Bulgaria – President and PM clash again

In 2006 Oleh Protsyk published a really nice article in Political Studies (vol. 54, pp. 219–244) entitled ‘Intra-Executive Competition between President and Prime Minister: Patterns of Institutional Conflict and Cooperation under Semi-Presidentialism’. An innovative part of the paper was the attempt to measure conflict within semi-presidential executives.

I was reminded of the article when I looked at the Sofia News Agency page and read the reports of the latest clash between the president and the prime minister. Recall that there is currently a period of cohabitation in Bulgaria and only last month a government-sponsored bill to impeach the president narrowly failed.

Now, Prime Minister Boyko Borisov has accused President Georgi Parvanov of being involved in stopping an investigation by the secret services and the interior ministry into the leader of the ethnic Turkish DPS party, Ahmed Dogan. President Parvanov has responded by defending himself against the accusation, accusing the prime minister of spending too much time attacking him and not enough time sorting out the country’s economic issues.

If Oleh ever wishes to update his article, then he would have no difficulty observing intra-executive conflict in Bulgaria and in real time!

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