Georgian Politics After Controversial “Foreign Agent” Law

Episode Transcript

• Georgian Politics After Controversial “Foreign Agent” Law

  The transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.

  Nina Rozhanovskaya: From the Kennan Institute, this is Nina Rozhanovskaya. And you are listening to The Russia File. In December 2023, the South Caucasus Republic of Georgia was granted official European Union candidate status. And in March 2024, in a rather symbolic coincidence, its national soccer team qualified for the European Championship for the first time. It seemed that Georgia’s European aspirations were finally coming to fruition, but the country’s path to EU membership is now at risk because of a controversial “foreign influence” law that sparked mass street protests. 

  Today, we are going to discuss the social and political climate in Georgia ahead of the parliamentary election; the country’s balancing between Russia and the West; as well as the concerns, hopes, and expectations of Georgian society. 

  For that conversation, my guest is Joshua Kucera. He is a journalist based in Tbilisi, the capital city of Georgia. In his career, he has reported from more than 30 countries, and he currently covers the Caucasus region—Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan—for RFE/RL and The Economist. Josh, welcome to the program. 

  Joshua Kucera: Thank you for having me. 

  NR: And so let’s start straightaway, with a topic that was the primary focus of a lot of the Georgia news coverage for weeks now. That is the so-called “foreign agent” or “foreign influence” law. In May this year, very recently, Georgian lawmakers voted in favor of the Law on Transparency of Foreign Influence. They did so despite the weeks of public protests and despite the international outcry and the negative reaction from Georgia’s key Western partners. And then they managed to successfully override the presidential veto. So what makes this law so controversial? And why do you think the ruling party was so persistent in trying to adopt this legislation? 

  JK: The law will now require any NGO organization or media organization that gets 20% or more of its funding from abroad to register in an official state registry as a, quote, “agent of foreign influence”—that’s what the registry is going to be called. The government, the ruling Georgian Dream party, promotes this law as necessary for transparency. And they’ll say, “well, lots of countries in Europe, in the United States, are also passing transparency laws, and so we need this as well.” 

  And I don’t think that the law would be controversial in and of itself, except for the fact that the ruling party officials have explicitly and repeatedly said that they intend to weaponize this law against their political opponents, against precisely the NGOs and the media organizations that they consider enemies hostile to them and which are funded largely from the West.

  To take a step back, Georgia’s civil society sector and media sector is really very heavily dependent on grants from the West. So the large majority of these organizations are not very controversial, but there’s a handful of them that have been thorns in the side, politically, of Georgian Dream—that have taken very strong political stances against the current government—and it appears that Georgian Dream has thought up this law as a means of attacking them.

  It’s quite a blunt instrument that has the potential to affect a lot of things. But it appears that the targets are this fairly narrow group of small but influential NGOs and media organizations. So that’s the one real source of controversy. And the second one is that in their discourse about this law and about the necessity to expose foreign influence, they [the government] appear to be most concerned about influence from the United States and Europe. And Georgia has been strongly aligned with the West for the past 20 plus years. This is really the cornerstone of its foreign policy—its partnership with the West, with the United States and Europe. But in this law, in the language and the rhetoric around this law, Georgian Dream officials have emphasized specifically Western funded organizations. So this has raised a lot of questions about what are the intentions of Georgian Dream vis-à-vis its Western orientation and its geopolitics. 

  As to why they’ve been so persistent about this—it’s a very good question, because you may recall that last year, they tried to introduce this exact same law. There was a very small difference in the wording. Last year it was about “foreign agents.” This year, they’ve softened it very slightly to “agents of foreign influence.” It’s otherwise precisely the same law. And last year there were also very big protests against this law—so big that the government backed down. And it’s very rare. Georgian Dream has a really dominant ruling majority, and they can do almost whatever they want. And this was one of the very few cases where public pressure forced them to back down. So it raised the question: why do it again?

  There’s going to be elections in October. And it appears that one of the key strategies of Georgian Dream is to paint the opposition as not as Georgian as they are, as “agents of foreign influence.” But there’s a lot of different ways you could do that. And to bring back precisely the law that was so unpopular last year, it really raises a lot of questions. Because I think, if anything, it’s probably backfired.

  Ahead of this law being brought back the second time, you would have said, okay, Georgian Dream is in a very strong position ahead of the elections in October. They got EU candidate status. This is huge. They qualified for the European Championships. It could be a real feel-good time for Georgia and in a way that would serve the incumbent well. And yet they have chosen to escalate this crisis in a way that has galvanized people against them. 

  So I think it has to be seen as counterproductive, except that the one thing to keep in mind about Georgian politics [is that] Georgia is a very small country. It’s three and a half million people, something like that. And things are very personal in Georgia, in politics especially, and the Georgian Dream and the opposition parties really, really hate one another. And I think that, on the one hand, losing last year might have been a really deep personal affront to Georgian Dream that they could not stand. And secondly, they might have seen it as a show of weakness. If you back down, then you’re weak, and we can’t be seen as weak. We have to be winning all the time. So bringing back the law and pushing it through, even over protests again, has maybe, in their mind, shown, okay, we’re the strong ones, we have reasserted our dominance.

  NR: Well, there is certainly a lot to unpack here. And indeed, in a way, we will see later whether this move was productive or counterproductive. A lot will depend on the results of the election. But it’s interesting; you’ve mentioned that the politicians who are behind this legislation do not even deny that they plan to target certain NGOs and that they are particularly concerned about Western influence. If it were an isolated case, it wouldn’t have been as alarming. But since there is this Russian experience of similar legislation being used and expanded to target first NGOs and then individuals and crush dissent in the country; and then there were examples of Hungary and Kyrgyzstan and other countries that followed in the Russian steps; so if [Georgian] politicians are not even denying that that’s at least one of the intentions, one can certainly see why the reaction would be so strong. 

  Obviously, proponents in this case and in the Russian case always refer to other countries—the European experience, and especially the US experience, the FARA [Foreign Agents Registrations Act] legislation—saying that every decent country has legislation on transparency of civil society. But from what I understand, just like with the Russian case, it has nothing to do with FARA. It’s demonizing NGOs, making them seem less Georgian in the eyes of the citizens, but it’s also punishing them with fines.

  JK: I do think that the law itself would not be controversial, if it had been a different context. The [Georgian] government’s arguments are hollow in the sense that they have really made it specific that this is something that they’re going to use in a punitive fashion. And then you’re right that there’s also quite heavy fines. Don’t quote me on the details, but something like if you don’t register and you’re supposed to have registered, they could just continue to fine you over and over again and effectively bankrupt you quickly. Also, there’s some kind of investigative mechanism in there that’s very intrusive, that if they think that you are an agent of foreign influence and you haven’t registered, then they have all these rights to probe various things about you.

  NR: So opposition forces have labeled this law “the Russian law.” This rhetorical tool helps them rally people around this cause, but also it is not surprising, since it does bring to mind the Russian experience. But now that this law has already been adopted, the Georgian lawmakers are considering a set of bills that would impose restrictions on LGBTQ+ rights and freedoms in Georgia. In fact, at the time of this recording, there was already the first reading.

  So it’s still the beginning of the process, but even that is quite indicative of where the government is heading these days. The combination of the “foreign agent” law and the new restrictions on the LGBTQ+ community does make it seem as if the ruling party is indeed following in the Russian footsteps. Do you feel that there is this direct Russian influence on Georgian politicians or Georgian lawmakers and the ruling party? Or is it just the Georgian Dream party trying to borrow these effective tools from an authoritarian playbook that’s been tried and proven quite successful in Russia?

  JK: I think that there is no direct Russian influence on the government. People on the streets actually will tell you that there is. I don’t know. This is a very curious thing about Georgia. Russia plays a massive, massive role in the Georgian political imagination and everything bad that happens in Georgia is often attributed to Russia. I don’t think that there’s any evidence to indicate that the Georgian Dream party is in communication with Moscow. And I don’t know to what extent the protesters literally believe this or if Russian as an adjective is a stand-in for everything bad, authoritarian, repressive.

  As you said, Georgia is far from the only country around the world that’s doing this. All over the world, countries are using an anti-Western discourse, demonizing vulnerable minorities, especially queer people, in order to consolidate support among conservative voters. This is a global phenomenon. And that Georgia is doing it as well, it should not be too surprising. 

  This anti-LGBT law is also very interesting. It actually came out before the “foreign agent” law. It’s gone through more slowly. It’s just passed its first reading. But it was actually proposed to parliament before we even knew that the “foreign agent” law was going to be reintroduced, which raises further questions, because at the time when we thought, okay, they’re going to bring this quote-unquote “gay propaganda law,” in Machiavellian terms, it was going to be very politically effective because Georgia is overall a socially conservative society. And you could see that the government was very openly trying to trap the opposition into taking a quote-unquote “pro-gay” stance.

  It’s really quite a repressive law. I forget the exact wording, but something like “promoting gay relationships”….What does that mean? Even talking about your own gay relationship? It’s extremely broad. But what they were going to do is basically force the opposition people to say they were for gay people, and they were really being kind of open about this. “Do they care more about the LGBT flag or the Georgian flag?” This is what one Georgian Dream politician said.

  That was going to be an effective means of rallying support. But the other question is: Georgia got this European Union candidate status in December, but this comes with a lot of strings from Brussels. And Georgia has to implement a lot of reforms in order to keep moving on the process. And these tend to be reforms that will reduce Georgian Dream’s ability to maintain power. They are generally things that will open up the judiciary, for example—the reforms that will make the country more democratic. And Georgian Dream doesn’t necessarily want these things. 

  And so there’s a school of thought that says the Georgian Dream is pretending to want the European Union while seeking to sabotage it. In this calculating prospect, you could say, okay, we have this “gay propaganda” law. The opposition is forced to say that they’re pro-gay and then the European Union is going to be angry at us. And then if we have problems down the line with the EU, we can say, oh well, we tried to protect our values and the EU didn’t like it. So what can we do? It’s not our fault. It’s that the EU didn’t want us as we are. 

  And so you could see a way in which this was a very calculating, clever move that would have, I think, worked well. And then they blew it all up by introducing this “foreign agent” law which caused everyone to forget about the “gay propaganda” law for two months and got everybody out on the streets.

  NR: I had this question about the Georgian Dream party that started out as quite pro-European and seems very Euroskeptic now. Why would you push for your country’s membership in the EU and then sabotage it? But you’ve answered that. At least it is one of the answers that do make sense, that you reap the benefits from becoming a candidate and maybe being a candidate forever and ever while never becoming an actual member, because becoming a member means fulfilling all the requirements. 

  JK: There’s another school of thought, too, and I don’t know if it’s mutually exclusive with that theory, but it’s that the Georgian Dream understands that the European Union is changing. The Georgian government’s closest ally in the European Union is Hungary. And Viktor Orban has been a real champion of moving Georgia along in this process. And I think that there’s one school of thought as well, that for Georgia, the EU talks this big values game, but it’s becoming more geopolitical. 

  And Georgia sees that its role in the light of the Ukraine war and in light of Europe changing where it gets energy from—its trade routes to China and so on, and bypassing Russia—that Georgia geographically and geopolitically plays now a more important role than it used to. And I think Georgia also is thinking that it can negotiate from the stronger position, that we have what Europe wants. And so we can do this more transactionally. We don’t have to do everything you say. We don’t have to jump through every hoop that you tell us to. We can jump through the hoops that we want to, and you have to jump through some hoops for us too.

  And I would argue that that getting candidate status in December proved them right to some degree. The EU is afraid that if it denies Georgia somewhere along the process, that it will alienate the population and then open the door to Russian orientation. So Georgia has the EU a little bit trapped because they would rather have a bad Georgia inside the tent than whatever kind of Georgia outside the tent. And I think they know this in Tbilisi. And the question is, are they going to be pushing the EU too much? And I think you might see that they already have. There was just a statement last week by the European Union that the accession process is de facto suspended. 

  NR: Well, this game goes both ways. The EU may have reacted so strongly now because now it has the biggest set of pressure points to try to influence Georgia, while it’s still a very fresh candidate. But going back to the Georgian Dream: it has the majority in the parliament and has been in power since 2012. And that might explain why they are so keen on scapegoating the minorities and crushing their opponents because this might be their last chance to consolidate power. But the question is, now that we are in the middle of this crisis, what are the expectations regarding the upcoming election? How strong is, indeed, Georgian Dream’s hold on the country and how united is the opposition?

  JK: Well, this is a very big question, and I think this is what we’re going to start seeing. I would say that before they reintroduced the “foreign agent” law, the Georgian Dream had a very strong hold on the political system and that their chances in the elections in the fall were going to be very good, not least because Georgia has a new electoral proportional system, under which only parties that get 5% or more of the vote are going to make it into parliament.

  Georgia’s opposition is fractured among a lot of small parties, who also argue with each other quite a bit. And so the prospect of them cooperating and joining forces somehow was slim. You could see a lot of them getting 2% and 3% and 4% and not making it into the parliament. And then Georgian Dream’s share of the seats in parliament would be proportionately much higher than its popular vote. Now, though, you have really galvanized the opposition and you’ve seen a level of cooperation and coordination that I don’t think you would have seen before all of this happened. 

  One figure we haven’t mentioned yet is the president, Salome Zourabichvili. She came in as this Georgian Dream figure. And she’s now turned into this very anti Georgian Dream figure. The Georgian Dream leaders must be regretting putting her into power as they did. But she’s not particularly associated with the opposition. So she’s a rare kind of middle force.

  NR: I could imagine someone like her becoming a compromise figure. The first woman president of Georgia, someone who vetoed this controversial law. There seems to be a lot of political capital being gained by her recently. And if it comes to choosing someone who is not one of the opposition leaders as such, but a compromise figure who could unite everyone, I would imagine someone like her—not necessarily her personally, someone like her—becoming this front figure. 

  JK: There’s absolutely a huge amount of speculation in Tbilisi to this end. One thing that she didn’t do, though, is form a party. She’s not going to run formally. But what she did do is she created what is called a Georgian Charter. Opposition parties are supposed to sign this charter as this symbol of cooperation. But the most significant thing about the charter is that all of the parties agree that “if we win, we will not choose a government. The president will choose the government.” 

  The thing that’s hamstrung the opposition for so many years is the fact that the leading party, the United National Movement, is the party that former president Mikheil Saakashvili started. This is his party, and it simultaneously remains the most popular single opposition party, but also the most hated political party by most other people. And so you have this difficult needle to thread, where you need those votes, but a lot of people are turned off from the opposition because they absolutely don’t want this party in power. A lot of people make parallels between the end of the UNM-Saakashvili rule to what we’re seeing now. They also  became very repressive before 2012. They also did a lot of the things that the Georgian Dream is doing now, and a lot of people resent them for it, continue to resent them for it.

  And so you’ve always had this situation where you need a united opposition. And yet the biggest opposition party is toxic to very many people. So it’s a difficult balance to draw. And what this Georgian Charter that Zourabichvili has created, what it’s done is it’s effectively taken it out of UNM’s hands, [and made it so] that a potential opposition voter now can say, “okay, I can vote for my preferred opposition party knowing that if they win, if the opposition wins, it’s not going to be a UNM prime minister.” 

  The second thing—this hasn’t been formalized yet—but the parties are promising to form short-term coalitions so that within each group they will be more or less guaranteed to get their 5%. And so none of the votes would be wasted, as they might have before this crisis inspired them to collaborate a little bit more. So you have this situation now where the opposition is in a much stronger position than it would have been without this crisis engendered by the “foreign agent” law. 

  NR: All this strategizing and strategic voting, and different opposition parties working together, it only all works provided the elections are free and fair. If there is mass electoral fraud, as we know is the case, let’s say, in Russia and in some other countries, then even those very smart strategic actions are doomed. Obviously there will be [election] observers; we’ll have the data when it comes to that. But at this stage, what are the expectations? Do you and the experts expect these elections to be free and fair? 

  JK: It’s a very critical issue. Up until now, Georgian votes have been maybe not perfect, but basically free and fair and Georgian Dream is understood to have won genuinely in all the elections that it has contested so far. That may not be the case in the fall. And we don’t know yet. There are signs that already the party, the government under the party, has crossed lines that it had not crossed before. 

  The former government was known to be very harsh against protesters. There was always violence against protesters. And this is actually one of the talking points that Georgian Dream was constantly using against the former government. And they continue to use this, even when the government has [been] gone for 10 years. They bring up this fact, that the former government was very harsh on protesters. Now they’re doing the same thing.

  People have been openly beaten at the protests. Some of these NGOs that have been targeted by the law, they’ve been vandalized, like very crude spray paint on their walls and calling them a traitor. Several opposition politicians have been beaten up by mysterious figures that everyone kind of assumes must be connected to the government. These are lines that the government was not willing to cross before this year. 

  I think that there’s a reasonable question, if they’re willing to cross those lines, are they willing to cross the line and steal the election? I don’t know. But I do know that both the opposition and the foreign partners, the EU and the US and so on, are going to put a huge amount of resources into making sure, as much as they can, that the election is fair.

  NR: I don’t know if it will directly come up during the election, but Georgia, from the very start of its independence, has had to balance between Russia and the West. It has no choice, just geographically and historically. We know that despite all the tension and despite the past war with Russia, there is a certain leaning towards Russia in the government. And at the same time, the European aspirations of Georgia are basically enshrined in its constitution. 

  Georgian society was more supportive of Ukraine than the government. Back in spring, I was in Tbilisi for a week. And it’s so strange: when you walk around, you see all this graffiti saying, “Russians go home,” and you see the Ukrainian flags. You can’t fully match this picture, something that you see with your own eyes, with what you know about how Georgian foreign policy works. 

  JK: It’s an extremely complicated situation. In the initial part of the post-independence period, Georgia was balancing between Russia and the West. Then you had the coming to power of Saakashvili and even in the first, small part of time under the Saakashvili government in the 2000s, there was a balancing of Russia and the West. At some point, they decided to put all of their eggs in the basket of the West. And you had then the war with Russia in 2008. Abkhazia and South Ossetia were already de facto breakaway [regions]. They had broken away in the ‘90s, but as a result of that war, Russia officially recognized each of them as independent countries. It’s very difficult now to imagine Russia stepping back from that. 

  And so Georgian Dream, when it came to power in 2012, one of the key parts of its platform was, “we are going to reduce tensions. We don’t have to like Russia, but we can’t poke it.” I’m paraphrasing, obviously, but that was more or less the Georgian Dream strategy. And they slowly implemented that during their time in power. And then you saw, as a result of the Ukraine war, all this became quite a crisis point. It’s the issue of a lot of speculation, I would say, about why exactly the Georgian government has responded the way it has to the war in Ukraine. But you’re right, they have not been supportive of Ukraine. They have been cautiously critical of Russia, but conspicuously cautiously. 

  I think the theory that a lot of people, including in the Western diplomatic community in Tbilisi, hold is that they’re scared of Russia, that at this point the Ukraine war really brought home the vulnerability that Georgia has in this new, very unpredictable environment. And so there was a thought that, okay, if Russia wins in Ukraine, then why wouldn’t they just go for Georgia next? If they can beat Ukraine, they can certainly beat Georgia. If they can’t beat Ukraine, Georgia’s much weaker and Georgia could be a consolation prize. And so this, I think, is probably behind Georgian Dream’s calculation. They are really trying to keep their head down as much as possible. 

  So it’s an extremely difficult balancing act. And I think, until this “foreign agent” law, you could say that they actually have done it incredibly well. If you would have said in 2021, imagine in a couple of years you’re going to get EU candidate status and Moscow is going to be saying what a great job you’re doing. That’s really a huge accomplishment. But now I think they’re at risk of ruining things with the West, with the EU in particular, and who knows what’s going on with Russia. But still at this point, Georgian Dream is presenting itself as a pro-Europe party and they are arguing that this law is pushing them closer to Europe, that transparency is a European value. These are some of their talking points. I don’t know if they’re going to keep being able to do this.

  To take a step back, Georgian media is extremely polarized and there’s basically pro-government media and anti-government media, and people who vote for Georgian Dream watch the pro-government media and they’re not going to hear even these statements from the EU saying that the accession process is de facto on hold. They’re going to hear the Georgian Dream official saying, “our law is European and we are bringing ourselves closer to Europe with this.” This is a balance they may not be able to hold until the election, but they’re trying it at least.

  So I think that they are going to be trying to de-geopoliticize the election. They’re going to say that, “no, we’re for Europe. Don’t call us Russians, we are for Europe. This is not a Russian law, this is a European law.” This is part of their discourse. So I think that, at least for now, they’re trying to de-emphasize the geopolitical side of this, while the opposition is putting that front and center. The opposition is saying, “it is our European aspirations that are at stake. They have passed the ‘Russian law.’ We are the ones who are going to ensure Georgia’s European path.” 

  NR: Does that mean that this election ultimately is about Russia versus the West? Instead of, let’s say, being about things that normally voters care more about, like the economy, the jobs, the migration issues, healthcare. Does that mean that the pre-electoral agenda gets skewed towards those problems instead of purely domestic Georgian matters?

  JK: I think it’s definitely going to be skewed in that direction; I don’t think you could call it a referendum on EU or Russia, because I think still the large majority of Georgian Dream voters want to get into the EU and want better relations with the West and so on. So I don’t think it’s going to be a referendum in that sense, but I do think those geopolitical issues are going to come to the fore more than they normally would. 

  NR: I wanted to also delve a bit deeper into the topic of society. You are based in Tbilisi. You, I’m assuming, get to meet a lot of people, including protesters. The way it seems from the pictures, from the news reports: we definitely saw a lot of public events, public rallies in Tbilisi. All those young pro-Western, urban city dwellers, maybe also middle-class people. The question is, is it just Tbilisi? What about other regions and towns and villages across Georgia? Do people beyond Tbilisi even care about these particular bills that are on the agenda? What does it look like on a national scale? Because I think that what we mostly see is Tbilisi, maybe a bit of Batumi, and that’s it. 

  JK: Yes, it’s a very good question, and I think it’s a little bit difficult to answer. This is something that has been the case for the whole time I’ve been covering Georgia. There’s a very narrow range of Georgian voices that get heard in the West and they are precisely this kind of people that you described in the protests: very pro-Europe, educated, middle-class, English-speaking.

  That said, I do think that this is an issue that has gone beyond that narrow bubble of liberal Tbilisi people. Georgia has been in soccer mania for the past two months, or three months, or however long it’s been since they qualified for the Euros. And one interesting side story of this is [the fact that] a number of the players on the national team have come out vocally against this law and for the protesters. And I think that there’s definitely a hope among the protesters [and] protest leaders that [if] this is something that a normal Georgian, quote-unquote “normal Georgian,” will not pay attention to [in] a protest in Tbilisi, they will pay attention to their favorite soccer player. And if their soccer player is talking about it, then that’s going to pique their interest. 

  And I do think there was an indication last year that this had gone beyond the liberal bubble and forced the government to back down, because also last year, some soccer players and basketball players and other cultural figures had spoken out against the law. People who are normally apolitical. I believe part of the reason the Georgian Dream backed down last year is because they realized, “okay, this is not just the liberal Tbilisi bubble who is against this. This is a broader objection.”

  A couple of weeks ago, I was on vacation, and I took a trip around Georgia and I stayed in family guesthouses in smaller towns. It was remarkable how many people brought it up to me. These people in small towns who rent guesthouses out, they wanted to talk about it. They brought it up. And I heard different views. Some people were pro-government and some people were pro-opposition. But it’s definitely something that people are thinking about, for sure. 

  There’s a statistic that is constantly quoted in every story, including mine, that 84% of Georgians say they want EU membership, which is quite a dramatic number. Probably no EU countries have that high of a number. Somebody, though, pointed out to me [that] it’s [as if] Georgian people who are polled don’t hear this as a legitimate question about their opinion. They hear it as a quiz to which there’s a correct answer. And I think that there’s some truth to that. 

  I will say also, though, [that] while I have some questions about whether people really want the EU or even know what the EU would mean to them, I think that people really do hate Russia. That’s something that unites every class and group and region across Georgia, is that people really don’t like Russia. And I think this branding of the law as the “Russian law” was very successful in that regard. And people do see this as going in a Russian direction, and that is something that they don’t want. And I think that has the potential to galvanize ordinary people. 

  But yes, this is going to be a big question, I think, for the election. One of the things a lot of people in Tbilisi are talking about [is] that the opposition is very bad in rural areas, that all the opposition leaders are these hopelessly urban elite people who cannot talk to rural people, but they all know that that’s a problem and they all somehow are going to be trying to solve that problem this summer and in the run-up to the election. 

  NR: I would say this cleavage, this gap between urban politicians and the rest of the country, it’s not even that unusual. 

  JK: And I would actually add that I think in Georgia, it’s actually less than….You know, I’m American and I think our societal cleavage is worse than Georgia’s. I used to live in Turkey. I think Turkey’s societal cleavage is worse than Georgia’s. Polarization between the political parties is very strong. But until recently, among society, it’s not been that. It’s not been as something like where you identify super strongly with your political clan and you hate all the other people. It’s going in that direction, but I think, by global standards, it’s actually not as bad.

  NR: To be fair to Georgia, it certainly is not the only country that is now in the middle of a political turmoil. We can list examples, from the US to France to many other countries.

  JK: And I would add, I think one of the reasons that it was less polarized in Georgia, actually, compared to a lot of these other countries is that there’s not actually a very big difference ideologically between Georgian Dream and the opposition parties. If you ask them on all of the critical economic questions, foreign policy questions, the cleavage is getting bigger, but it’s not great. And I think before, at least a couple of years ago, I think you would have really struggled to identify a very strong ideological difference. 

  So I think a lot of voters just tune out, because they say it really doesn’t matter. It’s two groups of elite people fighting it out among themselves, and it doesn’t really matter for the direction of the country. And I think that’s been true for a lot of Georgia’s recent history. It may be less the case now, but yes, I think that’s the reason that Georgian society is not that politically polarized, just because there’s really only been one ideological option available to them. 

  Both parties—and everyone sees that—both parties have failed to do anything meaningful for Georgia’s economy, that migration out of the country is at a very high level, and especially in rural areas. There is a complete economic stagnation in these areas. And really, neither party, for the last decades, has had any meaningful answer for what most Georgian people care about, which is creating the conditions for a normal life for themselves. 

  When you look at these opinion polls, there’s very high numbers of people saying that “none of the political parties represent me.” And I think it’s because they see that the issues that are important to them, like jobs and opportunities for their kids and pensions, none of it is changing and none of the parties have really any answers for these things. So that’s actually a negative reason for the lack of polarization—it’s just that nobody is addressing the things that matter to people.

  NR: That’s an important point indeed, because I guess, with all the news from Georgia, we all get carried away discussing big political topics and forgetting something that actually motivates a regular citizen, a regular voter, to care about things. 

  I am afraid that the whole topic of Georgian politics is just too big to cover in one podcast episode. I certainly invite our listeners to follow Joshua’s writing for RFE/RL and for The Economist, to learn more about what’s happening on the ground in Georgia and in the broader region, because certainly we can expect more news to come from that region.

  Josh, thank you so much for joining me today. I am extremely grateful for you taking the time to answer these questions and share your ideas about Georgia. 

  JK: Well, thanks very much for inviting me.

  NR: From the Kennan Institute, this was Nina Rozhanovskaya. Thank you for listening, and we look forward to having you with us on the next episode of The Russia File.