Screaming at a Wall. Societal accountability from below in Bulgaria and Hungary

Abstract

The article investigates engagement in anti-corruption activism in Bulgaria and Hungary. Since the late 2000s, protest events occurred in greater numbers in the two post-communist countries, addressing questions either directly or indirectly related to high-level or political corruption. Bulgarian and Hungarian collective anti-corruption actors share a common framing of the issue ('state corruption' or 'state capture'), though their struggles vary in their modes and strategies ('civic self-organisation' versus the dominant role of 'transactional activism'). The article crucially reconstructs the context within which anticorruption activism took place, the different forms of mobilisation, and the specific framing of the issue by means of original interviews with prominent Bulgarian and Hungarian activists. Finally, attention is devoted to the subaltern fortunes of these struggles in attaining the aspired goal of societal accountability.