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Field study on the public attitudes to privatisation
The research was aimed at tracing the public attitudes to the privatisation in typical areas.
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Research on the public attitudes towards the educational reform in Bulgaria
The regions under research were selected so as to represent different education models: public and private schools, general education, vocational training, specialized, elitist, etc.etc.
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Field studies and analyses of the political situation before the local elections in October, 1999
The research was based on the methodology and the methods of the participant observation and was designed to identify the patterns of political attitudes before the local elections in 1999.
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The Varbitsa River Watershed Council (Bulgaria): Outcomes of NGO involvement at the local level in an ethnically mixed, environmentally degrading and impoverished mountain region in Bulgaria
A paper presented at an international conference on the management of river resources by communities, held by Global Water Partnership in Prague (November 2002)
The Centre for Social Practices (CSP) was set up by civil
society activists in 1994 with the express intention of
working towards citizen empowerment in a post-totalitarian
situation. One of the more durable lines of work since then
has proven the problematic of community involvement in the
decision-making regarding rivers (their defence against
degrading interference, resolution of conflicts arising out
of access to water issues, river enhancement and
development in the framework of sustainable
development).
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Transition, Violence and the Role of NGOs: the Case of Bulgaria
A paper prepared for “Cultures of Violence” – Mansfield College, Oxford, September 2004
Violence in the post-modern world
It is a mistake to think of violence as an aberration - a
virus in the software that can be eradicated by narrow
specialists. It verges on conceptual and political
impotence to grasp violence as the product of a specific
recent outside influence - television, pornography,
Terminator-3, Tom and Jerry, George W. Bush - that can be
legislated away or voted out.
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Lobbies, interest groups and representation issues: a Bulgarian experience
An abstract prepared for the workshop Les groupes d’interet dans les pays d’Europe Centrale et Orientale organized by CEVIPOL-GASPPECO
Contrary to expectations, the development of Central-East
European (CEE) societies
after 1990 did not simply reproduce Western models. The
transition has not only
been longer than expected, but much more complicated and
original. This generalization
applies in full to the issue of "interest
groups". On the basis of
analysed experience, we can identify two main sources,
which condition the appearance
of interest groups and also shape their aims and
forms.
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Civil Society: where are we today?
An overview of experiences prepared for Democratic Institutions and Democratic Governance – an OSCE / Human Dimension workshop, Warsaw, 12-14 May 2004
Introduction
Clearly, at these gatherings what we are doing is trying
to fuse theory with
practice, in order to produce policy and to plan action.
This is much more satisfying
than the usual arguments around "theory versus
practice" and vice
versa. The downside is that the fusion we are aiming at
entails responsibility.
If we get it wrong, we do not simply get criticized by
other thinkers. If we
get it wrong, people suffer.
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Government policy and the gray economy
Centre for social practices – Sofia
The Matrix
From the first stage of the project (2001-2002), together
with the many participants
(scientists, lawmakers, the central government, local
government, businessmen,
and journalists) we defined the following positions,
which strongly influence
the decision of entrepreneurs to be "white",
instead of "gray".
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Informality in Bulgaria: what policies?
A paper presented at “Informal Employment” – a European Commission meeting held in Brussels (May 2004)
Everyone who has spent some years studying informality in
countries such as Bulgaria ultimately comes to the
conclusion that he is dealing with a series of sub-plots,
and there is a bigger plot; and that, consequently, any
policies addressed at formalizing economic activity should
not remain at a sub-plot level, but also address the main
plot.
PDF(size:113 KB)
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Civil society as partner in local development: a Bulgarian experience
A paper prepared for IC Regional Workshop “Partnerships for a successful transition in Eastern Europe ” – 9-13 June 2004
Introduction: why civil society?
During the 2004 annual Global Development conference in
Delhi , one of the most important round tables discussed
the following subject: “Power is leaking out of the nation
state. Where is it going?”
This points to the first of two major reasons for the
increasing significance of civil society. One is the
weakening of the representative capacity of classic
democracy. Under classic representative democracy political
parties codify into programmes the various demands of the
public; and the state then implements them, through what
was understood to be an objective and detached Weberian-
style bureaucracy.
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