A persistent problem many post-communist societies have faced is building state infrastructure and establishing government authority while devolving power to their citizens through democratic elections, public participation, and limitations on state authority. In Georgia after the 2003 Rose Revolution, separatist wars complicated these processes of state building and democratization. Even as the state began to reform the anemic and often corrupted institutions of the Shevardnadze era, it followed a path of governmental centralization (at the expense, many argue, of democratic governance), even as Georgia’s leaders sought popular legitimacy and increasingly pursued populist strategies. The character of these reforms contributed to increasingly tense interactions with the leadership of the secessionist regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.
Julie A. George, of Queens College, CUNY, was a 2011-2012 Individual Advanced Research Opportunities (IARO) [8] fellow.
