The paper proposes to analyze the Europeanization of the Bulgarian political actors. The Europeanization is going on, but there is still an Europeanization “de facade” (Gueorguieva, Petithomme: 2011). Among the causes there are weak institutionalization of the party system and party quality that led to the rise of a new populist party in government in 2009 – GERB: Citizens for European Development of Bulgaria. The expectations that the adhesion in the EU would bring stabilization of the party systems oppose the reality. The Bulgarian case is one of the of difficult party system consolidation. In 2001 the National Movement Simeon II NDSV gained more than 40% of the electoral support and in 2009 the new party GERB did almost the same while the NDSV didn’t pass the 4% threshold. The decline of the traditional democratic parties is going with the appearance of anti-establishment, some anty-system actors mobilizing with anti- corruption and anti-mafia rhetoric, rejecting political elites, promoting the “strong man” and “ law and order”, and opposing the People’s will to the Liberal Democracy in the name of the Rule of Law. The GERB’s minority government is supported by the extreme party Ataka. There is no exception in the general wave of populist leaders across Europe and in the U.S. too. The specificity is that the party imposing the “law and order” style or “police’s State” as it is popular promoted firmly pro-European and democratic identity. We would focus on the state of the political parties, the party system, factors and cleavages explaining the appearance of electoral and catch all populist organizations around the personality of charismatic leaders.
