Building Trust through Deliberation in Fragile Democracies: A Case Study of Citizens' Assemblies in Georgia

In countries where representative democracy is weak or underdeveloped, deliberative mini-publics can serve as schools of democracy, socializing and training citizens in civic engagement and self-governance. Our project explores the outcomes of implementing citizens' assemblies in Rustavi and Ozurgeti in Georgia, a nation where democracy is yet to fully take root. We draw on interviews with assembly organizers, participants and local authorities. We borrow our theoretical framework from the social movements literature and discuss the political opportunity that facilitated the adoption of deliberative processes. We also assess the impact of these processes and the role of the international actors promoting and financing such initiatives on participants' perceptions of civic engagement, local governance, and trust-building. We argue that these assemblies have had a positive impact, socializing participants and engendering longer-term civic initiatives. Our research contributes to the literature on deliberative democracy in fragile democracies and sheds light on an important question for scholars and policymakers about how to train a democratically minded citizenry before democracy has taken hold.