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A year ago, Alexi Gugushvili and I described Georgia's October 2012 election and the events surrounding it as "amazing," "truly remarkable," and "nearly unheard of." Is Georgian political life still unfolding in such an exceptional fashion, or is there a "new normal"—and if so, is it friendlier to liberal democracy, or fraught with problems for it? It may be that electoral democracy is becoming more routine in Georgia, but something is missing: Robust democratic opposition, and with it a sense that there is some continuing structure that contains and organizes competition among rival parties. Parties, elections, laws, and institutions still define the road to liberal democracy, and Georgians must lose their fear of traveling that road.

Abstract:
Lucan Way's elucidating account of postcommunist authoritarianism and democratization includes compelling critiques of diffusion-based arguments, particularly with regard to timing and electoral cycles. Yet his interpretation glosses over a distinction that ought to be the foundation of any discussion about post-Soviet governments—the distinction among regimes, rulers, and political teams. Further, Way underestimates the importance of the strength of autocratic parties or armed forces. Autocrats need strong parties and armed forces because they need either to resist or to control something. To understand the power of whatever that "something" is, political scientists need to pay greater attention to the weak legitimacy of autocracy.

Western pressure can be decisive, but it is not always easy to forecast when and how it will be applied.

In the winter of 2006 Georgians and Ukrainians will be marking the anniversaries of events that they dubbed revolutions. It is surprising that these historic upheavals did not spur any reconsideration of the concept of revolution. Modern liberal democracy emerged when a "right of revolution" began to be widely argued in the 1700s. Over the next two centuries, revolution was a hope always cherished somewhere on the globe. Some of the subsequent revolutions were amazing successes while others turned out to be cruel deceptions. The "color revolutions" in the former Soviet Union give us an opportunity to ask ourselves whether revolutions are in fact dying out, and whether revolution is a good or bad idea.

The reign of strongman presidents and the routine use of electoral fraud and manipulation have produced widespread apathy, resignation, and cynicism about the prospects for democracy in the Caucasus. In the fall of 2003, these trends dominated the presidential elections in Armenia and Azerbaijan, as well as the parliamentary elections in Georgia. But shortly after the elections, a brief and nonviolent series of mass protests in Tbilisi—the so-called Revolution of the Roses—forced Georgian president Eduard Shevardnadze and his Citizens' Union of Georgia (CUG) to resign, and paved the way for democratic reform under Mikhail Saakashvili of the New National Movement. The inspiring events in Georgia hold a number of lessons for students of democratization and prodemocracy activists alike, and should make us reconsider the methods by which fragile openings to democracy may be sustained and widened.