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In this article Maria Manolova has studied the changes in the structure of representative local government in Bulgaria between 1878 and 1944, in its juridical and historical aspects. The article analyses the structure and competence of the elected local authorities, built around the commune as the basic unit of government, and the attempts by the central government to exercise control over them. The resulting legislation on local government reflects the tensions between the two opposed principles of centralization and decentralization of government. The article reviews the principle legislative Act over the period and how their content was shaped by these competing principles and by the pragmatic needs of the political parties in their competion for power. But despite the fluctuations in the legislation, culminating in the strongly centralist decree-law of 1934, the concept of the commune as the basic institution of popular local self-government in Bulgaria has survived.
