The Problem of Lasting Change: Civil Society and the Colored Revolutions in Georgia and Ukraine

A. Relevant PDT Hypotheses

Executive vs. Legislative Power

• Laverty supports the PDT thesis that it is crucial for executive power to be balanced with legislative power; further, a system with balanced legislative and executive powers allows for civil society to have better access to the political process.
• For example, Saakashvili’s concentration of political power in the executive after the Rose Revolution hurt civil society because the administration was able to absorb the most important civil society leaders into the government while not truly addressing its concerns and weakening the sector.
• In Ukraine, the concentration of power in the executive gave Yushchenko little incentive to seek legitimacy from civil society and thus the government was able to alienate and exclude civil society from the political process.

Civil Society

• Laverty argues that civil society groups were crucial to the electoral revolutions in Georgia and Ukraine and supports the PDT thesis that a strong civil society is necessary for democratic transformation.
  • However, he cautions that while civil society is necessary, it is not sufficient for lasting transformation.
  • Healthy political institutions, such as a balance of powers and a sound constitutional structure, are also necessary for democratic consolidation after civil society movements.
  • The decline in the power of civil society after the revolutions in Georgia and Ukraine is largely due to institutional factors, for example, an overly powerful executive branch. 
• To be most effective, civil society should be autonomous, but not alienated, from the state.  After the regime changes in Georgia and Ukraine, civil society was either co-opted by the state (Georgia) or alienated from it (Ukraine), thus reversing some of the democratic progress of the revolutions.
• To create lasting democratic change, civil society must be able to relate to sound institutions: “A healthy civil society depends fundamentally on the construction of healthy political institutions. (154)”  After the revolutions, institutional factors, such as the constitutional structure or the relations between the media, state, and civil society, stood in the way of democratic transformation.
• Civil society cannot allow itself to become a tool of the state instead of a contributor to the political process: “…the state holding an instrumental conception of the public sphere undermines the deliberative dimension of democracy. (157)”
• Laverty praises the Ukrainian and Georgia NGO’s for their highly horizontal organizational structures, their clever use of cultural politics and humor, their nonviolence and discipline, and their collaboration with other sectors of civil society, political parties, and the media.

B. Article Summary

Trouble on the Black Sea (Georgia Pre-Revolution)

• The weakness of the Georgian state allowed civil society to become relatively strong before the Revolution; attempts to weaken or repress it were largely ineffectual
• The Kmara group was particularly effective in the movement.  In part, its success was due to its highly horizontal structure that made it more difficult for the state to suppress.  Further, Kmara activists benefitted from the training and advice of civil society activists in other post-communist countries, such as members of the Otpor movement in Serbia
• Kmara used cultural politics (including popular figures in the campaign, using humor, staging events such as rock concerts) to involve apathetic citizens and to make the movement more difficult for the state to openly repress

Overcoming Virtual Politics (Ukraine Pre-Revolution)

• Civil society was not as strong in Ukraine as in Georgia; the Ukrainian state was stronger and the civil society was shallow and weak
• The opposition parties overcame ideological differences to unite together and cooperated effectively with civil society
• The Revolution depended on the mobilizing structure of domestic opposition networks (political parties and civil society groups) and used techniques learned from other countries’ experiences such as Serbia and Georgia

Diminished Pluralism (Georgia Post-Revolution)

•  After the Revolution, Saakashvili changed the constitution to concentrate executive power in himself and weaken the parliament; moreover, the new government began to take over the independent media and became increasingly intolerant of dissent
• While progress was made on corruption issues, there was regression on democratic consolidation
• The regime co-opted the civil society by giving government positions to the most experienced activists; this “decapitated” Georgian civil society and destroyed its autonomy from the state:
  • “…civil society may form alliances with parties, but if they become captured by the parties, or hegemonic within them, they thereby movie their primary locus of activity to political society and lose much of their ability to perform certain unique mediating and democracy-building functions. (154)”
• Institutional factors were the greatest obstacle to consolidating democratic change after the Revolution.  The political institutions, both in terms of constitutional structure and the relationships between the media, state, and civil society, were not strong enough to affect lasting change and the state fell back on old repressive patterns.

East vs. West (Ukraine Post-Revolution)

• The Orange Revolution reflected the cultural divisions in Ukraine between the east and west regions of Ukraine. The east supported of Yanukovich and saw the Revolution as “a coup d’etat conducted by western and central Ukrainians rather than a collective action on behalf of democratic principles and personal rights. (156)”
• A combination of these cultural divisions and fractures within the Orange Revolution coalition allowed for the resurgence of Yanukovich and the Party of Regions
• After the Revolution, civil society was largely excluded from political processes
• The state had little incentive to seek legitimation from civil society and civil society had little access to the political system
• The government saw civil society as a tool that could be used for its own ends, not as a partner or contributor to the democratic process

Conclusion

• Transformative political change after electoral revolutions has been elusive and this “represents a deeper institutional problem where the political system excludes and stifles civil society. This can manifest either though cooptation (as in Georgia) or alienation (as in Ukraine), but both seem to require the same refashioning of the political context. (157)”