ABSTRACT
This chapter explains agricultural reform legislation and, more specifically, property rights restitution and collective farm transformation policies as the outcome of a political bargaining game between radical reformers and people opposed to land restitution and radical decollectivization. It analyzes the interaction of political and economic factors in agricultural privatization and land reform legislation in Bulgaria between 1989 and 1995. In November 1989, Thodor Zhivkov, the Bulgarian Communist Party leader, was replaced, after thirty five years in office, by Petar Mladenov, the former foreign minister. The liquidation of the liquidation councils apparently served three purposes. First, it got rid of this union of democratic forces-created institution and its role, which was defined by law. Second, it cleared the debts of farms under liquidation. Third, it allowed the cooperatives under liquidation to register as private cooperatives, and to distribute assets to them.
