Paths towards Democratization: Social and Political Struggles in Georgia since its Independence

Abstract
The talk will mainly focus on the turbulent process of democratization in Georgia since its independence. It will try to analyze the main turning points in Georgia’s recent past and try to link it to the upcoming challenge of becoming a member of the European Union and NATO - which the country is aspiring for after the rose revolution. Elections, civil society, government, and NGOs are the main actors in this process. In the last couple of years, Georgia has demonstrated a capacity for a huge self-organizing, long-term peaceful protest against any type of Russian influence that might have taken place and expressed its will to be integrated with European institutions. However, the geopolitical situation complicates this path as well as the model of governance that we witness nowadays. Although there has been clear progress after Georgia’s independence in the way governments change (1992 through civil war, 2003 through peaceful revolution, and 2012 through constitutional elections) it is still an emerging democracy and a hybrid regime. Regular change of power through elections is crucial but not a sufficient precondition for democratic rule. It is also necessary to empower social institutions, civil society, support freedom of expression, value pluralism, etc. Political pluralism and differentiation of ruling powers still seem to be a challenge in Georgia. In the past three decades, each time the change of the ruling party meant a change of a political elite that was excluding their predecessors and claiming to start everything from a new page, and this time differently. 

Speaker bio
Irakli Dekanozishvili is a Ph.D. Candidate at the University of Münster. Since 2019 he is a member of the cluster "Democracy, Human Rights, and Religion" - An international interdisciplinary structured program that focuses to research basic social, philosophical, and normative questions of modern, plural democracies from a philosophical and social-theoretical perspective. Irakli’s research focuses on the questions of social and political philosophy, a theory of democracy, and good governance. Furthermore, his interests consist of examining and analyzing political, economic, and security developments in the South Caucasus region and Ukraine. He has been teaching courses at Ilia State University (Tbilisi) since 2015 on the subject of political philosophy and applied ethics.