Anti-Liberal Euroscepticism: Bulgaria as a Case Study

This paper brings together two bodies of literature: one on the anti-liberalism and the other on Euroscepticism. The central research question that this paper will seek to answer is: How is anti-liberalism related to party-based Euroscepticism in Bulgaria? To test the hypothesized link between the anti-liberalism and party-based Euroscepticism, I am using as an independent variable the anti-liberalism in Bulgaria, observed in the period after the accession of the country to the EU. The dependent variable, which is the party-based Euroscepticism of three Bulgarian political parties, is typologized as having political, socio-economic and socio-cultural dimensions. The research period covers the financial crisis in 2008, the migration crisis in 2015, the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020-2021 and culminates with the EP elections of 2024 – a year when the anti-liberal Eurosceptic discourse both among some segments of the population and political parties had become normalized. The empirical material in the paper is collected during a period of four years (2020-2023) and includes not only qualitative content analysis of party documents, party newspapers and media interviews of different party officials but semi-structured elite interviews with party leaders and officials as well as data from three focus groups with party voters of the above mentioned three most outspoken anti-liberal Eurosceptic parties in the country.