Democracy from Below? Interest Groups in Georgian Society

Abstract

The Georgian state, almost destroyed by two secessionist wars, a civil war, and an economic catastrophe, had by 1997 reestablished an orderly political life. The messianic rhetoric of the early postindependence years was replaced by a new language of civic values and pluralism. The former Soviet nomenklatura—never really ousted by the revolution or subject to lustration laws—had joined old cultural elites, industrial managers, new entrepreneurs, and intellectually minded modernizers in a heterogeneous political class. Though fractious and facing new challenges to its authority from the media, international nongovernmental organizations, and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), this new political class began to mediate Georgian economic and political life. Society remained fragmented, but structural changes in the economy, the Georgian leadership's restoration of order, and the activities of international nongovernmental organizations, generated embryonic interest groups and indigenous nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) with claims on government policy. Today, policy conflicts are no longer just the domain of autonomous state structures, but multicornered fights—albeit unequal ones—that extend into Georgian society.