New Face, Same System

Bulgaria’s eighth parliamentary elections in five years of political gridlock have had an unexpected result. Progressive Bulgaria, the coalition founded by pro-Russia Rumen Radev after his resignation as president in January, won over 44% of the vote, far more than polls had predicted. With the highest winning score since 1997, Progressive Bulgaria can now form a government on its own.

According to the latest count, the pro-reform alliance We Continue the Change–Democratic Bulgaria (PP-DB) and the populist Citizens for European Development of Bulgaria (GERB) are far behind it, around 13%. The collapse of the latter, which had dominated politics since 2009 signals the end of an era. Vazrazhdane (Revival), the most explicitly pro-Russia force in the outgoing parliament, narrowly cleared the 4% threshold to win seats. The Bulgarian Socialist Party, once the country’s most significant political formation, failed to do so. 

The result appears to bring to a close five years of crisis. But the decisive question is no longer whether the country can produce a stable government, but whether the arrival of a new dominant party ends its political pathology or only repackages it.

The recent cycle of repeated elections and unstable governments may be ending, but the democratic backsliding crisis is not.

Bulgaria’s democratic backsliding did not begin in 2021. The networks that dominate politics—built around the GERB, the BSP, and others—have controlled state institutions, the judiciary, and the economy in various configurations since the end of communism. Russia’s influence operates most effectively not through parties like Vazrazhdane or individuals like Radev, but by exploiting the institutional decay that three decades of state capture have produced—a judiciary that does not prosecute, a regulatory apparatus that does not regulate, and a political class with little incentive to change either. 

With a majority in parliament, Radev will have the power to reshape the judiciary’s composition, regulatory bodies, and state media—but this means institutional capture can accelerate under single-party control rather than be frozen by coalition gridlock. 

Bulgaria’s European partners should be wary. The concerns about Radev’s pro-Moscow orientation will be reinforced by Progressive Bulgaria’s high scores in the polling stations for voters abroad in Russia and Belarus. Also, as well as Vazrazhdane, the Movement for Rights and Freedoms–New Beginning (DPS-NN)—the party associated with Delyan Peevski, who is sanctioned under the US Magnitsky Act since 2021 and by the United Kingdom since 2023—remains in parliament. 

What changed in the political turbulence of recent years was not the system, but the appearance of a credible challenger to it in PP–DB. However, with not enough seats to govern alone and too principled to accept the terms on which coalition partners would have it, it has been consistently sidelined. The appearance of Radev’s Progressive Bulgaria does not change the situation. He is a product of the same political environment he claims to want to dismantle, and his formation has not broken with the patronage logic that sustains the system. The recent cycle of repeated elections and unstable governments may be ending, but the democratic backsliding crisis is not.

The views expressed herein are those solely of the author(s). GMF as an institution does not take positions.