CRRC’s 9th Annual Conference: New Frontiers: The South Caucasus Amidst New Challenges

On June 22 and 23, the Caucasus Research Resource Centers in Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia hosted the 9th annual methods conference. This year the conference focused on the  Russian-Ukrainian and how it has altered the geopolitical, economic, and demographic state of the South Caucasus. 

The first day of the conference featured four panels, on issues ranging from values, mobilization, and activism in the South Caucasus to migration to and from the region. 

The first day also featured a round table on  Archival Access and Openness in the Caucasus and Eurasia, with speakers from Berkeley, Cambridge, and Princeton, among other universities. 

The second day of the conference featured two panels, with the first looking at new economic geographies of the region, and the second focused on intercommunal relations in the South Caucasus. 

The conference concluded with a methods workshop, focused on Empowering Research Subjects with Photovoice in the South Caucasus.

The full conference video will be available from CRRC Georgia’s YouTube Channel in the near future, here.

The conference abstract book is available here. 

What Do Non-Partisans Think of Politicians and Parties in Georgia?

Note: Note: This article first appeared on the Caucasus Data Blog, a joint effort of CRRC-Georgia and OC Media. This article was written by Zachary Fabos, an International Fellow at CRRC Georgia. The views presented in the article are the author’s alone and do not necessarily represent the views of CRRC Georgia, Caucasian House, or any related entity.

A CRRC analysis found that, of the plurality of Georgians who do not feel any party aligns with their views, most dislike Georgia’s leading political figures and parties.

Controversy over Georgia’s leading politicians’ actions and statements is commonplace. Prime Minister Irakli Gharibashvili’s recent statements on the war in Ukraine and the subsequent criticism surrounding it is just one recent example.

Typically, an individual’s reaction to such controversy is connected to their political views and party alignment. However, a plurality of Georgians either do not know which party their views align with or feel their views do not align with any party, according to CRRC Georgia’s January 2023 Omnibus survey. This segment of the Georgian public is critical of all political figures and parties they are surveyed on, regardless of a politician’s political affiliation.

Participants of CRRC Georgia’s Omnibus Survey were asked which party best aligned with their views. A plurality (47%) of Georgians either do not know or believe no party aligns with their views. A quarter (24%) indicated their views align with Georgian Dream, while 11% reported the United National Movement (UNM) did. 12% chose other parties, and the remaining 6% refused to answer.

As the plurality of respondents do not know, or feel no party aligns with their views, what do they think of some of the country’s leading political figures?

Respondents that indicated don’t know or no party aligns with their views disliked all the political figures they were asked about. However, this group was most critical of Georgian Dream party chairman Irakli Kobakhidze and former UNM chairman Nika Melia with a net favourability of -50% each, with 13% reporting they liked Kobakhidze, and 63% reporting they disliked him. The nonpartisans, and the public more generally, were least critical of Tbilisi Mayor Kakha Kaladze, with a net favourability of -7% amongst those who supported no party. The rest of the political figures in the survey fell somewhere between, all with negative net favourability among this group.

 

The degree to which these respondents’ criticism is nonpartisan is reinforced by data from those that indicated either the Georgian Dream party or UNM was closest to their views. Among these partisan respondents, likes and dislikes sharply align with partisanship.

Georgian Dream supporters greatly dislike political figures associated with the UNM, with former President Mikheil Saakashvili receiving -67% net favourability, and former party chairman Nika Melia -84% net favourability. Support for political figures associated with Georgian Dream is consistently positive. However, party chair Irakli Kobakhidze and President Salome Zourabichvili, an independent who was strongly supported in her election by Georgian Dream, received the lowest net favourability scores of the group with 34% and 29%, respectively.

Similarly, those indicating the UNM is closest to their views strongly supported opposition-aligned political figures, while being critical of those associated with Georgian Dream. Amongst this group, for example, Prime Minister Irakli Gharibashvili received a net favourability score of -68%. In contrast, UNM supporters have highly positive attitudes towards Saakashvili, who had a net favourability of 83%, the highest net favourability rating of any political figure in all groups regardless of party.

Opinions on the two leading parties among nonpartisans were largely critical, as 60% stated they disliked Georgian Dream while 67% disliked the UNM. Although the group was more likely to like the ruling party (21%) than the opposition (13%), positive perceptions of both parties were relatively uncommon.

This group was similarly critical of all other parties they were surveyed on, with all being disliked by a majority (at least 60%), or more of the group. The most liked of the third parties was former Prime Minister Giorgi Gakharia’s For Georgia, with 15% of those in the group of nonpartisans questioned indicating they liked the party. The least liked was the far-right Conservative Movement, at 6%.

 

Note: Response options to the question on the above chart included like a lot, like more than dislike, dislike more than like, and do not like at all in addition to don’t know, refuse to answer, and I have not heard of this party. The chart above merges responses of like a lot and like more than dislike as like. It also combines responses of dislike more than like and do not like at all into dislike.

The data shows that party allegiance, or lack thereof, is associated with Georgians’ opinions on political figures. As a plurality of those surveyed do not align themselves with any one party’s beliefs, many Georgians are left not sympathising with any party, and largely dislike most major political figures.

Do Georgians Feel Like They are Being Spied on by the Government?

 Note: This article first appeared on the Caucasus Data Blog, a joint effort of CRRC Georgia and OC Media. It was written by Dustin Gilbreath, a Senior Non-Resident Fellow at CRRC Georgia. The views presented in the article are of the author alone, and do not necessarily reflect the views of NDI, CRRC-Georgia, or any related entity.

Nearly half of the Georgian public think that they or their family members are under government surveillance at least some of the time.

Georgia has consistently had controversies around surveillance over the past two political administrations, as both the United National Movement and Georgian Dream governments have had extensive access to communications.

In September 2021, a massive cache of files allegedly belonging to the State Security Services (SSG) was leaked, causing a scandal in Georgia and stirring fears of mass surveillance among the public.

[Read more on OC Media: Datablog | Georgian public opinion on the SSG files]

Though Georgian Dream initially made some reforms in this area upon coming to power, recent legislative changes have largely rolled back on this progress. In light of the consistent scandals, it is perhaps unsurprising that nearly half the public thinks that they are being surveilled in one form or another, according to a recent survey CRRC-Georgia conducted for the Social Justice Center.

The survey asked respondents how much they felt that the SSG surveilled them or their family members in everyday life through the following means:

    Listening to their phone calls;
    Monitoring their social media activity;
    Informants in their neighbourhood, community, or workplace and;
    Physical surveillance.

The data suggest that the public is most likely to think that security services listen to their phone calls, with 36% reporting they believe this happens sometimes or always.

Social media monitoring was the second-most common form of surveillance people believed to be subject to, with one in five (20%) believing this happens sometimes or always. Approximately one in six (17%) believe that there are government informants at their workplace, in their community, or in their neighbourhood. Direct surveillance is believed to be least common among the public, with only 6% reporting they believe this happens to them sometimes or always.

 

Overall, 44% of the public reported that they believe the government monitors them in one of the above manners. One in five (21%) named one means of surveillance on the survey, one in eight (13%) reported two means of surveillance while one in ten (10%) reported three or four means of surveillance.

 

When the data is broken down by social and demographic variables, a number of patterns emerge: first, older people (55+) are significantly less likely to believe they are under surveillance than those between 18–34 or 35–54.

Second, people who support the opposition are 25 points more likely than Georgian Dream supporters to believe they are under surveillance at least sometimes. Similarly, nonpartisans are seven points more likely to believe that they are being surveilled than supporters of the ruling party.

A regression that included the above variables did not show any significant differences between men and women, ethnic minorities and ethnic Georgians, IDPs and non-IDPs, wealthier and poorer households, people in different types of settlement, those with differing levels of education, those working and not, and working the public and private sectors.

 

The above data suggests that nearly half the public thinks the government is surveilling them, with opposition supporters being particularly likely to believe the government is watching.

The data in this article is available here.

Georgians' Attitudes and Beliefs Associated with Polarised Media Preferences

Note: This article first appeared on the Caucasus Data Blog, a joint effort of CRRC-Georgia and OC Media. This article was written by Givi Siligadze, a Researcher at CRRC-Georgia. The views presented in the article are the authors’ alone, and do not necessarily reflect the views of CRRC Georgia, the National Endowment of Democracy, or any related entity.

A recent NDI/CRRC survey suggests that Georgians have markedly different beliefs about the present state and future of their country, regardless of their party sympathies, depending on whether the television channel they trust is pro-government or pro-opposition.

Georgian media is widely considered to be heavily polarised, with its focus ‘almost entirely on the party-political agenda’, according to one respondent in a recent DW Akademie study.

This polarisation may have reached the point of impeding the functionality of the media: a 2021 study found that Georgia’s main media outlets in Georgia had become so partisan that their ability to report in the broader public interest was undermined.

Research using data from a March 2023 NDI/CRRC survey found that people’s attitudes and perceptions of Georgia and its politics differed significantly depending on what TV channels they considered trustworthy, even when controlling for party preferences.

The data suggests that people who trust pro-government TV channels tend to be more optimistic about the country's direction, less concerned with political issues, more convinced that Georgia is a democracy, and more open to Georgia cooperating with Russia on political as well as economic issues than people who trust pro-opposition TV stations.

In Georgia, one in five people (19%) trust pro-government TV channels the most (Imedi or PosTV). Roughly every eighth Georgian (13%) puts their trust in pro-opposition TV channels (Mtavari, TV Pirveli, Formula, Kavkasia), and a similar proportion (12%) of the public trusts other TV stations (Rustavi 2, GPB, Adjara TV, Obiektivi, etc.). The remaining 57% of the electorate trust no TV channel or are uncertain about which station they trust most.

The data suggests that regardless of age, sex, settlement type, ethnicity, wealth, and partisan sympathy, people who trust pro-government TV channels tend to feel more positive about Georgia’s present and future, compared to people who trust other TV channels or do not trust TV at all.

All else being equal, Georgians whose most trusted TV channel is pro-government are 40 percentage points more likely than people who trust pro-opposition TV channels to think that the country is going in the right direction, and 33 percentage points more likely to say that Georgia is a democracy today, than people who trust pro-opposition channels.

 

Regarding which countries or international organisations Georgia should have the closest political cooperation with, people who trust pro-opposition TV stations differ from other segments of the electorate.

A regression analysis suggests that people who trust pro-opposition TV channels tend to be more pro-Western and anti-Russian than people who trust pro-government media, other TV channels, or do not trust TV at all.

People who trust pro-opposition TV channels are 13 percentage points more likely to think that Georgia should politically cooperate most closely with the USA, and 18 percentage points more likely to think that the EU should be Georgia’s closest political ally, than Georgians who trust pro-government media.

Moreover, they are 10 percentage points less likely to say that Georgia should have its closest political ties to Russia.

 

The patterns are similar for opinions on Georgia’s economic partnerships. The data suggests that after controlling for age, sex, settlement type, ethnicity, wealth, and partisan sympathy, people who trust pro-government TV channels are twice as likely to support deepening economic relations with Russia than people who trust pro-opposition TV stations.

 

Similar patterns emerge regarding what issues people consider to be priorities in Georgia.

All else being equal, people who trust pro-opposition TV channels are more likely to name political issues (free and fair elections, court systems, freedom of speech, media independence) and less likely to name socio-economic issues (rising prices, wages, pensions, jobs, poverty) as the most important problems that Georgia faces today than people who trust other TV channels (pro-government and non-affiliated media).

Georgians that trust pro-opposition TV channels are 10 percentage points more likely than people who trust pro-government media and 13 percentage points more likely than people who trust other TV channels to name political issues as the most pressing problems that the country is facing.

Georgians

 
Georgians who trust pro-government media tend to assess the government's performance positively, both broadly, and more specifically in terms of Georgia’s efforts at integrating into the European Union, while people who trust other TV channels or trust no TV at all tend to be more critical.

After controlling for other factors, people who trust pro-government media are 40 percentage points more likely than people who trust pro-opposition media to report that the government is doing everything in its power to ensure Georgia’s EU membership. Similarly, they are 20 percentage points more likely to say the same in comparison to people who trust other media or no media at all.

 

All else being equal, people who trust pro-government TV channels have a 74% chance of assessing the current government’s performance positively, versus 27% for those who trust pro-opposition media. As with other issues, people who trust non-partisan TV channels and people who do not trust any TV channel at all are somewhere in between.

 

 

The above analysis is correlational rather than causal, so cannot identify causal effects of trusting or viewing partisan TV channels. However, it is evident that people who trust explicitly pro-government and pro-opposition TV channels view things differently. This association between trust in TV channels and public attitudes holds true even after controlling for partisan identification, suggesting that TV might play an important and independent role in shaping politically polarised segments of Georgian society.

Note: The above data analysis is based on logistic and multinomial regression models which included the following variables: age group (18-35, 35-55, 55+), sex (male or female), education (completed secondary/lower or incomplete higher education/higher), settlement type (capital, urban, rural), wealth (an additive index of ownership of 10 different items, a proxy variable), party identification (Georgian Dream, Opposition, Not affiliated) and ethnicity (ethnic Georgian or ethnic minority).


The data used in this article is available here.