The contours of post-liberalism in the West and in Southeast Europe: a conversation with David Bisset 

Vladimir Mitev

David Bisset is a Scottish national living in Bulgaria. His NGO, Equilibrium, is the largest provider of social services in Bulgaria in terms of diversity and is an influential force in the social services sector in the country. David is also the author of a book on deinstitutionalisation reform in childcare institutions in Bulgaria, Romania and Moldova. He also has relationships with numerous universities.

This podcast tests a number of ideas about the failures of liberalism and the post-liberal international and social order – in the West and in Central and South-Eastern Europe. It is an attempt to think about the world from Ruse and Razgrad, two cities in south-eastern Bulgaria, on the road between Sofia and Bucharest and Varna and Bucharest respectively.

The talk discusses:

0:00 Intro 

1:00 David Bisset as a social expert (a short presentation) 

2:01 Deviations and design flaws of the post-World War II liberal order in the West; 

22:48 The rise of domination and hegemony in Central and Southeastern Europe during its transition; 

41:27 The solidarity economy and democratic innovations in the West; 

49:12 “The light that failed” in Central and Southeastern Europe – Ivan Krastev and Stephen Holmes’ critique of the region’s imitation of the West and what comes after liberalism; 

1:00:22 A positive version of the post-liberal order for Southeastern Europe – there the EU’s internal periphery is developing the logic of a centre, while borders and divisions within the centre are on the rise; 

1:16:17 A positive version for the post-liberal order internationally – as the great centre (the West) implodes, the centres proliferate and, importantly, while on the margins of the West there is a regression to war and hegemony, in other ways and spaces less and less can be achieved through might (imposing one’s will on the other); 

1:27:26 The post-liberal international order as an order of empires – how the EU empire and its militarisation should be seen – as a liberal, progressive project worthy of unconditional support or as another empire, albeit one that claims its ideology; to be more humane and rational; 

1:42:35 What is the difference between the UK and the EU and why does the Labour-led UK have a pro-EU foreign policy, distancing itself from the US; 

1:52:16 Who are the allies of progressive forces in the post-liberal world; – progressive self-determination in the post-liberal world; 

2:09:43 Conclusions.

Welcome to an extraordinary podcast and discussion with David Bisset. It is the second one that The Bridge of Friendship is doing and it is being distributed by Cross-Border Talks. It’s again a discussion, or a promise of a discussion, that comes as a reflection of what’s going on around the world, and possibly with a social theory-savvy mind, which I hope he has and which I hope I won’t prevent from showing its insights. The occasion for this talk is something David posted on Facebook a few weeks ago.

David Bisset is a Scot who has lived in Bulgaria for decades and has worked in the NGO and social services sector. He also has university experience and has been an authoritative voice on the so-called deinstitutionalisation reform in social services in Bulgaria and the region. So I assume, although I haven’t asked him directly, I assume that he is very familiar with what liberal, humanist, let’s say NGO, values and mindset represent. And I think it’s important to discuss this with him, because it was from one of his posts that I got the message that what’s happening now in the world with Trump’s abandonment of a number of post-World War II policies and philosophies of the United States and the West in general, I feel that liberalism is somehow being dismantled or reduced. As I said, David Bissett had a certain Facebook post that I refer to, that liberalism was well-intentioned, maybe just like socialism, it came with good intentions, it was a strong philosophy, with a strong emphasis on human rights, human dignity, progress, ability to perfect, but not, or improvement, but never reaching the state of perfection.

A number of assumptions about liberalism were also promising for intellectuals in my region after the fall of socialism, but in the end a number of deviations appeared. This is also what David suggested in his post on Facebook. So liberalism might be in a state of need of renewal or at least reflection on what went wrong, and here I think our talk could indeed start with perhaps a very general question, but after that we could go into more concrete issues, namely what was the liberal promise or contribution, as you have felt it and perhaps believed in it? What went wrong as we are now in a situation where the world order is being redrawn in some way and maybe some truths are being told? What was the liberal promise or contribution, as you felt it and perhaps believed in it. What went wrong as we are now in a situation where the world is being redrawn in some way and perhaps some truths could be said more openly?

Okay Vladimir, I’m sitting here with a book on my desk that I’m reading for the second time. The author is Geert Maack. He’s a historian and journalist from the Netherlands, from Holland, and the book is called ‘The Dream of Europe’ and the subtitle is ‘Journeys in a Troubled Continent’. 

It’s an extraordinary book because he traces the development of the European dream in the post-war period and then starts to question, or try to analyse, how the dream of this united Europe began to unravel, began to come apart at the seams.

It’s also a very moving book because he makes these journeys across the European continent. They span several decades, meeting people, from intellectuals to fellow journalists, from villagers in Bosnia to Iranian immigrants in the suburbs of Copenhagen, and piecing together the impact of this unraveling of the European dream on their lives. It’s quite a moving book in some ways, and I realise that it spans the period of my professional life from when I left university to the present day.

I mean, the idea behind the creation of the European Community was, well, it was rooted in the fact that there had been two world wars in the 20th century and people said, in effect, “Never again”. This must never happen again on the European continent. We have to create structures to prevent that from happening. We have to work together and create unity between the different countries, understanding that some of the borders of these countries were drawn quite arbitrarily in the late 19th and early 20th century.

Understanding that cultures actually crossed borders and understanding that there were certain frictions that came out of the formation of these new nation states. But the main principle was that there should never again be war on this continent, and that means that in the early days, there was an emphasis on a sort of humanitarian style of politics, a humanitarian style of social governance, with a great emphasis on social welfare, on workers’ rights, on the standard of living of families in the various member states. But then things started to go wrong.

In fact, there was a war that took place on the European continent and it ended with the disintegration of the country that was once Yugoslavia. And it became very clear that the European authorities were not well equipped to deal with this war and inevitably the United States intervened in the end. There have been catastrophic events both within and outside Europe, such as the Iraq war or the 9/11 disaster in the United States, the economic collapse of 2008, the financial crisis. But these have inevitably contributed a great deal to the development of liberalism over this period of 30-40 decades.

But I remember when I was a young man in the 1980s, working in London after university, I went into accountancy. I don’t know why I did it, because I didn’t enjoy it, but I ended up moving more towards management consultancy, which was a discipline that was in its infancy at the time, and working in the area of organisational psychology, that sort of thing. And I remember starting to see signs of something I didn’t like but as a young man in those early days I couldn’t quite articulate what it was, I couldn’t put my finger on what it was I was seeing.

But now, looking back, I remember a time when my organisation, the organisation I worked for, was asked to assist in the process of professionalising public administration and the primary focus was on certain boroughs within the Greater London region. And we were asked to participate in that project to provide advice and support. But we ended up pulling out because we didn’t like what we saw, what we were seeing, which left a bad taste in our mouths, as we say in the West.

In fact, there was a war that took place on the European continent and it ended with the disintegration of the country that was once Yugoslavia and it became very clear that the European authorities were not well equipped to deal with this war and inevitably the United States intervened in the end. There have been catastrophic events both within and outside Europe, such as the Iraq war or the 9/11 disaster in the United States, the economic collapse of 2008, the financial crisis. But these have inevitably contributed a great deal to the development of liberalism over this period of 30-40 decades.

Because this professionalisation seemed to be an attempt to attract young graduates into the sphere of public administration. Graduates who supposedly had relevant qualifications, and these young people would be fast-tracked into senior positions. They would move through the system quite quickly. We recognised that this had the effect of devaluing what was already there and devaluing the principles of working in public administration, where the emphasis was on starting at the bottom and working your way up through the organisation, gaining experience as you go.

And we felt that this experience, the longevity of the existing staff and their maturity, was being devalued and swallowed up in this attempt to professionalise public administration.

And that grew and grew and grew. So we ended up seeing corporations involved in all sorts of areas of public life in Britain. And then it started to happen elsewhere, particularly in the Netherlands, France, Germany and elsewhere.

So you had corporations running the health service, you had corporations involved in education. We now have public schools in Britain run by corporations. We have corporations involved in the provision of social services, disability care, childcare, and it just kept on growing and growing.

And that meant that over time the vocabulary and the principles in these areas started to change. We started to hear expressions like people were no longer heads of department, they were chief executives. Now people started to talk in terms of return on investment and cost efficiency in these kinds of issues.

And also what we tended to see was that many of these government departments were becoming more and more dependent, having been hollowed out, becoming more and more dependent on external advice, mainly from members of the big six consultancies. So in the European context that would probably be Deloitte and PricewaterhouseCoopers, which raised obvious questions about public accountability, because they were outside the sphere of government, but nevertheless played a major role in determining how government departments operated. It raised questions about conflicts of interest.

And you would hear stories about someone from one of the big accountancy firms, say PricewaterhouseCoopers, advising government ministers on tax policy in the morning and then advising their wealthy corporate clients on tax avoidance schemes in the afternoon. A massive conflict of interest. So what happened over time was that the public administration, the old government departments, the old civil service, the old establishment, was hollowed out and rapidly lost its competence in managing its old spheres of activity and became increasingly dependent on external consultants, corporations, think tanks, research bodies outside the sphere of government.

What also seemed to happen was that this gradually grew into a sort of layer above society, a sort of intermittent layer between government and society. This layer: we might call the managerial class or the administrative class, which just seemed to grow and grow. And we started to see a proliferation of what the social anthropologist Dave Graeber called “bullshit jobs” that were in the service of the system. So you had a chief executive in the health administration who needed a professional assistant, who needed another professional assistant, another professional assistant, another professional assistant.

And you saw this proliferation of these people who were specialising in very narrow areas of specialisation, micro-specialisation, and doing only procedures that the previous incumbents in government departments would take for granted, would just do as part of their normal job, as part of their day-to-day working life. 

So you saw this growth of what we call the managerial class, and we began to realise that this managerial class was becoming profoundly self-serving. So, what was happening was that somebody who had previously been in a bullshit job, who (previously) would come out of university at the age of 27, 28 with a “relevant qualification” and call themselves a Master of Business Administration or Public Administration.

How can you be a master of anything at the age of 27? You’ve never had a job before, you’ve never done this work in your life. So it showed that there was this new belief in instant expertise rather than the idea of developing mastery in your role over a long period of time.

So there was a tragic erosion of the skills base, just below the government. Yet members of this management class saw themselves as ideal candidates to become government ministers. So you had this immature, superficial system replacing what was there before, the old establishment, which had more to do with longevity of experience, life experience, maturity, competence.

And I think over time it’s created this situation where the public has simply lost all confidence in government in the West. And it has, even more than these cataclysmic events that I’ve mentioned, it has contributed radically to the erosion of governance in the European context, and initially in the American context, just this erosion of the competence base. And it’s difficult to express my disappointment and horror that this has been allowed to happen over the years.

But this is the basis on which the Western world, much of the Western world, is now run. We are experiencing it here, I mean, you mentioned my experience of deinstitutionalisation in Britain, this has been going on virtually since 1991, the early 1990s, after Bulgaria and Romania joined the European Union. It’s been going on over that period of time.

And repeatedly we’ve seen consultants and advisers coming in from the West. And repeatedly we’ve seen highly experienced frontline workers in Bulgaria who are disappointed with the experience because they find that the standard of advice we get is superficial. It seems to be a mixture of platitudes and very simplistic five or seven point plans for the deinstitutionalisation process to take place.

Very, very simplistic plans on how to scale up efforts to improve childcare and family support in Bulgaria. So I feel, and I agree wholeheartedly with the economist Mariana Mazzucato, who in her book ‘The Big Con’ has talked about the depletion of the competence base within government and its periphery. And the total dependence on organisations that are both for profit.

And, as you can see, also have a substantial client base in the corporate world. So there is this conflict of interest. I don’t know what the answer is, to be honest.

Okay, so as a result of this erosion of competence that you’re talking about, the world and especially politics, especially in the more peripheral areas, like maybe south-eastern Europe, are being reduced to what I think in Britain is called a Punch and Judy show.

🙂 Yes, I’ve heard that expression. 🙂

Mainly, as I understand it, it means that you have two dummies or puppets do short sketches of maybe vulgar phrases. And usually there is somebody hitting somebody. The way the Balkan culture is seen, maybe also has a little bit of that element that is in the word seir, which you might know, maybe you live in Bulgaria. You know, maybe some people here are very comfortable with watching this Punch and Judy show on TV every day, which is not an exaggeration, because periodically we have situations where, for example in the Bulgarian parliament, people come close to physically punching each other or even go for it.

And I think it’s clear that violence arises when there is a lack of reason and, of course, a lack of power. I remember that some young people thought that to say a bad word to someone about some of their relatives was a sign of domination, a sign of power. I’m more of the opposite school.

I have the feeling that people swear, especially in the Balkans, I don’t know about other cultures, but here it’s because they’re incapable and they recognise their incapability and so they say the swear word. And it was a bit of an unexpected direction for me to go in, because we very quickly reached both the West of Britain and my region and took them under observation. But I’m curious about this whole reduction that we’re seeing.

You talked about a loss or destruction of competence. And there is even a situation where perhaps in many areas which competence require years of accumulation of knowledge, years of testing, years of even having a social ground, a social base, a social environment in which to interact with people and to reach a certain awareness or knowledge or realisation. There are many areas in which my region, for example, simply can’t produce real knowledge.

I say that as someone who speaks Persian, I am aware of various reactions that stigmatise any Persian speaker, regardless of whether the Persian speaker approaches an Iranian or a non-Iranian – a Bulgarian, a Romanian, etc. There are areas of knowledge in which there is a real lack of knowledge, a lack of awareness, and it is very difficult to have knowledge about them that is really enlightened, true knowledge, knowledge of realisation, also because there are no clear standards. Usually a lot of the discussions that we have in our social life in these domains are reduced to who’s who.

And I can say, for example, that in Bulgaria there is a feeling that there are maybe three or four or five types of groups, political groups in society, and maybe people at a certain level, if you’re outside their in-group, they’re only interested in who is your master, who is the leader, are you with Radev, are you with Pevski, are you with someone else, are you with Borisov, and so on. 

You said you didn’t know the answer. Maybe there should be some talks to find the answer to the reasons. And the way I think, again I am talking more about my region because my experience with Western Europe is much less, but I think there are some factors that create problems, structural problems. They don’t even depend on one person, they just exist independently and create problems.

So one of those factors, I think, is that maybe it’s every society, every modern society, but maybe especially capitalism is in a way about hegemony. And because it’s based on competition, people who are efficient are usually people who have resources. And maybe over time it’s much easier to be efficient without any effort, just because you have resources and you can multiply them through the laws of capitalism.

But this creates a certain division in society between the haves and have-nots and stigmatises people who may have potential and may deserve to flourish but who, because they have no resources, are in a situation where they cannot compete. And that may not be fair to equality and justice in society in general. So also this issue of different resources creates a certain hegemonic attitude of certain institutions or people. Some speak of oligarchs. Maybe there are different hierarchies in it.

But in any case, there is obviously a hegemony in society. And to change that balance, you really have to fight a lot. I mean, you have to be very determined and also very self-confident.

It’s not an easy path, it can take years to change certain balances, maybe even within your family, which is theoretically well-intentioned. But there are also hegemonic relationships in the family, between parents and children, etc. I’m not saying that only one part is hegemonic, it could be distributed in different ways.

But I’m saying that there are big problems with this difference of power in people, and it creates some problems for change in society, I think. Because at least for me, and I think it’s logical for me, it sounds logical to say that change in society usually means some kind of renewal. And it’s also connected to life, because life is also a kind of renewal and, let’s say, rebirth and renewal of our powers.

Just like nature blossoms every spring. So the power of life is related to renewal and society should also be about successful renewal, which I think should happen more naturally and more organically, without big fuss and big conflicts. But I think I have the feeling that the more somebody goes to the periphery of the international system, that’s my point of view, of course, as a peripheral, more or less peripheral person, but the more you go to the periphery, the more the hegemony gets stronger.

I’ve really talked a lot about this thing, it’s not the only structural issue, maybe it’s also related to the level of speed and dynamism of our identities, our personalities, our ability to learn. Maybe there are many more issues, but I want to add to your… When you were diagnosing the problems you were observing, you talked about corporate culture and a deviation from plans that were originally plans for a social and humane society in Europe.

Now I have the feeling that as soon as this competition became the guiding principle in the EU, which happened after the Delors reforms in the 1990s, the result is this accumulation of hegemony, and I’d like to add to your diagnosis the question of hegemony and inequality of power, and I’m curious how you see this question, knowing that you have experiences from different countries, not only from the UK and Bulgaria, but also from other countries, so how does this fit into the picture of the problem of today’s post-liberalism, if we can say so?

Hmm, I’m just tossing some of the things you said around in my head, Vladimir. Yes, what we tend to find today, after the financial crisis of 2008, post-Covid, is that many governments are now determined to try to balance their books and they’re implementing what we call “austerity measures” and many, not just on the left, but many in the traditional middle classes (and even quite a few commentators on the right) are now beginning to recognise that those who bear the burden of these austerity measures of governments tightening their belts are the dependent and vulnerable members of society. So, in order to save money, governments are targeting the welfare system and insisting that it needs to be made more efficient and that the levels of disability benefits and sickness benefits and these sorts of things that are paid out need to be looked at and only given to the most deserving, the underlying assumption being that there are many who don’t deserve to receive these benefits.

There’s a determination to get those on benefits back to work as much as possible. It’s said that many simply don’t want to work because they’ve discovered that they’re better off receiving state benefits than joining what we call “the precariat”, which is this group of people, a significant number of people who, because of their lack of qualifications, because of their family situation, are dependent on what we call zero-contract work where they’re critically exploited. If they have to take time off, they can be punished. If they get sick, they lose their source of income. 

It’s certainly true that the welfare systems in a number of European countries are broken and need to be radically overhauled, but I think to a large extent many governments are hostages to those who don’t approve of the welfare system. Hostages to people who see the poor and needy as victims of their own laziness or inability to function as proper citizens.

There’s this widespread vilification of the poor, and particularly of those members of society whose families may have come from other countries, immigrant families. So, I mean, it sounds very simplistic to say that governments work for the one per cent or are held hostage by the one per cent, but you can’t argue with the fact that social inequality has increased markedly over the last few decades, and every time there’s an effort where governments try to balance their books, it seems to be the poorer members of society who pay the most as a proportion of their very fragile incomes, or who suffer the most as essential services are cut and cut and cut. 

So it’s a question of priorities, and I think the distortion of those priorities shows the extent to which governments are, I hate to say, willing to abandon large sections of their citizens. I don’t want to say that they are indifferent to the plight of their citizens, but rather that they are too much in the grip of big business and corporations and too dependent on the development of strategies devised by outside consultancies, where social welfare is probably not a major consideration.

It goes back to what I was saying earlier about the emphasis on cost effectiveness and efficiency and return on investment and cutting costs, cutting costs, cutting costs. So, to a very considerable extent, business and profit-making criteria have infected too many areas of public life, and we are now trapped in that system. And undoing the damage that has been done is a considerable task, and government departments that have been hollowed out and have become dependent on external consultants, corporate sponsorship, corporate support, corporate partnership, don’t have the imagination or the resources to return to a system that is fairer from a social point of view, from a social justice point of view.

Okay, so you continue to see the source of the problem in the corporation, as I understand it, or the managerial class, or the general ethos of the last three or four decades. As a parenthesis to that, I’m aware that the UK is a place for a number of cooperative initiatives. For example, I think there is consumer cooperation in the UK.

I also think there is a certain respect in the UK for cases where people create something like a cooperative company. I remember that in the Basque region of Spain, for example, there are cooperatives that are very advanced, even technologically advanced, and Mandragón, if I’m not mistaken is the name, maybe I’m pronouncing it wrong, but there are a number of cases where cooperatives have somehow become a form that empowers citizens and allows them to have their own resources better distributed among them.

Okay, so since I don’t really know of any successful large or even small initiatives of this kind in my country, I’m curious to know what you know about the culture, not only of companies, but also of cooperatives and the culture of solidarity economy or solidarity decision-making. Perhaps it could also be extended to the culture of certain democratic initiatives such as citizens’ assemblies, etc.

It’s not like you, it’s not something I know a lot about. I do know that when these bodies first started to emerge, one of the guiding principles was that things had gotten too big, supply chains had gotten too massive, governments had gotten too big, and that we needed to get back to a system of smaller self-governing bodies of citizens. There’s two sides to it, there’s the kind of local agricultural market, local artisan, kind of village-style enterprise that I first became aware of in the 60s, sort of grew out of the hippy era.

There’s that side of it, but I’ve also been reading about these kinds of, we call them urban zones, which are becoming an increasingly visible phenomenon on an almost global scale, you know, emulating or trying to emulate what’s going on in places like Singapore, Hong Kong to a lesser extent, where local government and local business are working together to create a system of governance and a system of commerce that defies or distorts international global commerce to their own advantage.

So it’s sort of a replica of the city-states of the Middle Ages, you know, where when you arrived at the gates of a city, you entered that city, you entered a world that operated on its own basis or on its own terms. And yes, that is an emerging phenomenon in the world as well. So it seems to be operating at both ends of the income spectrum.

Groups of billionaires who live in certain areas are starting to create, it’s not just walled compounds around their homes, it’s a sort of walled city, their own city-state that operates on their own terms. So you’ve got that at one end of the income spectrum, and then you’ve got these very modest, very back to basics, very let’s try to live off the grid types of cooperatives working at the other end of the spectrum. And I think, strangely enough, they’re both driven by the same motives, which is a recognition that there are dangers in relying on the huge, complex economic system that we’ve created through neoliberalism.

And there’s a need to get back to work, trying to produce as much as you can locally, or trying to rely on your own specialisations within a region, whether it’s agriculture, whether it’s banking, where it’s trading in precious minerals. And in a way, what Donald Trump has been doing in recent weeks, is another example of that. Your question made me think about it, and it’s something I hadn’t thought about, but yes, there is certainly this emerging force in the world, and particularly in the Western world.

This emerging force may have many fathers or many reasons for appearing, and I am at least tempted to draw a parallel between the end of socialism and what we, or at least I may be a little hasty in calling it, the end of liberalism or post-liberalism. Namely, it was conservative forces that ended socialism, and we are now in a situation where it is again the far right that is challenging the order. It is the force of change, if you like.

Some people have made comparisons between the rise of Trump and Musk and what Gramsci was talking about in terms of cultural hegemony and the need for unprivileged, let’s call them maybe in his term original intellectuals or original leaders, to emerge from these communities that they see as subordinate to a certain hegemony. Perhaps a lot of comparisons and speculations are being made. I don’t want to legitimise any of them, but I’ve just noticed that in both cases, the change at the end of socialism was done with an agreement between the American conservatives and the people in the Kremlin at that time, and it led to the appearance of conservative attitudes in Russian or Soviet society, let’s say post-socialist society, and now we’re back in a situation where the force of change is the far right, or maybe it’s, I don’t know if it’s exactly conservatism, but it’s certainly a force that’s again not so much pro-social, it’s maybe more pro-business and pro-libertarian, if you like. And there’s a certain claim that what Trump and Musk have been doing in recent months is to destroy, not even really to build or create. Their mission, if I can paraphrase Mazzucato with her book Mission Economy and argue that politicians should follow big projects and ambitious ideas, their mission is to destroy.

So now, in this context, where there is a certain effort, at least from my point of view, to dismantle what has been the basis of a certain order, I would like to draw a little more attention to our region, because there have been many signs that something is not going as it should, at least from the liberal point of view, if we assume that this point has been coherent and always relevant. I remind you of a book that you know very well, Ivan Krastev and Stephen Holmes wrote something called ‘The Light That Failed’, that’s right, and it focused, as I understand it, on why liberalism may not have achieved as much as expected in Central and Southeastern Europe.

And you have had your own way from the West to our region, you have grown and developed along with the situation, the social environment here, so perhaps returning to the question of post-liberalism and the light that failed, what comes after liberalism? If I may ask, it’s a very general question again, maybe difficult or easy, but I know a joke about socialism, the joke is what is the worst thing about socialism and the answer is what comes after it. So I am curious, do we already see certain contours, if there is such a word, or signs, sketches of what a certain post-liberal philosophy, ruling philosophy, order, international order, post-liberal mindset might be, both in the West and here in our region?

Hmm, one of the central premises of that part of the book, ‘The Light That Failed’, was the fact that the West in a sense imposed an imitation imperative on those countries in Southeastern Europe and also the Baltic countries. Which they just about got away with until they lost their moral standing, and that meant that people like Orban and Putin could point and say, excuse me, and also governments and populations in Bulgaria and Romania could start to say, you’re telling us we have to adopt your values and be like you if we want to raise our standard of living and be successful, but what about the Iraq war? You lecture us about our attitudes to Roma minorities, you lecture us about this and you lecture us about that, but the flaws and the hypocrisy behind many of the West’s actions are now blatantly obvious to us, so come on, you’re not kidding us anymore.

So what comes after liberalism? I’m not sure I have an answer, to be honest, Vladimir. Many Western commentators are horrified and even forced to ask such a question, because they see liberalism as an embodiment of Enlightenment values that go back to the 16th and 17th centuries.

It’s the most, they claim it’s the most solid, humane philosophy that’s been proven to exist, you know, it’s far from perfect, but if we were to put it aside and consider something else, we dread to think what that other thing might be. There are those who argue that in the very near future we’ll be living in societies that in many ways will resemble the film The Matrix, you know, where artificial intelligence will be making a lot of the decisions for us, where sophisticated machines and computers will be doing 80% of the work, and a lot of the population, a lot of those who currently work for a living, will be made redundant. So could you imagine a sort of George Orwell 1984 situation where the world is run by this dominant, this elite, and everybody else is just fed the crumbs off the table and kept happy in some way, and don’t really have to work for a living, and maybe be given drugs and have implants in their brains that give them the contentment and the satisfaction that we currently get from developing social status and having a circle of friends and working for a living and pursuing personal missions? The future is frightening and I really, I have no idea what I feel, what I can, you know, see, what I want to see replace liberalism. Maybe, to be brutally honest, I don’t have the imagination in the circumstances.

It requires me to make, let’s say, very simple generalisations in a situation that is at the moment mind-bogglingly complex. I mean, I can imagine how I would like to spend my old age over the next 20, 30 years, if I live that long. I have certain personal aspirations, I have aspirations for my family and friends, I have aspirations for the community that I belong to, but how that can be achieved, I just have no idea.

Okay, again, I have my perspective on these issues that we have been discussing, and I have already talked about hegemony. Maybe I’m less able to imagine the changes to the social order in our societies because of the disruption of technology and the influence of capitalism itself. Maybe there are always rises and falls, economically and socially, groups and people.

But if we focus on the international order, I think there have been certain basic tendencies or principles in modern times. I think one of them is this division between people or forces that are more internationalist and those that are more nationalist. I’m not saying that those who are nationalist are not internationalists, because as we see in the European Parliament at the moment, there are four sovereignist groups.So people who claim to defend their national identity, conservative values, localism against globalism, are also very good at international cooperation. But ironically, because there are four groups of sovereignists, each one finds its own will, because it turns out that sovereignists from Central Europe have different interests than sovereignists who are linked to Germany or France, for example. So even sovereignism is both internationalised and localised and divided.

But I’m more interested in internationalist people, because maybe this is my profession and my bias, but from my point of view, for example, in the periphery, there is generally a strong tendency for nations and people to reproduce among themselves, to be protected from outside intervention. There is a term that some experts on good governance use about the countries of Eastern Europe or even Central Asia, impenetrable, I think the word is, impenetrable regimes, which are regimes or governments or models that are very difficult to change, indeed to change. And for me this is again curious because, again, from my experience with the Bulgarians, I have generally positive expectations of them, of course, but I know that when you reproduce among yourself, among your close people, when the standards are not very much tested internationally, there is a greater risk of failure.

And I don’t want Bulgarians or others, Romanians or others to fail. I want more people, more nations, more groups from my region to be successful, professionally, emotionally, etc., in every way in life. I want us to be a success story.

We shouldn’t have the complex that our societies may have had somewhere in the 1990s, that there’s a certain model in the West that we have to emulate, and we’re not perfect, we’re not, we’re fallen. And we, I think, maybe one, maybe even a potentially positive element of post-liberalism might be that the centre is not what it used to be. I mean, really, the centre, like both the US and Western Europe.

And that might not necessarily be a bad thing, because maybe surprisingly, this is of course a speculation, but maybe some regions of the periphery develop over time the logic of the centre, or discover inside themselves certain abilities, resources, knowledge, that could make them a kind of centre for a certain region, for a certain domain. I can give a very visible example with the fact that Romania and Bulgaria were not in Schengen for a long time, even though they should have been, but there was a certain political agreement that they would not be admitted. So they were kept as a kind of internal periphery within the EU.

And just at the beginning of 2025, they were admitted fully to the Schengen area. So now, at the moment when the borders in Western Europe are somehow being re-established, because in various countries of Western Europe the Schengen system is being put to the test and somehow is not being applied as it used to be, when the USA is once again bent on having this war with Mexico and expelling migrants. In this situation, Romania and Bulgaria are abolishing border controls between themselves.

So they are somehow in a situation where they are more of the centre. The centre, let’s say, is an area where there’s a free flow, an unrestricted flow of people, capital and so on, which is excluded.

Also, strangely enough, Bulgaria and Romania, and I could add Poland, and maybe the whole region in general, have had a lot of economic development, let’s say in terms of GDP. So incomes have risen, salaries have risen in recent years. And even foreign workers have been coming to Bulgaria and Romania in recent years, which is something that used to be characteristic of Western Europe.

And now, more and more, maybe we’re becoming somehow like the centre, maybe not, maybe I’m exaggerating a bit or more, but there is some presence of elements that used to be in the centre of the capitalist system or the European Union. And at the same time, in the European Union, or even in the US, there seems to be a certain fatigue with borderlessness, with openness. They are moving towards a certain closure, a certain suspicion, a greater suspicion of different people, of people who are different in terms of their origins.

And I’m curious how you see this development, whether post-liberalism, at least for our region, wouldn’t be something like the paradox of a couple in which, over time, the roles are somehow changed, if you understand, or swapped. Somehow one element, one person in the couple moves and becomes a bit more like the other, and the other becomes a bit more like what the first person used to be. So I’m curious if you see any sense, if you see these things and how you actually see them.

My God, I think I understand what you’re saying. When you asked me the question, how do I imagine, what do I imagine would follow liberalism? I suddenly thought of an experience I had when I was in the city of Edinburgh with a whole bunch of Bulgarian colleagues the week before Scotland was going to vote on independence.

And inevitably, my Bulgarian colleagues pressed me on my feelings about the issue. And I couldn’t give them a satisfactory answer. I could see that perhaps, as a patriotic Scot, the Braveheart element in me was sympathetic to independence.

I could be aroused by the suggestion of independence, I could be aroused by the suggestion of independence, but the intelligent thinking part of me thought, this is just too bloody complex to even contemplate the adjustments that will have to be made and the degree of interdependence between Scotland and England and Scotland and the rest of the country, both in terms of government, in terms of financial structures, in terms of the banking system, in terms of all sorts of things.

It just boggles my mind to even think about how to unravel it. So when you asked me what I thought post-liberalism would look like, I hesitated to answer the question because I just can’t imagine it, because I’m one of the many commentators who think that capitalism is broken. We need to replace liberalism in its current state, although I’m a liberal at heart, but the sheer complexity just gives me a headache just trying to think of simple things I’d like to see in the future, things I’d like to see ended and things I’d like to see implemented.

It just boggles my mind to even think about how to unravel it. So when you asked me what I thought post-liberalism would look like, I hesitated to answer because I just can’t imagine it, because I’m one of the many commentators who think capitalism is broken. We need to replace liberalism in its current state, even though I’m a liberal at heart, but the sheer complexity just gives me a headache just trying to think of simple things I’d like to see in the future, things I’d like to see ended and things I’d like to see implemented.

But then I listened to what you just said about how, yes, peripheral countries are in this kind of emergent process. As you say, Romania is a little bit ahead of Bulgaria, but Bulgaria is starting to catch up in terms of economic development, in terms of meeting the Schengen criteria. And yes, it’s as if the playing field is tilting slightly.

I agree with what you said about the Western countries. There’s this fatigue and this confusion and this fear and this realisation that they’re living in a broken system and that something has to give. But who has the imagination and who has the will to start this very complex process of dismantling the current structures and replacing them with structures that are fairer, more equitable, kinder to more of the population?

I mean, what you said reminds me of something. My mum and dad, they’re both dead now, but they only visited Bulgaria once. I remember my father was here, he was talking to a colleague of ours who was a professor at the university in Sofia, and he just said to this man, my father said, “For God’s sake, don’t make the same mistakes that we made”.

Which was more a statement of personal feeling than the obvious answer would be, well, what mistakes? What are you talking about? But both my father, who was expressing the sentiment, and my Bulgarian friend, who was listening to him, somehow knew what my father meant.

My father was saying, yes, improve your lot, join as a member of the European Union, westernize to a certain extent, pay tribute to the values and practices you once had, but learn from the mistakes we made in the past. Don’t follow our imitation imperative. Use your discretion.

Be aware that the streets of London are not paved with gold, that our system in the West is far from perfect. Pick and choose those parts of it that suit your national purposes, that suit your regional purposes, that suit the Balkans, and then teach us some lessons, teach us to learn from past mistakes, and give us the courage and the conviction to adapt to what we are doing in the West.

What you say, the phrase “don’t repeat our mistakes”, I hope it doesn’t sound a bit nasty on my part, but that’s kind of a patronising way of…

Oh yes, I can see that, yes, it is.

I want to challenge you with another question about what the post-liberalist order in the world would look like, and I want to talk a little bit again about hegemony and about the centre, because maybe we know that there has been this claim that the crisis in the world, in the rule-based order, has been exemplified by Russia’s intervention in Ukraine and perhaps also by what Israel is doing to the Palestinians in Gaza. So there is this idea that the crisis of the centre that underpinned the rules of the world is leading to a situation where Erdogan, Putin, Netanyahu and others are taking the law into their own hands and whoever has the might is imposing their will on the weaker. Now, of course, this is perhaps even very visible, perhaps there is no need to argue about the fact that on the periphery of the West the strong military forces are imposing their will, but I don’t think this is the only element of the, let’s call it, post-liberal order.

I think especially in the European Union, but maybe also in general, there is maybe also a parallel and even opposite process in which you can impose less and less on the other. Now, I agree that in certain areas of the world there is huge hegemony, very destructive, but again how can Bulgaria impose something on Romania or Romania on Bulgaria and even I can ask how can Bulgaria impose something on North Macedonia because we as Bulgarians and North Macedonia as well know that there are some differences, some issues which create certain tension between the countries, but nobody seems to have the tools, the might, the allies to really impose his will and that is of course maybe a little bit dialectical, but I would say that just as there is certain fear and we see that hegemony maybe rises, maybe hegemony will matter less and less, at least maybe in some areas in the world or in some relations and I also think that a post-liberalism order maybe is not far from the idea that there will be many centers. I know that Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, has been considered a promoter of the multipolar center.

That’s perhaps a subject for another question, because usually a multipolar world system means a system where the poles are certain empires, and I may come back to that later, but I also have the feeling that more and more it’s up to the people, paradoxically, even up to the communities, where the centre is. I don’t know if you see it that way, I don’t know if you agree with it, but there may indeed be a situation in which nobody has the power to twist hands and force others to follow their will, to buy their products, to listen to their lectures. We are more and more in a society where people can really choose and there are so many models of how to grow in life, how to behave, many models of family or relationships, many models of activity.

I know I might sound very naive, like a liberal from some blind western or I don’t know which eastern country, but I really feel that this is also true. The centre is becoming decentralised, there are many centres and hegemony, given that there are many centres, hegemony is less and less valid as an approach and that means that we also as countries or as people or as communities have to develop models, approaches, skills, tools maybe even to navigate in a world where nobody can dominate over anybody else. We just have to learn to communicate, paradoxically, as equals, we have to learn to do things together, etc.

In the West, one of the dominant views of how the world is changing is the realization that America is losing its pre-eminence and may soon be replaced by China. China will be the new economic and political superpower, but there are also, as you said, these emerging economies and other emerging economies on which we are very dependent, particularly in the southern hemisphere, India, Taiwan, South Korea. And as you say, even in the context of Europe, it’s as if the old centre, Germany, France in particular, are in a situation of almost permanent crisis, their industries are doing badly, they’re heavily dependent on Russia for energy supplies.

So you had this anomalous situation where the European unions were imposing tariffs on Russia, confiscating Russian assets, and yet some of the major countries were spending more than they had, then the Russians were being deprived of, because they needed energy sources from Russia. So you’ve given me food for thought, and I can see the germ of truth in what you’re saying, where perhaps the old dominant centre is beginning to implode and the bargaining power and the political competence and the progress, the technological progress, is now more widely dispersed, which means that a wider range of countries now have considerable influence. It’d be nice to think that this will lead to a situation where hedging money is obsolete.

As a concept and as an operating principle. I think it would require a redesign of the way we operate as a world. The reconstruction of our global economic structures, our global bases of agreement, which have been heavily modelled on the old centre.

So yes, I can see what you’re suggesting, but again, I can’t get my head around it, I can’t imagine how it’s going to be facilitated. The pessimistic part of my character thinks that this implosion of the old centre and this dissipation of power and influence could initially cause a significant imbalance in the world and a lot of feuding. But perhaps, yes, I can see a happier situation emerging in the end.

Simply because of the emerging need for compromises and for those compromises not to be skewed in favour of the old centre of America and, for that matter, the European Union. So yes, Vladimir, I think there’s something in what you’re saying, but I just can’t see how the world is going to be transfigured on that basis.

Okay, thank you for acknowledging the validity of certain ideas that I share. You end with the European Union and this is something that I promised to come back to, because there is this claim by some foreign policy analysts, including in Bulgaria, that the post-liberal order is somehow an order of empires, or certain large blocs, among which I could perhaps name the USA, Russia and China, of course, and perhaps even more Israel is somehow aligned with Trump and perhaps also with Russia at this moment. And in any case, there is this feeling that around Europe, the centres of power are those that are beyond Europe and Europe, especially the European Union, is something like an indecisive, divided, weak element of the international system. This is usually the rhetoric of a certain tendency among analysts, but if we look more closely at the situation in Europe, perhaps we will come to some understanding that perhaps the European Union is also in some way a similar force, at least in the sense that it is a really big bloc with hundreds of millions of people.

Maybe its peculiarity or main difference is that it is a liberal, some say an empire, so that is, especially for the left forces in the region or in Europe, there has been this discussion, should one support the militarisation of the European Union? And some say that to be left is of course to be against wars and that militarisation will inevitably lead to war. Others say that the European Union will never be truly autonomous, strategically autonomous, as it is called in the EU documents, without a certain greater military power.

And there has been this claim that the EU has for a long time left behind the umbrella, including the nuclear umbrella, of the USA, has done business without investing much or enough in arms, and that now, when the USA seems to be redefining the international order, the European Union, if it wants to be a big player or at least a player, should develop its own bigger military industry, etc. So I think you are familiar with these discussions and issues. So I think you’re familiar with all these discussions and issues, but I’m curious again, from a liberal, if you like, liberal left, because I have the feeling that you’re also there, a liberal left with a certain social sensitivity, from a liberal left point of view, what would be the progressive position, maybe not only geopolitically, but also geopolitically in the coming world, or even politically? Because, okay, I understand that the European Union protects certain things, puts emphasis on human rights, protects democracy, while other countries, some or regions or empires, are somehow illiberal, let’s say, to say the least. But on the other hand, the logic of empire is again a logic of a certain hegemony, and I wonder, could democracy really exist under an empire?

There is a school of thought that says that democracy can only be national, at the national level. These are very big questions, and I don’t want to really abstract with complexity, but I think you can find and see what the dilemma is. The European Union perhaps has a certain positive role from the point of view of protecting, let’s say, human rights and so on.

It has it in its documents, it has it in the rhetoric of its leaders. But again, there are contradictions in a world of hegemony, in a world of military power, of control over information, even in a world of greater securitisation that we have seen in recent years. Who is this progressive ally?

Maybe it’s not a country, maybe it’s not an empire, maybe the progressive forces should have some other form of support, not the one I’ve been discussing so far.

It was quite extraordinary how much of the sabre-rattling and the desire for sustained military support for Ukraine came from Europe, while the Americans seemed to remain more sceptical. Nevertheless, many commentators have pointed out that Europe has encouraged the continuation of hostilities in Ukraine. They’ve created circumstances that haven’t helped to bring Putin and Zelensky to opposite ends of a negotiating table.

But still, the level of support, the practical support for Ukraine from the European countries was not sufficient to allow Ukraine to be victorious, to achieve its goals. So all that happened was a prolongation of the hostilities, a postponement of the negotiations. And I think this shows that Europe and NATO, in terms of a power base, in terms of a military force, were encouraging Ukraine, but also trying not to provoke Putin too much, not to push him to do something that would precipitate the need for a NATO response.

So Europe was in this extraordinary situation of supporting Ukraine but not supporting it enough, prolonging the hostilities, making war cries, but also shying away from direct confrontation with Putin and Russia, which tells us that Europe as an empire in the traditional sense doesn’t really fit the bill. It doesn’t have the independent military capacity to defend itself. It is afraid of provoking Russia, although it was quite happy to support the expansion of NATO to Russia’s borders and even to antagonise Putin in the run-up to the Ukraine crisis.

So does the European Union have what it takes as an independent empire, throwing off its dependence on the US? I really don’t know. In some ways I think Europe is very, very uncomfortable with its own history, with its own failings.

I’m not just talking about Nazism in the Second World War. I’m not talking about the First World War. I’m talking about the experience of empires clashing on European soil.

The memory of the Second World War is still with us. The memory of the First World War is fading, but the history books tell us about this constant struggle in Europe over the centuries. And, as I say, that is part of what provoked the attempt to form a European Union in the first place, that these things should not happen again.

But as other forces and other pressures have emerged in the world, I think the European Union has been found very wanting and has tended to sit on its hands and not really develop a solid position on things that are phenomena that undermine its coherence and its unity and its progress in numerous factors such as the issue of multiculturalism and mass immigration on the European continent. This has been a destabilising factor. The decline of European economies, national economies, the emergence of these nationalist leaders.

I think that if the world were to break up into these empires, as you call them, Europe would go into that situation with a certain timidity, because of its history, because it wouldn’t be able to see a way of putting the past behind it, of leaving the past in peace, of making peace with the past, and actually trying to develop a completely new model of European government. And if I could put it very simply, I think that too much of the European dream, of the European mission, has been a response to the past, and not enough attention has been paid to what the future holds, and that’s why we haven’t seen much of the great mission that Mariana Mazzucato sees in the missionary economy on a European scale. I think too much attention has been paid to reflecting on the recent history of Europe, and even on an even longer period of time.

And there’s this timidity, this fear in Europe. We don’t seem to have the American swagger that comes from never having fought a land war, you know, never, well, with the slight exception of the Japanese action at Pearl Harbour, but then being a young country with an eye to the future, Europe’s nations are old, many of them with an eye to the past and very little idea of how to face a very uncertain future.

OK. I have a quick question and a slower question. I will ask them both.

The quick question is, when you talk about Europe, does that include the UK or not? And the slower question, I mean, of course, the slower answer, is perhaps you have just described some issues or some aspects of how you see Europe’s position in this post-liberal, as we call it, world. How does the UK compare to Europe in this respect, in these dimensions that you have described?

One of the major differences between Britain and Europe is Britain’s far greater affinity with the United States, whereas this is not as pronounced in the other European countries on the European continent. Although Britain was involved in two world wars, both of which were fought on European soil, and although Britain has endured German bombing raids, Britain hasn’t been invaded since time immemorial. The last invasion of Britain was by the Normans in 1066.

So you have Britain’s constitution and its rule of law and its concept of freedom going back to the time of the Magna Carta. Britain has this long, stable creation of tradition, whereas in mainland Europe traditions have come and gone, they’ve been shattered by the friction between European nations and the clash of empires. So Britain is aligned with Europe in many ways, not just the proximity, you know, where the Enlightenment sort of took place between Scotland, Edinburgh is said to be the seat of the Enlightenment in Britain and the European continent.

Strong affinity between France and Scotland, you know, going back over centuries, strong ties between European and Scandinavian countries because of common ancestry and long-standing trade links. And yet, you know, in a way, Britain is separate. And has always looked east, you know, across the Atlantic to America.

I never quite understood why. Especially as America is probably a much greater success story in terms of multiculturalism than Britain, you know, and many nationalities are proud to be well represented in America, you know, Jews from Eastern Europe, the Irish, Italians, large immigrant populations from South America. So I can’t quite work out why Britain has this strong affinity with America as opposed to Europe.

Something I might have to delve into and study more.

Okay, but how this strong bond with the US is now seen, because we now see how Trump also seems to be at odds with the Labour government in London. And we see a political ally of the UK that seems to be cooperating with France and with Europe in general. The Weimar Triangle is expanding and supporting Ukraine, while Trump has a more complex position on Ukraine and gives the impression that he’s even pro-Russian, or his movement MAGA is pro-Russian.

So you say, let’s say, the general assumption is that the UK is pro-American, but we don’t see that at the moment. How do you explain that?

Well, I don’t know. I mean, certainly Keir Starmer has been quite prominent in the headlines in his cooperation with Macron and also with the German politicians in his support for Ukraine. He’s been far more, he hasn’t wavered in his support for Ukraine.

He’s been much less ambiguous than the Americans. I’m not entirely sure that Trump is entirely pro-Putin, but I can’t really explain Trump’s apparent affinity with Putin. But I still think that Britain is very, very dependent on America as a trading partner.

A lot of British manufactured goods go to America and vice versa. American business is very strong in Britain. Britain is a powerhouse in the manufacture of cars and pharmaceuticals and all sorts of British industries are heavily linked to America.

And just a long tradition, if you like, of being an American partner. Since the period immediately after the Second World War. So it’s almost embedded in modern British culture that we are, as you say, a devotee of America.

We’re now in a position where that position has to be radically rethought. And I can see Starmer vacillating, not knowing what to do in retaliation to Trump’s tariffs, saying that he has a lot of respect for Trump and likes him as an individual, and still making gestures that are favourable to the United States because he feels he doesn’t have a choice. But nevertheless, he is showing solidarity with Europe on the issues that are taking place on European soil, especially the Ukrainian crisis.

So I think Starmer is sort of stuck between a rock and a hard place, as we see in the West. He doesn’t quite know which way to go. He doesn’t quite know how much to stand up to Trump, whereas Macron or Carney, the new prime minister in Canada, are much more open and much more oppositional to Trump.

Starmer is playing a vacillating game. He doesn’t quite know how to react.

Okay, we are coming to the end of the discussion and I would like to repeat a question that I put very tentatively when I was talking about the European Empire. I tried to ask, um, we have progressive forces in our region, in the West, in the world, and we have this rise of the far right in many places around the world. We also have the dismantling of the liberal order, which Trump is doing, and you can already see it in the fact that some of the leading media, for example, which were somehow supported by the American government in various ways, have had to find another solution to continue to exist because certain money for them seems to have been stopped or is about to be stopped.

And in general, the progressive forces, at least in my region, were in a weak or very weak position, perhaps because there was no geopolitical force to support them, or perhaps because there was no economic base that could also support them in a stronger way. We’ve seen in my region the rise of business, corporations and oligarchs alike, in short, in this world that we’ve been moving towards for some time, and now it’s even accelerating to be created. Progressive forces need certain allies, certain social, economic, political, geopolitical bases, perhaps even.

I’m curious, the NGO sector is perhaps one of the possible forces for such support, but again the bigger question is who are the progressive forces interested in in their rise and who can they rely on in these conditions where we have, I mentioned social base, economic base, political base, geopolitical base, who are the allies of the progressives in these current conditions when even the US is sort of shrugging, if I can paraphrase the phrase, Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand.

What’s been very encouraging is the sheer number of people who have taken to the streets in the US, literally millions and millions and millions of ordinary people, which might suggest that opposition to what’s happening politically in the US is now galvanising. A lot of commentators have now said, okay, it’s difficult to predict the extent of the damage that Trump is going to do, but if we can somehow survive him, only good can come out of this, because he and his ilk, we can call them the oligarchy, I don’t know what to call them, have now shown their hand. Their ambitions have been laid bare.

They are causing considerable disruption to the political system, the public administration, the universities, the health system, the welfare system, all aspects of social administration in America. But as you say, if we can survive the shock, we will be in a position where we will be forced to review the weaknesses in these systems. We will be forced to think in a very incisive and critical way about the injustices that have prevailed for too long, primarily social inequality and the sheer power that these oligarchs have had over the political elites in America and to a lesser extent in the United Kingdom.

And it seems impossible to many commentators that Trump will return for a third term. He will be blocked. There’s a possibility that he won’t finish his current term.

He may be replaced. You know, the forces of democracy are now mobilising against them, and many commentators think that only good things can come out of this. One, we won’t see Trump or people like him again.

And secondly, we’ll be forced to face up to the failings of the current system and take them very seriously. And perhaps to answer the question you asked me, what will follow liberalism in its current state, in its current manifestation? Will liberalism be marked too, with phenomena like a national minimum income, you know, by a greater emphasis on welfare and support for those who live in precarious circumstances?

Who knows? But something has to happen. And I think Trump has shown the rot in the system, the very fact that someone like him could come to power shows the weakness of Western democracy in its current form.

So there’s a part of me that’s optimistic. There’s another part of me that’s terrified of what could happen in the world during Trump’s term.

Okay, I was asking you about the base from which progressive forces could emerge, and you drew my attention to the USA and what is going on in its internal contradiction, some even call it a mild form of civil war, in a way. I’m curious about something, maybe this is how our conversation will end. The last time we spoke, we had the opportunity to discuss the idea of a Bulgarian-Romanian mini-Schengen.

And I remember a word that you used to describe why the Bulgarian-Romanian mini-Schengen could be a good idea. You said that it could mean more self-determination for the countries. And now we have sovereigntists who sound as if they are trying to reclaim some territory for the national country of Romania or some other country in the region.

But at least for me, in the context of what we have been discussing for the last two hours, self-determination from a progressive point of view should not be the replacement of one hegemony with another. So if I replace the hegemony of American corporations or American oligarchs like Trump or other billionaires with some local Bulgarian or Romanian or other billionaire or influential company, it still does not change much. It is replacing one hegemony with another.

I’m curious, and I’ll repeat my question now, but perhaps in a better context for you to discuss. I’m curious about what self-determination might really be, what it might mean, what it might look like, and whether this current crisis of the centre that we’ve been discussing, both in the US and in the European Union, should not or does not really create the conditions for self-determination, not just in the sense of replacing one hegemony with another, but with a truly transformative self-determination.

And I’m just curious, knowing your experience with the people in my region and the institutions and issues that arise in the social sphere. Really, I repeat, what could this self-determination look like and how great are its chances of progressive, let’s call it, self-determination?

A very encouraging recent phenomenon has been the significant street protests in Serbia, ostensibly against the perceived level of corruption in the Serbian government. We’ve seen similar phenomena in Bulgaria in recent years, although the impact is questionable given the state of Bulgarian politics today. We’ve seen similar rumblings in Romania.

So there is this awakening and energisation, particularly among the younger generations here, for a style of politics that is, well, inevitably far less corrupt and far less in the service of the oligarchy, but also far more representative of the breadth and diversity of society. In the West, for example, one of the issues that’s been discussed for a long time is that the political systems have conspired to create sort of two-party situations, you know, the liberals in the United States, Labour and Conservatives in Britain, but increasingly these parties have started to resemble each other and there’s very little to distinguish between the two. A lot of this has to do with the phenomena I mentioned at the beginning of our conversation.

So we need a system of government and a system of political representation that, to put it very simply, is actually representative of what people think they’re actually voting for. I mean, across Europe and across America, across the United Kingdom, the number of people who actually vote has fallen drastically over many years, and then there are certain blips when it picks up again, but the level of disillusionment with a style of government is quite extreme. So you’re talking about a progressive movement, but I see the movement as being more mainstream, more and more of the population, as evidenced by these street protests in the United States and increasingly street protests in the UK.

The political system has to wake up and start answering to the ordinary voter in the street rather than being subservient to the oligarchy and corporate interests and other things. So I think what we’re seeing is an energisation and an emergence of anger, disillusionment in the population, which for a long time was just simmering and destructive, but now it’s taking a constructive form, I think. And I think we’re going to see more and more loud and hopefully effective demands for changes in the way our countries are governed, both here in Bulgaria, Romania, Southeastern Europe and in the West.

But I see a lot of the energy being demonstrated more effectively here in Eastern Europe at this point in time, probably because of the lethargy and the fatigue and the hubris and the inability to grasp what can happen. In the West we’re shy about these things, but I think what you’re hearing in Bulgaria and in Serbia and even in Moldova is a style of political opposition that’s more open and it’s something raw and something energetic and something almost heroic that I just don’t see in the West anymore.

Okay, for more than two hours now, we’ve been trying to think about the world while somehow being placed in a certain periphery, at least geographically, and I feel that it’s really important that times are changing, but we’ll really be able to feel and live the change when we’re able to name exactly what’s changing and how much and what’s changing in what way. So I would be happy if this conversation with Mr David Bissett really offers some ideas in this way, a contribution to a continuous and non-hegemonic conversation and reflection on the changing world. I know it sounds a bit banal that times are a-changing, as Bob Dylan sang, and many people say that there is change in the world, but very rarely is it concretised what exactly has changed, and in our case socialism or liberalism, even if they are no longer supported in the way they were some time ago by certain international entities as a set of ideas and practices and experiences, they remain valid, and it’s important to somehow reflect on and be enriched by the value and richness of both these ideas and practices and experiences, even when they fail, or perhaps especially when they fail to live up to their promise.

I am again grateful for this talk, David, and I hope we will continue this format of communication. I suppose you mentioned somewhere that you are thinking about what you are going to do in the third year that you are in. I’m in my second year, the age of being young.

I’d love to have more opportunities and opportunities and podcasts and to continue to think, to really continue to think, to continue to study and even to doubt our beliefs, because that’s the really amazing gift of humanity. So now I’ve settled my case here, let’s say. I have given you a series of challenges through this talk.

I have explored some ideas or interpretations that I have. I may also let you say some words to conclude, or we can end however you wish.

Thank you, Vladimir.

I hope we can continue our conversation. I mean, at times in the last few hours I’ve been hesitant, I’ve been uncertain, but perhaps through our discussions a greater certainty, a vision will emerge. I mean, I come from the West, and I sometimes look at Britain and Western Europe, you know, I’ve travelled and I’ve studied and I’ve had many relationships.

And I ask questions that I just can’t answer. And I think it’s because in the West everything is much more deeply embedded. Systems and ways of doing things and economic practices and social structures have been stable even though they have been threatened for generations.

So it’s hard to imagine how the radical scale of change that’s needed now can actually take place. Living here in the Balkans all the time, looking at what’s happening in Bulgaria, talking to young people, especially communicating with friends and colleagues in the neighbouring countries, I see the signs of a new way of doing things. And I see things that excite me and encourage me and fill me with hope.

So yes, let’s continue our discussions.

OK. Thanks to the listeners for staying with this discussion this long. Hope, I think, is also the ability to find common ground with others.

And in some ways, myself and my partner in this discussion, David, may be very different, but I really felt that we had common ground in this conversation and that we were reflecting in a shared, mutual and collaborative way. So I hope you have enjoyed this conversation.

Photo: David Bisset (source: YouTube)

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