Do Armenians and Georgians support protests?

Note: This article first appeared on the Caucasus Data Blog, a joint effort of CRRC-Georgia and OC Media. This post was written by Tamar Uzunashvili, a Junior Fellow at CRRC Georgia. The views expressed in this post do not necessarily reflect the views of CRRC Georgia or any related entity.

According to data from the Caucasus Barometer Survey, a majority of Georgians support protests. In comparison, while over half of the Armenian population is in favour of protests, support has been on the decline since 2019.

Protests in the South Caucasus have intensified recently, particularly in Georgia, where demonstrations have surged since the ruling Georgian Dream party first introduced the controversial Foreign Agent Law in 2023. Over the past year in Georgia, protests have occurred almost daily, particularly since the government’s November 2024 announcement that it was halting the country’s EU accession bid.  Similarly, Armenia has witnessed significant protests between 2017 and 2024, driven by political revolution and war.

Data from the Caucasus Barometer Survey shows that until 2021, public support for protest participation was consistently higher in Armenia than in Georgia. In 2021, attitudes were similar, but in 2024, more people in Georgia believed that people should participate in protests than those in Armenia.

In Georgia, support for protest participation declined between 2008 and 2011. In 2012, it surged by 22 points, with data collection taking place after prison abuse scandals — which showed the humiliation, torture, and inhumane treatment of prisoners — and parliamentary elections that year. In subsequent years, attitudes slowly rose and reached a stable point in 2017, after which there has been little change in attitudes.

In Armenia, support fluctuated between 2008 and 2012 and then stabilised between 2013 and 2019. Since then, however, support has decreased sharply, falling to 50% in 2024 from 71% in 2019.

A regression analysis of 2024 data demonstrates that attitudes vary among different social and demographic groups.

Gender and education were significant predictors of supporting protest in Armenia. Men were more likely than women to have a positive attitude towards participating in protests by 16 percentage points.

People with tertiary education were 22 percentage points more likely to support protest participation compared to those with secondary or lower education, and 10 percentage points more likely to support protests than individuals with secondary technical education.

People in Yerevan were more likely to support participation in a protest than people who live in rural or urban areas, where the probability of supporting protests was almost equal.

In Armenia, younger people (18–34) were more likely to support protests than older people (55+).

Wealth, partisanship, and employment did not predict attitudes in Armenia.

In Georgia, the data shows that people were more likely to support protests than oppose them across settlement types. At the same time, individuals who live in the capital were more likely to have positive attitudes toward protests than people in other urban or rural areas.

The data also varied across age groups, with young people (18–34) being substantially more likely to support protests than those who are 55 and older.

Those who support Georgian Dream were less likely to have a positive attitude toward protests than individuals who do not support any political party. People who support the opposition and those who refused to report which party they support had similar attitudes to individuals who did not support any party.

Employment was also a factor, with employed individuals more likely to support protest participation than those who were not employed.

Gender and wealth were not associated with attitudes towards protests in Georgia.

Support for protests is generally high in both Georgia and Armenia, though on the decline in Armenia. Across both countries, younger people are more inclined to support protests.

The analysis in this article makes use of logistic regression analysis. The analysis includes gender (male and female), settlement type (capital, urban, and rural), age group (18–34, 35–54, and 55+), education (secondary and lower, secondary technical, and higher than secondary), a wealth index (0–13), employment (employed and unemployed) and partisanship (no party, Georgian Dream, opposition, and refused to answer) as predictor variables.

During Sargsyan’s incumbency, dissatisfaction with government grew and support for protest increased

Serzh Sargsyan, formerly the President and then Prime Minister of Armenia, resigned from office on April 23rd, 2018, following 11 days of peaceful protest. Over the past 10 years, which coincide with Sargsyan’s time in office, Armenians were increasingly dissatisfied with their government. At the same time, the country witnessed growing civic engagement, with “youth-driven, social media-powered, issue-specific civic activism,” referred to as “civic initiatives”. CRRC’s Caucasus Barometer data from 2008 to 2017 reflect both these trends.

While in 2008, 53% of the Armenian public thought that people were not treated fairly by the government, 74% did in 2017.

Note: For the chart above, original answer options “Completely agree” and “Somewhat agree” were combined into the category “Agree,” and answer options “Completely disagree” and “Somewhat disagree” were combined into the category “Disagree”. 

Moreover, trust in political institutions declined precipitously over the years. For example, distrust in executive government increased from 38% in 2008 to 59% in 2017.

Note: A show card with a 5-point scale was used during the survey. For this chart, original answer options “Fully trust” and “Trust” were combined into the category ’Trust,’ and answer options “Fully distrust” and “Distrust” were combined into the category ’Distrust’. 

Throughout this period, only 3%-6% of the population of Armenia reported that they thought Armenia was a full democracy. A further 11%-18% thought the country was a democracy with minor problems. At the same time, approximately half of the population believed democracy to be preferable to any other kind of government.



As dissatisfaction was on the rise, so too was Armenians’ support for the idea that people should engage in protest actions against the government to show that the people are in charge. While in 2008, 59% of the population of Armenia agreed with this statement, 70% did in 2017.

Although CRRC data could surely not have predicted this week’s events in Armenia, it does demonstrate the growing dissatisfaction with government and increased willingness to protest that developed over the course of Serzh Sargsyan’s time in office.

To explore Caucasus Barometer data further, visit CRRC’s online data analysis portal, here.

Note: The 2017 data presented above makes use of preliminary population weights. The final population weights were not possible to complete in time for publication of this blog post. Hence, the figures for 2017 may change slightly, once the 2017 Caucasus Barometer Armenia survey weights are calculated.

Getting to the streets: Who is more inclined to protest in Georgia?

While elections bring citizens to vote on a regular basis thus fulfilling the minimal  ̶  necessary but not sufficient  ̶  condition for democracy, as set out by Schumpeter in 1942, petitions, demonstrations and various forms of organized protests are also an effective way for citizens in democratic societies to both exercise the power of the sovereign in between elections and to express discontent with elected representatives. These activities become more popular when other forms of institutional or civic channels are absent, dysfunctional, or alien to the majority of the population.

Georgia has had quite a rich experience with protests and demonstrations after independence in 1991. These have been mainly driven at efforts to change the government, although the last couple of years have seen demonstrations of a social nature with regards to LGBT (both pro- and anti-LGBT rights) and women’s rights.  Authors like McAdams (1982) and Van Zomeran et. al (2008) use people’s perceptions of a movement’s efficacy to bring the expected/desired change, among other factors, in order to explain their willingness to participate in such movements. Thus, the more people perceive an activity as efficacious for the aimed outcome, the more they are willing to take part in it. Given the above, it is interesting to explore whether perception of efficacy of protest actions is equally characteristic for different socio-demographic groups, and if not – representatives of which groups are more inclined to perceive protests and demonstrations as efficacious and eventually take part in them in Georgia.

Using data from CRRC-Georgia’s 2014 survey Volunteering and civic participation in Georgia, funded by USAID through the East West Management Institute, this blog post explores who is more inclined to participate in demonstrations based on the perceived efficacy of actions. Efficacy is measured through agreement or disagreement with the statements, “For me, actions like holding peaceful demonstrations to demand something from the government are pointless, because the government will do whatever it wants anyway,” and “I think that holding peaceful demonstrations is important, because in this way the government is forced to take into consideration people’s demands,” which were originally two opposing statements offered to respondents. In tangent to these questions, the blog post explores how the answers of people with different levels of education, household economic situations and a background of recent participation in public meetings or political rallies differ based on perceived efficacy of peaceful demonstrations.

While there were minor differences in the level of perceived efficacy of demonstrations by gender, age and settlement type, visible differences were observed by level of education. The chart below demonstrates that the higher peoples’ level of education in Georgia, the more they tend to see peaceful demonstrations as an efficacious tool to affect government decision-making. Thus, 78% of those with higher education report perceiving demonstrations as important in forcing the government to take into consideration people’s demands, compared to 64% of those with secondary or lower education.

Note: Level of education was re-coded as follows: “no primary education”, “primary education”, “incomplete secondary education” and “completed secondary education” into “secondary or lower”; “incomplete higher education”, “completed higher education” and “PhD or Post-Doctoral” into “Higher”. Both here and in the following charts in this blog post, agreement and strong agreement with any of the two opposing statements offered to the respondents were grouped during data analysis. The option “agree with none of the statements,” as well as answers “Do not know” and “Refuse to answer” were excluded from the analyses.

A poor economic situation may also lead to belief in efficacy of and, eventually, participation in protest actions. Although one may expect that people who report that money is not enough for food and/or clothes are more likely to participate in a peaceful demonstration in order to influence the government in Georgia, survey data suggests that this is not the case. In fact, the worse people perceive their household’s economic condition to be, the less they are inclined to see peaceful demonstrations as an efficacious tool to influence the government. Thus, 42% of Georgians that report money is not enough for food see protests as pointless, compared to only 19% of those that report having a very good household economic condition (those who report they can afford to buy expensive durables or anything they need).

Note: In the question on household economic situation, options “We can afford to buy some expensive durables” and “We can buy anything we need” were combined during the analysis. Options “Do not know” and “Refuse to answer” were excluded from the analysis.

Although Georgians that participated in meetings and/or rallies in the past 6 months appear to be more optimistic than others in relation to the efficacy of demonstrations, roughly one in five people that reported previous participation do not see demonstrations as efficacious in influencing decision-making. Rather than pessimistic, as would be the case with those that have not tried to engage in such activities, this segment of active citizens may better be described as disappointed.

Note: Two different questions were used to measure participation in a political rally or a public meeting. During the analysis, the answer “Yes” to at least one of these questions was classified as “I took part in a political rally and/or a public meeting in the past 6 months” and the rest were classified as “I took part in neither a political rally nor a public meeting in the past 6 months.” Options “Do not know” and “Refuse to answer” were excluded from the analysis.

This blog post has shown that those that recently participated in public meetings or rallies, as well as more educated and wealthy Georgians perceive peaceful demonstrations as more efficacious in affecting government decision-making, compared to those who have not recently participated in meetings or rallies, are less educated and are poorer. If perceived efficacy of demonstrations would define choices on whether to participate in a demonstration or not, then one can expect the rich, the educated and the people that were recently active in public meetings or rallies to be the first to get to the streets for a demonstration.

How does this match up with your understandings of protestors in Georgia? Join in the conversation on our Facebook page, here.

To learn more about the data, check out the 2014 Policy, Advocacy, and Civil Society Development in Georgia report or refer to CRRC’s online data analysis tool.