Politics of Bulgaria
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The politics of Bulgaria take place in a framework of a parliamentary representative democratic republic,[1] whereby the prime minister is the head of government, and of a multi-party system.[2] Executive power is exercised by the government. Legislative power is vested in both the government and the National Assembly. The Judiciary is independent of the executive and the legislature.
Parts of this article (those related to the effects of the 2 October 2022 election) need to be updated. (December 2022) |
After forty-five years of single party system, Bulgaria became an unstable party system in 1989. This system was dominated by democratic parties and opposition to socialists – the Union of Democratic Forces and several personalistic parties and the post-communist Bulgarian Socialist Party or its creatures, which emerged for a short period of time in the past decade. Personalistic parties could have been seen in the former governing (from 2001 to 2005) Simeon II's NDSV party and Boyko Borisov's GERB party.
Bulgaria has generally good freedom of speech and human rights records as reported by the US Library of Congress Federal Research Division in 2006,[3] while Freedom House listed it as "free" in 2020, giving it scores of 33 for political rights and 45 for civil liberties.[4] However, in 2014, there were some concerns that the proposed new Penal Code would limit freedom of the press and assembly,[5] and as a consequence freedom of speech. The Economist Intelligence Unit rated Bulgaria a "flawed democracy" in 2022.[6]