Speaking power to power: Grassroots democracy in the anti-fracking movement in Bulgaria

The anti-fracking movement (AFM) in Bulgaria, was a successful grassroots local-to-national organizing effort to change public policy. The study draws on social movements, community psychology, and grassroots democracy theory to explore, describe and critique how participants in the AFM collectively constructed meanings and practices of organizing in interaction with the sociopolitical context as they expanded their efforts from the local to the national level of policy-making. Data for the study were collected from semi-structured interviews with activists, movement documents, and participant observations. Structured and open coding followed by qualitative analyses produced descriptions and explanations of grassroots democracy in the movement. The movement was based on a prefigurative vision and practice of an antihierarchical “civic society” and was also shaped by the demands of the Bulgarian political context. Power, consent, and participation had dynamic meanings and forms that secured both grassroots democracy and effective political action. Тhe AFM resisted well-known mechanisms of hierarchization and co-optation, but it also reproduced certain inequalities of power. The findings relate to recent trends for expansion of community organizing to the national level of politics, for expansion of the community organizing models outside the United States, and for a popular grassroots preference for anti-organizational organizing.