Building Institutions for the Future
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BUILDING INSTITUTIONS FOR THE FUTURE Georgia’s Journey Towards Democratization & the European Union UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO INTERATIONAL COURSE MODULE CLASS OF 2020 3 Table of Contents Introduction Professor Robert Austin & David Kitai 1 Capturing the Courts: Analyzing the European Union’s Shortcomings in Promoting Judicial Independence and Transparency in Georgia Gautier Boyrie 5 EU as a Geopolitical Actor: Leverages and Limitations in Promoting Anti-Corruption Reform in Georgia Gi Gi Wai Suet Chan 21 Georgia’s Visa-Free Progress: Moving Towards Europe? Emma Davy 34 Easier to Ask for Forgiveness than Permission: A Survey of Urban Fabric Development in Tbilisi, Georgia, 2020 Arina Dmitrenko 48 In Vino, Potential: Opportunities and Bottlenecks of the Georgian Wine Industry Martin Cheng Hao Gui 71 Violence Against Women: The Case of the Republic of Georgia Ema Marcheska 89 Russian Disinformation & Anti-Western Propaganda: Georgia’s Quest Towards European Integration Teah Pelechaty 103 Virtual Integration: The Role of Cybersecurity Cooperation in Georgia’s European Integration Efforts Adhele Tuulas 126 Reform of the Judiciary in Georgia: A Failure of European Union Rule of Law Promotion? Foti Vito 140 Identity, Education and Exclusion: A Study of the Azeri Population in Georgia Isaure Vorstman 156 4 Foreword Toronto, July 29, 2020 Dear Readers, In the midst of this ongoing pandemic it is with even greater pleasure than usual that I present this collection of wonderful essays from my students who joined the trip to Georgia in February 2020. I have been travelling with students for field work for my entire career. Indeed, it is the highlight of my career. It is such a pleasure to work with such devoted people. On this occasion, I asked my dear friend and former student David Kitai to write a more formal introduction to the papers and the trips in general to Georgia over the past few years. Special thanks to him and to my friend and colleague, Daria Dumbadze who make these trips possible. I could not (and would not!) do it without them. Special thanks as well to the Dean of the U of T’s Faculty of Arts and Science and Jennifer Banh and Sarah Witol at the Office of Professional and International Programs. I hope you enjoy the papers. Robert C Austin, PhD Professor, Centre for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies, Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy 1 Introduction The Georgia ICM was the single most important educational experience of my life. I say that without any hint of hyperbole. I was on the first POL359 ICM trip to Georgia in 2014 when Prof. Robert Austin decided to take a team of students there for research rather than Kosovo, his destination for the last decade. I was a 20-year old 3rd year student who had been lucky enough to travel, but never to a destination more unusual to me than Hungary or Poland. Georgia felt like another world. Its language, its natural beauty, its food, songs, and dances enthralled me. Walking along the streets of Tbilisi showed me up close the depth and variety of the world. I was learning before we even began our work. The work of the ICM was not easy. We had prepped hard, as every year does, writing a briefing book covering the history, politics, culture, economy, and international relations of Georgia. We had made contacts across the world, arranging interviews and group meetings for our week in Tbilisi from Toronto. With access facilitated by Prof. Austin and the indispensable Daria Dumbadze, we interviewed deputy ministers, NGO heads, and top academics on such weighty topics such as past abuses in the Georgian prison system or the cultural legacy of Stalin. The ICM stayed with me after I’d left Georgia. I did not know it at the time but I would be back a year later, conducting an independent research project in the final year of my undergrad. I returned a year later, now graduated, simply as a traveler. I returned again to live, arriving to work at a winery called Pheasant’s Tears at harvest time and staying to work in the Tbilisi restaurants shaping a renaissance in Georgian food, wine, and tourism. I learned some Georgian and made lifelong friends and something of a second home in that endlessly surprising country. I have been lucky enough to return in some capacity, to work or to visit, almost every year since. The ICM was the first taste of my chosen profession: journalism. Though academic in nature, the trip to Georgia gave me my first taste of in-person research interviews. It taught me how to develop and workshop a thoughtful list of questions and it taught me to pull key follow-ups on the fly. It taught me to critique a narrative as it’s presented by a source, and how to engage them and keep them talking. The skills I use every day now as a writer and journalist, I first tested in Georgia. This year, Prof. Austin and Daria invited me to rejoin the ICM in a more formal advisory role. I’m so grateful they did as it allowed me both to revisit that formative experience and to help a new group of students take part in their own. The ICM is a challenging experience, but these students were more than up to it. Through pre-planning meetings, they showed curiosity and knowledge about the small, often forgotten country they’d be travelling to. They engaged deeply with their chosen topics and found nuances and thought-provoking angles in their questioning. They worked tirelessly in the 2 often painful process of arranging interviews and, when in Georgia, they navigated the city of Tbilisi expertly, which is no easy task! On the ground the students led their own projects. They found new interview subjects, made quick arrangements, and planned on the fly. Even when they thought they had enough information, they didn’t miss an opportunity to speak with a new stakeholder in case they could share an additional insight. They worked long hours but took each day in that country as an opportunity. They were tireless, insightful, and curious, a credit to their school. This book is the culmination of their work. Within are the essays they produced as a product of their research. They covered subjects as varied as Georgia is, from architecture, to criminal justice reform, to cyber-security. In each essay they connected a specific aspect of Georgia’s situation back to the overarching themes of POL359, covering aspirant EU member states, of which Georgia is one. The book runs in alphabetical order, beginning with Gautier Boyrie’s essay Capturing the Courts. In it he examines Georgia’s fought relationship with its judiciary. He notes how crucial judicial reform has been in Georgia’s EU aspirations since the rose revolution of 2004 and asks what impact recent signs of backsliding in judicial independence and transparency might have on those goals. In EU as Geopolitical Actor, Gi Gi Chan explores the role of the EU and the hope of EU integration in Georgia’s efforts in anti-corruption. She outlines how effective Georgia’s early anti-corruption efforts were after 2004 and the role the EU played in that. She goes on to show how in contemporary Georgia, for lack of internal will or external support, some more longstanding elements of corruption have proven harder to root out. Emma Davy explores a recent change many Georgians have celebrated in Georgia’s Visa-Free Progress. She explores the now three-year legacy of Georgia’s visa-free regime with the Schengen zone, examining how the initially celebrated development has turned into a somewhat difficult issue between Georgia and the European Union. Arina Dmitrenko looked at more local issues in her paper Easier to Ask for Forgiveness than Permission which studies the difficult situation of the city of Tbilisi, home to more than a third of Georgia’s population. She observes that the urban fabric of the capital has long reflected the goals of its past rulers and ask how a pro-EU political consensus has shaped Tbilisi. Martin Gui’s project explored a much-loved aspect of Georgian culture: wine. In Vino, Potential asks how the country that claims to be the birthplace of wine is using its unique and diverse wine tradition to drive economic growth and cultural diplomacy. Ema Marcheska delved into the subject of violence against women in Georgia, one of the country’s more troubling and pernicious problems. She examined the situation through the lens of the Council of Europe’s Istanbul Convention, aimed to combat violence against women. She asked how effective these laws have been in changing the situation of violence against women in Georgia. 3 Russian Disinformation & Anti-Western Propaganda by Teah Pelechaty explored Russia’s role in Georgian politics through an examination of press, propaganda, and disinformation. Pelechaty explored some of the forms anti-Western propaganda has taken in Georgia and shows how it has been used to try to derail the country’s popular pro-EU stance. Adhele Tuulas brought her past experience researching cybersecurity to her IICM project. Her paper explores Georgia’s cybersecurity infrastructure since the 2008 war, a conflict that carried a significant cyber element. She explores how Georgia’s cybersecurity and cyber orientation have aligned with the West and the EU. Foti Vito’s Reform of the Judiciary in Georgia explores the wider establishment and sustainability of the rule of law in Georgia. As a country with a long history of corruption and recent history as a failed state, the rule of law has been essential to Georgia’s EU aspirations.