The politics of Bulgaria take place in a framework of a parliamentary representative democratic republic, whereby the prime minister is the head of government, and of a multi-party system. Executive power is exercised by the government. Legislative power is vested in both the government and the National Assembly. The Judiciary is independent of the executive and the legislature.
A caretaker government is a temporary ad hoc government that performs some governmental duties and functions in a country until a regular government is elected or formed. Depending on specific practice, it usually consists of either randomly selected or approved members of parliament or outgoing members until their dismissal.
The prime minister of Bulgaria is the head of government of Bulgaria. They are the leader of a political coalition in the Bulgarian parliament – known as the National Assembly of Bulgaria – and the leader of the cabinet. At times, the prime minister has been appointed by the President of Bulgaria.
Petar Stefanov Stoyanov is a Bulgarian politician who served as President of Bulgaria from 1997 to 2002. A member of the Union of Democratic Forces (UDF), he was the party's nominee to succeed one-term president Zhelyu Zhelev in 1996. He was elected to the Presidency in 1996, but lost his reelection bid in 2001. Following a brief retirement from politics, he became an MP in 2005 and later Chairman of UDF from 1 October 2005 to 22 May 2007. He resigned following the 2007 European Parliament election.
The Union of Democratic Forces is a political party in Bulgaria, founded in 1989 as a union of several political organizations in opposition to the communist government. The Union was transformed into a single unified party with the same name. The SDS is a member of the European People's Party (EPP). In the 1990s the party had the largest membership in the country, with one million members, but has since splintered into a number of small parties totaling no more than 40,000 members. The SDS proper had 12,000 members in 2016.
Zhan Vasilev Videnov, sometimes spelled in English as Jean Videnov, was Prime Minister of Bulgaria from 25 January 1995 until 13 February 1997, a term remembered for the most severe economic and financial crisis in recent Bulgarian history, which featured hyperinflation and a drastic fall in living standards. He was chairman of the Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP) from 1991 to 1996. Currently he is a college lecturer and inspirer of Che Guevara of Plovdiv.
The history of Bulgaria from 1990 to the present is the period of Bulgarian history that begins after the fall of Communism and the transition to a market economy.
Stefan Antonov Sofiyanski is a Bulgarian politician who served as interim Prime Minister of Bulgaria in 1997 and was a three-term Mayor of Sofia. He was a leading member of the Union of Democratic Forces.
The Council of Ministers is the main authority of the executive power in the Republic of Bulgaria. It consists of the Prime Minister of Bulgaria and all the specialized ministers.
Ivan Yordanov Kostov was the 47th Prime Minister of Bulgaria in office from May 1997 to July 2001 and leader of the Union of Democratic Forces (UDF) between December 1994 and July 2001.
Plamen Vasilev Oresharski is a Bulgarian politician who served as Prime Minister of Bulgaria from 2013 to 2014. Previously Oresharski was Minister of Finance from 2005 to 2009 in the Cabinet of the Triple Coalition with Prime Minister Sergei Stanishev.
The eighty-seventh cabinet of Bulgaria ruled from May 21, 1997 to July 24, 2001. The government was formed by the United Democratic Forces, an electoral alliance led by the Union of Democratic Forces, after they won a landslide victory in the 1997 parliamentary election winning 49.15% of the votes and 137 seats in the National Assembly. The cabinet was chaired by the UDF leader Ivan Kostov who shared the cabinet posts between his party and his allies. This was the largest margin of victory since the end of communism in 1990, to this day. Kostov's government was the first since 1990 to serve its entire four-year mandate.
Parliamentary elections were held in Bulgaria on 5 October 2014 to elect the 43rd National Assembly. GERB remained the largest party, winning 84 of the 240 seats with around a third of the vote. A total of eight parties won seats, the first time since the beginning of democratic elections in 1990 that more than seven parties entered parliament. Boyko Borisov then became prime minister as head of a coalition with the Reformist Bloc and with outside support from the Patriotic Front and the Alternative for Bulgarian Revival.
The eighty-fifth cabinet of Bulgaria, also known as the Videnov cabinet or Videnov Government, was a coalition government in Bulgaria, led by the Bulgarian Socialist Party, which ruled from 25 January 1995 to 12 February 1997. The Socialist-led coalition government resigned after nationwide protests because of hyperinflation, banking crisis and economic collapse.
Snap parliamentary elections were held in Bulgaria on 11 July 2021 after no party was able or willing to form a government following the April 2021 elections. The populist party There Is Such a People (ITN), led by musician and television host Slavi Trifonov, narrowly won the most seats over a coalition of the conservative GERB and Union of Democratic Forces parties. Four other parties won seats in the 240-member Parliament as well.
General elections were held in Bulgaria on 14 November 2021 to elect both the President and the National Assembly. They were the country's third parliamentary elections in 2021, with no party able to form a government after the elections in April and July. A second round of the presidential elections were held on 21 November 2021 as no candidate was able to receive a majority of the vote in the first round.
Early parliamentary elections were held in Bulgaria on 2 October 2022 to elect members of the 48th National Assembly. The snap election was called after the fall of the Petkov Government, a four-party coalition, in June 2022. This was the fourth parliamentary election since 2021, an unprecedented situation in Bulgarian history, the previous elections being the April, July, and November 2021 elections.
Parliamentary elections were held in Bulgaria on 2 April 2023 to elect members of the National Assembly. These were initially scheduled to be held before November 2026; however, as no government was approved by the 48th Parliament, Bulgarian President Rumen Radev announced in January 2023 that he would call a snap election.
