RUCARR Seminar with Konstantine Eristavi, Visiting Postdoctoral Researcher at the School of Interdisciplinary Area Studies at the University of Oxford
When? December 2, 15:15-17:00
Where? Seminar room, 9th floor, Niagara or on Zoom: https://mau-se.zoom.us/j/66397767365
Abstract:
Most accounts interpret recent developments in Georgia as “democratic backsliding” and a qualitative break from an earlier phase of democratisation. I contend instead that Georgia’s trajectory is better understood as the ongoing consolidation of an authoritarian neoliberal model. In contrast to prevailing approaches that separate the analysis of authoritarianism in former Soviet states from questions of political economy, this presentation argues that authoritarian governance in Georgia is constitutive of its development model and inseparable from strategies pursued by capitalist elites. In particular, the talk traces (dis)continuities in the configuration of state power since independence and discusses mechanisms through which successive governments have disciplined working and poor classes and depoliticised social conflict in order to entrench the neoliberal regime of capital accumulation.
