deployed in order to hold political elites accountable. It focuses on post-accession hooliganism, a specific form of elite misbehavior which became increasingly visible after the country joined the European Union, and on civic anger, a political sentiment that spread as a popular reaction to this misbehavior. The main conclusion to which the examination of the ongoing process of antigovernment mobilization in Bulgaria lends credence is that civic involvement in democratic politics is the most important factor that might reverse the decline of a democracy’s quality.

About the Author

Venelin I. Ganev is professor of political science at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, where he is also a faculty associate of the Havighurst Center for Russian and Post-Soviet Studies. He is the author of Preying on the State: The Transformation of Bulgaria After 1989 (2007).

View all work by Venelin I. Ganev