Bulgaria Keeps Taking to the Streets. Why Does So Little Change?

Removing powerful politicians will not dismantle the networks that sustain them. That requires confronting what happens when public institutions stop meeting people’s needs.

The protest sign had already been used once.

“This sign is from 2020,” it read. “I don’t want to be carrying it again in 2030.”

I came across it while scrolling through Instagram posts about Bulgaria’s protests against the proposed 2026 budget. It was a good slogan. It was also a diagnosis.

Every few years, Bulgarians return to the streets demanding political change. The dates have become a shorthand for the country’s recent history and political time: 1997, 2013, 2020. Each wave brings new participants, new expectations and the conviction that this time something might finally give.

The latest mobilisation, like its predecessors, is being described as a departure from what came before. This time it is “the protest of Generation Z". Instagram and TikTok have helped bring people into the streets, much as the then-emerging blogging culture and Facebook shaped the protests of 2013—and, more broadly, the wave of protests following the global financial crisis of 2008. This leaves us with a sense of a recurring protest cycle and raises questions worth asking: Has anything changed, and if so, what? If not, why not? And what does it actually take to change something, rather than simply go through another cycle?

There is reason to welcome the involvement of a generation previously dismissed as politically disengaged making itself heard. My concern is with the political language they are being invited to inherit.

For roughly thirty-five years, Bulgarian protest culture has relied on a familiar set of distinctions: “Europeans” against “the mafia,” “the good citizens" against the “lazy,” “democrats” against “communists.” Some demonstrations are celebrated as the authentic expression of civil society; others are dismissed as populist. In that account, "corruption" occupies the centre. Remove the corrupt politicians, free the judiciary from their influence and Bulgaria can finally become the European democracy it was supposed to be. 

These distinctions organise political conflict around moral worth and presumed civilisational belonging. The appeal is understandable. But these moral and civilisational distinctions leave too little room for a discussion of the structural social and economic arrangements that allow figures such as Delyan Peevski a politician and former media mogul sanctioned by the United States for corruption in 2021, and a principal target of the protests— acquire and, more importantly, sustain their power through successive governments, elections, and waves of protest. It also encourages the belief that removing them will be enough.

The gap left by the welfare state

A less comfortable explanation begins with the erosion of the welfare state, and the inadequacy of social infrastructure and public provision.

According to Eurostat data for 2024, 37.4 percent of people in Bulgaria considered themselves poor. The richest fifth of the population had incomes seven times those of the poorest fifth. These figures belong in the discussion of political power, alongside judicial appointments and corruption scandals.

When the state withdraws from its welfare functions, it leaves needs unmet—and creates opportunities for others to step in.

So-called "mafia" organisations and parallel power structures have historically found fertile ground where public institutions fail to guarantee basic security and care. Figures such as Delyan Peevski can exploit these gaps by offering a selective imitation of social provision: access to jobs, particularly in small towns and villages, help navigating administrative procedures, brokerage, favours, and promises to “get things sorted.” This can be presented as evidence of a “State with a capital S,” even as access depends on particular people and networks rather than reliable public institutions.

Peevski’s influence rests in part on an extensive infrastructure of such services across Bulgaria. Some people genuinely support him because these networks have helped them secure employment or resolve an urgent problem. Their support cannot simply be reduced to vote-buying.

Recognising this requires moving beyond convenient and often toxic generalisations, including anti-Turkish rhetoric and sweeping denunciations of supporters of the Movement for Rights and Freedoms (DPS), a party historically rooted in Bulgaria’s Turkish minority.. Dismissing voters does little to explain the conditions under which political loyalty is secured. The weakness of public provision is one of the conditions that enables figures such as Peevski to establish and maintain their power.

Corruption and dependence reinforce each other

An obvious objection follows: surely the fundamental problem is the absence of justice and a functioning rule of law? Surely corruption and political influence over the judiciary are what make Peevski possible?

The failure of the justice system is an enormous part of the problem. Yet the dominant protest narrative often treats corruption and judicial dysfunction as almost self-contained issues, detached from the socioeconomic conditions that sustain them. This produces an intense focus on corruption without adequately explaining what makes it routine, profitable, and difficult to punish.

When public institutions fail to provide access to employment, healthcare, social support, and adequate local services, informal intermediaries gain influence. Their promises are familiar: “I’ll find you a job,” “I’ll sort it out for you,” “I’ll get your paperwork moving.” For someone facing an immediate need, such assistance can have considerable value. But it also creates relationships of dependence.

Those relationships can be converted into political loyalty, pressure, and control. They can extend through local government, public administration, regulators, the police, and parts of the justice system. Influence over institutions then produces impunity, while impunity allows the networks to grow stronger and makes them harder to circumvent.

There is little value in turning this into a chicken-and-egg debate about whether weak law enforcement or inadequate social infrastructure comes first. They reinforce each other. A narrow focus on corruption risks overlooking the wider system of dependencies that corruption serves and reproduces.

This matters for what we expect political change to achieve. Judicial reform is essential, but we also need to ask how people can gain access to basic services and security without relying on a politically connected intermediary.

What can a change of government achieve?

Would a resignation, a new government, and higher voter turnout resolve these problems? They could create opportunities for change. Voting matters, as does holding governments accountable. But elections alone cannot dismantle the structural conditions that sustain networks of dependence.

As long as people feel abandoned by public institutions, particularly outside the major cities, gaps in public provision will remain opportunities for political brokerage. Different figures and different parties can occupy the same positions, offering selective assistance in exchange for loyalty.

The question for protesters therefore extends beyond whether Peevski is corrupt, morally objectionable, or deserving of ridicule. Which policies—and which failures of policy—make this form of power durable? What would reduce people’s dependence on it?

If protest remains at the level of moralising spectacle, its outcome may be painfully familiar: enormous energy, limited change, and another mobilisation a few years later.

There is a further risk. A new government could use the language of moral renewal to push through another right-wing budget without meaningful commitments to hospitals, schools, culture, education, and social protection. A budget serving primarily businesses and the middle class would leave many of the same needs unmet. The resulting gaps would continue to provide fertile ground for the kind of power associated with Peevski.

Removing a political figure would then leave intact the conditions that made that figure powerful.

Turning protest energy into social demands

What I hope this mobilisation can open up is a more sustained conversation about those conditions. That means examining what makes Peevski possible in Bulgaria and translating that analysis into concrete demands.

It requires fewer claims to moral and civilisational superiority—“we, the citizens,” “we, the middle class”—that implicitly cast others as undeserving. It requires greater clarity about the budget: who benefits, who pays, which services receive funding, and which needs remain neglected. It also requires a serious discussion of redistribution, including redirecting resources away from militarisation and towards social provision.

The visibility generated by social media can help mobilise people. But slick reels and memorable slogans need to be accompanied by demands capable of addressing the conditions that reproduce political dependence. Hospitals, schools, accessible public services, and social security must become central to the discussion of democratic change. Without that shift, protest risks repeatedly expressing justified anger while leaving the foundations of the problem largely undisturbed.

Bulgaria’s recurring protests have made clear that many people reject the way power is exercised. Breaking the cycle requires a programme for changing the conditions under which that power is acquired and maintained. 

The person carrying the old sign should not have to bring it out again in 2030. Giving them a reason to put it away will take more than another change of government.

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Roberta Koleva

PhD researcher in Sociology and Social Anthropology at Central European University, Vienna