1. Promoting Democracy?
Political Parties and Western
Democracy Promotion in Georgia
Work in progress, May 2009
Joel Lazarus, DPhil candidate
Dept of Politics & International Relations,
University of Oxford

2. Caveats…
• ‘…if democracy cannot answers
Preliminary analysis and be consolidated in
• Sacrificing details for comprehensiveness
Georgia, it is not clear where it can be
• Food for discussion and thought…
consolidated. As difficult as the challenges are, the
outlook in Georgia still looks brighter than in most
of the rest of the nondemocratic world’
Lincoln Mitchell (2008: 6)

3. Georgia’s democratic potential
Cons avoided:
‘…if democracy cannot be consolidated in
 Natural resource wealth (Ross 2001)
 Oligarchic it is not clear (?) (Stefes 2006) be
Georgia, economic structure where it can
 Clan party politics (Collinsas the challenges are, the
consolidated. As difficult 2002)
 Ethnic party politics (Barany & Moser 2005)
outlook in Georgia still looks brighter than in most
 Military as autonomous political force (Geddes 1999)
of the rest of the nondemocratic world’
Lincoln Mitchell (2008: 6)

4. Georgia’s democratic potential
Pros:
 Good social indicators: high literacy rates and education levels
 Open to effects of democratic “diffusion” (Whitehead 1996;
Brinks & Coppedge 2005) and of “linkage” (Levitsky & Way
2002).
 Unchallenged ideological position of democracy
 Pro-democratic revolution and explicitly pro-democratic
leadership
 The largest regional per capita beneficiary of democracy
promotion and development aid
 If Finkel et al (2007) are right we should see positive outcomes
in Georgia.

5. ‘…if democracy cannot be consolidated in
Georgia, it is not clear where it can be
consolidated. As difficult as the challenges
are, the outlook in Georgia still looks brighter
than in most of the rest of the nondemocratic
world’
Lincoln Mitchell (2008: 6)

6. Opposition politician clashes
with riot police, May 6th 2009

7. Georgian politics since independence
• Civil war 1992-3
• No constitutional transfer of power
• Post-Rose Revolution (November 2003)
 Media/NGO repression
 Electoral fraud and intimidation
 Large-scale protests violently crushed
 Opposition boycott of parliament
 Current street protests and violence
 Intense polarisation of party politics

8. Georgia’s political parties
Georgian parties’ traits accord with Carothers’ (2006: 4) ‘standard
lament’ about political parties in ‘new or struggling democracies’
around the world
Salient traits
• Highly centralised, leader-centric organisations
• Ideological vagueness: nationalism as dominant ideological
force
• Informal “rules of the game”
• Opaque, illicit financing
• Personal insults and violence instead of debate
• Dominant ruling parties: administrative resource, patron-client
networks, electoral fraud

9. The research question
Why, after almost two decades of
independence, do Georgia’s political parties
and party system remain so weakly
institutionalised?

10. Research methods
Qualitative methods and techniques:
• Primary and secondary literature sources
• Semi-structured interviews with:
• Georgian political elites; NGO leaders; academics
• Western aid donors, providers, diplomats
• Elite interviewing
• Process tracing
• Discourse analysis
Secondary quantitative data
• Data collection on aid flows

11. Political parties as bellweather of
democracy
Parties – the indispensable element
• Schmitter 1999:
• Symbolic integration – policy and ideology choices
• Electoral structuration – recruiting citizens into electoral
campaigns and public office
• Governing function – forming governments and providing
internal structure to legislative process
• Aggregative function – aggregating and articulating voters’
preferences
• Representation – linking citizens to political system
- the ‘demos’ to democracy

12. Standard definitions of party and party
system institutionalisation
Institutions:
‘[R]ules and procedures that structure social interaction by constraining
and enabling actors’ behaviour’ (Helmke & Levitsky 2006: 5)
Institutionalisation:
the process by which the rules of the political game are established
and politicians’ and parties’ behaviour becomes patterned and
predictable
…Rules and behaviour

13. Weakly institutionalised parties
Internal External
Structural systemness decisional autonomy
Attitudinal value infusion reification
Randall & Svåsand 2002: 7
Almost almost parties, even the ruling party, score very poorly agains
all but the ‘decisional autonomy’ dimension…

14. Weakly institutionalised party system
Process or rules-focused approach:
• Stability of formal rules of the game:
constitution, electoral code (Cox 1997;
Bielasiak 2002)
Party-focused approach
• Stability of system components – parties
(Pedersen 1979; Laakso & Taagepera’s ENEP
1979; Mainwaring & Scully 1995)

15. Incumbents build dominant party: Opposition seeks
clientelism; administrative resource; to oust
electoral fraud government by
any means
Informally patterned and
predictable:
The vicious cycle of
Power changes
‘Zero-sum’ unconstitutional politics in hands through
politics: Georgia?... unconstitutional
means. Those
win by any linked to former
means regime are
punished
Incumbents’
fear of
retribution

16. “The mistakes of the past should be analyzed so as
not to get locked in the same vicious circle
tomorrow…How long should the authorities and
the opposition compete with each other in
radicalism?”
Giorgi Targamadze,
Leader of Christian Democratic Party
6th March, 2009

17. Preliminary answers
Domestic variables
• Formal institutionalist explanations often confuse cause with
effect (endogeneity)
• e.g. constitutional or electoral code choices, amendments not made in a
political vacuum
• Poor leadership (agentic factors) best explained by structural
factors
• Georgia’s structural factors explain why charismatic, impulsive leaders
with authoritarian tendencies come to power
 Alternative socially-grounded, “substantive”
approach/definition of party and party system
institutionalisation

18. Preliminary answers
Domestic variables continued…
• Path-dependency
• Political
• No early experience of democratic politics
• Socio-economic
• Pre-Soviet feudalism
• Late and limited urbanisation/industrialisation
• Bureaucratic
• No tradition of rational bureaucratic governance
 Soviet: ‘patrimonial communism’ (Kitschelt et al 1999)
• Bureaucratic/governance - patron-client structures, fiefdoms
• Social – privatisation of social sphere
 Post-Soviet: weak social cleavages -> weak citizen-party
linkages
 Weak party and party system institutionalisation

19. Preliminary answers
Domestic variables continued…
• Political culture inimical to party institutionalisation/
democratic development
• Low levels of organisation/mobilisation;
• Very low levels of trust in parties, other political institutions;
• Lack of pro-democratic values: tolerance, self-reliance,
restraint

20. Preliminary answers
Domestic variables continued…
• Territorial/sovereignty issues
• Nationalism dominates political scene
• Ruling party/president stress need for unity
• Political opponents dismissed as traitors
• War and political instability inimical to general
processes of social and economic development

21. Preliminary answers
International variables
Western democracy promotion aid and diplomacy
• ‘Political democracy promotion’ (Carothers 2009) –
backing “reformers” to exclusion of all others
• Ignoring, even praising unfree and unfair elections
• Ignoring constitutional/electoral code manipulations
• (Perceived?) shift in funding from CS/media to direct
government support after Rose Revolution

22. Inherent tension in Western democracy
promotion foreign policy and diplomacy
Self-interest trumps principled foreign policy
• Stability rather than democracy/HR the objective
 Political democracy promotion – individuals over
values
 Ignoring democratic/hr transgressions
 Hypocrisy
 Democracy discredited

23. Understanding the current political crisis
Systemic crisis
• US/EU backing to revolutionary government
 Greatly diminished sense of domestic accountability
 Constitutional and electoral code manipulation
 Oppositional disillusionment and distrust with ‘West’
and ‘democracy
 Unconstitutional political struggle
 Undermines potential effects of diffusion, linkage,
leverage?

24. Understanding the current political crisis
Social crisis
• Painful economic/social reforms
• Society as object of, not partner in, reform project
• Lack of communication/explanation/empathy
 Huge sense of social alienation and anger
 Non-parliamentary opposition feeds into this

25. What can/must realistically be achieved
in Georgia?
Systemic stability not “democracy”
• Agreement over formal rules of the game
 New constitutional and electoral agreements
 De jure and de facto agreements
 Georgia achieves level of Eastern European states
Social stability
• Conciliation and humility on part of government

26. Party aid in Georgia
Party aid providers
U.S. Party Institutes (NDI, IRI):
• NDI very (pro-)active in revolution
• IRI chief now government minister
 Issue of legitimacy, neutrality in eyes of
opposition

27. Party aid in Georgia
Party aid providers
European organisations:
• NIMD large multi-party project: ‘Political
Institutions in Georgia
• Small FCO/GFSIS multi-party project
• German stiftungen’s partisan approach
• KAS-Christian Democrats
• FNS-Republicans

28. Party aid in Georgia
Objectives
II. Professionalisation of party cadre and
electoral campaigns
III. Internal democratisation
IV. Inter-party co-operation and consensus-
building

29. Party aid in Georgia
Outcomes – Pluses
• Valuable technical assistance to
party leadership and lower party
cadre (multi-party and partisan)
– professionalisation of parties;
– strategy
– political skills
• Stiftungen building deeper
relationships, achieving more

30. Party aid in Georgia
Outcomes - Minuses
II. Professionalisation
 Very little increase in programmatic content
 More leader-centric party structures (?)
 Playing field even less level?
III. Internal democratisation
 Failed attempts at internal elections (Conservative Party)
 Internally democratic parties not electorally successful
IV. Inter-party co-operation and consensus-building (NIMD)
 Polarisation and conflict worsened since project
commenced in 2007

31. Multi-party aid’s five ‘central
dilemmas’
Political and institutional obstacles party aid providers face
both from recipient societies and from within party aid
organisations themselves:
• Time discrepancy
– Long-term goals vs short-term needs
• Talking local, acting global
– Local assessments vs “cookie-cutter” solutions
• Formal focus, informal realities
– Building formal institutions vs formal institutions ignored/undermined
• Technical solutions for political and cultural problems
– Donors/providers talk about the ‘cultural’ but offer the technical
• Limited legitimacy
– Problematic criteria for party inclusion; picking local NGO partners;
“dancing on the line of internal affairs”

32. Holistic approach to understanding
effects of Western interventions
Detailed single case studies are important and valid but they are
also useful as a prism through which to view the effects of other
aid/diplomatic interventions and how they can conflict and
undermine each other
• Party aid efforts undermined by dominant effects of
Western foreign policy/diplomacy
• Development aid also channelled according to foreign
policy objectives e.g. MCA, direct budget support
• “Civil society” funding undermining party political
(business, state) development
• NGO sector as disseminator of values/technology of
socialisation vs NGO sector as retardant of development?

33. Reforming Western foreign
policy and diplomacy
• Foreign aid in all forms remains first and foremost
tool of foreign policy (Morganthau 1962)
• Realism is too extreme
 ‘Ethical realism’:
• Reject political democracy promotion: values over
individuals; substance over processes
• Minimise negative conditionality; maximise and specify
positive conditionality
• Internationalise democracy promotion institutions e.g.
OSCE EOM
• Lead by example e.g. democratisation of global governance
institutions (IFIs, WTO)

34. Conclusion
• Political institutions as embedded in and
reflective of society and political culture
• Less optimistic prospects for substantive,
participatory democracy in Georgia
• Understanding weakly institutionalised parties
and party system in this social context
• Domestic factors (path dependency, culture,
territory.sovereignty) best explain weak
party/system institutionalisation

35. Conclusion
• Inherent tension in Western democracy promotion
 Hypocrisy
 Discredited democracy
• Western ‘political democracy promotion’ as partial
explanatory variable of recent political
instability/weak party development
• Value but limits of technical party aid;
dangers/ethics of US party aid; merits of German
approach
• Systemic and social crisis not democratic crisis
 Achievable breakthrough = establishing formal rules of
game; process of social conciliation