1. The king, who is head of the army and navy, has the supreme executive power and can appoint and dismiss ministers, can prorogue Parliament but not for longer than two months, and can dissolve Parliament. The King may issue regulations and order measures, having the obligatory force of laws, whenever the State is threatened with immediate internal or external danger. All such measures, however, must be adopted by the Cabinet Council, and entail the collective responsibility of all the ministers. They must be submitted to the approval of the National Assembly in the course of its earliest session. A special section of the Constitution expressly forbids the levying, by means of such extraordinary regulations, of new taxes or duties, the National Assembly having alone the right to impose them.
2. The National Assembly, elected by manhood suffrage through a secret ballot. Every deputy has the right to make propositions and to introduce bills, if he is supported by one-fourth of the members present. The National Assembly may amend the bills and propositions introduced by the Government. The deputies have the right to make interpellations. By means of this, the deputies can force individual ministers or the entire Government to explain their line of conduct and to state their intentions on some special matter, or as regards their general policy. The National Assembly may appoint commissions of inquiry or institute inquiries as regards the conduct of the Government. It may submit to the Crown special addresses.
There is no Upper House, but for special occasions a "Grand National Assembly" is convoked. This has the same composition as the ordinary National Assembly, and its members are elected in the same way. The only difference between the two is that the number of members of a Grand National Assembly is twice that of the ordinary National Assembly, every electoral unit of 20,000 inhabitants sending two deputies instead of one. The Grand National Assembly may decide only those matters which have necessitated its convocation. A Grand National Assembly is called in the following cases:
1. To decide questions of exchanging or ceding a portion of the territory of Bulgaria.
2. To revise the Constitution.
3. To elect a new Prince when the reigning family becomes extinct, owing to absence of descendants who can occupy the throne.
4. To appoint regents during the minority of the heir to the throne.
5. To authorise the Prince to accept the government of another State.
Every Order must bear, in addition to the signature of the Prince, that of one minister or of all the ministers, these latter being the responsible representatives of the executive authority. The ministers are held responsible to the Prince and to the National Assembly for all their acts. This responsibility is collective for all the ministers in the case of measures which have been decided by the Council of Ministers, and individual with respect to the acts of the ministers as heads of the various State Departments.
What I have described represents in effect a complete system of representative and responsible government. But observation of Bulgarian politics during and since the war has suggested to me that the King and his ministers really can exercise a practical oligarchy: and it is probably necessary that they should.