Civic Policies and Democratic Political Process

Building a Pluralist Lobbying System in Bulgaria

  The project aimed at developing and implementing working models of lobbying which represent organized local/municipal, civic and entrepreneurial interests. This was being achieved by developing and testing concrete strategies for the lobbying of state institutions by helping local pressure groups acquire and use extensive US and other international experience in the field. The building of lobbying models, stipulated in this project, were based on the peculiarities of the political system in Bulgaria where there were four levels of possible interaction between pressure groups and the state:

-the parliamentary level,

-the executive political (e.g. Council of Ministers) level,

-the level of civil service, and the local/municipal level.

The models had been developed in such a way so that pressure on state institutions to be distributed according to the authority of the level, thus stimulating decentralization in decision making processes and satisfying certain local interests. The duration of this project was one year and was being implemented with the financial support of the US Democracy Commission.

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