Evaluation of Political Regimes, Personal Predispositions, and Political Information Processing (Case of Bulgaria)
Evaluation of Political Regimes, Personal Predispositions, and Political Information Processing (Case of Bulgaria)

Summary/Abstract: The paper is focused on the micro level processes of democratisation, namely the perception of political information and the consequent perception and evaluation of the political regimes of the past and the present. Illustrated by the case of Bulgaria, it reveals mechanisms that can be observed in other transition countries as well. The study examines the influence of party affiliation and political socialisation on how people process political information and evaluate political regimes, both present and past. The data, collected by quasi-experimental focus groups and analysed by employing quantitative content analysis, provides evidence that people with different political affiliations and with different political socialisation vary not only in their evaluation of the political regimes, but also in the way they reach their evaluations. This is mostly due to their attachment to one of the regimes and the cognitive closure effect. As a whole, the new liberal democratic regime is embraced. However, there are certain aspects of the regime perception and evaluation that raise concerns about the sustainability of this support.

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