ne of the most remarkable—and least
celebrated and understood—political stories
of the postcommunist region is the relative
success of democratization in Bulgaria. Not only has
democratization taken place but democracy has taken
hold. Bulgaria has avoided the slide toward
authoritarianism that occurred in Russia, Ukraine,
Belarus, Albania, Armenia, and all the countries of
Central Asia in the second half of the 1990s.
Explaining Bulgaria’s experience is difficult. Most of
the usual explanations for success do not work.
Bulgaria does not have a hardy democratic tradition.
The brand of Sovietism practiced in Bulgaria was
similar to that found in the USSR. Dissent was dealt
with harshly. In contrast with Hungary or Poland, no
substantial political or economic liberalization
occurred during the 1970s or 1980s. At the onset of
the regime change, Bulgaria was poor even by regional
standards, and the economic trauma it endured during
the early years of transition was as severe as that
experienced by Russia and Ukraine. Neighborhood
effects cannot be considered particularly auspicious.
Bulgaria shares a long border with Serbia, and Sofia is
located close to that border. To its south, Bulgaria is
bounded by Greece and Turkey; it is the only country
to share a border with both. Bulgaria does not border
a West or Central European country. Nor does it have
an ethnically homogeneous population. It has a large
Turkish minority, geographically concentrated in the
south, as well as substantial populations of Roma and
Pomaks. The precommunist history of relations
between Bulgarians and Turks was bloodier than that
between Serbs and the people now called Bosnian
Muslims, and relations between the two groups in
Bulgaria were much worse during the Soviet era than
those between the two groups in Yugoslavia. In short,
Bulgaria did not enter the postcommunist era as a
leading candidate for robust democratization. Yet
democracy came nonetheless, and it appears to be
holding, perhaps even deepening.
After the beginning of the regime change
at the end of the 1980s, Bulgaria did develop one
noteworthy asset: an array of reasonably strong polit-
ical parties. Like Romania and Mongolia, arguably
the postcommunist region’s two other pleasant
surprises in the realm of democratization, Bulgaria
has had a relatively high rate of popular participation
in parties. Seven percent of voting-age Bulgarians, 12
percent of Romanians, and 20 percent of Mongolians
belong to parties. The numbers are all high by post-
communist standards and are far greater than in
Russia and Ukraine, where rates of party member-
ship are one or two percent (Marc Howard,
Demobilized Societies: Understanding the Weakness of
Civil Society in Post-Communist Europe [Ph.D. disserta-
tion, University of California, Berkeley, 1999]; M.
Steven Fish, “Mongolia: Democracy without
Prerequisites,” Journal of Democracy 9, no. 3 [July
1998]). In Bulgaria, as in Romania and Mongolia,
the communist-successor party or parties account for
a substantial proportion of overall party membership,
but major liberal or otherwise noncommunist-
successor parties emerged as well. It is difficult to
locate anything other than political parties to account
for the Bulgarian (or for that matter, Romanian and
Mongolian) advantage in democratization.
In Bulgaria, the most impressive party to emerge
since the dawn of open politics is the Union of
Democratic Forces (UDF). It is not only the strongest
party in Bulgaria; it is arguably the mightiest right-
center party in postcommunist Europe. Only Vaclav
Klaus’s Civic Democratic Party even compares to the
UDF in terms of membership magnitude, organiza-
tional coherence, and depth of rootedness in society.
Where the UDF came from
The UDF started life as a mélange of over a dozen
diminutive groups that coalesced loosely during the
early phase of the regime change. It lost the first parlia-
mentary elections to the Bulgarian Socialist Party
(BSP), the main communist-successor party. It fared
better in the 1991 elections and from November 1991
until September 1992 enjoyed a brief stint as the
leading party in government. It also did well in races
for local offices, especially in urban areas.
