Components of the Georgian National Idea: an Outline

No Abstrac

What Georgians think about the Armenian Revolution

Armenia's "velvet revolution" will hardly have any direct impact on Georgia or on the state of Georgian–Armenian relations. However, the events that unfolded in their neighboring country fascinated and amazed the Georgians, even though they did not yet understand the significance of the events. The two countries share important similarities, and both use the other as a point of reference. Many Georgians compared the unfolding events in Armenia with their own "Rose Revolution" in 2003, as well as the two Ukrainian revolutions - the "Orange" and Euromaidan, in 2004 and 2014, respectively. Those revolutions mark critical points in the histories of these countries, albeit in different respects. How can Armenia change, and if it does, how will Georgians view those changes? I will discuss those questions from two perspectives: that of regional balance of power and that of the development of democratic institutions

Klumme: EU’s voksende troværdighedsunderskud

Intet resum

Democracy and its Deficits: The path towards becoming European-style democracies in Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine. CEPS Working Document No. 2017/12, December 2017

Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine are three participating states of the European Partnership that have chosen to conclude Association Agreements with the European Union, often at the expense of relations with their most powerful neighbour, Russia. They are also rather similar in their levels of democratic development. Within a post-Soviet space, they stand out for their relatively high level of democratic freedoms and political pluralism; none of them, however, can be considered a consolidated democracy, and most analysts describe them as uncertain or hybrid political regimes that combine features of autocracy and democracy. This paper offers a comparative analysis of the three countries’ political systems and aims to interpret both the roots of their relative success, and the nature of the deficits that prevent them from consolidating their democratic institutions. Among these deficits are problems stemming from ethnic, regional and cultural conflicts; strong and weak features in their general constitutional systems; the links between democratic development and government capacity to produce public goods; state capture (including control over the most influential media organisations) by powerful oligarchs and endemic corruption; underdevelopment of political parties and party systems; insufficient trust towards institutions of electoral democracy and a resulting propensity to use extra-constitutional means of political struggle. Civil society organisations have also failed penetrate the wider public and the anti-liberal discourse of traditionally dominant churches and anti-Western media and civil society groups is often supported by Russia. Despite these structural challenges, the commitment to European values and norms demonstrated by societies in these three countries gives hope that they can eventually consolidate their democratic institutions. It is argued that closer ties to the EU are important in explaining their relatively high level of democratic development. For this reason, the consistent and enhanced commitment of the European Union to this region is crucial to their continued success in this area

'Supra is not for women' : hospitality practices as a lens on gender and social change in Georgia

Peer reviewe

The Struggle for Good Governance in Eastern Europe. CEPS Paperback, 27 September 2018

This volume forms part of a wider project on the European Union’s Association Agreements (AAs) and Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Areas (DCFTAs) with Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine. These agreements serve as the cornerstone of the EU’s ambitious strategy to help anchor these three states into what they themselves call their “European choice”. They are comprehensive in scope and content, with an equal weight attached to both political and economic aspects. This broad landscape of issues has been analysed systematically in three Handbooks, now appearing in their second editions.1 The present volume picks up on the key political aspects in greater depth, and does so with a comparative approach taking all three cases together. The task has been to go through the critical determinants of, and obstacles hindering ‘good governance’, including constitutional aspects and hazards for the process such as the oligarchs, pervasive corruption and the unique geo-political situation in which the three states find themselves in between the EU and Russia. As with the three ‘Handbooks’, this present volume was produced by research teams from four independent think tanks, CEPS in Brussels, Reformatics in Tbilisi, Expert-Grup in Chisinau and the Institute for Economic Research and Policy Consulting in Kyiv. While much of the content of the Handbook is undoubtedly rather dry, we hope that the reader will appreciate the lighter touch in the artwork of Constantin Sunnerberg, which graces the introductory page of each chapter