Populism, New Parties and the Quality of Democracy: Bulgaria in the context of Central and Eastern Europe and the EU-27

The paper aims to explore the relationship between populism, new parties and the quality of democracy in Eastern Europe. It brings together three conceptual frameworks: 1) populism and the populist formula of "thin" ideology, charismatic leadership, loose party structures, the existence of a crisis (objective or constructed), salvation narratives and polarizing discourse; 2) new parties and the new party subsystem which is characterized by parties that exploit novelty, anti-corruption appeals, and celebrity (party leaders and founders); and 3) post-democracy: a democratic context of continuous political crises characterized by fundamental changes and pendulum shifts from policies to politics, from crisis management to crisis creation, from institutions to leadership, from ad hoc crisis to permanent crisis. The paper first maps out the prevalence of populism and new parties in the EU-27, utilizing secondary data and a combination of indexes (V-democracy party index; CHES-Europe survey, the Party Manifesto Project, Timbro’s Authoritarian Populism Index, Freedom House), against the quality of democracy, utilizing democracy indexes (V-democracy and Freedom House). It then examines Bulgaria as a case study, comparing country-specific dynamics to developments in other Central and East European countries. The paper concludes by theorizing on the potential effect of populism and new parties on the quality of democracy.