Abstract
In 2003 and 2018, mass protests triggered the collapse of authoritarian regimes in Georgia and Armenia, respectively. In both cases, civil society organizations (CSOs) played an important role in laying the groundwork and organizing the protests. Following the toppling of semi-autocratic leaders, reform-oriented governments took over in both countries. Yet, the way civil society engaged the new rulers differed considerably. Whereas in Georgia, former civil society leaders were often absorbed into the new government, Armenian civil society has kept its distance from the new political leadership. In this paper, we attempt to explain why state-civil society relations after the revolutions have developed in different directions in these two Soviet successor states. We argue that three conditions explain differences in engagement with the new governments: CSOs pre-revolutionary cooperation with the political opposition, Western governments support for civil society before and after the political transitions, and the degree to which CSOs represent and are rooted in the general public. As a consequence, Georgia’s post-revolutionary regime lacked the checks and balances that CSOs usually provide, allowing it to sacrifice democratization on the altar of modernization. In Armenia, in contrast, CSOs have maintained a critical stance and continued to hold the government accountable.
Highlights
In the 1990s, an avalanche of studies on civil society began to fill bookshelves and academic journals
Taking into account the tremendous amount of financial aid and technical assistance Western governments have invested in the development of civil society organizations (CSOs) around the world, it is somewhat surprising, and arguably disappointing, that little work has been done to assess whether that effort has paid off in the long run
We will look closer at the degree to which civil society has been able to bolster democratic institutions in our two countries, and why the external and internal effects of civil society on democratic developments in Armenia and Georgia have varied following the toppling of authoritarian regimes
Summary
In the 1990s, an avalanche of studies on civil society began to fill bookshelves and academic journals. After the collapse of the Eastern Bloc, civil society was hailed by many democratization scholars (Cohen and Arato 1994; Linz and Alfred Stepan 1996; Diamond 1999) and development practitioners as the harbinger of democratic transition and consolidation in the post-communist region and the world at large International development organizations, such as the World Bank, the United Nations Development Programme, and the United States Agency for International Development embraced the concept (McIlwaine 1998) and provided generous funding for strengthening CSOs. Influenced by neo-Tocquevillian liberal emphasis on voluntary associations and looking for tangible entities to support, the development industry primarily focused on non-governmental and nonprofit organizations (Lewis 2001; Mandel 2012).
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