With Plamen Oresharski’s government on the verge of resigning, it remains to be seen whether Bulgaria can finally emerge from its political crisis

Bulgaria has endured political instability since 2013, following a series of protests and the resignation of the country’s government under Boyko Borisov. As Ekaterina Rashkova writes, the new government led by Plamen Oresharski, which emerged from elections in May 2013, has come under intense pressure in recent months and is widely expected to resign. She argues that with elections expected to be held later this year, Bulgaria is once again at a crossroads in terms of its future direction

The decline in support for Bulgaria’s Socialist Party could be the first step in a rebalancing of the country’s party system

One of the key stories to emerge from Bulgaria’s election on 5 October was the disappointing result for the Bulgarian Socialist Party, the successor to the Bulgarian Communist Party which ruled the country from 1946 until 1989. Ekaterina Rashkova writes that while Bulgaria faces substantial political problems, the result of the 2014 election may nevertheless indicate a long-term shift in the country’s balance of power which might generate some optimism for the future

Political Learning and the Number of Parties: Why Age Matters

Party system fractionalization was re-invented as an unsolved puzzle after the fall of the Berlin Wall. While scholars agree that the stability of the party system is imperative for the proper functioning of democracy, many note the high number of political parties in the East European states. Still, we lack a systematic analysis of party system development in those countries. A possible reason for this gap is that extant theories on the number of parties were written with established democracies in mind and are thus unequipped to explain the dynamics taking place in young democracies. This dissertation attempts to fill this gap providing at least preliminary answers for the variation in the number of parties between new and more established democracies. My theory proposes that learning the effect of institutions is crucial to whether they actually have an effect or not and is integral to understanding the number of parties in a given system. Furthermore, I argue that certain institutional arrangements, for example the translation of votes into seats, may play a more important role than the district magnitude when present. I view learning as coming from trial-and-error experience which elite members get by political participation over time, as well as experience with a changing institutional environment both within and external to the party system as such. To test my propositions I use a three-level hierarchical model on district data of 20 European democracies. The results show that at the district level, age of democracy has a positive effect on the level of party system convergence and the effect is stronger in young democracies. The analysis further reveals that pre-electoral institutional constraints such as signatures and deposits have a positive and significant effect on party system convergence, while in the presence of EU-related events the convergence index drops, likely due to the additional incentives for political competition that such events bring. Public funding does not prove significant and the effect of age of democracy on party system convergence in mature democracies remains inconclusive as alternate specifications elicit varying results

Geographic and temporal morphological stasis in the latest Cretaceous ammonoid Discoscaphites iris from the U.S. Gulf and Atlantic Coastal Plains

We examine temporal and spatial variation in morphology of the ammonoid cephalopod Discoscaphites iris using a large dataset from multiple localities in the Late Cretaceous (Maastrichtian) of the United States Gulf and Atlantic Coastal Plains, spanning a distance of 2000 km along the paleoshoreline. Our results suggest that the fossil record of D. iris is consistent with no within species net accumulation of phyletic evolutionary change across morphological traits or the lifetime of this species. Correlations between some traits and paleoenvironmental conditions as well as changes in the coefficient of variation may support limited population-scale ecophenotypic plasticity, however where stratigraphic data are available, no directional changes in morphology occur prior to the Cretaceous/Paleogene (K/Pg) boundary. This is consistent with models of 'dynamic' evolutionary stasis. Combined with knowledge of life history traits and paleoecology of scaphitid ammonoids, specifically a short planktonic phase after hatching followed by transition to a nektobenthic adult stage, these data suggest that scaphitids had significant potential for rapid morphological change in conjunction with limited dispersal capacity. It is therefore likely that evolutionary mode in the Scaphitidae (and potentially across the broader ammonoid clade) follows a model of cladogenesis wherein a dynamic morphological stasis is periodically interrupted by more substantial evolutionary change at speciation events. Finally, the lack of temporal changes in our data suggest that global environmental changes (such as those possibly related to the emplacement of the Deccan Traps Large Igneous Province) had a limited effect on the morphology of North American ammonoid faunas during the latest Cretaceous prior to the K/Pg mass extinction event.Missing morphometric values are highlighted with NA in the dataset.Funding provided by: National Science FoundationCrossref Funder Registry ID: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/100000001Award Number: 1924807Funding provided by: American Museum of Natural History and Richard Gilder Graduate School*Crossref Funder Registry ID: Award Number:We assembled a large morphometric dataset consisting of 328 individual fossil specimens of the scaphitid ammonoid cephalopod Discoscaphites iris collected from nine localities in Texas, Missouri, Mississippi, and New Jersey, representing a ~2000 km transect from SW to NE and encompassing the full geographic range of this species. Morphometric parameters were measured on well-preserved adult specimens of two dimorphs (Macroconchs - presumably the female, and microconch, presumably the male). We took up to seven morphometric measurements, and calculated ratios that captured the size, shape, and degree of compression of each of these ammonoid shells from each different locality. We evaluated the coefficient of variation (the standard deviation divided by the mean) for size and shape ratios as well as compression ratios at each locality. We used non-parametric statistical tests [Mann-Whitney U] to evaluate the significance of changes in mean morphological trait values between localities. To correct for multiple comparisons we applied a Bonferroni correction and also controlled for the false discovery rate. We also explored relationships between morphological traits and several environmental variables using linear modelling. All analyses were conducted in the R programming environment

In the midst of political crisis, Bulgarians are searching for accountability and justice from their government

Bulgaria has experienced a wave of protests and demonstrations by those dissatisfied with endemic corruption and the lack of law and order in the country. These protests recently culminated in the resignation of Prime Minister Boyko Borisov. Ekaterina Rashkova writes that new elections are now highly likely, as the other Bulgarian parties will find it difficult to form a government in the current parliament

Party system change at work: the 2014 legislative election in Bulgaria

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Still men’s parties? Gender and the radical right in comparative perspective

This framing paper introduces the symposium on gender and the radical right. With the exception of a few recent studies, gender issues have received little attention in research on the European radical right. The purpose of this symposium is to address that and examine (1) whether radical right parties are still ‘men’s parties’–parties led and supported primarily by men and (2) to what extent and how women and women’s concerns have been included by these parties. It argues that radical right parties have changed their appeal since their origins in the 1980s. There is now evidence of the fact that radical right parties, at least in some countries, exhibit an active political involvement of women and engage in some representation of women’s concerns. This puts them in a more ‘standardised’ political position vis-à-vis other parties. Given the current lack of focus on this topic, and given the recent gendered changes in radical right parties, this symposium stresses the academic and political importance of studying gender relations in radical right politics