C - 0; M - 98; Y - 91; K - 30; PANTONE 7621 CP

C - 0; M - 97; Y - 87; K - 60; PANTONE 7624 CP

International Assistance to
Georgian Political Parties

VITTORIA ZANELLATI Introduction

APRIL, 2018 Practically every publication on international assistance to political parties
in new or emerging democracies starts with the same paradoxical remark:
while on the one hand political parties should be considered as crucial for a
well-functioning democracy, on the other hand, they often perform poorly and
are generally held in low esteem. They inadequately perform the functions
they are expected to fulfil – including interest articulation and aggregation,
political participation, elite recruitment, and governance – and they frequently
suffer from very limited legitimacy. Arguably, international party assistance (IPA)
programmes, one aspect of a larger democracy assistance effort, have been
designed to overcome the aforementioned paradox, i.e. bridging the gap be-
tween the role of political parties in representative democracies and their poor
performance and public reputation.1 Interestingly, Georgia has been a target of
IPA programmes since the early nineties but, despite sustained efforts, parties
have remained far removed from the type of stable, democratic and represen-
tative organization that is commonly aimed for by party assistance. This raises
two crucial questions: (1) why are political parties such a problematic target of
assistance? (2) What have international actors been doing to support them?
In order to address these questions, this paper is divided as follows. While the
first part is meant to briefly address the first question and to introduce the read-
er to the Georgian tumultuous party system development, the second part is
devoted to the analysis of the experience of international support for Georgian
political parties. Which international actors are involved in IPA programmes and
which strategy do they follow? When and under what conditions international
support to political parties might make a significant contribution to the consoli-
dation of democracy? What are the effects of such programmes, both intended
and unintended, on political parties and on the broader party system?

1. Background: political parties and party system in Georgia

The Georgian post-communist turbulent political trajectory has been matched

by an equally turbulent party system development. Political parties in Georgia
1 Burnell, P., & Gerrits, A. (2010). Promoting party politics in emerg- have been faced with the usual difficulties of party development after decades
ing democracies. Democratization, 17(6), 1065-1084.
2 For a deeper insight into levels of electoral volatility in Georgia of communism, which have been further compounded by a nascent party
see Bader, M. (2010). Party politics in Georgia and Ukraine and the
failure of Western assistance. Democratization, 17(6), 1085-1107.
culture. Historically, every major change of power since 1991 has been accom-
3 The Georgian system has traits of a “loose multiparty” or panied by a radical realignment of the political party landscape. For the most
dominant party system in which, while multiple parties are visible
on the scene, only one can appropriately be characterized as part, parties have entered and left the political arena at a striking speed be-
strong. Characterization as a strong party is a result of electoral
success – the winner takes all, quite literally, and captures the state
tween elections, the consequence being that voters have been confronted with
apparatus. This ‘capture’, or merger of party and state, has been a radically different set of parties from election to election – the only positive
characteristic of Georgia since its very independence and is almost
certainly the legacy of 70 years of communist rule. exception being the United National Movement’s (UNM) survival and retention
4 Parties of power are usually created at the instigation of the exec-
utive branch of government, benefit extensively from state resourc-
of voter support after the 2012 elections, which represents a significant devel-
es, are affiliated with the president - irrespective of whether the opment in the Georgian party system. Next to the emergence and disappear-
president does or does not have a formal role in the party - and,
unlike other regime-initiated parties, are created with the purpose
ance of parties, volatility has also been apparent in changing electoral alliance
of becoming a dominant force in party politics. This type of party and, sometimes, in within-party changes.2 Party turnover has been driven by a
has dominated legislatures both under the Shevardnadze (Citizens’
Union of Georgia) and Saakashvili (United National Movement) lack of incentives for party development: institutional arrangements – especially
presidencies. One might think that parties of power ceased to exist
as a result of the constitutional amendments introduced in 2010,
regarding executive-legislative relations and electoral legislation – have nega-
which basically turned Georgia into a parliamentary republic and tively affected the gravity of parties in political life, as well as their possibilities of
reduced the authority of the President. However, the current ruling
party Georgian Dream (GD) can still be defined a party of power making much headway in an uneven electoral playing field.3 Therefore, those
and the main difference with its predecessors is that the party has
not been developing and uniting around the figure of the president
parties that were not mere ‘flash parties’ were either parties of power,4 whose
but, instead, around its influential founder, whose influence behind existence is contingent upon the regime’s durability, or parties with very limited
the scenes makes him the main informal decision maker.
influence.

5 Bartolini and Mair (2001) group the various party functions under
two headings: on the one hand, their representative functions,
including interest articulation, aggregation and policy formulation,
and, on the other hand, their procedural or institutional functions,
including recruitment of leaders and the organization of government
and parliament. See: Bartolini, S., & Mair, P. (2001). Challenges to
contemporary political parties. Political parties and democracy, 327.
6 Democracy Reporting International (2017), The Heavy Price of
Extreme Political Polarisation in Georgia and What to Do about IT,
fact finding report DRI/GYLA.
7 http://www.iri.org/news-and-resource?type=1&country=691
8 Webb, P. (2005). Political parties and democracy: The ambiguous
crisis. Democratisation, 12(5), 633-650.
Besides being transient, Georgian parties have been struggling to perform
those representative functions5 that are associated with their counterparts
in established democracies. Many characterizations often mention a lack of
sharp ideological profiles, excessive role of leaders’ personalities, heightened
degree of political opportunism and populism, and lack of internal democra-
cy. For most part, Georgian parties have not grown out of social cleavages,
the consequence being that they do not represent large segments of society
(although they might articulate their sentiments) and have difficulties in offer-
ing attractive platforms for a political society. At the same time, while political
polarization – primarily around the pro-regime/anti-regime fault line – tends to
be quite high, ideological polarization is not. Differences between parties do not
hinge on different position from the left-right ideological spectrum and, when
discernable, they are often of secondary value in informing voters’ choices.
Traditionally, Georgian political parties are identified not with their ideologies
but with their leaders, and build their legitimacy upon the flaws of their political
opponents, rather than their party programmes or ideologies.6 Unsurprising-
ly, the predominance of persons over policies has undermined the need for
clear political platforms, the consequence being that party-voter linkages are
assumed to be of the weakest type, i.e. charismatic, whereby constituencies
are loyal primarily to the parties’ leaders. This leader-centric nature of parties
is to some degree vindicated by popular attitudes. According to several public
opinion polls conducted by the International Republican Institute (IRI),7 a large
share of voters expresses trust in particular political figures and cast their vote
based on the attitude to the leader. Parties thus face the challenge of trans-
forming into more programmatic institutions, which might strengthen party-vot-
er linkages in the long-run as voters would have clear expectations regarding
what policies will be pursued should a party of a given ideology win an election.
This list of weaknesses is by no means exhaustive. Other issues inhibiting party
development concern the internal decision-making process, which is viewed as
rather underdeveloped, as well as the over-centralization of party politics – the
party effectively is its headquarters, with the addition of a mostly weakly rooted
network of branches in the regions.
These weaknesses characterising Georgian political parties’ development and
performance of their representative functions might have led to an increasingly
serious shortfall in their popular legitimacy. Indeed, the level of trust in political
parties in Georgia tends to be low both in absolute figures and in comparison
with other civil institutions. In several opinion polls carried out by CRRC/IRI po-
litical parties feature as one of the least trusted institutions in Georgia and this
low level of public confidence has shown an increasingly downward dynamic,
suggesting that positive identification with parties is significantly limited – the
latest data available being from 2017, when 71% of the Georgian population
negatively assessed political parties’ performance. This indicator tends to be
worse than any other comparable civil institution (both political and social).
Interestingly, the flaws and weaknesses characterizing the Georgian party
system have been spreading to many established democracies, so that the
Georgian political parties’ decreasing legitimacy unfolds against the backdrop
of a deeper worldwide trend, i.e. the backlash against parties’ popular support.
More elite-driven party life, smaller party membership, increasing party volatility,
increasingly vague political articulation, decreasing party legitimacy and popu-
larity, rising alienation and anti-party sentiments are all symptoms of a ‘weak-
ened sense of “partyness”’ in society or of ‘party crisis’8 , by virtue of which
parties are more and more defined by their link to the state and less by their
links with society. However, the popular critique of political parties has not yet
translated into the rejection of parties per se and even less so in the rejection of
democracy. Despite widespread public disenchantment with them, there is no
alternative to political parties as they are the only form of representation able to
produce democratic governance.

9 Bader, M. (2010). Party politics in Georgia and Ukraine and the
failure of Western assistance. P. 1068.
10 Programmatic positioning by parties is expected to decrease the
impact of personalism in elections, thus providing voters with the
possibility of making informed choices.
International Assistance to Georgian Political Parties
2. Political parties as a target of international assistance:
scope and dilemmas
International assistance to political parties is essentially a one-way affair: from
organizations in old western democracies to political parties in new democ-
racies. It can be defined as “the organizational effort to support democratic
political parties, to promote a peaceful interaction between parties, and to
strengthen the democratic political and legal environment for political parties”.9
It usually covers all the major aspects of party life, from strengthening the inter-
nal organization of political parties (party organization, inclusion of women and
youth, internal democracy, transparency of party finances), to electoral capacity
building (political profiling and campaigning), to enhancing the legislative and
governance function as well as encouraging dialogue and cooperation be-
tween parties. With the exception of some multilateral institutions – the United
Nations, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, and the Eu-
ropean Union – all major IPA donors come from Western Europe, including EU
single member states and the European Commission, and the United States.
All implementing organizations are formally autonomous but still sponsored by
their own national or regional (EU) authorities.
There is a remarkable degree of similarity in party assistance by these differ-
ent actors. On the one hand, all of them are guided by ‘standards of good
practice’, i.e. formal and informal norms that providers of assistance have to
comply with. Firstly, assistance should not interfere too directly in the political
affairs of the recipient country or be perceived as doing so. This does not mean
that assistance has to be neutral. Indeed, the strongly political dimension of
international party assistance is its raison d’être but also its basic weakness in
terms of legitimacy, so that providers of assistance should avoid creating the
impression that they interfere in internal affairs. Secondly, aiding parties should
be aimed at promoting democracy, the consequence being that party assis-
tance must always be at the service of the broader objective of democracy
promotion. While the first norm compels providers to avoid favouring certain
political forces over others by working with parties across the political arena,
the second imposes criteria for the selection of recipient parties.
On the other hand, providers of assistance are guided by a shared ‘party
assistance norm’ that conveys a conception of how parties are supposed to
operate. Three main elements are embodied in this norm:
- Parties should be broad-based and have a solid organizational struc-
ture, instead of being a vehicle for a narrow leadership. They should therefore
strive to attract active membership, with a strong role for women and youth, as
well as organizational capacity at the local and regional levels;
- Parties should be representative of the interests of specific societal
groups, instead of serving the interests of the leadership. They should therefore
advocate a coherent program and, accordingly, electoral competition should be
issue-based rather than being stirred by personal reputation;10
- Parties should uphold the principle of internal democracy, instead of
being at the discretion of party leaders.
These elements of the party assistance norm are strictly interrelated: the ab-
sence of thick organizational structures often results in programmatic vague-
ness and a lack of internal democracy. Unsurprisingly, the norm relates to an
image of political parties that is largely derived from Western European experi-
ences and parties in the recipient country are expected to gradually internalize

11 Schimmelfennig, F. (2005). The International Promotion of
Political Norms in Eastern Europe: A Qualitative Comparative
Analysis. Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, Harvard
University.
elements of the norm. However, the extent of compliance with the party as-
sistance norm by recipient parties is in turn contingent on many variables that
basically inform the degree of effectiveness of IPA programmes.
The first variable concerns the potential misfit between the party model guid-
ing international actors and the type of party serving the interests of political
entrepreneurs in the target country. There might be, in other words, a potential
gap between supply and demand, i.e. the international actors’ offer and the
recipients’ priorities and needs. When relations with the state are an essential
source of party influence, leaders would invest more on their contact with those
in power, rather than with society at large. Similarly, when a political party main-
ly serves the political ambition of a small circle of members, this circle will not
show much enthusiasm for internal democracy, transparency or other crucial
dimensions supported by international actors. Therefore, regardless of how
well-designed foreign assistance programs might be, IPA’s success depends
on individual actors and on their willingness to promote party development.
The second variable concerns the additional dimension of local receptiveness
to the promotion of the party assistance norm. In other words, the effects of
IPA programs depend on the level of ‘normative fit’11 linking the supply-side
and the recipient-side of the norm, that is, the relation between the interna-
tional norms and local norms, traditions and practices. As far as Georgia is
concerned, while on the supply-side the norm harks back to an ideal model of
parties drawn from Western experiences, on the recipient-side the local norm
on party operation do not strongly condemn the absence of thick organiza-
tional structures, internal democracy, and a distinct program. The relatively
young Georgian parties tend to be different types of organizations, driven by
different types of incentives structures, the consequence being that norm
compliance cannot be achieved in party assistance merely through a logic of
appropriateness – i.e. recipients see compliance with the norm as an intrinsical-
ly appropriate behaviour. It is more realistic to think that Georgian parties would
follow a logic of consequences, so that they would adopt the norm when they
assume that adoption would bring benefits that outweigh potential costs. While
providers of assistance can rely on different incentive mechanisms to induce
compliance, such as persuasion and socialization, the major incentive that can
be expected to enhance compliance is clearly the anticipation of electoral gain,
that is, if getting more electoral support would follow from the adoption of the
party assistance norm, then this would be a compelling argument for parties
to comply with the norm. However, in the Georgian case there is no concrete
evidence that shedding off established practices would bring in electoral
benefits: party-citizen linkages based on personal reputation and, to a certain
extent, clientelism, rather than programmatic linkages, are also very effective for
winning votes.
The third crucial variable is regime context, i.e. the extent to which the insti-
tutional environment in a given country is conducive to the development of
democratic political parties. Weak legislatives, strong executive power, the
dominance of parties of power, electoral systems as well as access to party
funding might leave little space for meaningful competitive party politics. All
these elements do not simply affect the relevance and nature of parties but
also the extent to which international actors can have an impact on the orga-
nizational structure, the ideological make-up and political capability of parties.
As far as Georgia is concerned, two main elements of its institutional make-up
have had and still have an inhibitory impact on party development and on IPA
programmes’ effectiveness, namely, the electoral system and the law on party
 International Assistance to Georgian Political Parties

finances. There are at least two reasons why the Georgian electoral system
undermines robust party development. Firstly, the majoritarian section of the
vote provides an alternative route for parties and individuals to get into the
parliament, holding parties back from coalescing with other parties, and indi-
viduals from seeking party affiliation. Secondly, the opportunity to form electoral
coalitions allows insignificant parties to win mandates by banding together with
other parties for elections, which are likely to stick around and be part of a frag-
mented party system with many small and weak parties. A further element of
the institutional design that has hampered party development in Georgia has to
do with party finances, both state finances and private donations. As far as the
former source is concerned, the Georgian law on party finances basically cre-
ates a direct correlation between the financial support for political parties and
the amount of votes received. Even though this proportional funding system
is not a negative thing per se, in a dominant one-party system it significantly
favours the ruling party as the dominant force in the Parliament. As far as the
second source of finance concerned, private donations are also significantly
favouring the ruling party in a way that jeopardizes competition. Opposition
parties usually receive little or no financing of this kind as the ruling party can
use a combination of inducements and incentives to encourage businesses to
support the governing force, while discouraging opposition party development.
However, providers of assistance are not mandated, and otherwise would not
have the means, to counter these structural factors hampering party develop-
ment.

International party support therefore operates under extremely challenging and

difficult conditions. Political parties seem to be much more difficult to work
with than other political and civil society organizations since they are domes-
tic actors par excellence, relying on local support and depending on local
constituencies. Yet, they are subject to external stimuli and inputs that might
affect their nature and functioning. How all this works out in practice, how IPA
programmes have intervened in supporting their development in Georgia, is the
focus of this study.

3. Party assistance in Georgia: mixed results

Western actors have assisted political parties in Georgia since the mid-1990.
The three main actors in party assistance in Georgia over the last two decades
have been the National Democratic Institute (NDI) and the International Re-
publican Institute (IRI), affiliated with the Democratic and Republican Parties
respectively and funded by the United States Agency for International Develop-
ment (USAID); and the Netherlands Institute for Multiparty Democracy (NIMD)
– whose country office became in 2017 an independent, locally owned and
locally rooted NGO called the Eastern European Centre for Multiparty Democ-
racy (EECMD) with funding from the OSCE. NDI started providing party assis-
tance already in 1996, followed by IRI two years later, while the NIMD program
runs from 2005.

Their IPA programmes have been established with the objective of strengthen-
ing the Georgian multi-party system by encouraging parties to cooperate on
political issues and by enabling them to compete in elections on a level playing
field, to become more inclusive of marginalized groups, to become more trans-
parent and democratic in their decision making process. Ideally, therefore, party
assistance is aimed at providing an adequate response to those shortfalls and
domestic constraints identified earlier in the paper; how IPA programmes are
related to these constraints on party development is therefore reviewed below.

12 Interviews have been held with officers working in Party
Assistance Programs at IRI, NDI and NIMD in order to gain a
deeper insight into their objectives and range of activities aimed at
enhancing party development in Georgia.
13 See interviews in Bader, M. (2010). Against all odds: aiding politi-
cal parties in Georgia and Ukraine. Amsterdam University Press.
3.1 Fluid party politics
Providers of assistance have resorted to two types of programmes with the
aim of tackling volatility and instability of Georgian parties through trainings
and workshops/seminars (both provided to only one party or several parties
simultaneously) as well as direct assistance/consultations. Firstly, initiatives in
the area of ‘operational and structural development’ are aimed at strengthening
party organization, which in turn would prevent parties from disintegration or
far-reaching internal overhaul. These party-development initiatives inherently
promote the vision of a well-managed, evolving organization with democratic
leadership and a functional organizational structure. This area of development
thus encompasses practices needed to have the party grow as an organiza-
tion, such as establishing branches, policy making procedures, membership
management structures, and channels of communication between the party
and the public. More specifically, key areas include: membership development
and recruitment; message and platform development; relationship between
national, regional and local units; building relationships with outside groups;
fundraising; and opinion polls and research. Next to these initiatives aimed
at strengthening party organization, much of IPA programmes are ‘election
related’. In particular, assistance programmes focus on topics such as stra-
tegic planning for effective campaigns, candidate identification and selection,
message and platform development, voter outreach and mobilization, media
relations, campaign funding, opinion polls and poll watching.
As far as the first type of activities is concerned, they have been instrumental
in diffusing new ideas on a wide range of issues and topics related to political
party development, as well as in creating awareness about problems that these
entities face and potential solution. Significant efforts have been especially
devoted to the question of party structures’ development and initiatives have
been shaped with the aim of enhancing parties’ organizational capacity at
the local and regional levels. Providers of assistance have thus worked in this
direction by helping parties in developing their regional organizations and in
shaping strategies that would improve the lines of communication and coordi-
nation between the local, regional and national party structures. However, even
though there is a growing consensus among party leaders on the importance
of granting more autonomy to regional offices in order to better articulate local
needs and interests, it has often been noted in interviews that financial con-
straints hamper the development of regional organizations. Most of the parties
struggle to raise funds other than state funding, which, in most of the cases, is
not enough to maintain or develop a fully operational regional office.
As far as election-related initiatives are concerned, most political parties need
these skills regardless of their ideological orientation and there are reasons to
believe that such activities have the potential of enhancing the parties’ capac-
ity to perform their representative functions. Indeed, while the articulation of a
coherent party platform remains a great challenge for Georgian parties, their
campaigns and programs are increasingly becoming centred on real issues and
feasible. In these regards, it was noted during interviews12 that instruments
such as public opinion surveys provide a needed “reality check” for parties
when evaluating which strategies and ideologies will resonate with the elector-
ate.
It has been a frequent objection to party assistance in Georgia that a too signif-
icant proportion of seminars has been devoted to election-related topics at the
expense of initiatives aimed at structural-operational development.13 The ratio-
 International Assistance to Georgian Political Parties

nale for this focus is also due to the fact that improvements in governance
or internal party democracy, while crucial for long-term democratization, do
not offer the same short-term appeal to competitive parties. However, if the
ultimate goal of party assistance is encouraging the creation of a viable party
system with multiple democratically oriented, popularly supported parties, a
strategy that overemphasizes elections risks creating a situation in which the
goal of electoral victory outweighs the broader goal of providing the elector-
ate with meaningful choice and representation. While developing campaign
skills by party activists is clearly beneficial to overall party development, the
object of consolidating parties is better served by those initiatives that spe-
cifically tackle the question of party organization.

At the same time, efforts at coalition-building – i.e. at stimulating far-reach-

ing forms of intra-party cooperation leading to the merger of several parties
into a single one, rather than just stimulating temporary electoral coalitions
– might potentially reduce the fragmentation of the Georgian party system.
Promoting interparty relations has been the focus of the Multiparty Pro-
gramme organized in the framework of the NIMD project, which has priori-
tized the facilitation of dialogue on key issues between political parties, while
omitting campaign-related issues. Similarly, the International Foundation for
Election Systems (IFES) has facilitated the process of inter-party negotiations
on different key issues for improving the election environment through the so
–called IFES Format. However, efforts at coalition-building so far have fallen
through. Despite sustained efforts, providers of assistance have not been
able to halt fractionalization, so that most electoral coalitions have steadily
disintegrated after each and every round of elections. The rationale for this
failure might lie in the unwillingness of party elites to give up their party orga-
nizations, as well as to personal differences between leaders. Party assis-
tance can hardly have an impact on the whims of these elites.

3.2 Elite ownership

A roadblock on the development of representative and stable parties is the

excessive role of party leaders enhancing the relevance of charismatic par-
ty-voter linkages. To overcome this constraint, party assistance has tried to
break the dominance of party leaders by installing procedures that enhance
internal democracy, as well as by strengthening and broadening parties’ or-
ganizational structure in the regions. The underlying assumption is therefore
that increasing the number of persons within parties that can exert influence
over the party’s operation and enhancing the role of regional party structures
in the decision-making process would decrease the power of leaders and
transform parties into more programmatic structures.

All providers of international assistance have been working to address the

question of internal democratic governance and a special focus has been
put on candidate selection as well as shady recruitment procedures. Indeed,
some parties have democratic procedures for the election of their leaders
but, in practice, the process is rarely based on the principles of inclusiveness
and participation, as internal elections simply serve to provide pre-existing
leaders with a degree of external legitimacy. Moreover, the degree to which
party members and activists can influence the selection of top leaders is
insignificant, while their role in shaping the party’s platform, agenda and
policies is equally limited. Nor are party members involved in the selection of
candidates for national elections. While candidate identification and selec-
V

tion has often been a topic of discussion of those election-related initiatives

mentioned above as well as of direct consultations, it has been noted during
interviews that smaller parties in need of assistance have proved to be more
inclined to the internalization of democratic mechanisms and procedures for
the selection of candidates, including the establishment of party congresses.
The problem of elite ownership for party assistance is indeed that potential ef-
fects from assistance on stronger parties (especially ruling parties) are offset by
leaders who sometimes have interests that run against the reforms proposed
by party assistance, the simplest being the retention of absolute power within
the party.

As far as membership recruitment is concerned, providers of assistance have

attempted to tackle the question of shady recruitment practices by enhancing
the role of two groups who are thought of as being underrepresented and kept
out of influential positions: women and youth. Even though these efforts rarely
have much effects against the backdrop of elite ownership, they do have the
potential of increasing parties’ representative capability and levels of societal
mobilization by creating opportunities to enhance the awareness of, as well as
prioritise, women and youth’s issues. On the one hand, international providers
of assistance have therefore incorporated gender among their activities in order
to create consensus around women’s political participation to the extent that
gender issues gained momentum. Discussion about women in politics have
therefore been encouraged and multi-party task forces have been created with
the aim of helping parties in crafting their own internal strategies to increase the
involvement of women in political life – including by creating a women’s wing or
by shaping strategies for appointing more women to leadership positions in the
regions. On the other hand, support has been granted to youth organizations
and debates have been encouraged between youth wings of different political
parties with the aim of encouraging political participation.

Conclusion
The picture of effects from assistance in Georgia is a mixed bag. As repeat-
edly underlined throughout this paper, the degree of effectiveness of party
assistance is a function not just of the adequacy of the input of assistance but,
most of all, to the permissiveness of conditions on the recipient-side. Limited
lasting effects on party development is therefore explained from a combination
of shortcomings in the input of assistance and domestic constraints on the
reception of assistance. From the input side, it has been noted that the misfit
between the IPA norm and local norms tends to be quite large and that the
set of incentives offered by providers of assistance are not enough to foster
compliance. On the recipient side, party assistance is invalidated by a set of
domestic institutional constraints that hamper party development and by the
fact that most parties are driven by an incentive structure that is incompatible
with the values that party assistance seek to infuse into the Georgian party pol-
itics. Lasting effects on the operation of individual parties have therefore been
few but there is ground to believe that sustained efforts would contribute to the
development of a set of more stable and democratic parties. On a micro-lev-
el, thousands of individuals have been exposed to the party assistance norm
through their participation in assistance programs and it is of the utmost im-
portance that providers of assistance maintain their presence in the country, so
that they will be able to seize unexpected opportunities for democratic reform
when they present themselves. Indeed, the most fundamental but overlooked
value added of political party programs is the opportunity to build relationships
with local parties and political elites that can reinforce the infusion and internal-
 International Assistance to Georgian Political Parties

ization of democratic norms.

• As most effects from party assistance consist of elite socialization,
political entrepreneurs are beginning to understand elements of the party norm
and are starting to adopt features of advanced parties, especially those that are
enhanced by election-related IPA programmes, such as campaign and platform
development as well as voter outreach. Even though the internalization of skills
provided through election-related activities is enhancing the parties’ capacity to
perform their representative functions, more needs to be done in order to allow
all the parties to develop a more solid organizational structure and to break the
dominance of party leaders. In this situation, assistance should focus more on
structural development activities, on the one hand – especially in the area of
membership development and of coordination/communication between local,
regional and national party offices – as well as on those critical reforms that
parties are less likely to adopt voluntarily in the area of internal democracy.
• To be effective, more efforts should be put by providers of assistance
in addressing the incentive structure driving political parties. Assistance strate-
gies must support institutions capable of changing incentives and, in turn, party
behaviour. Assistance should thus try to create a link in the mind of politicians
between the public interest and their own interests, namely, achieving electoral
success or political power.
• Working with civil society organizations should be reinvigorated in
order to increase pressure on parties from the “demand side”. In addition to
election-monitoring organizations, other watchdog groups and nonpartisan
think-tanks should be a target of cooperation. By exposing incompetence,
corruption and abuses of power, these think-tanks can help reorient party elite
incentives away from self-enrichment and toward the public good.
• At the same time, it is of the utmost importance to invest in neutral,
nonpartisan voter education programmes and in civic education, always with
the aim of increasing pressure on parties to develop from the “demand side”. In
a country like Georgia, where long-standing traditions of civic participation may
not be as entrenched as in other countries, raising the civic awareness of its
citizens and ensuring their participation in community life is vital.
• In order to encourage critical reforms, providers of assistance should
also consider the potential of external incentives arising from the association of
Georgian parties with Euro-parties, which is a further instrument for socializing
Georgian parties to the party assistance norm. Currently, the Free Democrats
and the Republican Party are members of the Alliance for Liberals and Demo-
crats for Europe (ALDE), while the UNM and European Georgia have joined the
European People’s Party (EPP) with an observer status, just like the GD, which
is an observing member of the Party of European Socialists (PES). Being a
member or an observer in the operation of Euro-parties allows Georgian parties
to gain additional resources and technical support in terms of increasing their
capacities, as well as international legitimation and growth of authority in the
eyes of the people. Providers of assistance can thus encourage their targets of
assistance to capitalize on these international networks for development.
• Multiparty dialogue initiatives should also be prioritised with the aim of
encouraging domestic actors to deliberate and, ultimately, adopt legislation and
reform conducive to strengthening multiparty democracy.