This book argues that the relationship between political parties, civil service and party insider groups in Bulgaria is oligarchic. It also argues that these oligarchic dynamics overlap with the parentela policy network, which is a relationship where a ruling party interferes with the civil service to the benefit of its own insider group. In Bulgaria, party-wide executive appointments attract businesses to seek insider status hoping to expand their activities through prejudiced regulatory inspections as one form of executive interference. Such inspections constitute a veiled attempt to coerce a business, which is in a direct market competition with the party insider or in party political opposition. Any