Freedom, Faith and Development: Revisiting Bulgaria’s Historical Backwardness Through Amartya Sen’s Capability Approach

This article reinterprets Bulgaria’s historical backwardness through Amartya Sen’s concept of development as the expansion of substantive freedoms. The study integrates Sen’s capability framework with historical accounts of Bulgarian Orthodoxy and economic culture. Drawing on Amartya Sen, Martha Nussbaum, Daniela Kalkandjieva, Blagoy Kolev, and Venelin Makrides, as well as Max Weber’s classical thesis, the article examines how Orthodox cultural and institutional legacies have shaped freedoms in education, political participation, entrepreneurship, transparency, and security. The methodology combines conceptual analysis with historical-institutional reconstruction. Results indicate that Bulgarian backwardness is best understood as a long-term deficit in freedoms, rather than as a mere lag in industrialization. The novelty of the article lies in connecting Sen’s capability approach with the specificities of Bulgarian Orthodoxy and economic culture, thereby reframing the religion–economy debate beyond Weberian binaries.