This paper proposes an analytical framework for assessing long-term state viability under a deficit of continuity. Using Bulgaria as the primary case, it argues that state viability depends not only on demography, productivity, territory, state capacity, and external integration, but also on the degree to which policy direction, administrative persistence, and institutional execution are maintained across political cycles. The paper introduces continuity as an operating variable linking state viability to agency and develops a diagnostic Continuity Index framework intended to make gradual erosion observable even where direct continuity data are absent. The argument is diagnostic rather than predictive: it does not claim deterministic forecasting, but seeks to clarify the structural conditions under which a shrinking state may retain, weaken, or lose the capacity for long-horizon action. Bulgaria is used as the central case because it combines demographic decline, repeated political disruption, limited long-term strategic persistence, and continued embeddedness in European institutional structures.
Konstantin Botev (Thu,) studied this question.