The popular debate over the status of ethnopop (chalga or popfolk) points to a problem within the current expansion of the EU to the post-socialist Balkans: whether democracy can exist without certain forms of civil society. Ethnopop is unequivocally marked with the traditional stigma of the Balkans: ethnic politics and a Mafia economy. But to condition democratization only on the development of civil society is to ignore the primacy of ethnopop (as well as other popular Balkan cultures) over public institutions, political parties, or local NGOs as the sphere through which 'weak' and 'counter' publics (such as Roma, Bulgarian Turks, LGBT, and rural and post-industrial poor) can effectively break their political invisibility and seek democratic empowerment.