Georgians increasingly feel mistreated 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 Eto Gagunashvili, a Researcher at CRRC-Georgia, The views presented in the article are of the author alone, and do not necessarily reflect the views of CRRC-Georgia, or any related entity.

Recent CRRC Georgia data suggests that people in Georgia’s age and foreign policy preferences affect how they feel the government is treating them.

The public’s perception of the fairness of the government’s actions is critical to governance and may reflect the quality of democracy in a country. Today, Georgians tend to feel like their country is no longer a democracy, while the public feels that people like them are not being treated fairly by the government.

According to data CRRC Georgia collected for the Europe Foundation since 2009 through a survey on Georgian attitudes towards the EU, the share of Georgians who disagree with the opinion that people like them are being treated unfairly by the government has increased from 46% in 2009 to 60% in 2021. 

Today, twice as many people think that the government treats people like them unfairly as those who feel otherwise.

In the 2021 data, older people (55+) were more likely to agree with the opinion that in Georgia, people like them are treated fairly by the government than younger people (18–35). Other social and demographic variables were not statistically associated with whether or not someone thinks the government treats someone like them more or less fairly.

People’s perceptions of how democratic Georgia is, which country can best support Georgia currently, and support for EU membership are correlated with people’s views of whether people like them are treated fairly by the government. 

People who report that they would vote against EU membership were 18 percentage points more likely to agree that the government treats them fairly than those who report that they would vote for EU membership.

People who report that the USA can currently give the best support to Georgia were 18 percentage points less likely to agree with the statement that people are treated fairly by the government compared to people who report that Russia can best support Georgia.

People who think that Georgia is not a democracy yet, but is developing in that direction or think that Georgia is a democratic country with room for improvement were 13 and 25 percentage points more likely to agree that they are treated fairly than people who think that Georgia might become a democracy in the future, but it is not developing in that direction now. 

With the perception that Georgia’s democracy is backsliding, so too comes the public perception that the government is increasingly not treating people like them fairly. However, older people and people who think Russia can best support Georgia were more satisfied with how the government treats them. 

Note: The above data analysis is based on logistic regression models which included the following variables: age group (18-34, 35-54, 55+), sex (male or female), education (Secondary or lower; Secondary technical; Higher; type of settlement (capital, urban, rural); who can currently best support Georgia (EU, USA, Russia), how democratic Georgia is (Georgia might become a democracy in the future, but it is not developing in that direction now; Georgia is not a democracy yet, but it is developing in that direction; Georgia is a democratic country, but there is still room for improvement); Agree/disagree with the statement: "I am Georgian, and therefore I am European”); Would vote for or against EU membership? (For EU membership; Against EU membership; Would not vote at all).

As Georgia’s government argues with the West, the public want ever closer relations

Note: This article was first published in the Caucasus Data Blog, a joint publication of CRRC Georgia and OC Media. It was written by Dustin Gilbreath, the Deputy Research Director at CRRC Georgia. The views expressed in this article reflect the views of the author alone, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Europe Foundation, CRRC Georgia, or any related entity.

Over the past year, Georgia’s government has engaged in a series of spats with the Western governments and institutions, despite data suggesting people want the opposite.

Last year saw more damage to Georgia’s relationship with the West than in any other time in recent memory. 

In July, the US Embassy said it was ‘deeply disturbed and exasperated’ after the ruling Georgian Dream party withdrew from the Charles Michel Agreement, a deal which the President of the European Union spent multiple days in Georgia negotiating. ‘Refusing’ financial aid that one Member of the European Parliament said would not have been available anyway due to failures to reform the judiciary, was another notable strike in Georgia’s declining Western relations. 

The head of the Georgian Dream Party’s increasingly regular spats with the US Ambassador can only be further damaging relations. Concomitantly, the tone of US statements has gone from one of concern to talk of ‘risk[ing] tyranny’. 

All the while, data from the Knowledge of and Attitudes towards the European Union in Georgia, funded by the Europe Foundation and implemented by CRRC Georgia, shows that the public wanted closer relations with the West in the period leading up to the scandals noted above.

The share of people thinking Georgia should focus its political and economic efforts on Russia has declined since 2013. Two-thirds of people named Russia as one of the countries Georgia should have closer political relations with than others in 2013, compared with only a third in 2021. The data is quite similar when it comes to economic cooperation.

Note: Respondents were asked, ‘Which of the following countries and unions should Georgia have the closest [economic/political] cooperation with?’ They were allowed to provide up to three responses. As a result, the sum of responses does not equal 100%.

While Russia’s importance to Georgians has been on the decline, people’s views of the West have been on the rise. 

In 2015, 49% of people said Georgia’s closest political relations should be with the EU, less than the share naming Russia. Since then, there has been a 13 percentage point rise, bringing the share of the public thinking that relations should be closest with the EU 30 points above those reporting the same of Russia. 

The data on economic relations paints a similar picture, with a 17 percentage point rise in the share of the public thinking that Georgia’s closest economic relations should be with the European Union between 2019 and 2021.

The data paints a similar picture of attitudes towards the US. There was a rise from 46% of the public thinking Georgia should have the US among its closest political partners in 2015 to 61% in 2021. Between 2019 and 2021, the data shows a six percentage point increase in this view. 

The change is even larger with regards to attitudes towards economic relations with the US, with a 19 percentage point rise between 2015 and 2021, including a nine percentage point rise between 2019 and 2021.

The Georgian public increasingly thinks that Georgia should have closer political and economic relations with the West, while fewer and fewer people think Georgia should focus its political and economic relations to the North. Despite the public’s views, the Georgian Western relation remains on the rocks. 

The data used in this article are available here.

Do Georgians differentiate between the Russian people and Russian state?

Note: This article originally appeared on the Caucasus Data Blog, a joint publication of CRRC Georgia and OC Media. It was written by Dr. Tamuna Khostaria, a Senior Researcher at CRRC Georgia, and Nino Mzavanadze, a Researcher at CRRC Georgia. The views presented in the article reflect the views of the authors alone, and do not neccesarily reflect the views of GFSIS, CRRC Georgia, or any related entity.

Given the hostile relations between Russia and Georgia over the last 30 years, Georgian public opinion towards their northern neighbour could be expected to be less than positive. But do Georgians differentiate between the Russian state and the Russian people?

A study CRRC-Georgia conducted for the Georgian Foundation for Strategic and International Studies (GFSIS) and the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES) South Caucasus Office in 2021 shows that people have conflicting attitudes towards Russia and Russians. 

The data suggest that the Georgian public’s attitudes towards Russian people and the Russian state differ significantly. Half of people living in Georgia (52%) report having a positive attitude towards Russian people, with only 7% reporting negative attitudes. 

At the same time, half of the population (54%) reported having a negative attitude towards the Russian Federation, while only 18% held positive views. 

A quote from one 29-year-old ethnic Georgian woman from Tbilisi who holds a higher education and who participated in a focus group reflects these sentiments:

‘For me, Russia is an occupier, but my [negative] attitude is not towards ordinary Russian people, because if my government did horrible things that would not mean that I am like that too. I adore Russian literature, but I dislike Russia with its ruler. But again, that does not mean that I despise the people’.

Overall, 17% of people reported having a positive attitude towards Russia and Russian people, 21% a positive attitude towards Russian people and a negative attitude towards the state, 7% a negative attitude towards both, 22% neutral attitudes towards both, and 33% a mixture of attitudes. Less than 1% had a positive attitude towards Russia and a negative attitude towards Russians; as a result, this category is not included in subsequent analysis.

Which set of attitudes people position themselves in was associated with a number of factors, according to a set of regression analyses. 

Men were significantly more likely to have positive attitudes towards Russian people but not the state than women. Women were significantly more likely to report neutral or uncertain attitudes towards both. 

Attitudes also vary by education level.  People with secondary education or lower were significantly more likely to report positive attitudes towards Russia and Russians. In contrast, people with tertiary education reported more positive views towards Russians but not Russia.

People in Tbilisi were more likely to hold positive attitudes towards Russians but not Russia than in other settlement types, while people in rural areas were less likely to fall into this grouping and more likely to hold neutral views. 

Older people were more likely to have positive views of Russians but not Russia.  This finding might be explained by the closer relations which older people had with Russians during the Soviet Union. 

Indeed, this view was often expressed in focus groups, with participants noting that friendships are less common among young people. One 50-year-old ethnic Georgian woman with a higher education from Samagrelo stated:

‘Considering we are neighbours, we should deepen relationships and make them better. People can make anything happen. Politics is one thing, but people’s power is boundless. My generation feels that way, but the younger generation feels differently. They don’t speak Russian either, and can’t imagine any kind of relationship with Russians. We, the older generation, have more nostalgic sentiments [and can] set politics aside.’

Attitudes also vary with foreign policy preferences. People with negative attitudes towards Georgia’s Euro-Atlantic integration also tended to be more likely to have positive views of both Russia and Russians. In contrast, those who were positive about Georgia’s Euro-Atlantic integration held a broader mix of views. 

People who had a negative attitude towards Georgia joining NATO were roughly 2.5 times more likely (32%) to have a positive attitude towards Russian people and the state compared with people who held a positive attitude towards Georgia’s integration into NATO (13%). 

The data showed a similar pattern with attitudes towards Georgia’s integration with the European Union.

The findings suggest that attitudes towards the Russian people and the Russian state differ in Georgia. 

Men, those living in the capital, people with tertiary education, and older people held a more positive attitude towards the people, but not the state.  

As younger people have relatively weak links with Russians, it is reasonable to assume that what goodwill exists towards Russians is likely to wane in the future. How dynamics play out given these findings though, remains an open question. What is clear though is that people with negative attitudes towards Georgia’s Euro-Atlantic integration also have more positive attitudes towards both Russia and Russians.

Note: The above quantitative analysis is based on two multinomial logistic regression models, where the dependent variable is attitudes towards the Russian state and Russian people with the following categories: Positive attitudes towards Russian people and state, positive attitudes towards Russian people but not state, negative attitude towards Russian people and state, Neutral attitude towards Russian people and state, any other attitude towards Russian people and/or state, excluding people who had positive attitudes towards the Russian state but negative attitudes towards Russians. This variable was generated using two survey questions, with one question about people's attitudes towards the state and the other about attitudes towards Russian people. The independent variables include (a) demographic variables (gender, age, settlement type, and education) and attitudes towards joining the EU; and (b) demographic variables and attitudes towards joining the NATO.   

Georgia’s Foreign Policy Trilemma: Balance, Bandwagon, or Hedge? Part 2

The first part of this blog post discussed evidence of an association between perceiving Russia as the main threat to Georgia and a preference for a foreign policy that balances against that threat through alliances with the West. The relationship between threat perception and hedging, defined as attempting to maintain good relations with both Russia and the West, is less clear.

A large number of Georgians prefer some form of hedging foreign policy – either a pro-Western policy that maintains good relations with Russia, or a pro-Russian policy that maintains good relations with the West. In absolute terms, the pro-Western hedge group is much larger than the pro-Russian hedge group, and the former is fairly evenly split – 54% to 46% – between those who perceive Russia as the main threat and those who do not. In the pro-Russian hedge group, only 16% identify Russia as the main threat. If we combine all those who expressed a preference for either of the two hedging options – about three quarters of respondents who expressed a foreign policy preference – slightly less than half (44%) identify Russia as the main threat to Georgia (which is about the same as the population as a whole).

Hedging, by design, incorporates the logic of both balancing and bandwagoning. On the one hand, support for the two hedging options mirrors the more uncompromising positions of straight pro-Western or pro-Russian preferences. Identifying Russia as the main threat is positively associated with both a purely pro-Western and pro-Western hedge position as well as negatively associated with both a purely pro-Russian and pro-Russian hedge position.

On the other hand, a hedging strategy seems to be more important for those who do not see Russia as the main threat: this group is more likely to support a pro-Russian policy that also maintains good relations with the West (bottom left quadrant). But those who do see Russia as the main threat seem to prioritise balancing over bandwagoning. At the same time, they are less likely to opt for a policy that maintains good relations with Russia (top right quadrant) than a strictly pro-Western orientation.





Commenting on Serbia’s foreign policy and Belgrade’s attempt to navigate between the West and Russia, a US diplomat once said "You cannot sit on two chairs at the same time, especially if they are that far away." This precarious position for small states is well-known to Georgia and Armenia, and comparing the two cases can be instructive. Georgia and Armenia face similar conditions for reasons of geography and history, and the trilemma of balancing, bandwagoning, and hedging shapes foreign policy choices. Each country risks incurring costs if they lean too far towards the West or towards Russia, and as a matter of self-preservation they have to successfully manage relations with both sides, which also comes with risks. That said, threat perception among their respective publics is very different – Armenians do not see Russia as a threat to the same extent as Georgians – and support for Euro-Atlantic integration is far higher in Georgia.

The intuitive logic of hedging is clearly appealing and it resonates with many Georgians. There is a large domestic constituency in favour of a foreign policy that seeks good relations with both the West and with Russia, especially among the more than 50% who do not identify Russia as the main threat to the country.

The danger, however, of pursuing the best of both worlds is that you end up with the worst of both. Nor should it be forgotten that foreign policy preferences may be explained better by shared identity and values than by threat perception, and that it is a primarily pro-Western policy that also maintains good relations with Russia, and not vice versa, that commands the greatest support among Georgians.

Confronted with multiple competing demands and challenges – from strong public and elite support for greater Euro-Atlantic integration to the persistent tensions between the West and Russia and, not least, the ongoing presence of the Russian military on Georgian territory – Georgia’s politicians and diplomats have their work cut out as they navigate a tough geopolitical neighbourhood.

Note: The analysis uses a multinomial logistic regression. The dependent variable is the foreign policy preference. The base category is ‘Pro-Western’. The table shows the predicted probabilities for the following independent variables (with base category in parentheses): threat perception (all responses other than Russia as main threat), education (higher than secondary level), party support (Georgian Dream–Democratic Georgia), and country direction (Georgia is not changing at all). The other independent variables are sex, age group, settlement type, and ethnic minority domain. Party support was recoded into four categories: GD-DG, United National Movement, No party/Don’t know, and Other. Country direction was recoded as wrong direction, right direction, or no change.

Replication code of the full analysis is available here, including alternative model specifications. The data used are available here.  

Georgia’s Foreign Policy Trilemma: Balance, Bandwagon, or Hedge? Part 1

Georgia is a small, partly free democracy in a tough neighbourhood, and NATO membership remains an unfulfilled promise. While Russia is widely perceived as the main threat to Georgia’s security, the appropriate strategic or political response to the threat is not obvious. What options does Georgia have when faced with a powerful rival on its border, and what public support is there for these options?

Research on the foreign policy options of small states have generally focused on elite attitudes and structural determinants, but – with some exceptions – less so on the relationship between public opinion and foreign policy. This gap matters as public preferences for a country’s foreign policy (should) be important to decision-makers in a democracy. While foreign policy generally ranks lower than domestic concerns in the publics’ priorities, high stake questions of national security do cut through, and a foreign policy that lacks public support will be harder to sustain. This leads to the question, do threat perceptions predict foreign policy preferences?

Foreign policy analysts often talk about geopolitical choices in terms of balancing and bandwagoning: a state can either form alliances with other countries to balance against the threat of a stronger state, or bandwagon with the country that threatens them in the hope that the threat is mitigated by aligning themselves with the more powerful country.

Georgia’s options can seem like a stark choice between Russia and the West: should Georgia balance against Russia and deter the threat by developing closer alliances with Europe and the US, or bandwagon with Russia and forge closer relations with their northern neighbour? Each option has its advocates and detractors. Balancing can be seen as either a rational response to guarantee survival or as unnecessarily antagonistic. Bandwagoning can be seen as either the pragmatic management of geopolitical realities or appeasement and capitulation.

A third option is for Georgia to hedge its bets and strike a path between balancing and bandwagoning between Russia and the West. This risk management strategy may be well-suited for small states caught between Great Powers, including Russia’s neighbours who want to escape the influence of the region’s dominant power and protect themselves from East-West tensions, while working within the constraints of geography. Armenia’s attempts at a ‘multi-vectored’ foreign policy reflect this logic as well as the difficulties of implementation.

In the March 2016 CRRC-Georgia/NDI survey, respondents were asked to choose between four exclusive options: “In your opinion, Georgia's foreign policy should be Pro-Western; Pro-Western, however we should maintain good relations with Russia; Pro-Russian, however we should maintain good relations with the EU and NATO; or Pro-Russian?”. Georgians clearly favour a pro-Western foreign policy but there is a large constituency that does not want to accept a binary choice between the West and Russia. More than two thirds want what amounts to a hedging option, that is, a foreign policy that leans towards one side but without sacrificing good relations with the other side.


In theory, perceived threats to security should be an important determinant of foreign policy preferences in general, and of preferences over balancing, bandwagoning and hedging in particular. As the chart below suggests, Russia is by far the single most commonly identified threat to Georgia.

To test whether threat perceptions are related to these foreign policy preferences, a multinomial regression analysis is used with the above question about foreign preference as the dependent variable, and the threat perception question, in addition to demographic characteristics and domestic political preferences, as the independent variables.

If Georgians have a preference for balancing, there should be an association between identifying Russia as the main threat and a preference for a pro-Western foreign policy orientation that deters that threat, i.e., aligning with the European Union and NATO. The results provide evidence in support of this. As the table shows, those who identify Russia as the main threat are far more likely to support a pro-Western foreign policy (top left quadrant).



If, conversely, Georgians had a preference for bandwagoning, we would see an association between identifying Russia as the main threat and a preference for closer relations with Russia, i.e. a pro-Russian orientation – this is not the case. Contrary to the bandwagoning logic, we do not see support for a pro-Russian foreign policy amongst those who see Russia as the main threat. Rather, it is those who do not identify Russia as the main threat who are more likely to support a pro-Russian foreign policy. Notably, running the model without the threat perception variable made very little difference to the effect of the other variables on foreign policy preference.

However, as noted above, most respondents, when given the option, expressed a preference for a foreign policy that hedged between a purely pro-Western or pro-Russian orientation. The second part of this blog post, which will be published next Monday discusses this in greater depth.

Note: The analysis uses a multinomial logistic regression. The dependent variable is the foreign policy preference. The base category is ‘Pro-Western’. The table shows the predicted probabilities for the following independent variables (with base category in parentheses): threat perception (all responses other than Russia as main threat), education (higher than secondary level), party support (Georgian Dream–Democratic Georgia), and country direction (Georgia is not changing at all). The other independent variables are sex, age group, settlement type, and ethnic minority domain. Party support was recoded into four categories: GD-DG, United National Movement, No party/Don’t know, and Other. Country direction was recoded as wrong direction, right direction, or no change.

Replication code of the full analysis is available here, including alternative model specifications. The data used are available here.  

It’s the economy stupid: An experiment on Georgian support for the European Union

Georgians are enthusiastic in supporting the country’s accession to the European Union. Since 2012, when the National Democratic Institute (NDI) and CRRC-Georgia started tracking attitudes, three quarters of Georgians approved of the government’s goal of joining the EU, on average. What motivates Georgians to support the Union, or alternatively, to abandon support? A survey experiment included in the latest CRRC/NDI poll suggests potential economic burdens have a modest yet significant effect on support for membership. Results do not support the common belief that a potential military threat from Russia dampens Georgians’ support for the EU.

Over the years, a utilitarian hypothesis for public support of the European Union has gained traction: the potential economic gains associated with EU membership explain popular attitudes in Western Europe as well as in countries formerly behind the Iron Curtain. At first glance, economic factors are key for Georgian support for the EU. When prompted on reasons for approving the country’s EU membership, Georgians most frequently pick the opportunity to improve Georgia’s economy. In contrast to support, security appears to be the main reason why people oppose EU membership. 

Although these findings are suggestive, people’s stated reasons often hide other potential causes. Moreover, less is known about whether potential economic and security trade-offs have a compounding effect on decision making to approve EU membership. In the April 2019 CRRC/NDI poll, CRRC carried out a survey experiment to learn more about these issues. Respondents were randomly presented four vignettes describing potential economic benefits and losses of EU membership. To assess whether a potential security threat might cancel out or exacerbate the effects of more utilitarian statements, two out of the four vignettes included an additional sentence on a potential security threat from Russia.

After hearing vignettes, respondents were asked their voting intentions on a hypothetical EU membership referendum (see figure above). The results suggest that a potential economic loss (“increasing prices”) increases the probability of voting against EU membership. The effect is rather small – presenting the statement on the potential economic burden of EU membership increases the probability of voting against EU membership by five percentage points. These findings might be explained through the concept loss aversion. According to this idea, humans are more likely to act to avoid losses rather than working for a gain or pleasure. Thus, not surprisingly, Georgians are more concerned with potential losses associated with EU membership than its benefits. Although a plausible cause, a further experiment testing whether people react to the idea that joining the European Union could decrease prices would better pinpoint whether loss aversion is at work or not in this case.

Importantly, none of the other treatments including the combination of the Russian threat and increasing prices changed attitudes. It is hard to crack the mechanism why a doubly negative statement does not affect respondents’ feelings, when one of the statements alone does. One speculative explanation suggests that potential benefits associated with the European Union overpowers or cancels out the effects of ominous Russian threat as the latter is almost ever-present in the country’s life. Nontheless, more research is needed in order to test whether this is a plausible explanation.

  

What do these findings tell us? Null results suggest that many Georgians have attitudes towards the country’s foreign policy goals that are not easily swayed. Positive attitudes are relatively prone to change even when communicating potential economic and security threats. Importantly, among other utilitarian factors economic costs have the highest potential to move Georgians against integration in the European Union among the lines of argumentation tested. 

To explore the data in the blog above, visit caucasusbarometer.org. Replication code for the analysis used in this blog is available here. A full presentation of the results of the recent CRRC/NDI poll is available here.

What predicts foreign policy preferences?

[Note: This article was co-published with OC-Media on July 9. It was written by Koba Turmanidze. Koba Turmanidze is the President of CRRC-Georgia. The views presented in this article do not necessarily represent the views of CRRC-Georgia or any related entity.]

Georgia’s population has consistently expressed strong support for European Union and NATO membership while approval of membership in the Russia-led Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) has been quite low. A recent RAND Corporation publication challenges these observations, suggesting that the population of several post-Soviet states — including Georgia — fear Russia and therefore, prefer equally good relations with Russia and the West.

Whether this is a viable option for Georgia is beyond the scope of this writing. Instead, it focuses on a key claim within the RAND report: that a rational calculus about potential punishment from Georgia’s northern neighbour undergirds a preference for neutrality. Further inspection of CRRC’s 2017 Caucasus Barometer survey, which was used by RAND, suggests the data do not support this argument. Rather, the data suggest that the key difference between people who support Western-oriented, Russia-oriented or neutral foreign policies in Georgia is values.

The RAND report discusses balance of power during and after the Cold War, arguing that the most significant disagreement between Russia and the West stems from their contest to exercise influence over the ‘in-between states’, i.e. states which Russia has geopolitical interests in and which have not been accepted into the EU or NATO. These countries include Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine. According to the report, in these states people fear that tensions between Russia and the West are detrimental to their national interests, and therefore, they prefer neutrality over alignment with any political or economic bloc.

Fear of Russia does not influence people’s preferences
Do perceptions of tensions between Russia and the West have implications for popular support for Western or Russia-led alliances? Examination of the same data RAND used shows no statistically significant relation between fear of tensions between Russia and the West and support for Georgia’s membership in either Western or Russia-led alliances. Moreover, fear of those tensions does not influence people’s preferences for either of the neutral options they could have named on the survey (having equally good relations with both alliances or joining neither).



Note: Predicted probabilities are based on a multinomial logistic regression model. 

Rather than fear of Russia, people’s foreign policy preferences reflect a deep value-based division in Georgia, which the RAND report fails to acknowledge. To demonstrate this, consider the impact of a question on whether people endorse democracy as ‘the only game in town’.

The 2017 Caucasus Barometer asked respondents to select one of three different statements about democracy. Approximately half (52%) agreed with the statement that ‘Democracy is preferable to any other kind of government’. These supporters of democracy are significantly more likely to support Georgia’s membership in Western organisations compared with those who do not think that democracy is preferable to any other kind of government. Importantly, support for democracy has no significant impact on other answer options: it neither changes the level of support for membership in Russia-led organisations nor influences neutral options such as ‘both’ or ‘none’.


Note: Predicted probabilities are based on multinomial logistic regression models as above.

A similar analysis on attitudes towards the role of the government (i.e. whether the government is expected to be like a parent or like an employee) re-affirms that values rather than a fear of punishment by Russia are at the heart of foreign policy preferences in Georgia. Those who believe the government should be work for the people are more likely to support the country’s membership in Western organisations compared to those who think the government should be like a parent. At the same time, attitudes towards the government have no significant impact on popular support to Russia-led alliances or to neutral choices.

Supporters of a pro-Western orientation in Georgia are a coherent group: they have clear values such as believing that the government should work for the people rather than act as a parent, and they support democracy over other forms of governance. Such coherence is less pronounced among supporters of neutrality and totally absent among supporters of Russia-led alliances.
Public opinion in Georgia follows the logic of ‘where you stand depends on where you sit’: people’s foreign policy preferences are not merely driven by fear of Russia’s potentially violent reactions to the geopolitical manoeuvres of a neighbouring country. Instead, a pro-Western orientation is deeply rooted in people’s values.

The replication code for this blog post is available here. The data used in this article is available from CRRC’s online data analysis portal.

Note: Predicted probabilities in the above charts are based on multinomial logistic regression models where the dependent variables have five options: join EU/NATO, join EAEU/CSTO, have equally good relations with both, join none, or don’t know. Key independent variables are (1) support to democracy, (2) support to neutrality vs alignment with a bloc, and (3) (dis)agreement with the statement whether the tensions between Russia and the West are detrimental for Georgia. Control variables include basic demographic characteristics such as age, gender, settlement type, perceived economic rung, employment status, and household’s economic conditions measured as monthly spending and borrowing of money for food or utilities.

The EU, USA or Russia: Who is believed to be able to support Georgia best?

In recent years, Georgia has benefited from EU and US assistance, with around €400 million indicatively allocated for the EU’s projects in Georgia in 2017-2020, and the US government increasing assistance to Georgia in the 2018 Spending Bill. In contrast, Georgia’s relationships with Russia are tense, with diplomatic relations terminated in 2008.

In the 2017 wave of Knowledge of and Attitudes towards the European Union in Georgia survey (EU survey), a question was asked: “Who can currently best support Georgia – the EU, USA or Russia?” A third of the population (35%) answered the EU, while equal shares named the US and Russia (23% and 24%, respectively). According to 8%, none of these three actors can support Georgia, and 9% either responded “Don’t know” or refused to answer the question. Importantly, the distribution of answers did not change compared to earlier waves of the EU survey in 2013 and 2015.

Ethnic Georgians were more likely to report the EU can best support Georgia. Education and age also matter. People with tertiary education and people under the age of 56 said more often that the EU can best support Georgia. Ethnic minorities, on the other hand, named Russia much more often.



Note: For the question, “Which ethnic group do you consider yourself a part of?” original answer options were recoded. Options “Armenian”, “Azerbaijani”, “Abkhaz”, “Ossetian”, “Russian”, and “Other ethnicity” were all combined into the category “Ethnic minorities”. For the question, “Who can currently best support Georgia – the EU, USA or Russia?” original answer option “Other” (1%) was excluded from the analysis. 

Almost half (47%) of those who reported trusting the EU also reported that the EU can best support Georgia, while 49% of those who reported distrusting the European Union also said that Russia can best support Georgia.


Note: For the question, “How much do you trust or distrust the EU?” original answer options “Fully trust” and “Trust” were combined into the category “Trust” on the chart above. The original answer options “Fully distrust” and “Distrust” were combined into the category “Distrust”.

Many in Georgia trust the European Union and believe that the EU can best support Georgia. People with tertiary education, ethnic Georgians and those who are younger than 56 years old are more likely to say that the EU can best support Georgia.

To learn more about the population’s attitudes towards the European Union in Georgia, read the following blog posts: Awareness of EU aid and support for EU membership in Georgia and One in six in Georgia think the country is a member of the EU. To explore the data in this blog post further, visit our Online Data Analysis platform.

What the population of Georgia wants to know about the EU and how people want to be informed

The Government of Georgia (GoG) recently announced a plan to better inform the public about European Union (EU) programs in Georgia and their benefits. This effort is important, because the population often does not have accurate information about the EU and Georgia’s relations with it, as described in a recent blog post, as well as in a more comprehensive report. Nonetheless, roughly half of the Georgian population reports they would like to get more information on the EU, and this share has remained steady since 2013. This blog post aims at understanding how the EU and GoG could best design their information campaign about Georgia-EU relations by covering topics Georgians are most interested in. To do so, we take a look at the 2013 and 2015 waves of Europe Foundation’s Knowledge and attitudes towards the EU survey which was conducted by CRRC-Georgia.

To start, existing knowledge about the EU is rather limited. Only 27% of the population of Georgia knew in 2015 that the EU had between 21 and 30 member states, while 23% chose an incorrect answer. Most importantly, half of the population responded that they did not know the answer or refused to answer the question. These findings are roughly the same as in 2013. 

The population’s level of education seems like an understandable place to turn for possible explanations for the lack of knowledge. However, 46% of those providing an incorrect answer to the respective question report having at least some higher education – in fact, the shares of people with various levels of education are the same irrespective of whether they answered this question correctly or incorrectly.

Note: During the interviews, a show card was used for the question, “How many member states are currently in the EU?” The options from the show card have been recoded for this chart. The option “Incorrect” combines options “Up to 10 [member states]”, “From 11 to 20”, “From 31 to 40”, and “More than 40.” The option “Correct” corresponds to the option “From 21 to 30 [member states]”. Reported level of education has also been recoded for this chart. The options “Complete or incomplete primary”, “Incomplete secondary”, and “Complete secondary” have been combined into category “Secondary or lower education”. The options “Incomplete higher [education]”, “BA”, “MA”, and “Postgraduate” have been combined into the category “At least some higher education”.

When assessing how interested people are in various areas of knowledge about the EU, there is obviously a great deal of interest in the EU’s potential practical benefits for Georgia. Forty-one percent of those who report they would like to get more information about the EU want to have more information on Georgia-EU trade relations, consistent with the finding that economic reasons are named most frequently when Georgians are asked why they support the country’s membership in the EU. Unemployment and poverty being at the top of people’s concerns, it again isn’t surprising that the Georgian population is interested in the socio-economic situation in the EU.

Note: A show card was used for this question. Only the most frequently named answers are presented in the chart. 

Although 35% of those who would like to get more information on the EU mentioned that they would like to have more information on the EU’s role in conflict resolution, when asked what the EU Monitoring Mission does in Georgia, only 20% answered that it helps regulate the situation in the areas affected by the 2008 August War. Forty one percent reported they did not know the answer.

Television was identified by the Georgian Government in 2013 as the main source of information for Georgians about the EU and European integration. However, 40% of the population reported in 2015 that, in their opinion, there was little or no information on the EU on TV – almost twice as much as in 2013.

Note: A 5-point scale was used to record answers to the question, “How much information about the EU do you get from TV?” On the original scale, code ‘1’ corresponded to the answer “No information at all” and code ‘5’ corresponded to the answer “A lot of information”. For the analysis presented in this blog post, answer options ‘1’ and ‘2’ of the original scale have been combined and labeled as “Little / No information”. Option ‘3’ was not recoded and is labeled ”A fair amount of information”. Answer options ‘4’ and ‘5’ were combined and labeled as “A lot of information”. Options “Don’t know” and “Refuse to answer” (less than 5% if combined) were excluded from the analysis. 

Thus, on the one hand, about half of the Georgian population reports wanting to have more information about the EU, and its main source of information is TV. On the other hand, in 2015 more people reported that they receive little or no information on the EU from TV than did so in 2013. But efforts like the harmonization of Georgian legislation with EU legislation in areas such as the common market, sectoral policy, law, freedom, and security require wide ranging and costly reforms before leading to practical benefits. This means the reforms require public support if they are to be sustained. Therefore, it is increasingly important that TV broadcasters and other media find a way to keep Georgians informed about the EU and the country’s European integration. 

If the EU and GoG concentrate their communication efforts on the practical benefits for regular people, they are likely to succeed in sustaining the high level of approval towards European integration in the country.  

The Georgian public's perceptions of the EU’s and Russia’s influence on the country

Numerous news reports in 2015 focused on foreign influence in Georgia (for instance, see the Financial Times, The Washington Post, Al Jazeera, the Wall Street Journal, Foreign Policy, the BBC, Foreign Affairs for some of the stories related to Russian influence), but how does the Georgian public see the situation? This blog post takes a look at how much influence the Georgian public think two foreign powers, the EU and Russia, have on Georgia compared with how much influence they think these powers should have, using August 2015 National Democratic Institute (NDI) and CRRC-Georgia survey findings.

The Georgian public thinks that Russia has more influence on Georgia than it should have. Forty-nine percent of Georgians assess Russia’s political influence on Georgia as somewhat or very high, while only six percent thinks it should be so. Sixty-eight percent think Russia’s political influence on Georgia should be low or that they should have no influence at all. When it comes to cultural influence, the mismatch is smaller although the pattern remains similar – 43% of Georgians assess Russia’s cultural influence as low  or none, while 58% think that it should be low  or none. When it comes to economic influence, 30% of Georgians assess Russia’s influence on Georgia as somewhat or very high, while only 12% think it should be so.

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In comparison with Russia, the influence that the Georgian public thinks the EU should have in Georgia is closer to influence Georgians think it does have, but there is still a mismatch, especially when it comes to assessments of political influence.

The share of Georgians who think that Russian influence on Georgia has increased since 2012 is higher than the share of those who think that EU influence has increased in the same period (44% and 17%, respectively).

When it comes to foreign influence on Georgia, Georgians clearly think that Russia has much more political, economic, and cultural influence than it should have. The assessments are much more similar in case of the EU. Notably, more Georgians perceive Russian influence as having increased since 2012 than those who think the EU’s influence has increased.

Want to explore the data in more depth? Take a look here, using our online data analysis tool.

What We Know About Volunteering in Georgia

[This post originally appeared in investor.ge]

By Nino Zubashvili

Following the June 13, 2015 flood in Tbilisi, hundreds of volunteers helped to clean the disaster-affected zones of the city, which stirred the hope that volunteerism is on the rise in Georgia. In the past, studies on volunteering in Georgia conducted by non-governmental organizations (such as Helping Hand and the Civil Society Institute) claimed that volunteerism had not taken root in Georgian society, and CRRC-Georgia surveys have consistently shown a mismatch between attitudes and actions regarding volunteering in Georgia. Nonetheless, a closer look at the level of volunteering in Georgia, comparing it to Europe, and Georgian society's attitudes towards the importance of volunteering show fertile grounds for volunteerism in Georgia.

The mismatch

CRRC-Georgia's 2013 Caucasus Barometer survey findings show that 68% of Georgians find it important for a good citizen to do volunteer work. In contrast, only 19% of Georgians reported volunteering during the past six months before the survey was carried out in fall of 2013 - a clear gap between actions and attitudes. Interestingly, while the share of the population highlighting the importance of volunteerism for good citizenship increased between 2011 and 2012, the share of Georgians who actually volunteered did not change much. Notably, volunteering is still not considered as important as following traditions, voting in elections or supporting people who are worse off. 

Despite the existing mismatch, if we compare Georgia to other European states, the level of volunteering is not particularly low. A study on volunteering in the European Union carried out in 2010 by the British consultancy GHK Holdings Limited showed that the highest rates of volunteering hovered around 40%, but only in a few states (Austria, Netherlands, the UK and Sweden). In fact, European volunteering rates were largely comparable to those in Georgia, ranging from 10%-19%, and European states like Italy and Greece actually had even lower rates (less than 10%). 

Who volunteers, and who thinks it is important to volunteer?

When thinking about the prospects for the development of volunteerism in Georgia, it is important to know who tends to volunteer, which in turn would allow policy makers, NGOs and social entrepreneurs to understand where to best direct programs aimed at promoting volunteerism. The 2013 Caucasus Barometer survey findings show some differences in volunteering between socio-demographic groups. The elderly (aged 56 and older) are slightly less active (14% reported volunteering) than 18-35 and 36-55 year olds (20% and 22%, respectively), but this lower activity level could probably be explained by the infirmities of age. Interestingly, males tend to volunteer more than females (25% and 14%, respectively) and inhabitants of rural areas are slightly more actively engaged in volunteering (24%) than inhabitants of the capital (14%) and other urban areas (15%). In contrast to the European states studied in the above-mentioned GHK study, where the level of education tends to be connected with the level of volunteering, in Georgia an individual's level of education does not seem to matter with regard to involvement in volunteering. 

Like actual volunteering activity, attitudes towards the importance of volunteering do not change much by level of education, nor do they change by respondent's age or gender. Settlement type however, is a differentiating factor and fewer Tbilisians think that volunteering is important for a good citizen (60%), compared to other urban and rural dwellers (68% and 72%, respectively). This is all the more striking when we breakdown by age groups within settlement type. Even though the majority of volunteers following the 2015 floods were clearly young, in Tbilisi, young people were the least likely age-settlement group to think that volunteering was important for a good citizen. 

The level of volunteering that followed the Tbilisi flood and Georgian society's agreement that volunteering is important show that there is potential in the country for the level of volunteering to increase. Policy makers, civic society and social entrepreneurs alike should consider ways to work off of the obvious spirit of volunteerism embodied by the cleanup efforts and the already supportive attitudes towards volunteerism in Georgia. 

Interested in more data about volunteerism? Check the upcoming Caucasus Barometer 2015 data that will be available by the end of the year or take a look at the 2014 Volunteering and Civic Participation in Georgia survey at caucasusbarometer.org