Armenia followed 15 years later (Velvet Revolution). Georgia underwent a political transition in 2003/04, the so-called Rose Revolution. Our case studies are Armenia and Georgia. We are interested in the role that civil society has played during and especially after the toppling of authoritarian regimes. 1 With this study, we undertake a modest attempt to assess how state-civil society relations in two post-Soviet countries have evolved, focusing on CSOs as interlocutors. Taking into account the tremendous amount of financial aid and technical assistance Western governments have invested in the development of civil society organizations (CSOs) around the world, it is somewhat surprising, and arguably disappointing, that little work has been done to assess whether that effort has paid off in the long run. Thirty years later, political scientists seem considerably less interested in the subject. In the 1990s, an avalanche of studies on civil society began to fill bookshelves and academic journals. In Armenia, in contrast, CSOs have maintained a critical stance and continued to hold the government accountable. As a consequence, Georgia’s post-revolutionary regime lacked the checks and balances that CSOs usually provide, allowing it to sacrifice democratization on the altar of modernization. We argue that three conditions explain differences in engagement with the new governments: CSOs pre-revolutionary cooperation with the political opposition, Western governments support for civil society before and after the political transitions, and the degree to which CSOs represent and are rooted in the general public. In this paper, we attempt to explain why state-civil society relations after the revolutions have developed in different directions in these two Soviet successor states. Whereas in Georgia, former civil society leaders were often absorbed into the new government, Armenian civil society has kept its distance from the new political leadership. Yet, the way civil society engaged the new rulers differed considerably. Following the toppling of semi-autocratic leaders, reform-oriented governments took over in both countries. In both cases, civil society organizations (CSOs) played an important role in laying the groundwork and organizing the protests. In 20, mass protests triggered the collapse of authoritarian regimes in Georgia and Armenia, respectively. 2College of Humanities & Social Sciences, American University of Armenia, Yerevan, Armenia.1Department of Political Science, University of Colorado Denver, Denver, Colorado, United States.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |