making and the Secretariat for policy
implementation are the true centers of power in the overall
party-government system. The Central Committee is an operating body and
is made up of important members of the party, although they rank below
the small group that has reached the top echelons of the structure. It
is the interlocking of various party and government positions that
really concentrates power in the hands of a few individuals and permits
the ultimate leader, Zhivkov, to control the entire apparatus. Zhivkov
himself is an example of the interlocking in that, since 1971, he has
been the first secretary of the party and a member of the Politburo at
the same time that he was the president of the governmental State
Council. Only one other individual in 1973 combined membership in the
party's most prestigious bodies--Politburo and Secretariat--with
membership in the government's leading body--the State Council. Two
other party secretaries were candidate (nonvoting) members of the
Politburo, but they did not concurrently hold any high government
office.

The government established under the Dimitrov Constitution, as changed
by the Constitution of 1971, is the instrument through which the party
administers the country. The central government consists, essentially,
of the National Assembly, the State Council, and the Council of
Ministers. The unicameral National Assembly is described in the
constitution as "a supreme body of state power," whereas the State
Council is described as "a supreme constantly functioning body of state
power." In practice, if one or the other were to be described as the
single supreme body of state power, it would be the State Council, the
membership of which in 1973 included seven (out of twenty-four) members
or candidate members of the party Politburo and the operations of which,
during its first two years of existence, have stamped it with the mark
of supreme authority.

The role of the National Assembly as a legislative body is circumscribed
by the infrequency of its meetings. The assembly is popularly elected
from a single list of nominees at five-year intervals, but it is
required to meet only three times annually. The sessions of the assembly
are usually so brief that it functions as an after-the-fact approving
body rather than as a legislature. The development and initiation of new
legislation, therefore, is handled outside of the actual legislature,
primarily by the State Council and