Which time is the charm? The unending political crisis in Bulgaria.
In October 2024, Bulgaria held its seventh parliamentary elections after the mass protests of 2020. Except for brief periods of rule by regular governments after 2021, the country has been governed by caretaker governments. The ongoing negotiations for a government offer no concrete prospect for a way out of the political instability and the unstoppable political crisis. The 2020 protests created numerous pop-up political projects. These offered anti-elitism and technocrat populism (PP) or hybrid forms of anti-establishment and nativist tendencies (ITN, Bulgarian Rise). A complex of factors gave impetus to the ultranationalist, anti-systemic party "Revival". In one of the campaigns, TikTik launched the "Greatness" project. A considerable sector of Bulgarian society wants to see a change in the elite and some new social contract. However, seven elections have failed to produce this change through a democratic mechanism. Anger, despair and resentment have all accumulated amid a difficult socioeconomic situation and rising inflation. Abstention rates, meanwhile, remain high. This is not surprising because debates related to exchanging ideas and policy proposals were practically non-existent during seven consecutive election campaigns.
The article examines the ongoing crisis in Bulgaria through the prism of populism and its normalisation process. It uses the working hypothesis that since 2001, a process of normalization of populism has been underway in Bulgaria. This process is conditioned by various factors and has multiple explanations. Ultimately, populism has become a defining characteristic of the political system, which explains the current political situation. The author introduces the understanding of populism as a de-ideologized ideology and proposes a typology of Bulgarian populisms.
