Georgia's ongoing struggle for a better future continued: democracy promotion through civil society development

Abstract

To provide long-term democracy development assistance, foreign actors need to develop a medium through which such assistance will be provided. The NGO community which emerged in Georgia in the 1990s fulfilled this function. It was envisaged as developing into a civil society, but turned out to be elitist and politicized. The role that the NGO community was able to play in Georgia's democratization was weakened by the fact that the community was expected to be politically impartial and to achieve a political result at the same time. During the Rose Revolution, democracy promotion was channelled through the NGO community, and contributed to a change of power, but democracy did not follow. After the Rose Revolution, democracy promotion weakened. Despite the fact that a new wave of political protests during 2007–2008 provided another opportunity for Georgia to accomplish a democratic transition, foreign actors did not play the same role as they did before. The change in approach of the foreign actors can be explained not only by political considerations, but also by the fact that the international community had weak personal, organizational and ideological links with the new wave of the pro-democracy movement.

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