Power, Nation-State, and Society: Constitution and the Monarchy in Bulgaria, 1879-1944

• In Event: Globalization and the Modern Bulgarian Nation-State

Abstract

The search for reasons for the rather late abolition of the monarchy in Bulgaria in 1946 reveals one of the most astonishing features of the history of the modern nation state founded in 1878 after the separation from the Ottoman Empire: the long duration and at least apparent stability of the constitutional-monarchical order. The astonishment is based not only on the large number of breakpoints in Bulgarian political life that the constitution survived between 1878 and 1947, but also on the quality of these breakpoints, of which the defeat in the World War of 1918 could be mentioned as an example. Obviously, after 1918, the time was not yet ripe for a Bulgarian republic, so that it remains to be discussed which factors ensured the monarchy's survival even after the defeat in the war, and which brought it to an end after the Second World War, which was not seriously questioned any more, not even after 1989.

Author

• Markus Wien, American U Bulgaria (Bulgaria)