How do rules matter? Regulatory changes and conditioning of small political parties in Bulgaria

Achieving stable party competition is of fundamental importance for ensuring the smooth functioning of the legislative process, but even more so for the fulfillment of the broader goal of a democratic political system. As the main instruments of the democratic process, political parties have justly been at the centre of attention for decades of political science inquiry. Theorists such as Schattschneider (1942) and Duverger (1954) have defined the purpose of political parties as “an organized attempt to get control of government” (Schattschneider 1942, 35) and have laid down the conditions, now known as Duverger hypothesis and law, determining how many parties different electoral systems may produce (Duverger 1954). Similar ideas about political parties as organized attempts to control government and to structure and express interests are found also in the works of LaPalombara and Weiner (1966) and Sartori (1976).