The Capital City in the Context of accelerated Individualization. Reflections on the Bulgarian Experience

Privatization and competitive politics brought about accelerated individualization in Bulgarian society. Both the constructive and destructive effects of individualization are particularly concentrated in the country's capital city. It rapidly shifted its economic structure from industry to services and re-oriented its territorial morphology from north-west to south-east. These changes mostly took place in a spontaneous and often anomic way thus provoking the need for a new Master Plan of the capital city. Sociological studies supported its preparation. Below the surface of a relatively stable size of the capital's population they revealed substantial migration to Sofia during the 1990s together with continuing large-scale emigration of the young, best educated and entrepreneurial population cohorts. Recent studies confirm this trend despite of the fact that the capital city is economically in the best position in comparison with all other settlements in the country. The conclusion is that the economic, political and cultural re-integration of Bulgarian society is still incomplete and this may be noticed in all its structural levels, administrative and territorial units, the capital city including. Thus, new institutional strategies are needed for coping with the effects of accelerated individualization. In the capital city, the core of these strategies should be the strengthening of the economic, political and cultural basis of its communal integration.     

Transformation and Anomie: Problems of Quality of Life in Bulgaria

The weakening of social integration and anomie are unavoidable in the transformation of societies. The effect is a decrease of quality of life accompanied by disenchantments, aggressiveness and escapism. In some countries in Eastern Europe like Bulgaria the anomie effects of transformation became particularly strong. The major reason is the political instability. The dissolution of the previous state-centered over-integration of society developed into a dissolution of major mechanisms of political integration. The prospects for improvement of quality of life are focused on the balance of economic, political and cultural re-integration of Bulgarian society.