Challenges of the Institutional Change in Bulgarian Society: Conspiracy Growth and Predatory Culture
Challenges of the Institutional Change in Bulgarian Society: Conspiracy Growth and Predatory Culture

Summary/Abstract: The ongoing institutional change in the Bulgarian society combines inherited from the old centralized system cultural, social, political and economical patterns with new ones – market and democracy oriented. One of the major challenges of the new institutional framework is to establish a stable balance between the new formal regulations and everyday practices of behavior – including the informal ones. Thus in the course of a change the roles of the formal institutions is crucial for imposing the power of the Law on the society. However, the institutions may fail if the continuity of the informal practices is stronger than the formal ones. Following the perspective of the neo-institutionalism, the article is focusing a special type of collective actors whose pattern of behavior is situated at the ‘edge’ between formality and informality and who unite powerful dyads of political and economic actors – the re-distributive coalitions. The main object is the conspiracy growths of the Bulgarian economic group the ‘X’, formed secretly, out of the formally regulated institutional framework. The main emphasis is put on the predatory culture of the re-distributive coalition as well as on their ability to negate the power of the institutions in favor of a private interest. Even more, the article will argue that the conspiracy growth and the predator culture of the re-distributive coalitions could negatively affect the regulatory role of the institutions and hamper the success of the ongoing institutional change in the Bulgarian society.

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