From Geopolitics to Democracy: The Impact of the EU’s Policy Shift on Democratic Developments in Georgia

In recent years, the European Union (EU) has shifted its enlargement policy toward Georgia, its newest candidate state. Following heightened democratic backsliding and the passage of a Russian-style “foreign agents” law, the EU transitioned from prioritizing geopolitical considerations to emphasizing democracy and adherence to the Copenhagen Criteria. This paper examines how this shift in EU enlargement credibility impacted domestic politics and democratic developments in Georgia—a country where the EU has significant leverage due to overwhelming public support for EU integration. Drawing on interviews with Georgian civil society actors, opposition groups, and critical media representatives, the paper argues that during the period when geopolitics took precedence over democracy, the Georgian government successfully maintained a pro-EU, democratic façade while restricting the discursive space and mobilization strategies of government-critical groups. In contrast, the EU’s shift to a more credible, democracy-oriented conditionality diminished the government’s ability to manipulate EU narratives and empowered government-critical actors to rally around the EU in the lead-up to the 2024 parliamentary elections. However, the failure of these elections to produce political change underscores the limitations of credible conditionality in supporting democratization in authoritarian-leaning states. These findings contribute to EU enlargement theory by highlighting the continued relevance of the External Incentive Model (EIM), which identifies compliance costs for domestic elites as the key determinant of conditionality success, while also questioning the applicability of differential empowerment theory in contexts where regimes have reached a certain level of autocratization.