International Journal of Management and Marketing Research

Vol. 14, No. 1, 2021, pp. 35-61

ISSN: 1931-0269 (print) www.theIBFR.com
ISSN: 2157-0698 (online)

THE COMMON AGRICULTURAL POLICY OF THE

EUROPEAN UNION AND BULGARIA: CRITIQUING
THE NEW YORK TIMES 2019 EXPOSÉ OF
CORRUPTION IN THE COMMON AGRICULTURAL
POLICY
Benedict E. DeDominicis, Catholic University of Korea

ABSTRACT

This paper critiques the portrayal of the utilization of CAP funds as forms of corruption in eastern Europe.
This study analyzes the CAP from the perspective of its role in supporting European integration as a
strategy for peace promotion focusing on post-Communist Europe. This New York Times investigative
report illustrates certain biases regarding US politically prevailing normative assumptions regarding
political economy. Despite the Trump phenomenon, they underestimate the significance of intense and
increasingly salient post-Communist political polarization in Bulgaria and Eastern Europe in general. EU
regional and sectoral economic cohesion policies including the CAP are vehicles to incentivize political
elite network creation and cooptation to undercut potentials for militant nationalism. The rise of
conservative populist nationalism in Europe and globally illustrates the intensified political challenges to
peaceful integration and globalization. A consequence includes greater cultural diversification regarding
the definition of private versus public interest, i.e., the nature of the state. Analysis of the challenge of
corruption in Bulgaria from the CAP point of view provides an opportunity to explore deeply the
conceptualization of the state as a control system. The concept of the rule of law and what it means in
Bulgaria will be explored from this EU CAP perspective.

JEL: D73, F02, F36, F52, F53, F54, H83, M16, O19

KEYWORDS: Bulgaria, Common Agricultural Policy, European Union, Nomenklatura, Policy

Network, Post-communism

“Well, I’m not so sure that Putin put a stop to that corruption as so much nationalized, effectively, the
corruption and put it under the control of himself and figures from his inner circle, creating a new
oligarchy, not so much disrupting or dismantling the oligarchy of the ’90s, but creating a new, alternative
oligarchy that was loyal to him and benefited from their proximity to him and owed their wealth to him”
(Joshua Yaffa, Moscow correspondent for The New Yorker, in an interview podcast on Democracy Now!,
2021, para. 13).

INTRODUCTION

M alang and Holzinger (2020, 745) note that the European Economic Community formally
launched the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) in 1962 as a result of intergovernmental
bargaining among the six original member states. The founders of the future common market in
the 1957 Treaty of Rome included agriculture which comprised occupational employment for a large
segment of their populations: “Moravcsik (1998: 89) reports that in 1956 agricultural employment was 41%
in Italy, 25% in France and 15% in Germany; and agricultural GDP amounted to 25% in Italy, 15% in

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B. E. DeDominicis | IJMMR ♦ Vol. 14 ♦ No. 1 ♦ 2021

France and 11% in Germany” [sic]. On the eve of Brexit, agriculture accounted “for only 1.6% of GDP and
some 5% of employment” among all 28 EU member states. The EU’s EUR-Lex portal states that “the CAP
aims to: increase agricultural productivity by promoting technical progress and ensuring the optimum use
of the factors of production, in particular labour; ensure a fair standard of living for farmers; stabilise
markets; assure the availability of supplies; ensure reasonable prices for consumers.”

The CAP’s two component programs are the European Agricultural Guarantee Fund and the European
Agricultural Fund for Rural Development. The former “funds direct payments to farmers and measures to
regulate agricultural markets.” The latter “finances EU countries' rural development programmes” [sic].
The CAP’s “share of the EU budget has steadily fallen in the last 30 years from 73 % in 1985 to 37.8 % for
the period 2014-2020” (EUR-Lex, 2021). The EU CAP allocated 57.98 billion euros for dispersal to the
EU member state governments for dispersal to their respective agricultural sectors in 2019 (European
Commission, 2021). The front page of the New York Times November 3, 2019 edition reported on east
European authorities channeling European Union Common Agricultural Policy funds for their political and
material benefit. This investigative report noted that “[e]very year, the 28-country bloc pays out $65 billion
in farm subsidies intended to support farmers around the Continent and keep rural communities alive. But
across Hungary and much of Central and Eastern Europe, the bulk goes to a connected and powerful few.
The prime minister of the Czech Republic collected tens of millions of dollars in subsidies just last year.
Subsidies have underwritten Mafia-style land grabs in Slovakia and Bulgaria” (Gebrekidan, Apuzzo and
Novak, 2019, para. 4).

The report begins

“Under Communism, farmers labored in the fields that stretch for miles around this town west of Budapest,
reaping wheat and corn for a government that had stolen their land.”

“Today, their children toil for new overlords, a group of oligarchs and political patrons who have annexed
the land through opaque deals with the Hungarian government. They have created a modern twist on a
feudal system, giving jobs and aid to the compliant, and punishing the mutinous.”

“These land barons, as it turns out, are financed and emboldened by the European Union” (Gebrekidan,
Apuzzo and Novak, 2019, para. 1-3).

This investigative report illustrates some of the foundational laissez-faire elements of American prevailing
assumptional views regarding the appropriate relationship of the state to the economy (Lipset, 1997). It also
spotlights the trends in state evolution in post-Communist societies undergoing revolutionary change. The
attitudinal milieu is one of national institutional disarray and normative dissensus, which observers tend to
label corruption in comparison to relatively institutionalized west European polities.

A dilemma emerges in the application of scholarly research findings from the Western experience to post-
Communist societies and elsewhere emerging out of authoritarianism. In the latter, a relative lack of societal
institutionalized normative attitudinal consensus has existed on what constitutes the “public” versus the
“private.” Yet corruption has been defined as “an abuse of public roles or resources for private benefit”
(Dvořáková, 2019, 104, quoting Johnston, 2005, 12). In post-Cold War, Washington consensus discourse,
neoliberalism has emphasized the privatization of state functions. Private military and security contracting
companies are increasingly employed, while international efforts continue to ensure state responsibility for
their behavior (Davitti, 2020). Intensifying Western domestic political contestation has made the Weberian
ideal-type portrayal of the state as a unified actor monopolizing the articulation of the public interest less
relevant. State agencies and power networks politically enable and coordinate societal power centers (Al-
Kassimi, 2019). The state as a site of contestation has been evident in post-Communist societies undergoing

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revolutionary normative change amidst polarizing confusion and normative, affective dissensus and
dissonance.

The Orban government in Hungary was a particular focus of the November 2019 New York Times report
but the investigative journalists also noted allegations of questionable use of CAP funds in Bulgaria. About
100 “entities” constituting Bulgaria’s “farming elite” received 75 percent of allocated main CAP funds
while one of the largest flour producers has been charged with fraud regarding the subsidies (Gebrekidan,
Apuzzo and Novak, 2019, para. 21). The same 4000+ word report noted that EU investigators concluded
that throughout post-Communist Europe, “politically connected landowners” utilized their influence to
annex small farms. In Bulgaria, “land brokers” backed legislation enabling these acreage acquisitions
described earlier as “Mafia-style land grabs” (Gebrekidan, Apuzzo and Novak, 2019, para. 61-62, 4). The
New York Times repeated its condemnations two days later in a paper editorial (New York Times, 2019). A
former US ambassador to Bulgaria, James Pardew (2020), called for the EU to pressure the extended
Borissov government to end alleged malfeasance contributing to anti-liberal political inertia. Yet Zankina
and Gurov (2018) note that the opposition Bulgarian Socialist Party controls the presidency, playing a
significant counterbalancing role to the policy thrusts of the Borissov government.

This paper analyzes the state institutional trend dynamics in Bulgaria in comparative perspective regarding
the political legacy of Soviet Communist imperialism. The lustration debate has been one explicit response
to this legacy. Some research shows that national lustration statutes, i.e., purging targeted Communist-era
personnel from selected professional fields, reduce corruption (Rozic and Nisnevich, 2016). In Bulgaria
lustration policies have been comparatively limited. “Unlike the Baltic states and some Central European
countries, where anticommunism fitted easily into the new national narrative of Soviet oppression, Bulgaria
has no consensual narrative of what communism was, and how society ought to come out of it now that it
is no longer there” (Koleva, 2016, 363).

Another theme of this analysis is the building of alternative policy networks for economic profit and
political influence to supersede the former nomenklatura. The latter were the national Communist party-
vetted professional personnel under state socialism. After its Soviet imperial imposition, the Communist
era party personnel elite and its generational descendants have benefitted materially and politically to a
disproportionate extent under post-Communism. As a cohort, they have maintained their elite societal
positions. They have done so utilizing the social, material and political resources available to them under
late-Communism to prepare for and exploit the post-Communist phase and its opportunities. Nationalistic
backlash against their continued elite status should be part of the analysis of the role of the CAP and other
EU policies. They functionally contribute to constructing and fortifying alternative elite factional blocs in
these young national liberal democracies.

Despite standing in opposition to Weberian bureaucratic rational ideals, patronage politics is partly a
response to this backlash polarization and arguably serves as a functional political safety valve. Freeland
(2017, 127-28) argues that “viewing patronage as a failure of governance rather than a competing form of
governance leads to mischaracterizing incentives and may provoke violent backlash.” The “authority” of
patron-client based state control systems “derives from a system of patronage which allows them to secure
order through loyalty-based distribution of resources.” European integration progressively increases EU
member state internal political exposure to multilevel political actor critique. These actors tactically
maneuver at multiple EU levels of governance politics to achieve their respective goals. A consequence is
greater political exposure of EU member state domestic social relations to critical comparative evaluation.

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LITERATURE REVIEW

The Pluralization of the European Nation State

Bickerton (2020) argues that emphasizing the legal definition of national sovereignty underrates the
significance of EU membership in forming and reproducing state power today in Europe. Joining the EU
distinctively reconfigures the state. A state’s legitimacy, power and identity assume distinctive features of
Europeanization resulting from membership in the EU’s transnational networks of governance. The ability
of the state administration in the form of the government apparatus to express the goals and aspirations of
the nation determines partly whether the public grants legitimacy to the authorities. A member state of the
EU gains its legitimacy and authority additionally to some degree from belonging to a wider community of
nation states. It gains this legitimacy and authority by acting not alone and independently as a typical
sovereign nation state, but rather by acting alongside other governments, collectively. This assertion implies
that politically influential constituencies within EU member states have vested themselves in the assertion
and development of pan-European material and organizational interests. The development of these pro-
integration interests affects the diplomatic bargaining leverage in the form of policy option range broadly
and the decisional political latitude of policy makers specifically, to make policy (Cottam and Gallucci,
1978).

This international European regional societal analysis, highlighted in the English school, contrasts
modernity with pre-modern regime Europe (Lees, 2016). In the latter, national political awareness and
participation was limited to a very small section of the adult population. With modernity, the rise of mass
political participation brought with it nationalistic political values that challenged this trans-European
aristocratic ruling elite class (Cottam and Cottam, 2001). Nationalism added to the political drives that
required evolving regime accommodation to satisfy the public’s legitimation demands that Bickerton
highlights. In the latter half of the twentieth century, globalization of trade, finance and communication
increased opportunities for social mobility and creativity amidst continuing value change. This collective
value development included the rise of post-material values. Self-identification with broader imagined
transnational communities for those able to exploit these opportunities came to challenge the nature of the
positivist nation state. Globalizing interdependency witnessed the local and national lobbying activity of
these transnational community members located in different national constituencies.

For the nationalistically parochial segments of the public, globalization and its neo-functional spillover
policy effects has posed a threat to their own perceived intra-community institutional social status. It can
produce a powerful political backlash among national publics that have a stronger allegiance to their
national identity as represented by their national state government, e.g., Brexit. British Euroscepticism was
strongest among the EU major powers because of the greater prevalence of nationalistic values in the British
polity. Nationalistic values in the German, French and Italian politics have been collectively less intense
and salient in part because their twentieth century history has been starkly less triumphalist and more tragic
(DeDominicis, 2020).

Bickerton (2020, 29) continues that these integrative tendencies tend to make the EU itself essentially
important for the member states in terms of the formation of their respective so-called national interests.
Their respective national aims are formed through their officials and governments repeatedly interacting at
the European level. Their respective national goals are not formed before they involve themselves in EU
negotiations, but in the midst of this interaction. State-civil society and inter-state EU member interactions
together display a “pluralist conception of interest formation.” An EU member state’s national aims acquire
definition within a broader international environment of pooled, i.e., disaggregated, national sovereignty.
Reaching consensus among the member states in negotiations with each other is easier, facilitating EU
policy making.

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The complexity of the EU policy making process is a functional consequence of the EU being a governance
system. The invested cosmopolitan material and non-material group interests view the EU member state
actors adopting decisions that complement a meaningful, substantive European identity. This substance
includes concrete real benefits, e.g., European economic profit, as well as European security and status
benefits. For example, one American academic called to postpone coordinatively American national
holiday gathering for 6 months to control the Covid-19 pandemic. Wolfers (2020) highlights the benefits
to the American national community of the coordination of its subnational group actors, e.g., families, to
agree to postpone the Thanksgiving national tradition. These benefits would serve the American national
welfare and the component subnational groups within it. “In economics, this is called a coordination game,
one in which you want to make choices that complement those of others” [sic] (Wolfers, 2020, para. 23).
Insofar as the European Union is not viewed as a veil for particularistic neocolonial nationalistic interests
of particular EU great powers, the EU is a successful coordination game. The so-called EU democratic
deficit derives from the perceived complexity of the EU policy making process. More positively, it also
means that the EU is not perceived as a cover vehicle for Berlin’s acquisition of German economic power-
based regional hegemony (DeDominicis, 2020).

Bickerton’s description applies to all states in the global polity; all national polities decide their national
interest, if their respective leaders declare it, within a dynamic global context. Reinterpreting Bickerton’s
description regarding Europe would involve highlighting the legal requirements for incorporating trans-EU
consultation also as a moral and ethical obligation. Nationalism as an ideological doctrine may be more
likely to be disdained. It facilitates institutionalization of a transnational European self-identity community,
but it risks populist reactionary nationalist social movements. Bickerton (2020, 30) notes that
simultaneously, this tendency tends to evoke “problems” regarding legitimacy and accountability. An
analysis of the requirements for the public granting legitimacy to the authorities is inadequate if it does not
account for nationalism (Cottam and Cottam, 2001). Factors contributing to European national political
polarization include conservative populist reactions to increasingly influential cosmopolitan constituencies.

For the post-Communist east European states, European cosmopolitanism can inadvertently serve
functionally to appear to legitimate the failure to provide reparations to the victims of Communism. This
tendency may intensify to the extent that the descendants of the nomenklatura continue to bequeath their
competitive advantages in resources, networks and education to their offspring. They consequently may
appear to benefit disproportionately from this Europeanization process. The emotional response is likely to
be hostile envy (Cottam and Cottam, 2001). A counteractive policy regarding these trends may involve the
distribution of EU allocated Common Agricultural Policy funds within the national agricultural sector and
other EU resources. Their allocation as patronage by nationalist populist governments may build alternative
social and policy networks. Within these networks will emerge power elites, to use C. Wright Mills’ terms
(1956). These EU subsidy policies like the CAP incentivize co-optation of these so-called oligarchs. They
are creating patron-client networks utilizing patronage. These EU subsidy policies contribute to pluralizing
the establishment elite in which the former nomenklatura generations have been disproportionately
represented.

European Post-Communist Reform and Social Identity Evolution

Cottam and Cottam (2001) apply social identity theory from social psychology to analyze the political
psychology driving nationalistic behavior. They note that individuals seek to maintain a positive self-image
while engaging in social comparison while concurrently forming self-identity ingroups. Figure 1 below
outlines the process of social categorization that sets the stage for individual mobility and collective action
as identity management strategies outlined in Figure 2. This paper’s additional argument is that polarization
of national polities is a form of social categorization and comparison. Its strength reflects the intensity and
salience of conflicting proprietary claims to the substantive policy significance and meaning of national
sovereignty within the international community.

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Figure 1: “Social Identity Definition”

“Process” “Social “Social “Social

Categorization” Comparison” Identity”

“Dividing the
social world in “People are “A positive social
“Explanation” different motivated to identity serves
categories of obtain a positive basic needs for
people is always social identity certainty, self-
self-relevant: You through positive esteem, and
always belong to inter-group meaning.”
one of the groups comparisons.”
or a third (e.g.,
outsider) group.
This lays the basis
for social identity.”

Social identity theory’s foundational motivational principles are that 1) an innate drive of the individual is to maintain a positive self-image, 2)
individuals form ingroups versus outgroups, 3) individuals comparatively evaluate the social status of their ingroups with salient outgroups, 4)
individuals tend to equate the comparative status of their ingroup with their self-image. If and when individuals comparatively evaluate themselves
negatively within their societal contexts, then they will respond psychologically and socially, individually and collectively (see figure 2). Individuals
have varying intensities of self-identification with a multitude of ingroups, but self-identification with a national ingroup is prevalent among homo
sapiens and social competition can lead to violence (Fig. 1 from Scheepers and Ellemers, 2019, 8).

Upon comparing one’s ingroup with another and perceiving one’s own status as inferior and therefore one’s
self-image as negative, the perceiver can respond with three psycho-behavioral strategies. One strategy is
social mobility, i.e., attempt individually to join the perceived superior status group. A second strategy is
social creativity, i.e., the perceiver compensates by changing the evaluation criteria, selecting those on
which the perceiver views their ingroup as superior over the outgroup. A third strategy is open intergroup
conflict, i.e., social competition, in which the ingroup perceiver views the relationship with the outgroup as
zero-sum. Any gain by the outgroup is perceived as coming at the cost to the ingroup. National self-
determination movements by definition seek to break the relationship through secession to form their own
sovereign community (Cottam and Cottam, 2001). Figure 2 (below) schematically summarizes a
presentation of social identity theory precepts.

This study elaborates on the identity management strategy of collective action as a form of political
integration. In addition to collective action being employed in social competition, the collective action may
be in the form of additional social creativity. Collective action may seek to supersede the relationship
evaluation criteria upon which the zero-sum evaluation is based by fortifying new evaluation criteria. This
new evaluation criteria may supplant the status quo institutional context by exploiting dynamic political
opportunities. European integration strategy functionally aims to institutionalize, elaborate and fortify new
substantive, supranational comparative evaluation norms. It operatively aims to supersede zero-sum
international competition by developing pan-European institutions on the basis of new attitudinal
orientations. These orientations may include global sustainable development imperatives as guided by
international environmental protection conventions and the nascent institutions that have developed around
them. These monitoring bodies have permanent secretariats and other institutional embodiments around
which global civil society NGOs as well as for-profit sector organizations can coalesce and institutionalize.

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Figure 2: “Social-structural Variables and Identity Management Strategies”

“social-structural variables”” “identity management strategies”

“no” “no”
“Low “no”
“Boundaries “Status “Status
group stable?”
permeable?” legitimate?”
status”
“Collective
“yes” action”
“yes” “yes”
“Hockey
team losing
“Let’s go for it
game after
next season!”
game …”
“Individual “Social
mobility” creativity”

“Join other team …” “We are the more fun team!”

Upon perceiving an ingroup negative social status self-evaluation, an individual member may choose three different response strategies. Individual
social mobility seeks to join the superior status group if the boundaries are permeable, e.g., “in the United States, […] classes are permeable but
races, in most cases, are not” (Cottam and Cottam, 2001, 92). Social creativity involves compensatory reconfiguration of the comparison criteria
to reconstitute the individual perceiver’s positive self-identity ingroup evaluation. If dynamic interactive contexts destabilize social-structural
features of intergroup status relations, then social competition, i.e., collective action by the ingroup to supersede the outgroup along the same
status evaluation criteria, may be the social strategy response (Fig. 2 from Scheepers and Ellemers, 2019, 12).

The Europeanization of EU member states may be understood in these terms. It involves the inculcation
through law and practice of actors into supraordinate, ‘European’ cosmopolitan ethical and legal criteria
and imperatives. These imperatives ultimately apply in terms of policy requirements in the relationship of
the national authorities including their obligations in their treatment of their respective citizenries.
Heretofore marginalized groups, e.g., women, gain concrete benefits from this creation of supraordinate
communities and the superordinate institutional obligations that embody them. Their existence creates both
additional social creativity opportunities for these marginalized groups as well as individual social mobility
opportunities for their members. These groups are marginalized if their members in effective view
themselves as such. They may include conservative populist nationalists who view themselves as being
status subservient to co-national cosmopolitans. They may see the latter as previously exploiting the
utilitarian social mobility and class social creativity opportunities available under Communism. They then
allegedly converted these relative utilitarian and social status advantages into advantages under the new
post-Communist regimes. In sum, the stability of Europe requires the co-optation and integration of these
conservative populist nationalist movements. The EU must accommodate them politically albeit through
compromise and negotiation over the meaning of national sovereignty.

European integration may create opportunities for social mobility and social creativity for discontented
constituencies in post-Communist societies. These dissatisfied groups otherwise may orient their attitudes
in a zero-sum attitude towards the authorities, i.e., engaging in social competition social psychological
strategic approaches. A dilemma is that the former nomenklatura as the most successful business elite in
post-Communist states enjoy exceptional social mobility and social creativity options stemming from EU
integration. They are prone to do so due to their greater economic wealth and more developed social
networks whose foundations were laid under Communism by their forebears. EU integration may
inadvertently intensify these societal conflicts as the former nomenklatura are perceived to benefit even
further from Europeanization. Those nationalists perceiving themselves as not benefiting proportionately
from Europeanization are prone to intensify their affective envy towards them. “In the case of envy, the

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unequal comparison [in perceived comparative social status] between oneself and another is seen as unfair.
Feeling envious of others can alleviate feelings of guilt, since one’s own actions, which may have been
considered wrong, can be reinterpreted as having been justifiable given the unfair behavior of the other
party” (Cottam and Cottam, 2001, 103). Europeanization has the potential to intensify polarization,
including support for militant nationalists.

The EU confronts trends in the Polish polity under the Law and Justice Party to remove legal obstacles to
purging society of the legacy influence of collaborationists with Soviet Communist imperialism (Santora,
2017). The perceived perpetuation of nomenklatura-era social networks continues into the post-Communist,
Europeanization era. Core supporters for lustration perceive these intergenerational networks to exist. One
policy adviser to the conservative populist Polish government supporting judicial reforms opposed by the
EU derides the claim that post-Communist Poland has an independent judiciary. “When someone tells me
we are destroying the judiciary, I [Igor Janke, adviser] say, 'What judiciary?' […] In the 1990s, he [Janke]
contends, many of those guilty of committing crimes against the Polish people escaped justice. He calls
them "the red spiders." Red spiders breed more red spiders, and even though only two of the 80-odd
justices on the Supreme Court have ties dating to the Soviet era, their influence is still felt, he [Janke] said,
echoing the [Law and Justice] party line” [sic] [emphasis added] (Santora, 2017, para. 16-19).

To counter this trend, the EU acquiesces to the construction of counter-elite factional networks around
former dissidents, e.g., Viktor Orban in Hungary and the Kaczynski twins in Poland (one, Polish President
Lech Kaczynski, was killed in the Smolensk 2010 flight disaster). Their hostility to the media and the
judiciary and their demands to reform them reflects in part the collective perception that these informal
networks continue to benefit the old nomenklatura generational networks. While the Polish and Hungarian
regimes stop from relying upon physical coercion against their opponents, the EU is likely to concede to
this process of construction of counter-elite networks. The EU may even encourage it through the Common
Agricultural Policy as these figures distribute domestically the CAP subsidies allocated to them from the
EU budget as de facto patronage. The continuing reform of the agricultural sector through privatization of
Communist-legacy state-owned agricultural land provides extensive opportunities for patronage network
construction. In contrast, in Italy, “privatizations notably reduced the perimeter of the economic public
sector. The remaining state-owned companies were restructured to facilitate their integration into global
markets and respect the prescriptions of EU law. Patronage at the lower levels has fallen drastically, as it is
incompatible with constraints on public finances, made more stringent by the process of European
integration” (Di Mascio, 2012, 388).

States with stronger nationalist resistance social movements under Communism against Soviet imperialism
are more prone than Bulgaria to demonstrate these polarizations. Bulgaria did not display a mass social
movement resistance to Communism and consequently the co-optation of aspiring elites into nomenklatura
legacy-based ruling networks is more pronounced. Bulgaria’s anti-Communist elite opposition advocating
reforms “failed to win the first post-communist elections” (Zankina, 2020, 111). Societal constituencies
pressing for civil service reform were comparatively weak. Zankina notes that top-down pressure from the
EU instead became the main driver for these reforms as Bulgaria sought to join NATO and the EU.

Constructing a cosmopolitan pro-Europeanization political coalition has to include a tactical focus on

providing social mobility and social creativity opportunities. These openings should be readily available to
post-Communist elites viewing themselves as the descendants of the nationalist opposition to Communism.
It already has coopted the Communist nomenklatura generational descendants. The post-Communist,
Bulgarian Socialist Party Prime Minister, Sergei Stanishev, while leader of the Party of European Socialists
in the European Parliament, charged Bulgarian protestors as being “hirelings of shadowy oligarchic
interests” (Krastev, 2014, 8). This coalition should target for integration Communist-era dissident
generational descendants as well traditionally marginalized constituencies. The latter would include gender
identity minorities, and women’s rights. “Within the European Union, it [Italy] is joined by Poland, the

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Czech Republic and Bulgaria in not responding to European Parliament appeals for member states to
prosecute hate crimes and hate speech motivated by homophobia and transphobia” (Bubola, 2020, para. 8).
Integration targets include ethno-racial minorities, e.g., Roma, Armenians, Jews and others. These
integration foci would also include vulnerable national minorities that perceive themselves as having a
national patron state, typically bordering their citizenship state. Europeanization would ideally be viewed
as protecting their human rights.

The prerequisites for EU accession were first vaguely laid out in the Copenhagen criteria of 1993:

“Membership requires that the candidate country has achieved stability of institutions guaranteeing
democracy, the rule of law, human rights and respect for and protection of minorities, the existence of a
functioning market economy as well as the capacity to cope with competitive pressure and market forces
within the Union. Membership presupposes the candidate's ability to take on the obligations of membership
including adherence to the aims of political, economic and monetary union” [emphasis added] (“Presidency
Conclusions: Copenhagen European Council – 21-22 June 1993,” sec. iii, para. 2).

These accession standards functionally addressed nationalism by highlighting that economic reforms would
be necessary so that national economic firms could compete against other EU competitor firms. The
pressures of the single market would otherwise risk eliminating locally controlled capitalist enterprises
within the new member state upon joining the single market. Nationalist hostility and polarization trends
due to perceived neo-colonialism would be undercut in the general, vague requirement that the acceding
state would be able to participate in the single market. It should ideally also be able to adopt and implement
the acquis communautaire, i.e., the state must be relatively strong, meaning not overwhelmed by patronage
and clientelism. To rephrase, the new member state institutions should be relatively effective in transposing
and implementing the large body of EU policies. It is a daunting task; the acquis includes all policies
adopted since the 1951 Treaty of Paris establishing the European Coal and Steel Community.

Others argue that the Copenhagen criteria were not effective because the conditionality formally required
was not enforced. Schönfelder and Wagner (2016, 476-77, citing Kochenov, 2008) note the claim that the
accession conditionality instruments constituting that the Copenhagen criteria had minimal impact “in the
areas of democracy and rule of law.” While the European Commission evaluated each candidate member’s
status in meeting the criteria, the EU ultimately did not link this status to accession.

A prevailing public perception and attitude of partisan neutrality and legitimacy towards state authority
requires factional elite collaboration and consensus to transfer power peacefully (Bari, 2018, Nielson, Hyde
and Kelly, 2019). It can necessitate legal limitations on national governing power that populists portray as
“undue constraints on the sovereignty of the people” in these globalizing-Europeanizing, i.e., polarizing,
societies (Rupnik, 2016, 80). These assumptions have been problematic not only in Eastern Europe but in
the US. The Trump led American populist reactionary social movement has been a threat to the rule of law
and promotes polarization and hostility and suspicion towards state institutions González and Ramírez,
2019). It is partly a reaction to the increasing political influence of traditionally marginalized and despised
ethno-racial and gender-minorities and the accommodation of this influence by state institutions (Konrad,
2018). Parallel trends in polarization, hostility and suspicion have emerged in Europe, West and East,
particularly following the 2015 refugee crisis. The EU may respond by providing social mobility and
creativity opportunities for national actors--individual, group and corporate--that exploit the EU
coronavirus economic recovery package opportunities. For example,

“The neighborhood [of Madrid, Cañada Real, with “a large Roma community”] has been a political football
for decades, with several layers of government and different municipalities sharing responsibility for the
vast stretch of land. Amid the political foot-dragging, about 15 nongovernmental organizations have
stepped in to help the most vulnerable in Cañada Real. The number of Spanish aid workers has also risen

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since the [Covid-19] pandemic began, because travel restrictions have stopped them from working outside
Spain” (Minder, 2021, para. 4, 6).

Agency utilizing path dependencies and neo-functional policy feedback build upon growing vested interests
in integration. It can incrementally and progressively contribute to the integration of national sovereignties
(Spandler, 2015). Cottam and Cottam (2001) note that populist resistance episodically may arise in various
national polities, depending upon the idiosyncratic histories and beliefs prevailing in those polities. The UK
was always among the most Eurosceptic of the EU member states. This attitude derives significantly from
prevailing perceptions of its successful imperial history, contributing to public opinion susceptibility to pro-
Brexit appeals. The substantive content of Brexit as a new trade treaty relationship with the rest of the EU
is continually under negotiation. This diplomacy persists within the context of the awareness that nearly
half of the UK’s trade and commerce remain with continental Europe. London has already accepted the
principle that Northern Ireland will remain part of the EU’s single market. Scotland may insist on a new
independence referendum. Copelovitch and Pevehouse (2019, 183-84) that much of the rest of the
international community continues to move forward in promoting “international cooperation and
integration.” For example, the remaining eleven members of the original Trans-Pacific Partnership moved
forward with the initiative after the new Trump administration withdrew from it.

Supraordinate European community identities translate through legal mechanisms into superordinate
political and legal institutions that take legal precedence over EU member state laws and legislation. These
institutions should provide the increasingly attractive targets by which the ambitious and career-oriented
seek individual social mobility into the supraordinate European community. It should also provide concrete
benefits to produce increasingly attractive opportunities for substantive social creativity for those national
identity communities. They would otherwise focus on zero-sum social competition with traditional
perceived rivals and adversaries.

“[I]t is possible for hierarchy to co-exist with a certain kind of ontological egalitarianism. While in some
cases hierarchical sociality presupposes basic ontological difference—that is, the people who inhabit
different ranks in the system are considered to be fundamentally different types of beings, as in the caste
system as Dumont describes it—in other cases people are regarded as ontologically equivalent, and the
various ranks of the system are theoretically and often actually open to anyone. In such instances,
‘egalitarian hierarchy’ is not a contradiction in terms, but rather an important analytical descriptor”
(Haynes and Hickel, 2016, 5).

Relationships perceived as zero-sum equate functionally with polarization. Perceiving substantive

individual social mobility and ingroup social creativity opportunities equates functionally with cooperation,
collaboration and coordination of behavior including policy. Legally formalizing the latter is a significant
part of the behavioral substance of integration.

European Integration and Social Identity

The European Union strategy for incorporating interdependency into social identity evolution is a
comprehensive model. Bulmer and Lequesne (2020, 6) note the dynamic ways in which the EU and its
member states interact as the member states formulate political tactics to generate effective inputs at the
supranational EU level in pursuing their respective goals. The member states concurrently must each devise
policies for incorporating EU policies at the national level. A result is a changing political opportunity
structure within a member state for all actors, i.e., governmental and institutional actors, as well as for
political parties and interest groups, along with less formal civil society actors. The EU milieu provides
“new tactical and strategic opportunities for ‘projection’ for all these types of actors.” This so-called
projection applies in terms of influence and interests. The creation and utilization of this EU setting

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generates additional socio-political potentials for a broad array of actors to satisfy their social mobility and
social creativity drives.

Bulmer and Lequesne (2020, 6) note that these “new opportunities” for projection do not come without
costs. All of these actors become subject to new political constraints that emanate from the EU level in
terms of policy commitments and legal obligations. Utilizing law and policy, EU integration incentivizes
the emergence of a supranational moral and ethical community on these national member state foundations.
The agglomeration of these moral and ethical norms and the affect that associates with them constitutes a
set of beliefs regarding what is right/appropriate and wrong/inappropriate behavior, i.e., a culture. Belief in
this cultural community as the largest with which its members typically have a primary intensity self-
identification affective orientation constitutes a national self-identity community. It has this intensive
affective tendency because it is believed to be a community of ultimate fate for its members, i.e., what
happens to it, happens to its members. National self-determination in the form of a sovereign state is
assumed to be necessary for its members to achieve full self-expression. Nationalism in the form of
nationalistic behavior is a deep, primary intensity behavioral preoccupation with self-determination for the
nation. It can be a polity drive that associates with a predisposition to stereotype the Other perceived as
challenger to this national sovereignty (Cottam and Cottam, 2001).

The EU is far from having constituted a new EU national community, but it arguably is in the process of
attempting to build one. A paradox lies in attempting to construct a new EU national community on the
basis of existing national communities with their own states: nation states. Bulmer and Lequesne (2020, 6)
highlight that the questions of “logics” emerge as a result of the interaction between the EU and the member
states. Specifically, they pose the dilemma as to whether the so-called logic of political action in Brussels
be paramount or should the logic of political action with a member state prevail. These logics are political
systemic factors and constraints that interact. The functional aim of the EU is to impact on nationalistic
drives so that they associate national self-expression with economic and political liberal values (Cottam
and Cottam, 2001).

EU integration to increase, e.g., French, influence internationally through so-called pooling of sovereignty
is an articulation of the rhetorical-ethical justification for subsuming French sovereignty. According to
traditional conservative ethical principles, the national sovereignty is a paramount ethical imperative.
Greater French influence in the international setting through in effect formally institutionalizing
interdependency with Berlin and other EU member states is on one level paradoxical. It is plausible to many
French polity constituencies in a world system with Washington and Beijing as predominant political poles.
It is evidently comparatively less persuasive to the general British polity. It collectively perceives legacies
of the British Empire that provide London with diplomatic bargaining leverage sufficient to maintain British
sovereignty. British Brexiters evidently assume that this diplomatic leverage estimation is sufficient for the
UK to maintain British sovereignty, relative political status and economic well-being. Nationalists
comparatively are more prone towards overestimation of their nation’s relative power capabilities (Cottam
and Cottam, 2001).

The longer-term consequence is to change prevailing views and also changing attitudes and beliefs and
ultimately motivations away from nationalism. Institutionalizing interdependency can alter the composition
and constellation of national political polity constituencies in a direction of transnationalism. Different
constituencies emphasize and act as carriers of different motivations/values/drives (Cottam, 1977). The so-
called respective logics of the respective policy making processes of each member state interact. A
functional EU political strategic goal is to influence the member states at the more immediate level of
incentivizing nationalism to exploit and thereby align with interdependency. A belief in inexorable
interdependency may be expressed as cosmopolitanism, i.e., awareness of individual well-being ineluctably
dependent upon transnational communities. Cosmopolitan values equate with universalistic, individual self-
determination, i.e., human rights values.

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In attempting to shape the EU policy making process, member states bring their own national collective
institutional attitudes and beliefs. They interact, utilizing diplomatic bargaining amidst the formal and
informal EU institutional environment (Cottam and Gallucci, 1978). The complexity of the EU policy
making process with its diversity of constituent actors at subnational, national and supranational levels
transforms these national initiatives. It diffuses them institutionally throughout the EU via bargaining
negotiations among an array of institutional actors within the EU policy making process. Senior ministerial
representatives meet to decide from a list of policy choice alternatives on a pre-planned agenda, including
in the Council of the EU and the European Council. They are less prone to suspect that the policy process
represents the obscured hegemonic aims of any particular member state, particularly Germany. Even the
most recent Covid-19 pandemic aid program negotiated in July had to be approved by the European
Parliament (Erlanger and Stevis-Gridneff, 2020). Creating and maintaining this perceptual milieu is
necessary for the neo-functional spillover processes to occur via actors pursuing their social mobility and
social creativity strategies.

Subverting susceptibilities to national zero-sum social competition in an EU founded by nation states is a

necessary precondition for encouraging social mobility and creativity strategies among Europeans.
Incrementalism is necessary to allow for the elaboration and evolution of international regime-based,
transnational institutions. They provide these pro-EU ethical identity communities opportunities for
individual social mobility and collective social creativity. Neo-corporatism is a tactical behavior pattern by
which to achieve this institutional elaboration while still building upon the EU foundations amidst the nation
state members. Different types of actors project their interests and influence in this systemically
interdependent multilevel institutional milieu. It is legally based on treaty law between formally sovereign
member states, to create supranational EU institutions. Bulmer and Lequesne (2020, 6) describe them to
include of course national governments as their officials and ministers represent them, as well as “para-
public agencies,” i.e., regulatory bodies such as national competition agencies. They also include national
parliaments, sub-national governments, political parties, interest groups and “civil society actors”; national
courts “and, in a more diffuse sense, public opinion and conceptions of identity.”

From the decision makers’ perspective, public opinion may refer to a range of constraints focusing on
electoral politics, e.g., public opinion surveys leading up to the electoral results themselves. Conceptions
of identity impact on electoral politics but may be subsumed among constituencies insofar as latent but
intense concern for national sovereignty becomes salient. It then becomes a motivation for collective
national behavior, e.g., Brexit. Promoting European identity on an individual and ingroup level
paradoxically builds upon national sovereignty to create something supraordinate that is more than the sum
of its parts. It may ultimately perhaps supersede those components in a future sovereign superordinate EU.
As noted on an individual level it promotes social mobility into a European community with real material
benefits while also constructing this European polity community. The European polity emerges through
social creativity strategies of national communities vesting themselves into the European self-identity
ingroup. Opportunities for building this European community emerges in a global polity context, i.e., vis-
à-vis Russia or China or the global climate crisis or the US. The EU’s national component communities
engage in social creativity strategies with each other within an EU supranational institutional context
(DeDominicis, 2020).

From this perspective, Brexit is substantive because it means that the UK will not be participating formally
in the legal policy making institutions of the EU. Bulmer and Lequesne (2020, 6) ask two rhetorical
questions: 1) have national governments made EU institutions their agents? or 2) are the EU’s institutions
transforming the national government institutions into administrative arms of the EU as components of
what one analyst, Morten Egeberg (2006) describes as a “European administrative space?”. EU institutions
falling under the perception of being agents of one or an alliance of some of the member states at the
expense of the interests of the other member states is a perilous condition. If all the EU member states view
the EU institutions as the agents of all the member states, then it indicates success in building an EU ingroup

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self-identity community founded in EU/European principles. Nationalist political entrepreneurs and their
constituency followers may not agree and may disrupt this process.

National legal systems have incorporated transnational social movement aims in part via international law.
They apply jus cogens from international law, i.e., universal norms such as the ban on racism (Cassese,
2005). The EU is often portrayed as an elite-driven project. Bulmer and Lequesne (2020, 6) pose parallel
questions regarding the EU’s “transnational political parties” and “transnational interest groups.” These
EU-level parties and EU-level interest group lobbies evolve to serve supranational European community
interests as agents of the national constituent member organizations. The EU provides social creativity
options that provide concrete benefits include self-identity affirmation by official and unofficial national
representatives within the global community. LGBTQ non-discrimination rulings by the US Supreme
Court, e.g., are rhetorical manifestations of the legally binding results of the application of ethical norms
with the authority of the state. It may affirm social creativity insofar as it reflects a global transnational
social movement; the US would be otherwise out of step with Europe and much of the rest of the world.
The state provides roles and institutions in this globalizing context.

The so-called golden rule, i.e., treat others as one would expect to be treated, generates social creativity if
it affirms self-identity in the myriad social contexts in which it may be applied. As noted in the Internet
Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry for it, it emerged in a traditional, small “tribal” society in the late bronze
age, i.e., it probably was codified to affirm local ascribed roles and status (Puka, n.d., para. 73). It has
expanded since early modernity to encompass consciousness of membership in broader communities.
Citizens are aware that communities exist to which they belong and in which they are stakeholders, and we
need to consider how to act in order to protect and promote the community. Emotion is important here.
Generating social creativity as a national domestic regime control strategy may focus on uniting vis-à-vis
an external national Other. It implies ingroup members are all allies against the enemy Other, and its
members stereotype each other as friends bound together against the enemy, i.e., the enemy of my enemy
is my friend. A theme in the encyclopedia entry is that the golden rule is a facet of shared community
recognition as a factor shaping individual decisions about how to behave. Protecting the sovereignty of both
the national and European community is part of this dynamic norm system of European governance.

Bulmer and Lequesne (2020, 10) highlight the analytical importance of “institutionalism,” i.e., historical,
sociological and rational choice institutionalism. They focus on the character of EU member state policies
and how these policies are formulated domestically. Institutionalism also highlights EU-member state
relations. Institutionalism has a longer tradition, federalism, as an important strategy for developing
European integration. For those observers who wish to see the abandonment of the nation-state, it highlights
the dialectical relationship between territorial member state interest interaction with a “de-territorialized
political project” in producing EU policies and politics (Ibid., 12). The development of federal political
systems witnesses their original dualist forms evolve into ever increasing overlap between the levels of
government, i.e., “cooperative federalism” (Ibid.). It is important for understanding the continuing
imperative to achieve consensus between the different member states institutions at one level, and the EU
institutions at another level. The emphasis on exercise of democracy in political systems by utilizing
cooperative federalism promotes executive authority at the expense of control by parliaments and societies.
It generates social mobility and creativity opportunities to avoid social competition strategies among nations
and constituencies. It helps create the political conditions for constituting the content of achieving
consensus in Europe.

DATA AND METHODOLOGY

This study centers on survey of the scholarly literature and news media reports of record. With the
enlargement of the EU into Eastern Europe in 2004 and 2007, “the majority of the European agricultural
households were located in the new member states” (Lovec and Erjavec, 2013, 126). The pace of change

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in the comparatively “underdeveloped productions structures” [sic] indicates the structural stresses rapidly
transforming rural socio-economic institutions. During 2003-2011, “the number of agricultural households
in the new member states has declined by 46.6 percent in Estonia, 44.2 per cent in Bulgaria, 34.4 per cent
in Latvia and 30.7 per cent in Poland” (Lovec and Erjavic, 2013, 133 fn. 18, referencing Eurostat, 2011).
Islamoglu (2016, 501-02, fn. 2) characterized the EU Common Agricultural Policy as functionally aiming
to accelerate the building of “infrastructure” in these agricultural regions. The increasing Europeanization
of the sector thereby makes it more amenable to foreign direct investment. It supplants small scale farmers
with “mechanized agribusiness relying on migrant (transient) labor or reducing those producers to contract
farmers subjected to the terms of transnational distribution networks.”

Bulgaria lags within the European Union regarding public policy to train, educate, consult and inform
agricultural sector workers regarding innovations and policy requirements. 13 years after Bulgaria’s EU
accession, “almost 93% of all agricultural managers are still with only practical experience and no
agricultural training” [sic] (Bachev, 2020, 96). “Stimulating and sharing knowledge, innovation,
digitalization and promoting their greater use is set again as one of the strategic (a “horizontal”) objective
in the new programming period 2021-2027 for implementation of the European Union (EU) Common
Agricultural Policy (CAP)” [sic] [Bachev, 2020, 62, referencing the European Commission, 2018].

Network analysis is a prominent focus in EU policy making process studies (Kenealy, Peterson and Corbett,
2018). Henning describes the political science field conceptualizing “policy network analysis” in two forms.
One is a “quantitative sociological branch” diagrammatically mapping social relations. The other describes
particular patterns of “state guidance” to negotiate a “collective decision in a common problem area” among
“a plurality of state and private organizational actors” (Henning 2009, 153, referencing Héritier, 1996 [sic]
and Mayntz, 1993, 39). Henning imposes a policy network analysis overview to integrate pluralist and
corporatist paradigmatic perspectives on interest mediation:

“If policy networks are segmented, i.e. access to the government is biased in favour of a specific type of
interest group like farmers, Henning and Wald (2000) call such a system clientelism or clientelistic
pluralism, in contrast to pluralism which is characterized by many interest groups with more or less equal
access to the government. Finally, if policy networks include interrelations among different interest groups,
one can speak of cooperative rather than competitive lobbying systems. For the CAP, this creates four types
of ideal-type lobbying systems: cooperative or competitive pluralism and cooperative or competitive
clientelism” [sic] (Henning, 2009, 157).

The utilization of CAP resources to build clientelistic networks within the post-Communist member states
is not surprising. Agricultural production networks are comparatively weak and underdeveloped in
Bulgaria. “The main reason for the limited distribution of networks within the Bulgarian agribusiness and
rural areas, according to the experts is the lack of trust between farmers, processors and traders […]. This
is largely predetermined by the specific development of agribusiness in Bulgaria over the last 25 years of
broken links between production, processing and marketing, as well as the broken tradition of private
farming” (Doitchinova, Terziyska and Zaimova, 2017, 444).

Labelling these behavior patterns as mafia-like implies that it is grossly illegitimate from a Western
developed nation state perspective. In the post-Communist context, in which the emergence of effective
nation-wide state institutions is an attitudinal belief that has yet to become prevailing, this break down into
corruption is inevitable. The Times report characterizes the utilization of the CAP funds to create “a modern
feudalism” while focusing on Hungary under the longtime Fidesz government of Viktor Orban
(Gebrekidan, Apuzzo and Novak, 2019, para. 64). Privatization of large amounts of state-owned
agricultural land focused on distribution to Orban political allies. Their larger land holdings would allocate
greater proportional EU CAP subsidies to them. The outcome would incentivize the countryside to ally
with Fidesz: “It is a type of modern feudalism, where small farmers live in the shadows of huge, politically

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powerful interests – and European Union subsidies help finance it” (Gebrekidan, Apuzzo and Novak, 2019,
para. 71).

According to Zankina and Gurov (2018, 5-6), Bulgarian national March 2017 parliamentary elections
operated under representative selection regulations adopted immediately before the vote. They became “the
second parliamentary elections utilizing a preferential voting system.” They indicate a shift towards
“regionalization” and “corporate voting” as well as “controlled” voting, i.e., employers/patrons influencing
voting behavior of employees/clients. Zankina and Gurov (2018, 9) note that Bulgarian patron-client
political economic behavior includes authorities awarding no-bid “advertising budgets of EU operational
programs” to favored media outlets.

Use of the label, corruption, is as much a political act as it is an analytical one. Parochialism in power
relations characterizes weak states. European Union standards, set by its two most powerful, foundational
members, France and Germany, to a significant extent fix the criteria for modernity and development for
the rest of Europe. The effort to eliminate corruption, i.e., to establish the so-called rule of law, involves
creating a prevailing belief that most members of society are bound to and in fact tend to follow the law. It
means creating this social psychological environment in which the modal citizen comes to believe it to be
actual and true. It requires creating feedback that confirms and reinforces this institutionalization and the
belief in it. It necessitates substantive, concrete social mobility and social creativity opportunities to be
created and exploited. It entails agreement as to the national legitimacy of those forms of right and wrong,
i.e., ethical versus unethical, behavior. Consensual agreement on these norms, or at least on their
idealization, does not yet exist. European Parliament intervention in Hungarian and Polish internal political
trends that contradict its understanding of rule of law has provoked a nationalist backlash by the targeted
authorities (Stevis-Gridneff and Novak, 2020).

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

Feudalism is a label for a pattern of parochial institutionalization of power relationships in an environment

of contingency and insecurity. As a Weberian ideal-type model, it consists of a system of bottomless
triangles from the more powerful at the top of the pyramid and the lord’s vassals at the two base points.
They in turn are lords to their own vassals below them. In feudalism at its most developed, the king was at
the highest point with bottomless pyramid relationships continuing downward with the lowest class, e.g.,
serfs, at the very bottom. In return for obedience, the vassal receives security from external threats and
dangers through this parochial, personalistic, clientelistic relationship. In modern state patronage-based
control systems,

“The patron–client relationship is a complex one. While clients must remain loyal to their patrons to secure
future transfers, even the top patron—the national leader—generally has at least a tacit obligation to secure
privileges for the regime’s full clientele (Schatzberg 2001; Smith 2007). In this way, the state maintains
order through a hierarchy of patrons that generates some legitimacy within society, even alongside the
resentment that the corruption imperative often creates. What outsiders take as a failure of governance,
and what analysts have termed ‘quasi-statehood’ at best, represents an alternative, often capable mode of
governance” (Freeland, 2017, 132).

The prevalence of these structures in post-Communist eastern Europe is not surprising given the pervasive
contingency within these societies undergoing revolutionary transformations from Stalinism. The daunting,
state-building tasks these societies face far exceeds the challenges confronting, e.g., the defeated and
occupied former axis powers. Fascist Germany, Italy and Japan still relied on a capitalist political economy
whose institutions provided the foundations for their respective postwar economic miracles. Capitalist
institutions in post-Communist eastern Europe to varying degrees had to be constructed from comparatively
much more primitive conditions. This writer during his field research in 1989 Poland encountered anecdotal

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accounts of Communist-era banking officials inquiring to their Western interlocutors as to how a bank
checking account functions. The difficulties in acting ethically in post-Communist societies were most
obviously illustrated in the immediate post-1989 phase. Communist-era laws were inappropriate for
creating a capitalist economy. Successful businesspeople could not act according to the laws to be
successful. Hence, businesspeople could be effectively labelled illegitimate in their behavior only if they
engaged in the threat and use of physical force against their competitors and targets.

Post-Communism, Nationalism and Cosmopolitanism

Historically, domestic status achievement had become anchored in national ideals/standards/stereotypes.

Nation states formed in relation to perceived, often zero-sum competition of the nation with other nations.
Nationalists are more prone to view these relations in zero sum terms. Non-nationalists and cosmopolitans
are more prone to perceive and exploit social mobility and creativity opportunities from globalization if
they are available. An EU peacebuilding functional aim is to create a regional, if not global, international
environment that mitigates perceived national insecurity and threat. This benign environment incentivizes
the marginalization of the nationalists within their respective national policy making processes. Particularly
business interests will seek to exploit these European social mobility opportunities and social creativity
opportunities insofar as they promote corporate profitability.

National patronage and clientelism can be legitimated as Europeanization if they are used to facilitate
European integration of the nation state. Militant supporters of Viktor Orban and the Kaczynski twins
believe they are seeking to displace the elite exploiting their advantages derived from their communist
nomenklatura progenitors. They are more likely to be mitigated in their militancy to the extent that their
policies are legitimated as part of Europeanization. The post-Communist elite is less likely to be effectively
stereotyped as the unfairly disproportionate beneficiaries of Europeanization in rhetorical discourse.

The commitment of national European polities to cosmopolitan values should not be overstated. “President
Macron of France was honest enough to confess […] early in 2018 that it was possible a [EU exit]
referendum in France could even have yielded the same result as in Britain” (Bogdanor, 2020, para. 3). The
election of Trump and Brexit illustrate that the modal citizenry is not cosmopolitan but are ethnic core
group nationalists. Satisfying these militant populists is often largely symbolic, particularly if there is an
immediate significant systemic economic dislocation in fulfilling their demands. The Trump administration
declared its rejection of the North American Free Trade Agreement. “Many Americans who longed for a
strongman will vote for Mr. Trump again. They revere him for tearing up NAFTA (even if the new version
looks an awful lot like the old one) and slapping tariffs on Chinese imports and Korean washing machines
(even if his unpredictable trade war forced the deepest contraction in the manufacturing sector in a decade)”
(Stockman, 2020, para. 25).

The European Union can be conceptualized as an attitude, when expressed in the form of a belief, focusing
on appropriate norms for conflict resolution among competitive and competing entities. Threat and use of
coercion are not acceptable, chiefly since the EU is not sovereign. The EU begins as a system of governance,
not government. It will become a system of government when it becomes sovereign, i.e., it can enforce its
will with threat and use of coercion, ultimately, if necessary. It cannot now do so. These conflicts include
national identity value tensions, but resolution requires allegiance to limits on utilization of means to resolve
them to include abstention from threat and use of coercion. These limits indicate the beginning of the
emergence of sovereignty which develops through law. Community consensus on these norms of ultimate
authority to resolve conflicts perceived as laying in particular institutions indicates sovereignty. Perceived
intentions of the competing institutional actors claiming de jure or de facto sovereignty shapes these
perceptions.

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A Reporters Without Borders research analysis of Bulgaria’s political economy has characterized political
regime relationships as a new form of feudalism:

“Bulgaria has evolved from a strong communist regime to a modern feudalism, but without any real change
of actors. The former oligarchy invested massively in the privatisation of the Bulgarian economy at the
start of the 1990s and took control of all the key sectors such as energy, construction, natural resource
management, transport, telecommunications and real estate.”

“The situation in the media is similar, and according to the report it is not uncommon to find former high-
level party and security officials or former intelligence officers managing media outlets” (Price, 2015, 28
citing Basille, 2009),

This same analysis of the Bulgarian media political economy places it within the context of the broader
transformation of the old Communist elite into the political economic elite of the new regime. It notes
comparatively that “the richest Polish businessmen today had extensive contacts with the security services
prior to 1989” (Price 2015, 24, citing Horne, 2009). Price also references Ibroscheva (2012) whose research
found that “controversial figures that had collaborated with the Communist regime own some of the most
influential media outlets. The former spies’ unique position in the media, for example, gave them
unprecedented access to media resources like printing and broadcasting facilities, as well as access to
substantial capital that was out of the reach of ordinary citizens” (Price, 2015, 24, citing Ibroscheva, 2012).

Price highlights research that shows the intergenerational focus of transfer of national political economic
authority and status between the established and upcoming Communist party nomenklatura:

“[T]he revolutions of 1989 were, in effect, a change of actors, in which the younger generation of the
nomenklatura simply ousted its older rivals. The change also involved a redistribution of political power
to a group of more economically savvy and pragmatic nomenklatura members, many becoming prominent
politicians, oligarchs and media owners through Eastern Europe. Where the transitions were peaceful, the
formal rulers easily converted their political capital into economic assets and social status” (Price, 2015,
22-23, citing Kryshtanovskaya and White, 1996 and Steen and Ruus, 2002).

This transfer began before Communism’s collapse with liberalization reforms which younger, lower level
nomenklatura exploited most expeditiously given their familial authority positions. Entrepreneurial activity
included joint ventures with Western companies along with earliest access to newly available credits and
privatized state resources as the Communist elite prepared for liberalization (Kryshtanovskaya and White,
1996). Price (2015, citing Andreev, 2009) highlights the comparatively exceptional role that the former
secret service personnel have played in shaping the post-Communist political party composition in Bulgaria
and Romania. Their influence dominated privatization of state-owned assets in favor of powerful local
actors while foreign investors were blocked. Price notes the increasing resentment and envy characterizing
the orientation of public constituencies throughout eastern Europe. Their focus is on the appearance of
informal agreements between current and former economic elites to maintain their positions while income
disparities increase after EU accession. “80% of Romanians polled thinking that corruption levels grew or
stagnated even after joining EU [in 2007]” [sic] (Price, 2015, 25, quoting Horne, 2009, 363).

Price (2015, 25) highlights the importance of research on the “postcommunist media landscape …
especially in relation to the origin of the funds with which private media outlets were launched or purchased.
The majority of those who own media in Bulgaria … consider it more important to own a media outlet as
such rather than make a profit as this kind of media ownership is not profit-oriented but supports other
political or corporate ambitions.” The US is also increasingly reflecting globalization trends. Most recent
US news reports highlight the emergence of for-profit local media public relations outlets masquerading as
local news outlets. They work with political campaigns to plant political campaign propaganda

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B. E. DeDominicis | IJMMR ♦ Vol. 14 ♦ No. 1 ♦ 2021

masquerading as local news reports on allegedly local digital news sites (Davey and Nicas, 2020). It reflects
in part the increasing polarization of US politics and the consequent reflexive pluralization of the US digital
news media’s output (DeDominicis, 2019).

A PATH FORWARD

During the latter stages of the US-Soviet Cold War era, economic interdependency was a vehicle for
generating intensifying perception of threat from other states. Cottam (1994) notes that the 1973 global oil
shock generated an intensely hostile response in the US, with threats of US military action against critical
US Cold War containment allies, the Saudi royal family and the Shah of Iran. Saudi Arabia and Iran had
been perceived as essential clients in US efforts to contain Soviet expansion in the Middle East. Media
reports noted scenarios employing violence against the oil-producing states by the consuming states.
Nervousness emerged regarding developments as to how this new source of international conflict would
intersect with the Cold War and whether and how to achieve a new political system equilibrium. The
economic upheaval generated a serious political crisis, but of relatively short duration with a steep decrease
in the intensity of perceived challenge. This case illustrated the capacity of economic concerns to generate
a very intense value conflict at the interstate level. The potential for a very dangerous conflict is evident.

The Covid-19 pandemic accelerated the disruption of social norms in the US which “has reinforced
nationalist instincts” (Sanger, 2020, para. 7). President Biden competed with Trump in demagogically
stereotyping China, labeling China’s chief executive a “thug” during his 2020 election campaign
(Gladstone, 2020, para. 10). These accelerated nationalism-based trends are a collective attitudinal response
to this accelerated change across the gamut of domestic traditional norms. These constitutive societal
institutions, ranging from personal identities to global systems, are rules and roles and the affective
orientations and symbolic collective idealizations that associate with them. Societal actors react to
disruption and its insecurity, accelerating change trends via dynamic intensifying social identity
management responses. One academic observer underlined the socio-political effects of the pervasive
societal fear and anxiety amidst the pandemic. He portrayed it as a forewarning of the implications of the
imminent cascading, chaos-inducing crises inherent in unaddressed intensifying anthropogenic global
climate change:

“But along with the fear [of the Covid-19 pandemic], I remembered a lesson I'd learned in Iraq. I'd been a
soldier in Baghdad in 2003-2004, where I saw what happens when the texture of the everyday is ripped
apart. I realized that what we call social life was like a vast and complex game, with imaginary rules we
all agreed to follow, fictions we turned into fact through institutions, stories, and daily repetition. Some of
the rules were old, deeply ingrained and resilient. Some were so tenuous they'd barely survive a hard wind”
[sic] (Scranton, 2021, para. 13).

Prior to the pandemic, international trends included domestic polarization tendencies already associated
with globalization with the rise of populist nationalism, impacting national government foreign policy
(Beichelt and Bulmer, 2020). Government responses to the Covid-19 pandemic accelerated these trends.
Politically, scapegoating of a foreign actor mobilizes support while perilously risking contribution to an
intensifying conflict spiral to crisis levels between Beijing and Washington.

In responding to a perceived economy-based threat from a foreign state competitor, “[a] strategy for
addressing this conflict would have to be an elaborate one involving elements of both containment and
détente. A combination of elements from both strategies would be necessary in order to deny certain
strategic options and to reduce misperception as an exacerbating factor in the conflict. The collective
political capacity to be successful is questionable as the extended cold war conflict illustrated” [sic]
(Cottam, 1994, 167). The EU may develop its capacities to develop and apply a sophisticated strategy
incorporating elements of both containment and détente towards the US, Russia and China. Such a strategy

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would focus on polity constituencies within the target, politically strengthening cooperative elements while
contextually weakening militant polity components.

Scapegoating China is politically convenient, addictive in the short term but dangerously short sighted. As
Cottam and Cottam (2001) note, nationalistic actors which perceive intense threat may engage in social
creativity via alliances with heretofore conflictual groups. These alliance members are self-servingly
stereotyped positively for sharing the same perceived threat from a third actor. As noted above, the
individual relationship analogue for this psycho-social dynamic is captured in the adage, the enemy of my
enemy is my friend. Each actor has a function in the domestic and international alliance that is different but
necessary. The functional promotion of postwar European integration utilized and exploited to varying
degrees shared perception of threat from the USSR. A political psychological tendency is to solidify
domestic core nationalist constituency political support by focusing on a perceived, shared common threat.
The functional political systemic predisposition to embody the challenges to social cohesion in the form of
an identifiable foreign challenge is significant.

The political impulse is to blame domestic socio-economic dislocation on a perceived aggressive,

imperialist threat from foreign actor’s political economic national development strategies (Perlez, Mozur
and Ansfield, 2017). The Trump administration “identified” Beijing’s “Made in China 2025” strategic
development plan “as a long-term threat to big American industries like aircraft manufacturing,
semiconductors and pharmaceuticals” (Bradsher, 2018, para. 5). The scapegoating includes concurrent
selective, domestically polarizing targeting of stereotyped internal constituencies as channeling this threat,
necessitating state corporatist intervention to counter it. According to Trump administration US trade
representative Robert E. Lighthizer,

[…] “A lemming-like desire for "efficiency" had caused many of them [US businesses] to move
manufacturing over the past two decades to China, Vietnam and Indonesia, among other places.”

“They did so to save on labor costs or to avoid environmental standards, but that wasn't the whole story.
Offshoring was a trend that morphed into a craze. Egged on by Wall Street analysts and management
consultants, or simply swept up by the herd mentality of their peers, businesses came to see offshoring as
something they were expected to do to serve the interests of shareholders. Many failed to weigh
independently the long-term costs or meaningfully consider alternatives.”

“For business, this strategy paid off in the short term. Cheap labor meant higher profits. But for America,
the effects were traumatic. The United States lost five million manufacturing jobs. That, in turn, devastated
towns and contributed to the breakdown of families, an opioid epidemic and despair” (Lighthizer, 2020,
para. 3-5).

Countering these tendencies requires state strategic neo-corporatist intervention for the ultimately
inseparably interlocked, interdependent pursuit of domestic and global social justice. Greater public support
for education and training opportunities can be provided. Integration of sustainable development, i.e., Green
New Deal-type programs to transform national infrastructure can also appeal to the working class.
Supporting unionization efforts can be politically efficacious while at the same time promoting automation
and technological change. These policies serve to counteract vulnerability to conservative populist
demagogic appeals. The latter promotes perceptional and attitudinal trends viewing the target as an intense
challenge in social competition, zero-sum relationship terms. Social justice promotion policies encourage
abilities to recognize and exploit growing social mobility and creativity opportunities that emerge from
globalization.

Herrmann (2019, 6) references Hans J. Morgenthau (1973, 252) in noting this tendency of state actors to
engage in “nationalistic universalism.” That is, national leaders advocate international support for their

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state’s foreign policies, claiming they serve superior, universal ethical goals. To rephrase, state leaders tend
to cloak the output of their foreign policy making process in broadly appealing ideological or religious
symbols. To the extent that international audiences are persuaded, the state’s influence to achieve its aims
increases. To the extent that motivated reasoning drives foreign public opinions to accept these nationalistic
universal claims of the initiator, the initiator generates influence over their thinking and behavior. Power is
defined here as the “exercise of influence over the minds and actions of others” (Cottam and Gallucci, 1978,
4). These nationalistic universal claims combine with other power capabilities of the initiator. It provides a
psychological route by which to acquiesce to or support the expansion of the national influence of the
initiator. History is littered with failures to persuade targets to accept this hegemony often because of the
nationalism of the target community being evoked by the perceived imperial threat from the initiator.

The EU may serve a useful function in dispersing European influence generation power sources so that
Europe’s influence is less likely to be viewed as a cloak for neo-colonialism emanating from Berlin
(DeDominicis, 2020). The target makes this subjective assessment, other observers may differ, partly
depending upon their own motivations and need for allies and assistance. A Ukrainian nationalist may view
EU influence expansion into Ukraine quite benignly, particular insofar as it is seen as a counterforce to
Russian imperialist intervention. Accommodating EU influence in Ukraine requires not appearing to aim
in effect to replace Russian imperialism with German. Moscow’s prevailing view is one in which the EU
is perceived as the civilian soft power velvet glove for NATO hard power based, US efforts at neo-colonial
hegemonic expansion. For the EU to be a more effective peace strategy governance system in Europe and
the world, it needs to convincingly differentiate itself from the US/NATO.

Development of an effective capability for EU “strategic autonomy” is therefore recommended (Erlanger,

9/2020, para. 5). EU “containment” of the US was considered to become an imperative if Trump had
remained in office (Cohen 2020, para. 6). As the editorial director of Le Monde Sylvie Kauffmann noted,
that German Chancellor Angela Merkel declared “we, Europeans, must take our fate into our own hands”
(Kauffmann, 2020, para. 17). Her call came after a contentious NATO meeting with US President Trump,
but little resulted until “[a]gainst all odds, the coronavirus crisis has made Europeans more aware of the
need to take charge of their own future. "European sovereignty" is now the order of the day in Paris and
Berlin” (Kauffmann, 2020, para. 17-18). With Biden’s election, the political imperative to allocate the
political and material resources to encourage this so-called EU strategic autonomy capability will recede.
Return to the pre-Trump status quo is unlikely (Erlanger, 11/2020).

CONCLUDING COMMENTS

The goal of this paper has been to critique the role of the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) as an
instrument contributing to political integration among European nation states. The paper utilized data and
information available in the public record while applying a political psychology-based theoretical
conceptualization of nationalism. It triangulates with selected scholarly literature to provide this analysis
of the Common Agricultural Policy as an east European national regime stabilization vehicle. The EU CAP
subsidy programs functionally support co-optive patronage network political construction amidst ongoing
transformational reform of the agricultural sector. It mitigates the salience of latent, intense nationalistic
political polarization potential in these societies undergoing transformational change after two generations
of foreign Communist imperial domination. The study applies a social identity theory-based
conceptualization of the political psychology of nationalism. It finds that the CAP is in effect utilized to
promote cooperative social identity management strategies.

These strategies functionally aim to alleviate the vulnerability to intensification of societal polarization
around social competition, i.e., the perception of social relations as zero-sum. These alternative social
identity management strategies include, first, social mobility, i.e., individual cooptation and assimilation.
Second, social creativity, i.e., re-evaluating the perceiver’s own ingroup identity positively via opportunistic

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alternative substantive criteria, emphasizes Europeanization including via the CAP. Alternative political
patronage networks via the support of EU policies such as the CAP emerge to compete successfully with
the patronage beneficiaries of the old Communist elite. The latter have readily adapted to European
integration. This peacebuilding imperative applies to these national societies with recent histories of intense
political polarization exacerbated by recent foreign Communist imperial domination. The dynamics of
social identity evolution via social competition, social mobility and social creativity in a globalizing context
drives Europeanization in Bulgaria and elsewhere. European Union institutionalization involves norm
attitude evolution reflecting actors’ behavioral/psychological orientation to exploit broadening
opportunities for integration and cooptation. This orientation has a formal legal institutional formulation
basis around which to orient and direct this strategy in the form of EU treaties and institutions.

The Brexit referendum underscores for managers and public administrators the imperative to disincentivize
through institutional reform the political exploitation of nationalist populism. Demagogic exploitation of
intense but variably salient collective political cleavages around divisive nationalism remains a useful short
term political strategy even in western Europe. Europeanization’s acceleration of societal change exposes
intensifying dissensus in post-Communist polities, heightening their vulnerability to internal polarization
and nationalist conflict. Formal EU institutional change has subsequently avoided formal intergovernmental
conferences and EU treaty amendment national referendums that demonstrably intensify internal political
polarization (Bickerton, 2020).

The limitations of the paper lie in the conceptualization of the causal linkages between integration via
encouraging substantive national group social creativity strategies with individual social mobility.
Directions for future research include social psychological analysis of the evolution of the systemic,
structural processes by which parochial identity evolves into national and transnational identity. European
economic integration is also a process of pan-European culture building, embracing the level of the very
parochial and personal while simultaneously national and transnational.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENT

This article was written with the support of the 2020 Catholic University of Korea Research Fund. The
author would like to thank two anonymous reviewers for their insightful critiques and suggestions as well
as the journal editor for editorial oversight. Any mistakes and omissions are solely the responsibility of the
author.

BIOGRAPHY

Benedict E. DeDominicis, Ph.D. (University of Pittsburgh, BA Ohio State) is an associate professor of

political science at the Catholic University of Korea in the International Studies Department. He was on the
faculty at the American University in Bulgaria in the Political Science and European Studies Department,
1994-2009. He has published in Review of Business & Finance Case Studies, The International Journal of
Interdisciplinary Global Studies, The International Journal of Interdisciplinary Organizational Studies,
Organizational Cultures: An International Journal, The International Journal of Interdisciplinary Civic
and Political Studies, The International Journal of Pedagogy and Curriculum, The Global Journal of
Business Research and Nationalities Papers. He can be reached at the Catholic University of Korea,
International Studies Department, Kim Su-whan Building, K206, 43 Jibong-ro, Bucheon-si, Gyeonggi-do
14662, Republic of Korea.

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