Democracy Promotion and the Challenges of Illiberal Regional Powers by Nelli Babayan & Thomas Risse

Author:Nelli Babayan & Thomas Risse [Babayan, Nelli & Risse, Thomas]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781138654532
Google: 5qGpjgEACAAJ
Goodreads: 27783726
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2016-04-08T00:00:00+00:00

Democratization in Georgia and Ukraine: limited impact of democracy promotion

Democracy promotion is only effective when there is a receptive domestic constituency. In this respect, Georgia and Ukraine demonstrate “the ability of external actors to deal with changing local context”,28 and adjust to specific domestic conditions in each country. Despite shared Soviet-era legacies and the experience of “electoral revolutions”, Georgia and Ukraine have differed in terms of democratization agendas and actors, including veto players. Yet, both the US and EU have been relatively inattentive to the domestic dynamics, reacting hesitantly and belatedly to events, despite their proclaimed aims in the region.

In Georgia, both the EU and the US have (at least initially) assumed that the Rose Revolution would be an irreversible shift toward democratization. Yet, as captured in the literature,29 while improving in terms of governance, the country failed to build representative institutions and to ensure the participation of civil society in the policy dialogue. The wide-ranging reform process which developed after the Rose Revolution actually concentrated power in the president’s hands. External democracy promoters continued to support those individuals and organizations they had supported before 2004, thus failing to fully take domestic developments into account.30 Under Saakashvili, the EU was more outspoken on democratic setbacks and placed a greater emphasis on the need for checks and balances than the US.31 Despite shortcomings in the democratization process, the US has unconditionally supported the Georgian president for geopolitical purposes.32 The bulk of US assistance to Georgia was focussed on economic and military support rather than democracy promotion.33 However, even if belatedly, the current USAID country strategy for Georgia acknowledges both the shortcomings in the democratization process under Saakashvili and the politicized use of US assistance in Georgia.34

More recent domestic developments in Georgia highlight persisting dilemmas for external democracy promoters. In the October 2012 parliamentary elections, President Saakashvili’s United National Movement lost to the Georgian Dream of Bidzina Ivanishvili. This was welcomed by both the EU and the US as the first democratic transfer of power in Georgia in free and fair elections. Both Brussels and Washington exerted strong pressure on the president and the new prime minister to ensure a smooth transition. However, the growing polarization of political life again exacerbated tensions in the run-up to the 2013 presidential elections. In addition, the imprisonment of key political figures of the Saakashvili period (including former Prime Minister Merabishvili), the arrest of the former mayor of Tbilisi Gigi Ugulava, and the filing of criminal charges against the former president raised Western actors’ concerns about the use of the judiciary as a political tool. On several occasions, EU leaders warned Georgia against selective justice. However, the EU was mainly driven by the desire to turn the EaP into a success story prior to the Vilnius Summit in November 2013. Georgia is one of the three countries which signed the Association Agreement/DCFTA and, despite concerns over the political use of the judiciary, the new authorities have been performing quite well in terms of regulatory alignment with EU acquis.

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