Lincoln Mitchell is the Arnold A. Saltzman Assistant Professor in the Practice of International Politics at Columbia University. Before joining Columbia, he was a practitioner of political development. His work has primarily been in the areas of political party development and elections. In addition to serving as Chief of Party for the National Democratic Institute (NDI) in Georgia from 2002-2004, Mitchell has worked on political development issues in the former Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, Africa, the Middle East and the Caribbean. Mitchell also worked for years as a political consultant in New York City advising and managing domestic political campaigns.
A Site of History: The Parliament at Tbilisi.
Courtesy of flickr.com
Interpreting November 2007
The events of November 2007 in Georgia were seen by many as evidence of the failure of the Rose Revolution. Images of security forces using fire hoses, tear gas, and other violent means to disperse relatively peaceful demonstrations, followed by arrests and the temporary suspension of free speech and assembly were clearly incompatible with the image Georgia still enjoyed at that time of being – in what now seem like ill-chosen words by President Bush – as a “beacon of democracy” in the region. Not surprisingly, these events substantially damaged that image.
If one judges these events through the prism of European and American expectations, it is clear that they demonstrated the shortcomings of the Rose Revolution’s democratic promise, but viewed through the prism of the Georgian government, one arrives at a very different conclusion. For the government, the November crackdown was a demonstration of the strength of the new Georgian state. Smaller demonstrations than last November’s had, after all, helped bring down the previous regime. For that reason, President Saakashvili afterwards declared the demonstrations a “major test in (Georgian) statehood,” but a test which the country had far from failed: “We have passed the test on whether we are Bantustan or a real state, whether we are a failed state, or whether we have a real government.” Although the words struck foreign ears as somewhat bizarre at the time, for a Georgian state which had made bolstering state structures its top goal – far ahead of building democracy – Saakashvili’s words made perfect sense. Still, the events of recent months have made it but impossible for even the most ardent supporters of the Rose Revolution not to recognize the disparity between the rhetoric and reality of democracy in post-revolution Georgia.
In the months since November, a number of western think tanks and NGOs, most notably the International Crisis Group, Freedom House, and Human Rights Watch, have issued reports and statements offering severe criticisms of the actions of the Georgian government. Similarly, other observers and scholars, such as Nikolas K. Gvosdev, Daria Vaisman, and Christopher Walker, have offered critical analyses of their own. Most of these writings have sought to place the November crackdown in the context of the problems of democracy in Georgia over the last four years, problems often willfully overlooked by the U.S. government. Criticism of democratic development in Georgia is nothing new. Before the crackdown there had also been critiques from authors such as Ana Dolidze, Charles Kupchan, and others, including myself.
Although I have been among these critics, and believe that these works play a valuable role in both understanding Georgia and US and European policy towards Georgia, in this article I seek to explore a related question which may help put these events and subsequent works in a broader context. That question is – what were the goals and aims of the Rose Revolution? Answering that question can help us evaluate the Rose Revolution on its own terms. This should not preclude looking at questions of democracy and human rights, but will allow us to more effectively probe some of the government’s claims, including those regarding state building and economic reform being the top priorities, and thus perhaps offer a more nuanced analysis of the Rose Revolution.
A Revolution without Ideology
The term Rose Revolution has always been stronger on imagery and alliteration than on descriptive or analytical power. In practice, it might be more accurately called a democratic breakthrough or the final stage in Georgia’s transition away from the Soviet system, rather than as a revolution in the traditional sense. It was not, for many reasons, a revolution comparable to, for example, the Russian, Chinese, French, or Iranian revolutions. The change was not all that dramatic as many of the leaders of Georgia’s new government, including the president and prime minister, were only a few years removed from high ranking positions in the previous government or ruling party of Eduard Shevardnadze.
Another critical reason why the Rose Revolution differed from the aforementioned revolutions was that there was no real ideology driving it. The demands of the protesters on the streets of Tbilisi in November 2003 were concise and direct; they wanted to see an end to the corrupt and failing regime of Eduard Shevardnadze. Thus the primary demand was to call for Shevardnadze’s resignation – not for some sweeping change in the country’s governing political philosophy. The leaders of the Rose Revolution, who became the leaders of Georgia after 2004, had never been ideologues of any kind. They did not, for example, write books or statements describing their vision or ideology. Their stated commitments to democracy, prosperity, and a stronger Georgia, while sincere, were closer to platitudes than ideology, and were broadly shared throughout the country.
The absence of a strong ideology did not preclude a vision and set of goals; although those goals were admittedly somewhat vague. The most basic promise of Georgia’s opposition was change; specifically, change from the failed policies and governance of the Shevardnadze years. The opposition also spoke about restoring the territorial integrity of Georgia, meaning bringing Abkhazia and South Ossetia back into Georgia and orienting Georgia towards the West and Western alliances such as NATO and the EU. Furthermore, the opposition promised to fight corruption, reinvigorate the economy, and strengthen the country’s faltering democracy.
While this represented something of a vision, two things about these goals are worth noting. First, they were, to a large extent, a laundry list which were often presented without emphasizing priorities or describing means to achieve them. Second, the underlying vision of these goals was not substantially different from anything the weak Shevardnadze government claimed it wanted to do. The opposition’s – or at least the opposition which orchestrated the Rose Revolution – platform was essentially that they would be more honest and efficient than the Shevardnadze government in pursuing these goals. In this sense, for Mikheil Saakashvili, Zurab Zhvania, and the other architects of the revolution, the 2003 parliamentary elections and to some extent the Rose Revolution itself were, as Michael Dukakis might have phrased it, ultimately about competence, not ideology.
