ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews scholarly discussions of Bulgarian political culture and of scholarly and journalistic accounts of the Bulgarian presidential elections of 2011. The review of the existing literature on the political culture of Bulgaria brings attention to a clash of definitions between one group of scholars employing an individualist and economically-loaded standard of liberal democratic virtue and another group who instead stress elements such as the inclusivity of the political community, the separation of powers and other anti-majoritarian features that do not equate liberal democracy with economic policy orientations. The wave of anti-Roma mobilizations that led to large scale protests in every major Bulgarian city in September 2011 was triggered by the death of a 19-year-old Bulgarian man under the wheels of a minibus driven by an associate of the well-known Roma clan leader and alleged crime boss Tsar Kiro in the village of Katunica.
