Anna Krasteva

The article argues that Bulgaria is experiencing a negative transformation, a transition from post-communism to post-democracy expressed in the transition from corruption to endemic corruption and state capture. The aim of the article is twofold: on the one hand, to analyze the current hot political debate on the rule of law, on the other hand, to conceptualize in an innovative and original way the political transformations that make predictable and inevitable giant corruption scandals like Magnitsky, Pandora’s files. The first introduces the author’s concept of the transition from post-communism to post-democracy, which articulates three different transformations in post-communist development, each defining the rule of law differently. The second part considers the civil mobilizations against the corruption model as an expression and catalyst for the formation of active and contestant citizenship. The third part analyses the three-pole model of the state capture, as well as the coalition for political change.

The aim of the article is to analyze populism in relation to its political innovations. The idea is that, if national-populism marks such an impressive rise, it is because it is a carrier, author and driver of main political innovations. The three perspectives in which populism innovates are communications, symbolic politics, post-democracy. The innovation is captured analytically – through concrete political changes, instead of normative ones – as positive political changes. Populism is also a reaction, and an expression of „post-democracy” (Crouch) – the gradual transformation of democratic institutions in empty shells. The neo-liberal globalization and economization of societies shift the energy and innovative engine from the democratic arena to closed politico-economical circles. The far-right populism, on one side furiously criticizes the post-democratic loss of democratic content, and on the other additionally continues to erode it.

The article has a double objective: to analyze the campaign of the nationalist candidate in the presidential election 2016, as well as populist-nationalist discourses and messages of non-nationalist candidates. It is structured in three parts. The first offers a periodization of the nationalist vote and analyzes the campaign as a happening of Krassimir Karakachanov, the candidate of the United Patriots. The second introduces the symbolic cartography of the nationalist campaigns, introducing a diachronic perspective and comparing the messages and images of the presidential campaigns of the two sympathetic nationalist candidates - Volen Siderov and Krassimir Karakachanov. The third part introduces a synchronic comparative perspective by identifying nationalist messages of non-nationalist candidates. The main thesis and conclusion of the analysis is the tendency of hegemonization of the nationalist discourse, crossing the classical ideological cleavages.