Campaigning Outside the Campaign: Political Parties and Referendums in Bulgaria

In: East European politics and societies: EEPS, Band 33, Heft 3, S. 691-704

Abstract

This article is part of the special cluster titled Political Parties and Direct Democracy in Eastern Europe, guest-edited by Sergiu Gherghina. The instrumental use of referendums by political parties has already been acknowledged in earlier studies showing how parties in government used direct democracy tools to promote their policies and to gain legitimacy, while parties in opposition sought to augment their image in the eyes of the public. However, opposition parties may have another potential reason to promote referendums on top of their quest for a better public image: The topic of the referendum could be a legacy of their own government. This article reveals how this mechanism works by focusing on the first referendum at the national level in post-communist Bulgaria in 2013. It shows how the Bulgarian Socialist Party, in opposition at the time of the referendum, pursued a policy initiated when it was in office. We use primary data to investigate the extent to which the rhetoric of the party during the referendum campaign served as the basis for subsequent electoral campaigns.