"Muted" or "Reinvigorated": Opposition Parties and the Covid-19 Crisis. The Bulgarian Case.

The Paper examines the strategies, the place and the role of opposition parties – parliamentary and extra-parliamentary ones, during the ongoing sanitary crisis of the Covid-19 in Bulgaria. On the 13 of March 2020 a state of emergency was announced by the government and later the National Assembly passed the State of Emergency Measures Act. As elsewhere, these rules affected the legislative process, the functioning of representative democracy, the institutions, the society, the economy and the everyday life. In the sanitary crisis, parliaments changed their way of working. (IDEA 2020). Restrictions of freedoms were imposed with the social distancing, lockdowns or bans of gathering in public places. The crisis affected the opposition parties, too. There is a general trend to divestment of parliaments in favor of governments. (Fourmont A., Ridard B.: 2020). In Bulgaria, the personalization of power by the Prime minister was strengthened as the concentration of the decision-making in the executive as well. The opposition is restricted in its functions of control while even before, there was a trend to weakening of the opposition parties. Parliamentary opposition is formed by numerous political parties which are in relation individually with the government and in interaction with each other (De Giorgi, Ilonszki: 2018). The paper will consider the following points: (1) The opposition party’ s strategies to government: from “consensual” to “conflictual”; the motivations and goals of the opposition parties? (2) What kind of alternatives are advanced? (3) Does the crisis generate new oppositions? In the Bulgaria, the governments are often coalitions of two or more parties. Also, parliamentary majorities could be flexible. Therefore, opposition parties use various strategies pursuing different goals in different contexts. Extra-parliamentary opposition is usually more radical and could potentially change the structure of the next parliament. Andeweg Rudy B., De Winter L. and Dumont P. (2011), “From coalition theory to coalition puzzles”, In Andeweg Rudy B., Lieven De Winter and Patrick Dumont (eds) Puzzles of Government Formation. Coaition Theory and deviant cases, Routledge, Routedge ECPR Studies in European Political Science, pp. 1-23. Andeweg R.B. (2013) “Parties in Parliament: The Blurring of Opposition“. In: Muller W., Narud H. (Eds) Party Governance and Party Democracy. Springer, New York, NY Bardi L., Bartolini S. and Trechel A. H. (Eds) (2015) The Role of Parties in Twenty-First Century Politics. Responsive and Responsible?, Routledge Dahl R., 1971 Polyarchy: Participation and opposition, New Haven and London, Yale University Press. De Giorgi, E., Gabriella Ilonszki (Eds) (2018) Opposition Parties in European Legislatures. Conflict or Consensus?, Routledge Studies on Political Parties and Party System. Fourmont A., Ridard B., (2020) “Le contrôle parlementaire dans la crise sanitaire”, Policy Paper, Fondaion Robert Schuman, Questions d'Europe, n°558, 11 mai 2020, Harmel R. and Janda K. (1994) An Integrated Theory of Party Goals and Party Change, Journal of Theoretical Politics 6 (3) : 259-287 Murphy J. 2020 Parliaments and Crisis: Challenges and Innovations. Parliamentary Primer 1, Stockholm, Sweden, International IDEA.