Introduction to Special Selection: Georgia at the Crossroads (Again)

June 24, 2024

Spring in Georgia has been defined by mass youth-led protests in the diligent defense of a “European future” once thought unquestionable by the Georgian public and legislature. After being branded as an exemplary “young democracy” in the region and encouraged in its European and Euro-Atlantic aspirations by Western partners, Georgia is now in the spotlight for its swift democratic deterioration and backsliding. Following local and international calls for systematic institutional reforms, the Georgian Dream (GD)-dominated Parliament has instead adopted a controversial, Russian-style “foreign agents” law. The legislation stipulates that media and civil society organizations receiving more than 20 percent of their funds from abroad register as carriers of “the interests of a foreign power.”  Applicable to most of the organizations in the country, the law was extended to affiliated individuals in the later stages of parliamentary discussion, increasing its potential harm and prompting a massive public outcry in the streets of Tbilisi. Promulgating an anti-Western manifesto defining internal and external foes, governing party executives have publicly opposed the Georgian President (once their nominee), discarded extensive international caveats about the process of law adoption, and swiftly overridden a presidential veto, condemning the tens of thousands who expressed their discontent and declaring the “defense of state sovereignty.”  The current political situation represents Georgia’s most critical and consequential juncture since reinstating independence.

The adoption of the foreign agents’ law is tied to Georgia's broader internal and external identity and the direction of its policy orientation. Recent years have been defined by discussions on Georgia’s European identity and the constitutional enshrinement of a Western trajectory, both under a palpable threat. Against this backdrop, the law acted as a defining line between “pro-Europeanness” and “pro-Russianness,” a juxtaposition that in turn stands for internal perceptions of democratic versus authoritarian inclinations. Such divisions have bedeviled Georgia's post-Soviet experience, with its external alliances corresponding to domestic polarization on cultural, religious, and identity matters. In this context, the governing regime is increasingly being labeled as pro-Russian. The ruling party has intensified its exclusionary narratives and undemocratic on the basis of citizens’ alleged “pseudo-liberalism” and “radicalism.”  While the country has been heavily dependent on Western support, both for economic and social development, this is now being “compensated” by the increasing presence of Chinese capital and friendly overtures from Orban-led Hungary.

The passage of the foreign agents' bill comes in an election year, at a time when the ruling party’s popularity has been declining in the polls and there is increasing disillusionment with party politics. Few Georgians believe that the Georgian Dream party represents their interests – in recent polling, only 19 percent of Georgians identified it as the party closest to preferences. But there has been little support for Georgia’s opposition parties either. The former ruling party, the United National Movement (UNM), still draws limited support, but most respondents demur when asked about their favored party (47 percent say that no party is close to them, 13 percent refuse to answer, and 6 percent do not know). The electoral effect of the new legislation is not yet clear. On the one hand, it could signal that the Georgian Dream government does not believe it can withstand the scrutiny of an electoral cycle without diminishing media and watchdog organizations, whose reporting might sway voter opinion against it. On the other hand, popular response to the law has been so overwhelmingly negative that it has accomplished a feat that has seemed impossible for the last decade – providing the opposition with momentum and reason to unite against the ruling party. 

The events of spring 2024 in Georgia reflect many of the themes that Nationalities Papers authors have engaged with over the years: the role of external actors – Russia, the West, and others – in Georgian politics; narratives about Georgian identity, especially as it balances its European trajectory with traditional values; the role of governance in hybrid or partly free regimes; and the limitations of both popular mobilization and government repression in those contexts. Georgia, was the site of the first colored revolution in a former Soviet space, and contains many contradictory impulses: public protest and popular outcry persist alongside apathy and disengagement; civil society is strong but nonetheless disengaged from the broader population; the authorities are sometimes receptive to challenges, yet also willing to repress with ferocity. The summer and fall of 2024 are unlikely to see any resolution of these contradictions; nonetheless, this year’s events will fall into the pantheon of critical junctures that have marked Georgia’s political development since 1991. 

- Nino Gozalishvili (The University of Georgia) and Julie George (City University of New York).

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