Individual Democratic Institutions Research Fellowships 1994-1996

The research reports reproduced here are the responsibility of the individual authors. Their reproduction does not imply any form of official or unofficial endorsement by NATO. The reports are offered in unedited form, as presented by their authors, with a view to make their findings available to a wide audience. Tendencies Towards Authoritarianism: A Comparative Analysis of Russia and Bulgaria Georgi Dimitrov, Petia Kabakchieva, Jeko Kijossev [Back to Index] IV. The Bulgarian Transition 3. Possible outcomes of the struggle between the elites: main resources of power We will start with a summary of the perception of the functional political elite in Bulgaria according to a survey conducted in 1993. By "functional political elite" the team that carried out the survey (Petya Kabakchieva, Lilyana Deyanova, Krassen Stanchev and Zhivko Georgiev) means representatives of the top echelons of state administration which also have substantial political influence in the public sphere. Namely, the president and vice president, the leadership of parliament and the parliamentary factions, government ministers, chairpersons and informal leaders of the most popular political parties and coalitions, the leaders of the most powerful trade unions, the Confederation of Independent Trade Unions in Bulgaria (CITUB) and Podkrepa. Fifty-four people, regarded by the team as representative of the elite, were interviewed. Sixteen leaders of parties in the UDF (including subsequently ostracized parties such as the Alternative Socialist Party); ten from the BSP, among them leaders of the various ideological streams within the party; two from the MRF; two independents; twenty leaders of extra-parliamentary parties and coalitions; the President; three labour leaders. Most interviewees are still active in politics. Since the survey is qualitative, we will dwell on the patterns of thinking typical of the different party leaders. The categorical opinion is that the choice of political figures is random, occasionally based on a purely apparatus principle. This opinion correlates with the conviction that there is no elite in Bulgaria yet, since the elite proper is an elite by merit - meritocratic, not merely functional. There is also something of a cult of the reproduction of the elitist status. Apparently Bulgaria's prominent political leaders lack confidence - if not in their own, than in their colleagues' qualities. Still, the profile of the aforementioned leading political figures shows that two types of leaders are held in high esteem: charismatic, whose main quality is strength, ability to uphold one's position, cause; and "positional," whose institutional status, rather than qualities, is significant. The functional political elite obviously believes that "the elite" may be legitimated in the following ways: assertion of strong figures upholding a certain cause; promotion of political "aristocrats," descendants of former party leaders; apparatus, by keeping a definite high institutional post. These views have not changed since, and are expressed in the following mechanisms of selecting the elite: Promotion of young newcomers whose distinctive features are loyalty to the cause, willpower - combined, however, with professional competence and certain command of the technology of power. This position is typical of many BSP activists who elected at their latest (42nd) congress mostly young people to the party leadership, professionals who, however, had served in the Komsomol apparatus. In other words, the BSP combines the idea of "the new face" with the apparatus principle, which is possible only in the case of Komsomol cadres. Among the typical representatives of this cohort of "the young" is the incumbent Chairman of the party and Prime Minister, Zhan Videnov, the floor leader of the Socialist parliamentary faction, and the BSP's deputy chairpersons. At the same time, the aristocratic principle is applied too: figures legitimated as belonging to the party elite by birth have remained influential in the BSP, "third-generation party functionaries" who were active even at the earliest stage of the change. The most striking example is Andrei Loukanov - twice prime minister in 1990, grandson, son and nephew of prominent communist leaders. Apart from Loukanov, the only active politician from pre-November 10, 1989, to have survived so far is Alexander Lilov, the person who has been setting the party's ideological line for years but who is increasingly losing his strategic positions. The opposition applies similar strategies. The leaders of the Popular Union - Democratic Party and Bulgarian Agrarian National Union - definitely regard themselves as representative of the aristocratic line insofar as they are second-generation politicians; whereas the UDF assigns priority to "the young," "the new faces," people committed to the cause who are, at the same time, professionals - such as the UDF candidate in the coming presidential elections. People with institutional positions in the UDF government remain influential: take the Union's present leader, Ivan Kostov, minister of finance in two governments. At the same time, one of the main conclusions in the aforementioned survey is that a large part of the interviewed functional political elites do not regard themselves as autonomous and, in that sense, do not identify with the functional political elite - two in three said that "someone else was pulling the strings." In other words, the real elites are not the functional ones but are invisible, public confrontation does not lead to real confrontation. There are democratic institutions in Bulgaria de jure only, de facto it is not they who are exercising the real power. The fundamental principle of democracy - transparent decision-making, simply does not work in Bulgaria. This means that control is also needed over other resources of power which ultimately give self-confidence to the real elites who are the real decision-makers in Bulgaria. Control over the economic and informational resources is crucial in this respect, and the BSP's lead over the opposition has become all too obvious. That is why we have so far dwelt on the hitherto officially promoted methods of selection. The question is what other resources of power back or can be rallied by "the new faces" and "party aristocrats." Behind "the new faces" and "party aristocrats" in the BSP there are actually different resources of power which, however, do not rule out "qualities" and "aristocracy." In the case of "the young," their will to power is backed by the resources of the Komsomol apparatus which once used to be at their disposal, and by the strong community feeling. Their problem, however, is the lack of control over economic resources. That is why they launched an attack against the by now asserted economic conglomerates, meanwhile starting to constitute their own economic power centres in an effort to take over still vacant, "natural" or promising economic zones such as grain growing and trade, and telecommunications. The takeover was assigned by the Prime Minister to what he called a "circle of friends" - close aides of his, holding certain positions in the administration and collaborating hand in glove with big bank capital. The resources of the other, "aristocratic," group, come mostly from their service in the former structures of power which has given them control over the state apparatus and, hence, over the economic sphere (as a result of the typically socialist fusion of party, state and economic power). Another main resource of theirs is their brilliant command of the technology of power, followed by admittedly decent professional competence and culture. There are signs of open confrontation between the two groups at present, both trying to simultaneously seize political and economic power in the country, but from different directions. The former want to seize economic power from the positions of political power; the latter, who control powerful economic resources (Loukanov now heads the powerful Bulgarian-Russian association in charge of "the circulation" of gas - Topenergy), want to be the most influential political lobby. There is a tendency towards concentration of power in both cases, in the first one the cleanest way of realizing this tendency being authoritarian government and, eventually, possible oligarchy of the Michels type - partocracy; in the second case, the democratic institutions are necessary, but not as a transparent mediator of different interests but as necessary props in successful lobbying for definite economic interests. If this group prevails, we will probably have oligarchy of Mills's type. Which are the opposition's main resources. In actual fact, they seem to virtually boil down to "qualities" and "aristocracy," i.e. to political prestige which could easily come under fire in the course of the not too fair political struggle in Bulgaria. They are also supported by representatives of the so-called "restitution capital" most of whom, however, do not live off production or trade but off rent. They could also count on part of the landowners, the fledgling and toddling small and medium-scale private business; and especially on public discontent with the jolting reform. Right now that is the only resource on which the UDF leaders are counting, moving one no-confidence vote against the BSP Government after another in an effort to keep their electorate mobilized, cashing in on every single Socialist mistake. Therefore their main resource of power is directly dependent on their keeping control over the democratic institutions and introducing serious principles of selection of the elite, principles that prioritize the personal qualities and professional competence of contenders for the popular vote. Therefore we cannot talk about polyarchy proper in Bulgaria at present, since there is no actual functional separation of powers and the principle of selection of elites does not stake on their professional competence. At the same time, however, there is a real struggle between different elites using and relying on different resources of power. In this sense, the situation in Bulgaria has different development potentials: towards authoritarianism abridging democratic rights just short of direct dictatorship; towards oligarchy formally retaining the democratic institutions which, however, are inefficient since their political representation will be of the lobbyist type; towards assertion of democracy counting on the corrective vote of the "demos" and the moral authority of the leaders. We have hitherto discussed the main resources of the principal power centres. Yet the way in which they will be utilized and rallied, as well as the form of political government that will ultimately win, largely depends on the present situation.