Agrarian governance - the case of Bulgaria

The term governance is widely used in a number of scientific disciplines, as well as by international, state, business, non-governmental, etc. organizations. The interdisciplinary New Institutional Economics has contributed greatly to the modern understanding of the nature and factors of governance in general, and of governance in individual areas of social activity and levels of analysis – from the governance of individual transactions to the governance of global affairs. Almost ninety years after the “discovery” of transaction costs by Coase (1937) and the “reasons” for the existence of economic organizations of different types, today this “new” methodology is an integral part of the general (mainstream) economic theory and analysis. Of course, Williamson (1985) - in operationalizing this concept, and North (1991) - in revealing the role of institutions in economic development, significantly contributed to the development of the New Institutional Economics. Many other economists have also made a great contribution to the development of this new "branch" of economic science, which has been well summarized by Furubotn and Richter (2005) and Ménard and Shirley (2022). The author of this study was among the first to adapt the achievements of the New Institutional Economics in the analysis of agrarian governance and institutional modernization in Bulgaria (Bachev, 1996) and elsewhere (Bachev, 1995). Over the past three decades, Bulgarian economists have made numerous publications with analyses of the forms, factors, effectiveness and evolution of the governance of the main types of agrarian transactions, farmer organizations, and levels of governance during the period of transformation, pre-accession and full membership of the country in the European Union (https://agro-governance.alle.bg/#). Here we would like to underline our close cooperation with the leading scholars in the institutional analysis of agrarian contracts and organizations from the University of Missouri in the USA, which began in 1992 and has been deepening to the present day. We are especially grateful to Michael Cook and Michael Sykuta for their training, inspiration, continuous support and long-term cooperation. The paper presents the results of current research in the field of agrarian governance in Bulgaria. Without claiming to be comprehensive, it provides an idea of the Bulgarian experience in agrarian governance, and of the modest Bulgarian contribution to the implementation of the institutional analysis of the modes and mechanisms of agrarian governance. First, a holistic approach to understanding and analysing agrarian governance is presented. Then, the economic role of agrarian contracts is revealed, their types are classified, and an approach to assessing their effectiveness is presented. This is followed by an assessment of the quality of the system of agrarian governance in Bulgaria at the present stage of development. Then, an analysis of the governance and contractual structures of major functional areas of Bulgarian farms is made. Then, the forms, factors and effectiveness of land and labour supplies in Bulgarian farms are identified. The identification of modes, factors and efficiency of the provision of ecosystem services by the Bulgarian farms follows. After that, the levels and evolution of governance efficiency of Bulgarian farms are evaluated. Then, a holistic assessment of the comparative and absolute competitiveness of Bulgarian farms is made. Finally, the state, evolution, efficiency and factors of governance of agricultural inclusion in sustainable wastewater management in Bulgaria are presented.