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What Marc Plattner has called "'declinist' sentiment" about democracy is becoming more and more widespread.1 Many scholars approach the recent metamorphoses of the countries they study like mistrustful protagonists who, to borrow a phrase from Shakespeare's Othello, "follow still the changes of the moon with fresh suspicions," vaguely anticipating vile schemes that will end in democracy's suffocation. Such suspicions should not bar the way to clearheaded analysis, however. In Central and Eastern Europe, at least, the reconfigurations of the terrain of democratic politics have not taken the form of a tragedy that reveals the extremities of modern politics: There have been no "promissory coups," "authoritarian reversions," or "endogenous terminations."2 Instead what we have been seeing in the region are shifts that are incremental and partial—tinkering with legal frameworks, but not their destruction.
This is why the urge to come up with categorical statements about democratic decline should be resisted, while more attention should be paid to complexity, nuance, and careful mapping of political arenas. If the parameters of national politics are modified, which aspects of democratic governance are affected and which are not? If an element of hybridity emerges—if there is a mixture of democratic and authoritarian practices—which areas of the political field become less democratic, and what games exactly are played there? If a particular individual or a group of elected decision makers becomes especially influential, what would be the most accurate way to describe the goals, style, and source of legitimacy of this person or group? Do efforts to narrow the identifiable dimensions of a country's "democraticness" trigger political and social conflicts, and if so, who is likely to prevail and why?
It is around such questions that my remarks about recent political developments in Bulgaria will revolve. Situating this country within the debate about democratic backsliding is not easy. On the one hand, political fluctuations there have not been as dramatic as those that have transpired in Poland or Hungary. On the other hand, however, various actions of important powerholders have done visible damage to certain components of the armature of democratic governance and have empowered oligarchic and illiberal forces.
A survey of the changes that have occurred in Bulgaria over the last several years supports the notion that democratic...