Authors

Ángel Torres Adán¹;  ¹ Institute for Sociology-Slovak Academy of Sciences, Slovakia

Discussion

Previous works on the impact of foreign events over support for international organizations have shown that events happening in a foreign country (e.g. Brexit) can affect the views towards international organizations in third countries. Considering the previous evidence, across this paper, I focus on the potential impact of the Russian invasion of Ukraine over individual geopolitical preferences (i.e. support for the EU/EAEU) outside Ukraine. Precisely, I pay attention to Georgia, a country that has faced similar geopolitical challenges to those of Ukraine and, consequently, could potentially be affected by the situation in Ukraine. Has the Russian aggression of Ukraine had an effect on individual geopolitical orientations in Georgia? If so, has this effect being comparable for support for the EU and support for the EAEU? What about ambivalent geopolitical preferences groups such as Balancers and Isolationists? With this paper, I try to answer these research questions by employing a quantitative methodology based on the analysis of survey data collected by the Georgian branch of the Caucasus Research Resource Centre between 2019 and 2022. Preliminary results show that there has been an important decrease of support for the EAEU and a similarly substantial increase of support for the EU. Likewise, ambivalent geopolitical preferences (i.e. Balancers and Isolationists) have also been affected by the war.