Bulgaria political crisis and a suspended political moment

It is not usual for us to write about politics, but we feel that what Bulgaria is experiencing right now—a full-blown political crisis—will go down in history, just as the events of 1989 did. What began as a protest against an increase in public spending — widely seen as yet another way to feed an already entrenched system of corruption — quickly turned into a broader anti-government movement.

Meanwhile, three weeks before the country adopts the euro, the streets are boiling.
The state is wobbling. And the President himself is calling for the government’s resignation. This has been the case since December 11th.

In any country, this would be remarkable. In Bulgaria, however, it fits neatly into a pattern of chronic political instability: seven elections in four years, no stable majority, and a level of democratic fatigue reminiscent of France under the Fourth Republic.

As a result, it is highly probable that Bulgaria will head towards an eighth election in the coming months. The current parties have already announced that they will refuse to form a new government.

At some point, therefore, if the country wants to get out of this dead end, there will be only two options left. Either people vote and a clear majority emerges from the polls. Or the parliamentary system itself will need to be redesigned to prevent such situations from recurring.

This is exactly what Charles de Gaulle did in 1958 when he returned to power. He abolished the Fourth Republic and established the Fifth Republic.

Beyond what is happening in Bulgaria, France has also been going through turbulent times since July 2024, when President Macron dissolved the National Assembly and sent voters back to the polls. No clear majority emerged from the election, and we now have three blocs of roughly equal size, with no government able to last more than six months.

However, the key difference between France and Bulgaria is not that the French electoral system fails to produce a clear majority — De Gaulle solved that issue in 1958 when he reformed the system, among many other things. France’s problem today is a problem of leadership.

De Gaulle would never have imagined that a president with less than 20% approval could remain in office. In his logic, a president as unpopular as Emmanuel Macron would resign and call for new presidential and parliamentary elections to reset the entire system.

So, unlike Bulgaria, France is experiencing a crisis not because the institutional framework is flawed, but because the spirit of the Fifth Republic is no longer being respected.

A country that never truly had its revolution

To understand today’s unrest, one must return to the transition of 1989–1991.
Unlike Romania, East Germany, or even Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria never experienced a clean break with its former regime. The term “velvet revolution” is often used, but “revolution” is an overstatement: the scenery changed, but the actors remained the same.

The Communist Party rebranded itself as the Socialist Party. Networks reorganised. And the power structure quickly morphed into a post-communist model where continuity prevailed over rupture.

This became strikingly clear to me as I read Fascism by Zhelyu Zhelev — a book I discovered right after attending a conference dedicated to him at the French Institute on November 10. Fascism, published in the 1980s, was strictly banned under communism — for a simple reason: any citizen reading it at the time would have immediately recognised the totalitarian nature of the Bulgarian communist system.

The parallels with the regimes Zhelev analysed were too obvious, too dangerous.

Zhelev: understanding totalitarianism… and choosing a soft transition

What is truly fascinating about Zhelev is not only his critique of totalitarian systems but also his theory of political transitions. According to him, a society cannot leap from totalitarianism to liberal democracy overnight. Only one scenario make a clean break possible: Total military defeat (Germany and Italy in 1945).

In every other case — Spain after Franco, Portugal after Salazar, USSR, the countries of Eastern Europe — the transition must include an intermediate phase, inherently ambiguous such as a form of perestroika, a controlled liberalisation, a gradual opening managed from within, often by segments of the old elite or a military dictatorship.

Bulgaria choosed the first option.

And Zhelev, who became the country’s first democratically elected president, embodied this strategy:

no violent rupture,
no purges,
no “revolutionary justice”,
no sweeping removal of those who had run the system.

A pacifist, reasonable, pragmatic choice.

But one with lasting consequences.

The criticism: the soft transition became an endless transition

Many critics argue that Zhelev’s commitment to a peaceful transition came at a high cost.
Instead of dismantling the old system, he allowed its complete recycling:

in politics,
in the administration,
in the economy,
in the judiciary,
in state enterprises,
and even in the informal structures that still shape key sectors today.

To be fair, Zhelev may not have had a viable alternative: a brutal purge might have destabilised Bulgaria or pushed it toward the sort of internal conflict that tore apart Yugoslavia.

But the outcome is undeniable: Bulgaria never experienced the foundational rupture needed to build a new state on clean ground.

Thirty years later, the country is a democracy on paper — parties, elections, a free press — but beneath the surface, the logic of the past remains deeply embedded.
It sometimes feels as though the country is still, even now, stuck in an endless perestroika.

A transition that never quite concludes.

A historical in-between from which it struggles to emerge.

Corruption as a system: a legacy never uprooted

This is the context in which the current protests must be understood. They are not just about a budget or a parliamentary vote. They are about a system that has survived, adapted, protected itself, and regenerated for three decades.

Trying to fight corruption today is like trying to untangle an ancient knot: everything is intertwined. The elites of yesterday became the elites of today; the institutions of yesterday shaped those of today. You cannot simply “separate wheat from chaff” — the two have grown together.

Where France, in 1945, cut decisively — sometimes brutally — to rebuild, Bulgaria never experienced anything close to an epuration. It chose immediate peace, but it now pays the price of long-term structural inertia.

Arendt: a revolution only matters if it founds a new political order

This is where Hannah Arendt’s insights become illuminating.
In On Revolution, she distinguishes between revolutions that successfully create a durable political framework — like the American Revolution, rooted in the idea of liberty — and those that spin out of control — like the French Revolution, obsessed with equality and ending in Terror before giving way to Napoleon.

For Arendt, a revolution has meaning only if it produces a new, stable order.
Otherwise, it is merely a dramatic episode followed by chaos or a return to authoritarianism.

This is precisely what Bulgaria has lacked: a clear, structured, foundational refounding.

A project.

A redesigned institutional architecture built to last.

Bulgaria’s youth: a late awakening, or the last possible moment?

What stands out in today’s protests is the scale of youth mobilisation. They refuse to live in a country where everything seems frozen, locked, confiscated by a few entrenched networks.

But the question remains: is this awakening still timely, or is it already too late?

One thing is certain: the political tensions, the chronic instability, the endless scandals, the democratic exhaustion — all of this is the deferred bill of an incomplete transition.

We are now facing the consequences of what the country never dared to confront.

Conclusion: without rupture, there is no Republic

The demonstrations in Sofia are not just another episode in Bulgaria’s political drama.
They reveal a country reaching the limits of a transition that has stretched on for more than three decades — a transition that still hasn’t achieved its essential purpose:
breaking with the structures of the past to build something truly new.

Zhelev understood the problem, but he did not — or could not — enact the rupture that history required. And this non-decision defines Bulgaria to this day: a democratic state on the surface, but still entangled in the long shadow of its former regime.

Étienne de La Boétie would say that a people’s servitude to its leaders is often a voluntary servitude. In most cases, nothing truly forces men and women to submit to the will of a single man or a ruling caste.

In totalitarian regimes like the one Bulgaria endured until 1989, refusing this servitude often meant serious trouble — sometimes even life-threatening consequences.
But today, what Generation Z seems to have understood is that servitude is voluntary. One only needs to decide to break free from it — and to do so collectively — for it to collapse.

This applies to Bulgaria, but also to many other countries, including France.

The question now is whether Bulgaria will finally articulate such a project — or whether it will remain indefinitely stuck in its unfinished perestroika.

Some worldwide articles :

NB: The cover photo was found on Facebook, but we haven’t been able to identify the photographer. They can contact us so we can add their name.

Alexander Kolov

Entrepreneurship & Economics Editor

Alexander felt in love with Bulgaria when he came for the first time in 2003 to work for a French company. He believes that Bulgaria is like a rough diamond which has still not been cut.