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18. Rethinking Bulgarian Politics The role of the left and more specifically the emergence of Broad socialism cannot be understood independently of the political system operating in Bulgaria. The issue of the democratic deficit remained a pressing topic as the political system glided progressively into a kind of “regulated arbitrariness.” The promising liberal political life, inaugurated in 1879 through the Tŭrnovo Constitution, proved unable to live up to its liberal pledge, violated already in the late 1880s, initially by the arbitrary rule of Stefan Stambolov, and later on through the establishment of King Ferdinand’s autocratic “personal regime,” which elevated him as the principal arbiter of political balances in Bulgaria until his dethronement in 1918. The blatant adulteration of democratic procedures and the consequent derailment of the political game into an internal arrangement between Ferdinand and the political elites sealed the fate of constitutionalism in Bulgaria and allowed for an unstable and fragile political system, characterized by the perpetual fragmentation of the political world and the negligence of the political elite to connect to the base. In what developed into a ritualized and unofficially institutionalized practice, political elites received their legitimization principally from above and rarely from below. Political practice in Bulgaria developed the traits of a closed and exclusive political system, radicalizing a good segment of the intelligentsia, and simultaneously “setting free” the social forces at the base. The agrarian movement and all the complex socio-economic reasons that contributed to its inception and development are indicative both of the process of political alienation of the countryside and the inability of the political system to absorb and neutralize social cleavages. The socio-economic stimulus coincided with a cleavage of political non-representation, aggravated particularly by the defeats in the Balkan and First World wars. The violations of constitutional legality, which contributed to the endemic crisis of instability of the political system, were caused in the first place by intentional interventions aiming directly at a manipulation and curtailment of constitutional rights. Examples of this include the restrictive 280 IV. Caught up in the Contradictions of Modernity 1881 electoral law and the constitutional changes undertaken by Stambolov in 1893. Secondly, they were brought about by the later “quasiinstitutionalized ” practice, exercised both by the governments and the monarch, of acknowledging the constitution, on the one hand, but not complying in any way with its democratic principles on the other. The “personal regime” was as much a result of the autocratic tendencies of King Ferdinand as a failure of the political elites to counterpoise a viable political alternative. These two factors kept feeding off each other, in a spiral-like manner perpetuating the weakness of the political system. The “personal regime” simply thrived on, manipulated , and recycled precisely this weakness. Electoral procedures and the mode of ascendance of political parties to power is indicative of the adulterated political process. While electoral adulteration was not an uncommon practice in other Balkan countries, it is rather the absence of a minimum facade of legality that is striking about the Bulgarian case. Until the end of the First World War—that is, in the span of forty years— thirty governments took turns, coming from different parties, but representing to a smaller or greater extent obedient instruments of the will and the power of the monarch. They received power from him when they were useful to him; he abandoned them as soon as his policy required such a change. From these governments, only three or four came to power through actual electoral successes of the party in question; the rest, were first nominated, then they dismantled the established government, called new elections, and according to electoral habits in Bulgaria, the newly appointed government almost always won the elections.210 The following facts demonstrate how entrenched this procedure was: In the elections for the 9th National Assembly [1896], the ruling Popular Party [Narodniashka Partiia], founded only two years before, won 150 seats. Three years later, when Ferdinand distanced himself from it, it had only two deputies. Again in the elections for the 9th Assembly, the Progressive-Liberal Party [Progresivno-Liberalna Partiia] achieved only one mandate, in the 10th Assembly, thirteen mandates, in the 12th (when it was the ruling party) it received 97, and in the next year (when it was in opposition) only 6. In the 8th National Assembly, the Radoslavist Party [a branch of the Liberals], at that time participating in the government with K. Stoilov, had 35 deputies; in the 9th, when the party...

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