Protests Vs Post-Democracy: Bulgarian experiences

The December 2025 protests in Bulgaria have been unprecedented, both in scale and in geographical reach. They represent the largest wave of mass mobilization since the beginning of the democratic transition. While Sofia has traditionally been the epicenter of protest activity, this time the geography of contestation has diversified, with mobilisations taking place across numerous major cities. Mass protests in Bulgaria provide a critical lens through which to assess the reversibility of democratic backsliding in post-democratic contexts. Drawing on Colin Crouch’s concept of post-democracy and recent scholarship on democratic backsliding, the paper analyses protest waves in 2013, 2020, and 2025 as moments of intensified political contestation within a system that is formally democratic yet substantively hollowed out by state capture, oligarchic governance, and declining institutional trust. The paper asks whether protests can function as corrective mechanisms capable of re-democratization, or whether they remain episodic expressions of civic frustration with limited transformative capacity.