Neoliberal Georgia and the Challenges of the Antigovernment Protests
March 11, 2025
Introduction
Over the past two years, Georgia has experienced significant political turmoil marked by the introduction of several controversial legislations, parliamentary elections, and continuous antigovernment protests. In spring 2023, the Georgian parliament introduced the “Law on Transparency of Foreign Influence,” also known as “foreign agents law” or “Russian law.” Under the bill, NGOs and independent media that receive 20 percent of their funding from foreign donors would have to register as organizations “bearing the interests of foreign powers.” Despite the popular pressure (which initially forced the government to withdraw the bill), the ruling party Georgian Dream (GD) managed to reintroduce and enact the law in June 2024, leading to a new wave of widespread demonstrations. In October 2024, parliamentary elections were held amid allegations of rigging and irregularities, with the GD party declaring victory after receiving 54 percent of the vote. However, the election did not prompt many people to protest in the streets. Rather, the large popular mobilizations on the streets were prompted by Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze’s announcement that the Georgian government decided to suspend EU accession talks as well as to refuse all EU budget support until the end of 2028.1Civil.ge, “GE Aborts EU Accession,” Civil Georgia, November 28, 2024, https://civil.ge/archives/638801. In response, protests have been subjected to violent crackdowns, followed by a series of repressive legislative changes (for example, in the “law on assemblies and demonstrations” and the “law on public service”). Moreover, the official propaganda attempts to draw direct parallels between the ongoing protests and Ukrainian Euromaidan, with the aim to spread fear and delegitimize the popular resistance in the eyes of the public.
These developments in Georgia have been analyzed through various liberal and conservative perspectives, resulting in a wide array of concepts such as democratic backsliding, hegemonic authoritarianism, Belarusization, populist conservative turn, and so on. However, we argue that none of these concepts fully capture the evolving situation in Georgia, as they fail to offer an accurate analytical framework for understanding its current trajectory.
Let’s start with traditional liberal criticism of Georgian politics, which develops its analysis along the democracy/autocracy axis supported by a vague conception of participatory democracy and, consequently, its gradual degradation. This line of analysis overlooks the entire contemporary history of the post-Soviet states, ignoring the fact that the local liberal democracies have always lacked both the means of political participation and democratic and egalitarian economic rights for the majority of its citizens. Moreover, such analysis views democratic/autocratic phases in Georgian politics as deviations caused either by the increased intervention of some external agency or the ideological drift of the local ruling elites, rather than systemic features of the inner dynamics of the neoliberal project. We have witnessed at least two authoritarian phases in the past twenty years (2004–2012 and 2021–) under the United National Movement (UNM) and the Georgian Dream (GD) governments to pursue and cement the contemporary Georgian neoliberal project.
Drawing parallels to Belarus is no less problematic. The unique history of Belarus’s post-Soviet transition during the 1990s and the 2000s and its strong industrial base are the main factors enabling the Lukashenko regime to continue its project in a stable manner; these features are radically different from the capitalist project of independent Georgia to this day. Even if we agree that Georgia is heading towards a more authoritarian phase, Belarusization can explain neither its nature, nor direction.
Finally, the argument regarding the populist conservative turn does not provide much clarity, as it focuses on the changing nature of government propaganda rather than the political and economic agenda that this propaganda serves. A closer examination that considers factors such as economic sector composition, income distribution, labor rights, and social welfare reveals that no significant shift exists on the fundamental level of the economy. To this day, the commitment to the same political and economic logic persists as a common ground among competing elite groups, despite variations in propaganda.
To move beyond this critique and better understand the current developments, we need to closely investigate the dynamics and continuities of the Georgian neoliberal state, the nature of the rival political elite groups, and the characteristics of the ongoing antigovernment protests. Georgian political discourse becomes most evident during political turmoil: at the peak of crises widespread demands can take the shape of governmental change, new elections, or the withdrawal of an unpopular bill. However, even if a protest movement successfully achieves its goals, these changes always articulate positive structural changes in the neoliberal state and overlook the process that comes after victory. We would like to highlight a serious obstacle for the popular protest movements in Georgia, that is the inability to move beyond liberal political demands and pair those demands with concrete socioeconomic demands.
Neoliberalism and the Battle between “Two Principles”
Neoliberalism today is a worn-out buzzword with hardly any fixed meaning. Constantly overused in the everyday political lexicon, it either serves as a tool to attack one’s opponents and justify your own position, or is applied to practically any illicit phenomenon in contemporary societies as a simplistic explanation. However, the concept of neoliberalism can still explain a lot of things if we remain faithful to its original definition.
Neoliberalism is not ahistorical, nor can it be described simply on the level of culture and ideology. Rather, it should be put into the concrete historical, geographic, and economic context. Neoliberalism was born in the West during the 1970s as a response to the crisis of the capitalist world economy that has been aggravating since the end of the world war. For example, in Europe, the rise of neoliberal capitalism meant the great offensive of capital interests since the 70s and the 80s, followed by the disintegration of the welfare state. Meanwhile, outside of the western world, in the People’s Republic of China, neoliberalism might be applied to the capitalist transformation of the Chinese economy that started under Deng Xiaoping, as well as China’s integration into the global economy coincided with the hegemony of neoliberalism in other parts of the world. In the post-Soviet space, neoliberalism meant so-called shock therapy and a wave of privatization which led to one of the greatest transfers of wealth in history, as well as the foundation of ruthless capitalist states on the rubble of the Soviet Union—a process resembling the primitive accumulation that Marx once theorized based on his observations on the rise of capitalism in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Great Britain.2Marshall I. Goldman, The Piratization of Russia: Russian Reform Goes Awry (Routledge, 2003), i. For the post-Soviet states, including Georgia, the neoliberal 1990s resulted in a massive and regressive redistribution of wealth, as well as the degradation of the productive sectors of the economy, science, technology, and basic social welfare. However, despite all these historical, cultural, and geographical divergences, the success of neoliberalism always relied on the creation and stabilization of a certain type of state. To quote David Harvey, a neoliberal state’s function is to “facilitate conditions for profitable capital accumulation on the part of both domestic and foreign capital.”3David Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism (Oxford University Press, 2005), 7.
The above-mentioned historical examples teach us that, in order to materialize and survive, the neoliberal state always has to be adapted to its concrete political, economic, and sociocultural conditions. In Georgia’s case, the democratic/authoritarian or liberal/conservative oscillations conceal the unchanged logic of capital’s uninterrupted expansion under the guidance of a neoliberal state. There are plenty of examples of such shifts in recent history. There is a striking resemblance between the emergence of cultural nationalist neoconservatism after Thatcherite “there-is-no-society-neoliberalism” that Harvey describes and the evolutionary process of Georgian neoliberalism in the twenty-first century. If, Thatcher’s neoliberalism stood on the ideas of “competition and unbridled individualism,” Harvey claims, the US neoconservative answer based on “moral values centered on cultural nationalism, moral righteousness, Christianity (of a certain evangelical sort), family values, and right-to-life issues, and on antagonism to the new social movements such as feminism, gay rights, affirmative action, and environmentalism” was “stripping away the veil of authoritarianism in which neoliberalism sought to envelop itself.”4Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism, 82–84. In many ways, are we not witnessing the very same shift in Georgia nowadays, that is, the shift from the Thatcherite neoliberal project of Mikhail Saakashvili and the UNM towards the neocon corporate-style neoliberalism of Bidzina Ivanishvili and the GD?
Recent history has demonstrated that even those who come to power with the promise to liberalize the inhuman repressive police state turn to violence as soon as it becomes necessary for the functioning of the neoliberal state and the goals of its ruling elite.
This observation leads us to conclude that the liberal/conservative elite rivalry is part of the same political-economic project and historical process in general. Otherwise, we are doomed to fall into the above-mentioned trap and limit our analysis to either mere ideological surface or humanist simplifications. In the case of Georgian politics, the former logic ends up with a dualist choice between pro- and anti-Western or culturally liberal or conservative options. The latter logic has as its political horizon the humanization of the inhuman repressive regime through a government change or political reforms—to have less violent police and spetsnaz, or less brutal regime in prisons. On the surface, such a goal seems like a reasonable and worthwhile response to the increasing subjection of Georgia’s citizens to repressive violence. However, such a response is insufficient. Recent history has demonstrated that even those who come to power with the promise to liberalize the inhuman repressive police state turn to violence as soon as it becomes necessary for the functioning of the neoliberal state and the goals of its ruling elite. This is exactly how the situation has been unfolding in Georgia since 2012 when Ivanishvili and the GD came to power following the downfall of Saakashvili and the UNM—despite the fact that the UNM was primarily defeated due to its police violence and repressive regime, the main promise of the GD was to put an end to the violent police state established by the UNM.
What is the primary continuity that persists during the shifting liberal/conservative and democratic/autocratic phases in Georgia? Here, the work of Branko Milanovic might be helpful. In his commentary on Donald Trump, Milanovic sums up the entire history of capitalist societies based on the struggle between two basic principles: democratic (the invasion of the economy from the political sphere) and hierarchical (the invasion of politics from the economic sphere). In other words, what Milanovic points out is a class struggle in capitalism between the two contradicting interests of people and capital, broadly resulting into two conflicting visions for the structure of economic, political and social life. The democratic principle in a capitalist society aims to export collective interests into economic space and limit the hierarchical power structure of the owners of the capital with the help of various legislations, regulations, labor unions, redistributive mechanisms, and so on. On the other hand, the economic principle of capitalism aims to export the hierarchic, undemocratic, corporativist decision-making principles of company organization into the political space.5Branko Milanovic, “Trump as the Ultimate Triumph of Neoliberalism”, Global Policy, May 14, 2020, https://www.globalpolicyjournal.com/blog/14/05/2020/trump-ultimate-triumph-neoliberalism. Milanovic claims that figures like Trump mark the ultimate victory of the economic principle and neoliberalism in Western societies. We can try to look at Georgia through this lens.
Post-Soviet states are the exemplary historical cases of Milanovic’s conceptualization of the societies built on the dominance of the economic over democratic principle. In general, the tradition of post-Communist studies is rich with theorizations of the emergence of a certain type of neoliberal capitalism after the Soviet collapse. Political capitalists—defined as a ruling class that came to power after the collapse of the Soviet Union mainly by using political power to capture the state assets—is one such popular concept. To some, capitalism ruled by political capitalists has similarities to the concept of cronyism, or even Max Weber’s critique of German politics and society in 1917, who explains it as a type of capitalism, which stands on “some momentary, purely political conjuncture—from government contracts, financing wars, black-market profiteering, from all the opportunities for profit and robbery, the gains and risks involved in adventurism, all of which is increased enormously during the war—and the calculation of profitability that is characteristic of bourgeois rational conduct of business (Betrieb) in peacetime.”6Max Weber, “Suffrage and Democracy in Germany,” in Political Writings, ed. Peter Lassman and Ronald Speirs (Cambridge, 1994), 89. This line of analysis tells us a lot about how post-Soviet politics and societies function. Nonetheless, it is not enough to pave the way to a comparison of “crony” vis-a-vis “pure” capitalism that liberals often mention—those who to this day remain somewhat perplexed by the “unexpected” outcomes of the chosen post-socialist transition path. Post-Soviet capitalism has always been “political” and “crony,” and there are more historical reasons for that than the backwardness of the political culture or insufficient judicial reforms.
It is evident that if Western societies in recent decades have experienced gradual degradation of the social-democratic elements of their capitalism, the historical path of the majority of the post-Soviet states is different. Moreover, in many senses, Georgia stands as one of its most radical examples. To get a general idea, it is enough to look at its labor code, minimum wage standard, data on wealth distribution, or even the part of the state constitution that restricts raising taxes on the rich. From the very beginning—that is, after the fall of the Soviet Union and gaining independence—the Georgian state has been fundamentally built and developed on the strict dominance of the economic over democratic principle. In this sense, unlike the Western welfare states, there can be no return of a progressive nature, but the opposite—any possible progressive movement in theory comes into conflict with the very core of the Georgian neoliberal state.
After the Rose Revolution of 2003, the new Georgian state focused on establishing strong individual property rights, promoting a free market, and creating institutions for free trade. This transformation was characterized by mass privatization, a reduction in the public sector, tax cuts, and liberalization of the labor market and trade. All of these factors make Georgia one of the most radical neoliberal experiments in the post-Soviet space. The government prioritized the ease and enhancement of business activities for both local and international companies as essential goals. It viewed free markets and free trade as the primary means to alleviate poverty. This approach remains in effect today. However, while the post-Rose Revolution decade in Georgia was both characterized by the acceleration of neoliberal reforms by Saakashvili and Bendukidze and guarded by the repressive apparatuses of the police state, Ivanishvili’s ascension marks the entry of the biggest capitalist of the country directly into politics.7It should be noted that many individuals involved in these apparatuses (for example, the notorious “judicial clan” or among the various departments under the Ministry of Internal Affairs) created by the UNM government remain in power and are being instrumentalized by the GD regime to this day. We have a clear picture of big capital, which not only bribes and corrupts, but physically occupies the political sphere and its public representation. After GD’s twelve-year rule, the remainder of a coalition that once claimed to be moderately center-left compared to its economically radical liberal opponent is a group led by a strong man and composed of businessmen, their top managers, and lawyers. As a result, the state is simply governed by the corporate rules of behavior. In this context, traditionalist antiliberal rhetoric is a sufficient tool for running a corporation based on hierarchical economic principles, rather than an obstacle. In that, Ivanishvili is much like Trump—who, as Milanovic notes, “may not be interested in the US constitution and complex rules that regulate politics in a democratic society” for the simple reason that, consciously or intuitively, he “thinks that they should not matter or even exist.” On the other hand, the rules with which they are very familiar are the rules of companies and corporations: “You’re fired!”—a purely hierarchical decision, based on power consecrated by wealth and unchecked by any other consideration.”8Milanovic, “Trump as the Ultimate Triumph of Neoliberalism.”
The legacy of the neoliberal reforms following the 2003 Rose Revolution—characterized by a repressive police state, liberal deregulatory laws, cheap labor, weak unions, and weakening of the working-class in general—aligns seamlessly with Georgia’s current objectives as a transit hub and extractive site of global capitalism. Nonetheless, in recent years we have already witnessed significant social resistance across Georgia.
While we can draw parallels between both Ivanishvili’s person and his corporativist approach to governance and that of Trump, their economic projects are different. Trump tends to promote protectionist policies that run counter to the trends of economic globalization. How far the tariffs and US-China trade war will go, how effective Trump’s administration will be in “saving jobs” and “bringing the US industries back,” or how sincere their intentions are in the first place, is another story. Nonetheless, in contrast to the protectionist and antiglobalization tendencies popular among the far-right groups in the West, Ivanishvili’s capitalist project is heavily embedded in international trade and connectivity between Europe and Asia, and relying on foreign investments from various Western, Asian, and potentially Chinese financial institutions. In addition to the tourism sector, funds are supposed to be directed toward Georgia’s connectivity and energy infrastructure projects. These developments have geopolitical and geoeconomic drivers. Since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, the Trans-Caspian bridge between Asia and Europe—known as the Middle Corridor—has become of utmost importance for both the European Union and China. One of the rationales behind the development of such an economic corridor is a strategic diversification of transport routes between the two centers of capital accumulation, while it has also become an important pivot of regional cooperation between other corridor states, such as Turkey, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Georgia. Moreover, since the EU-Russia “decoupling,” the projected energy corridor crossing the South Caucasus with its planned infrastructure projects (such as the Black Sea Cable) has become of existential importance for EU security as a strategy to compensate for the cuts in Russian oil and natural gas.9Ursula von der Leyen, “Statement by President von der Leyen at the signing of the Memorandum of Understanding for the development of the Black Sea Energy submarine cable,” European Commision, December 16, 2022, https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/statement_22_7807. The Georgian government has set ambitious plans for increasing the national energy output from 4,600 MW to 10,300 MW by 2034.10According to the “Ten-Year Network Development Plan of Georgia 2024-2034” approved by the Ministry of Economy and Sustainable Development on November 8, 2024. TSO of Georgia JSC “Georgian State Electrosystem” (GSE), Ten-Year Network Development Plan of Georgia: 2024–2034 (Tbilisi: JSC Georgian State Electosystem, 2024), https://www.gse.com.ge/sw/static/file/TYNDP_GE-2024-2034_ENG.pdf. This goal is primarily centered around the construction of four large hydroelectric plants and over a hundred small- to medium-sized ones. These efforts are tied to the Black Sea submarine cable project designed to export “renewable energy” from the South Caucasus to Europe.
The legacy of the neoliberal reforms following the 2003 Rose Revolution—characterized by a repressive police state, liberal deregulatory laws, cheap labor, weak unions, and weakening of the working-class in general—aligns seamlessly with Georgia’s current objectives as a transit hub and extractive site of global capitalism. Nonetheless, in recent years we have already witnessed significant social resistance across Georgia. These include workers’ strikes in the industrial cities, antieviction protests in Tbilisi, and grassroots opposition to large-scale extractivist infrastructure projects. However, our text focuses on the ongoing antigovernment protest movement that erupted in 2023. Tensions escalated dramatically when one day, in a corporativist manner similar to what we’ve discussed above, Georgian citizens were informed from the TV screens that they were “fired from Europe” (or “Europe is fired from Georgia”)—that EU integration is no longer on the Georgian government’s agenda until 2028. This announcement sparked immediate outrage, prompting tens of thousands to take to the streets. There are objective reasons behind such a reaction. Pro-EU sentiment is deeply rooted in the public (often paired with a strong anti-Russian stance), which is typical for many post-Soviet states. This sentiment reflects a broader desire for a more prosperous future, as Europe is viewed as a symbol of a better life in contrast to the hardships of everyday reality in Georgia. While it is important to acknowledge that mere EU integration does not guarantee improved quality of life for the majority of Georgians, the fear of losing this envisioned future—without any viable alternatives—has fueled widespread anger. Fear is an important emotional driver, which has become highly political in contemporary Georgian reality and reveals a lot about the ongoing crisis.
Antigovernment Protests
In the past years, affects and emotions became key instruments and drivers for mobilization, both in garnering government support and accumulating antigovernment discontent. These emotions translate into two different popular fears and two different politics built on them.
First is the fear of war perpetuated by government propaganda. Ivanishvili and the GD managed to turn the Russian invasion of the Ukraine into a major affective force for maintaining their desired political situation. Their media propaganda is focused on stoking the fear of war, which portrays the GD as the only bulwark preventing war in Georgia. In short, the intention behind instilling fear of war is to be seen as the sole protector against this threat.
Second, the fear of losing the homeland and allowing it to fall under the Russian sphere of influence sparked tens of thousands of dissatisfied citizens to take to the streets. This affective force, which is generated by the majority of the opposition parties and the media outlets, has successfully managed to mobilize tens of thousands of protesters on three occasions during the past few years: twice against the “foreign agents law” in 2023 and 2024, and once after the announcement of the termination of EU integration in November 2024.
To make the fear of war feel more tangible, GD propaganda is drawing parallels between the protests in Georgia and Euromaidan. The aim is to delegitimize the protests and to spread the fear of looming violence, blood, and chaos, which would eventually culminate in a Russian military invasion. The argument is often explained on the level of appearances: EU flags, balaclavas, hot food and wedding ceremonies on demonstrations, using fireworks against the riot police, and so on. However, the key point is that these images are not exclusive to nor created during the Euromaidan protests. Rather, they emerged from the protests before Euromaidan, such as the movements in Spain (the Indignados) and Egypt (the Tahrir protests). Nonetheless, this vague and straightforward propaganda is somewhat effective—on one hand, it appeals to the emotions of its own voters and civil servants, while, on the other hand, it aims to discredit the protests in the minds of the conservative-leaning population. The mere mention of Euromaidan is often accompanied by the images of military or civil conflict, evoking the fear of war. Additionally, certain opposition leaders and media outlets (particularly affiliated with the UNM) are affirming this narrative, which bolsters the propaganda. The reasons for their actions are unclear. They may believe that the Euromaidan protests resonate positively with a significant portion of our society, or they might hope to gain increasing Western support in that way.
One key characteristic of Euromaidan is the presence of paramilitary and far-right elements. As Volodymyr Ishchenko, a critic of Euromaidan, argues, Maidan was “an armed uprising, responding to sporadic government violence with a violence of its own, heavily skewed in regional support, and with a significant far-right presence. It drew strength from mass popular mobilisation but failed to articulate social grievances, allowing itself to be represented politically by oligarchic opposition forces.”11Volodymyr Ishchenko, “Ukraine’s Maidan Mythologies,” Links, July 9, 2015, https://links.org.au/volodymyr-ishchenko-ukraines-maidan-mythologies. Yulia Yurchenko presents a different picture of the Maidan, viewing it as a demographically and politically diverse event. She disagrees with Ishchenko and others who argue that right-wing parties had a significant influence on the Maidan protests. Yurchenko believes that the right-wing political position was not dominant in terms of the composition of the protests as well, nor its ideological influence on the protesters. While she acknowledges that the Maidan was indeed a popular protest, she points out that its motivations went beyond just a desire to join the European Union. The protests also aimed to challenge the longstanding oligarchic system, violence, lawlessness, and corruption that had plagued Ukraine for decades. However, Yurchenko does recognize that although the far-right represented a small portion of the protests in quantitative terms, they still played a vital role in the organizational part.12Ashley Smith, “Fighting for Ukrainian Self-Determination: Interview with Yuliya Yurchenko,” Spectre, April 11, 2022, https://spectrejournal.com/fighting-for-ukrainian-self-determination/; Yulia Yurchenko, Ukraine and the Empire of Capital From Marketisation to Armed Conflict (London: Pluto Press, 2017), 168. Despite their differing views, both perspectives emphasize the important role that radical right-wing groups played in the protests. In contrast, the protests in Georgia are “radically peaceful” in both their form and composition, lacking any involvement from paramilitary or far-right organizations.
Furthermore, unlike the Yanukovych government during the 2013–2014 protests in Ukraine, the leaders of the GD have continuously expressed their willingness to pursue EU integration, provided that the EU leadership agrees to the GD’s terms. This message and how manipulative it might be, signifies an important distinction between the political dynamics in Georgia and those in Ukraine.
…a better economic and cultural life for the majority of its population…can only take shape if the liberal deadlock is overcome and discontented popular movements take the transformation the fundamental political-economic logic of the Georgian neoliberal state as their central goal…
On the other hand, we can outline one important similarity between the protests in Georgia and Ukraine. Unlike its predecessors in contemporary mass protests, such as the Occupy movement or Arab Spring that had class-related economic demands at their core, mass protest movements in both Ukraine and Georgia are characterized by the absence of socioeconomic demands. In Georgian reality, absolute domination of the demands of liberal character—such as government change through new elections or obscure political reforms—paired with the absence of economic demands functions as shackles, limiting the spread and reach of the protest movement. While it may sound like a paradox, the forceful limitation of social discontent might be the only feature that makes the protests in Georgia look like Euromaidan.
The political landscape of the Georgian protests is produced with the help of the predominantly liberal opposition whose agenda precludes tackling the fundamental economic logic of the Georgian state. Even if these political parties lack popular sympathy, which restricts them from becoming the public leaders of the movement, the liberal agenda is still haunting the protests in both its form and its content.
One interesting manifestation of this agenda involves a distinct perspective on strikes and their organization. During the ongoing antigovernment protests, strikes primarily focus on political demands, such as calls for new elections and the release of unjustly imprisoned protesters, to the point of excluding economic demands. In fact, these economic demands are seen as obstacles to achieving overarching political goals. As a result, business owners who oppose the government, along with media outlets and some protest leaders, coordinated a “strike.” That is, business owners—for example, in the banking and retail sectors—gave permission or even encouraged their employees to go on strike. However, the duration of this “strike” was limited to only a few hours in order to minimize profit losses. On the same day, one local pharmaceutical monopolist encouraged his employees to participate in a five-minute strike, promising that they would still serve clients with urgent needs within that time frame. Many workers, who had never participated in a strike before, might have viewed this action as a form of protest driven by the employer’s wishes. This approach does not help improve their material conditions; in fact, it might even worsen them in the long run. Additionally, there is a widespread belief that material well-being is an inevitable outcome of the European integration process. Many think that the ongoing integration will naturally elevate the living standards of ordinary Georgians. According to this logic, putting forward social and economic demands hinders the achievement of political objectives. It is true that “economism”—that is, when workers concentrate solely on enhancing their workplace and their own working conditions—can undermine the broader interests of all workers. But it is even more concerning when workers are urged to strike for political reasons by their own employers, while being prohibited from raising economic demands.
On the other hand, we should not ignore the working-class component of the Georgian protests and paint it entirely in bourgeois colors. This perspective is both theoretically and sociologically misguided. As an example, in addition to the middle and lower middle classes, students from the state universities actively participate and play a vital role in the protests. The majority of these students, like most young people in Georgia, are often employed in low-paying, low-productivity sectors, and a considerable number are even unemployed. It is important to note that state universities in Georgia are no longer the primary educational institutions for the children of middle-class families. Today, they are often viewed as lower-quality educational centers, while middle-class families tend to choose private universities. Furthermore, most of those arrested and those who have been subjected to severe police treatment are young people. In Georgia, one-third of the young population (aged 15 to 29) lack education, professional skills, or jobs.13ნინი შაქარაშვილი, “NEET ახალგაზრდები: თაობა განათლების, დასაქმების, გადამზადების მიღმა,” [Nini Shakarashvili, “NEET Youth: A Generation Outside of Education, Employment, or Training,”] Georgian Institute of Politics, October 18, 2024. https://gip.ge/ka/publication-post/neet-akhalgazrdebi/. Many of those who have educational opportunities are struggling to study effectively due to work. Despite the fact that the percentage of young people in the total population remains constant at 13 percent, their share of the labour market is declining. This indicates a significant trend of the young population leaving the country due to economic reasons. Consequently, they have more than enough reasons to be angry with and betrayed by the government. As a result, discontented youth are often first to confront the police, which means they bear the brunt of any confrontations. They are motivated not just by the above-discussed fear of losing their homeland, but also by the lack of a decent quality of life. Any sincere position is obliged to face this situation, rather than merely adhering to government propaganda or anticipating a “real” working-class uprising.
Contours of the Future: Concluding Remarks
First, the existing state of (im)balance of economic over democratic principle is widely accepted by the absolute majority of the political elite—from the Georgian Dream to the “pro-European opposition” composed of multiple liberal political parties.
Second, the bottom-up currents of popular discontent are often found in the same deadlock, grounding their resistance on liberal political (sometimes even culturalist) demands emptied of socioeconomic content that would challenge the above-mentioned dominance of the economic over democratic principle.
We argue that the inability of mass protests to articulate concrete economic demands with political ones is a continuous pattern that runs through the entire history of independent Georgia.
Consequently, it is likely that the current political-economic logic remains unchanged whether the GD, an alliance of major opposition parties, or some newly emerged mixed coalition comes out victorious as a result of the ongoing political crisis. Moreover, it is also unrealistic to imagine either the GD or its rival parties pursuing a protectionist, antiglobalist policy that runs contrary to the ongoing Georgian neoliberal project, whose future expansion is intertwined with globalization due to both its own nature and the geopolitical and geoeconomic dynamics in and around the South Caucasus region. Counter to the government propaganda and the concerns of many liberal antigovernment groups, the current economic strategy of the ruling party is neither sovereign, protectionist, nor isolationist, but rather, extremely globalized in nature; it is heavily reliant on foreign capital, international trade, and connectivity.
It is similarly naive to hope for a progressive turn by the Georgian political elites. To put it in Milanovic’s terms, it is unrealistic to imagine the current Georgian political elite challenging the existing balance in a zero-sum struggle between economic and democratic principles—a constellation, which up to this day grants absolute dominance of the economic over democratic one. Even if we perceive the increasing geoeconomic significance of Georgia as an opportunity, there are no indications that it will ensure a better economic and cultural life for the majority of its population under an unequal and unjust neoliberal state and its established rules of the game. Such a horizon can only take shape if the liberal deadlock is overcome and discontented popular movements take the transformation the fundamental political-economic logic of the Georgian neoliberal state as their central goal: the politics of fear need to be challenged with the politics of hope—a hope which will not limit itself to conservatively resisting the worsening of the political situation (for example, through a harmful legislation, or rigged elections), but creates a vision and horizon for the positive changes. However, here, we should reject any false idealistic hopes: such a movement of universal nature can evolve and gain strength only through the continuous process of particular struggles that address the concrete material conditions for the majority. The capitalism of the GD will further aggravate the need for the wealth distribution, democratic management of the natural resources, and environmental protection. Such developments might also pave the way for a broad coalition of workers, rural residents, and the urban lower-middle-class. This kind of class coalition is precisely what the current protest movement desperately needs. Such a coalition will be easier to achieve if at least some segments of the ongoing protest remain open to it.