Politics vs. Antipolitics in the Mediatised Public Sphere: Traversing the Contested Boundary between the Civic and the Political in Bulgaria

Abstract

This article offers a review of influential theoretical positions endeavouring to conceptualise the conditions and mechanisms through which civil society can become productively involved in the articulation of public opinion and contribute its voice to political decision-making. It focuses specifically on the contested relationship between civil and political society and the specifics of the discourses they produce in the political public sphere. Employing the so constructed theoretical framework, the article proceeds to take stock of the processes currently unfolding in the Bulgarian public sphere paying special attention to the modes of their mediatisation. In the focus of the analysis is the case of the civil society group Protest Network. It concludes that a social formation labelled the protest sphere emerges out of the experiences of civil society activists who struggle for publicity of their causes and demands. The protest sphere takes the place of the missing mechanisms supposed to transmit the concerns of civil society actors to formal political and legal institutions in an operational liberal democracy. Despite the fact that it is set in motion by members of civil society, the protest sphere is profoundly political and its role in a democratic society needs to be carefully examined.