The proposed research project aims at studying the particular reasons for the inefficiency of the constitutional and legal system in the Central and Eastern European countries. Its analytical framework encompasses the political and institutional experience driven from the process of social change in Bulgaria after 1989. It focuses on the challenges - social, political and legal - to the designed constitutional model in Bulgaria, on types of threats to that model and present safeguards for the constitutional supremacy. The degree of citizens' attention and attitude to the constitution is analysed as a litmus test for the level of democratic development and potential in the civil society.

The project examines the social preconditions for an effective constitutional and legal regulator in the post-communist societies, the latter having undertaken radical institutional reforms to meet the political and economic standards of the developed Western democracies. The study also critically investigates the connections of the present political elite in Bulgaria to the former communist party and the secret services and attempts to explore the ways these links might influence the process of institutional decisionmaking behind the institutionalised forms and means of the legislative process.