Former Fellows

Project Outline

Political misrepresentation has been relatively under-explored. To quote authorities in the field, political scientists tend to treat this issue as an aberration, which is to be naturally corrected by democracy by means of developing proper legislation. Sociologists are interested in explaining the social causes and effects of misrepresentations. The currently prevailing taxonomy, however, does not offer a test able to detect impediments to participation, or identify methods for silencing, and/or monopolising frame-setting activities. Therefore, it is a commonplace for sociologists and political theorists to study post-1989 East European democracies along a minimalist logic of political misrepresentation, by resorting to some stratification theory. If applied to the Bulgarian case, this, however, would prove a rather uneasy task as the latter is far more complex in its social model, and it will be impossible to split and analyse it in three simplistic social groups - the winners (the elites), the losers, and the minorities.

The prime object of study of the proposed research work is the legislative actions passed against possible political misrepresentations in post-1989 Bulgaria. Analysing the rationality of these actions is part of the project's objective. The project interprets rationality as a set of ‘in-order-to' and ‘because' motives, and hence, it sets out to describe these motives by developing grounded theories of explanation. It claims that the bulk of the ‘because' motives cannot be reduced to standard explanatory causes, such as violations of democracy. On the contrary, the project expects to link these motives to responses to social mistrust rather than view them as an expression of political hypocrisy.

The proposed research addresses four major types of cases of political misrepresentation, namely, deficient representation (where portions of the public remain unrepresented), inauthentic representation (linked to violations of election procedures), insincere representation (i.e. not acting in the best interest of the constituents), and inadequate representation (not acting out the will of the constituents). Election laws and amendments of the Penal Code concerning election fraud, too, are analysed as a possible counteragents against political misrepresentation.