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CRRC-Georgia examines the trust in political insti­tu­tions in Georgia, and what that might mean for Georgian democracy.

A fair amount of schol­ar­ship indicates that (dis)trust in political insti­tu­tions provides an indi­ca­tion of how well those insti­tu­tions work. Hence, trust in political insti­tu­tions is an important indicator of the func­tion­ing of a demo­c­ra­t­ic gov­ern­ment.

Following this line of logic, one would expect that trust in insti­tu­tions reflects the public’s trust in who runs them. Data from CRRC’s Caucasus Barometer from 2011 to 2017 supports this argument.

Overall, the data indicate that trust in political insti­tu­tions has declined in Georgia since 2011. None of the political insti­tu­tions asked about on the Caucasus Barometer (the president, local gov­ern­ment, executive gov­ern­ment, par­lia­ment, and political parties) received as high a level of trust on the 2017 Caucasus Barometer as on the 2011 or 2012 versions of the survey.

While trust has declined overall, relative levels of trust have largely been in sync with the changes of power in the country.

After the Georgian Dream party came to power in 2012, there was an increase in trust towards the executive gov­ern­ment (from 39% to 48%) and par­lia­ment (from 37% to 44%), the two insti­tu­tions that changed political lead­er­ship.

Trust in the president continued to decline from 58% in 2011 to 28% in 2012, and 23% in 2013. All of these surveys were done while Mikheil Saakashvili was still president.

Trust in the president grew in 2015, the first Caucasus Barometer after the 2013 pres­i­den­tial elections, which ended Mikheil Saakashvili’s pres­i­den­cy and brought Giorgi Margve­lashvili to office.

Public trust in local gov­ern­ment did not follow the same logic as the executive gov­ern­ment, par­lia­ment, and the pres­i­den­cy. Even though Georgian Dream won the 2014 local elections, trust in local gov­ern­ment did not change between 2013 and 2015.

This could be due to the rel­a­tive­ly weak public expec­ta­tions of local gov­ern­ment. Indeed, in 2013, only 4% of the public reported they had attended a local gov­ern­ment meeting in the last year on a CRRC/TI survey. Besides low expec­ta­tions, many local gov­ern­ment officials had defected from the UNM to GD in the years since the change of power. Hence, it is not clear that the elections truly marked a change of power.

At the same time, that trust in local gov­ern­ment did not increase, trust towards executive author­i­ties and the par­lia­ment declined as the popular glow sur­round­ing Georgian Dream wore away. Trust towards the executive fell from 48% in 2012 to 26% in 2017. While 44% trusted par­lia­ment in 2012, trust fell to 22% in 2017.

Meanwhile, trust in President Margve­lashvili continued to grow, which might be attrib­ut­able to his de facto oppo­si­tion to the ruling party, without defection to the oppo­si­tion United National Movement Party (UNM).

Trust in political parties has remained low and showed little change from year to year. It declined between 2011 and 2015, yet trust in political parties does not appear to follow the electoral cycle as trust in insti­tu­tions con­trolled by specific parties appears to.

Growing public mistrust toward political insti­tu­tions in Georgia is a sign of weak state insti­tu­tions in the country. Renewed optimism and trust in insti­tu­tions appear to follow changes in political lead­er­ship, but without strong insti­tu­tion-building processes, optimism turns into dis­ap­point­ment.

While Georgian democracy has made con­sis­tent progress for the last three decades, tran­si­tion­ing from per­son­al­i­ty to policy-driven politics remains a challenge for Georgia’s demo­c­ra­t­ic con­sol­i­da­tion.

This article was written by Kristina Vacharadze, Pro­grammes Director at CRRC-Georgia. The opinions expressed in the article do not represent the views of CRRC-Georgia or any related entity.

To explore the data further, visit CRRC's Online Data Analysis tool.