The presidential elections this fall are shaping up to be another major test for the Bulgarian political system after the series of tremors in recent years. While the major parties continue to postpone the announcement of their candidates, the issues of leadership, populism and the influence of the backstage are once again coming to the fore. Why is it increasingly difficult for political formations to produce convincing leaders, is populism turning from an election tactic into a model of governance and how are social networks changing the democratic process? Political scientist Dr. Maria Kazakova speaks to FACT on these and other questions.
- Dr. Kazakova, we are entering the campaign to elect the President of the Republic of Bulgaria. The elections will be held at the end of October. There are currently two candidacies – of the incumbent president Iliana Yotova and Nikolay Nenchev, nominated by his party BZNS. Are the other parties hiding, not ready, or simply waiting? The big parties are mostly waiting. Is this a sign of political caution or a symptom of a deeper leadership crisis?
- We live in a time of accelerated, I would say spontaneous communication. In the absence of clear differences in political ideologies, competition is practically carried out only on the basis of personal trust or distrust in political leaders. Considering that the mechanisms for social advancement mainly go through quasi-criminal or criminal methods, anyone who dares to stick their head in the anti-moral swamp of publicity knows that they have a short period of time before being counter-attacked by their situational political opponents. The paradox is that most often the argument is “you are no different from us“, “we steal because and others steal“, a suffocating sense of normality of injustice has taken root. In this regard, the less time each candidate has before the campaign for public defamation, the better his chances are for a relatively better performance in the elections. As for the so-called “big” parties, all entities falling into this category are currently quite young and poorly institutionalized and in principle their actions are reduced to reactionary tactics, not leadership strategies.
- Why is it increasingly difficult for big parties to nominate a candidate they can confidently stand behind? Are there a lack of personalities or a lack of political courage?
- The instability of majorities in recent years and the volatility of the vote have led to a very high turnover and, accordingly, a short life of political leaders. Personnel depletion is a fact, and taking into account the structure of political power, which practically resides in oligarchic power centers outside, around and above official institutions, an additional condition for a successful political career is the imitation of leadership, through the presence of partial leadership biographical fragments in the elected officials, who, however, do not see a problem in falling into executive dependence. The parties are looking for something like an oxymoron "brave cowards", ready to speak proudly on stage, despite their secretarial commitments to the real backstage power brokers.
- Populism traditionally opposes "the people" to the "elite". Do you expect this line to dominate the presidential campaign, regardless of the ideological differences between the candidates?
- This is a fundamental division that began to undermine the political field shortly after 1990, and has been structurally determining for over 25 years. It will be no different in these elections. However, there are also some new moments that are worth noting. In parallel with populisms, there is already a partial critical publicity in Bulgaria, a significantly more vibrant civil society compared to that at the beginning of the saturated populist era that started in 2001. So to speak, Sofia is alive and no matter how much different political formations representing electorates from different parts of the country do not publicly acknowledge it, at the moment the tone is set by the parties that emerged mainly from the yellow-paved maturation and activation. The new topics come from there, the rest work on the principle of echo and counter-attack. In addition, there is also a maturation of the anti-elitist message, be it populist. Society already has its own agenda and has named what it wants to change. The oligarchs have faces and names, and the institutions that should start dealing with justice, instead of reproducing injustice or something like “perversion“, are also on the list. The long competition of political populists has led to a clarification of the messages, although so far there has been no concrete implementation. In addition, it should be borne in mind that populism is fundamentally political flattery, based on the idealization of the broad masses of the people. In Bulgaria, however, people involved in the long corruption networks often do not consider themselves collaborators and are not aware of their complicity in the schemes in which they blame the unloved elites.
- How does Balkan populism differ from that in Western Europe? Are there any specific characteristics that are also observed in Bulgaria?
- There are no clear ideal types of heterogeneous populist speech, on the basis of which we can speak of Balkan populism in its pure form. However, there are trends, such as the original roots of the primary populist manifestations, typical of the early phases of democratization, which subsequently underwent evolution and relative homogenization based on the intensive information exchange. Populisms in the Balkans, and in Central and Eastern Europe in general, are rather focused against the post-communist elites and ethnic minorities, while in the former geographical and political-economic category of Western Europe they are rather the fruit of dissatisfaction with deindustrialization, immigration and globalization. Over time, however, these trends enrich each other. An interesting lesson for every future populist and especially for the millions who support these trends is the development of Great Britain. Ten years after Brexit, it turns out that loud anti-European messages actually lead to impoverishment, not to the return of imperial glory. Proud Britain is now turning its tail around the EU. What if one day people start speculating about Brexit 2, as a Bulgarian exit would sound? It is important to emphasize that millions of voters actually vote for the pejoratively labeled and referred to as anti-democratic pathology "populists". They are the ones who breathe life into populism. Leaders are often "accused" of populism, never the voters in a populist vote, through which they voluntarily delegate their collective power to them …
- We are increasingly seeing candidates who build their campaigns on personalities, not on programs. Is this a natural development of politics, or a sign of erosion of the party system?
- The personalization of power is a characteristic typical not only for Bulgaria, as the reason for it is, on the one hand, the lack of distinct political ideologies, and on the other, the media leadership, which has replaced stably institutionalized party formations, which also leads to personal trust in the personality of the leader. As for the erosion of the party system, in Bulgaria, especially after the last elections in April 2026, we cannot speak of erosion, but of the collapse of the party system, since there is not a single participant from those who formed the first post-totalitarian system who is still active, with the exception of modified formations that emerged from complex splits and mergers, such as “DPS - New Beginning“ and some reformatted representatives of the former right. A major sign of disintegration, not erosion, was the BSP's withdrawal from the National Assembly.
- Presidential elections are traditionally highly personalized. Does this make the institution of the president the most favorable environment for populist messages?
- The presidential institution has the privilege of enjoying public trust, but without having responsibilities that allow the specific head of state to demonstrate the effectiveness of his leadership in action. This is precisely why it produces leaders like the current Prime Minister Rumen Radev.
During his almost two terms in office, Radev used the presidency as a wax tower, from where he practically applied the tactic of strategic silence with elements of an opposition to the government instead of a unifier of the nation.
In this way, Radev became a typical populist-type leader who gains trust in his image as a general in a period of crisis, with the peculiarity that he practically rather built an image without a precise profile, which in a period of lack of alternative the voters themselves filled with content. As Prime Minister, he also uses the technique of distanced silence, with which he tries to create some kind of Bonapartist-type government, which, however, increasingly postpones the pressing issues of the fight against the oligarchic model. The only moments when Radev's personality took an active, rather than tactically silent, allegorical or oppositional position to the authorities in his capacity as prime minister, is when he actively defended the interests of representatives of the Russian oligarchy, clumsily trying to call this the Bulgarian national interest, as well as to hide this move under the robe of the Russian patriarch.
- Which topics will be most often used with a populist charge - war, the euro, migration, social policy, prices or national identity?
- Each of them is suitable food for populism. It is interesting that after such a long populist experience, in Bulgaria we are beginning to observe an evolution of the phenomenon. Unlike, so to speak, the “early” populist leaders, such as Simeon Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, the current ones are starting to apply not only populist discourse mainly in a pre-election context, but also populist management techniques. An example of this is the initiative “Basket with Care“, which is a vivid example of effective political marketing, which replaces the problems of social stratification and the downgrading of significant social groups with superficial measures at the tail of long cause-and-effect chains, which look more like the care of a Latin-American father, or Bulgarian Putinism, which flatters the socially oppressed, being well integrated into the circles positioned at the opposite social pole.
- Social networks have changed the way campaigns are conducted. Do they strengthen populism by encouraging short, emotional and conflicting messages at the expense of substantive debate?
- Like many other things, social networks have a double effect. On the one hand, they actually stimulate the spread of populist messages through the rapid turnover and focus on the simplistic conflict spectacle. Social networks are bubbling disinformers, where truth and tailed suggestions are constantly intertwined. They also give the opportunity to populisms, which in principle tell everyone exactly what they want to hear, regardless of the fact that it is, for example, unfulfillable. They target their messages to the extent that a leader is elected with mutually exclusive commitments, injected into the information bubble of separate social subgroups. On the other hand, social networks also support the synchronization of civic associations and agitations and have made it possible to channel social energy through increasingly intense manifestations of civil society - for example, through protests, which were unthinkable 20-30 years ago. In the absence of institutionalized political parties, they are mechanisms for organized social pressure, which in some respects acts as an antidote to populism.
- How can voters recognize the difference between a legitimate political promise and classic populism?
- In principle, populist speech is woven into the discourse of almost all political leaders. In the context of massive populist campaigns, there is no leader who is not, to a greater or lesser extent, a populist. However, the thinking voter can focus on several indicators that serve as a relative compass in the unceasing populist tornado that serially builds and demolishes false heroes before our eyes. On the one hand, the presence of too many enemies and few concrete measurable commitments in a leader's political speech may lead us to think that we are observing another slightly more western or slightly more eastern oriented Krali Marko. Another main characteristic is the speed of political time. Lightning-fast decisions without deep and time-consuming procedures, understand handcuffs for the chosen ones who will stop the vicious cycle of triumph of those who serially violate the rule of law, but only through a justice system relatively torn from oligarchic subordination, are simply soap bubbles full of populism.
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Dr. Maria Mateeva-Kazakov is defending her doctoral dissertation at the Sorbonne in Paris (Paris II) with the title "honorary and admiration from the jury" under the supervision of Prof. Jacques Chevalier on the topic of populism in Bulgaria. Long-time observer of the processes in Bulgaria for the magazine Est-Europa, which is published in France. Former political advisor to the European Parliament and consultant on European policies at the Center for Strategies and Evaluations in London. Director of the Institute for Research, Analysis and Strategies (RAS institute), working in the field of strategic planning of EU policies. Board member of the Green European Journal, published in Brussels.