The Challenges of Post-Soviet Transformation in Georgia: Democratization and Its External and Domestic Rivals

David Matsaberidze

Abstract


The democratization process in Georgia, starting with the dissolution of the Soviet Union and declaring independence in 1991, has come through the rocky terrain, with ups and downs, struggling with the internal (nationalism, ethnic fragmentation, state weakness and fragility, weak party-politics) and external (Russia’s grip on the Near Abroad, hence on Georgia in the geopolitically strategic region of the South Caucasus, intersection of the great powers’ interests and proxy clashes in the region in general and in Georgia in particular) challenges. This paper claims that the challenges of democratization process in Georgia should be highlighted at the intersection of external and internal threats; hence the widely acclaimed visions of triple (see: Offe, 2004) and quadruple (see: Kuzio, 2001) models of transformation describing the processes of democratization under state-building and nation-building processes should be pinned down to the analysis of causes of fragmentation of [political] public sphere in order to uncover intersections of the internal and external threats to democracy, which have undermined the process of democratization and unleashed the trends of populism and illiberalism. 


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