Authors

Ana Andguladze¹;  ¹ UNIVERSITÉ LIBRE DE BRUXELLES, Belgium

Discussion

Despite internationally supported decade-long reforms of the judiciary, Georgia has been ‘backsliding into judicial oligarchy’ - a state where the influential, dominant group of judges monopolize positions of power within the courts (Tsereteli, 2022). In this context, we know little about how civil society actors (working on the rule of law and judicial reforms) adapt and respond to attempts to slowly dismantle the rule of law and strengthen judicial oligarchy. This paper analyzes to what extent we can observe opposition from Georgian civil society actors against the judicial oligarchy. And if such opposition exists, what is its nature, and what are the main strategies applied by civil society actors? 
Drawing from the content analysis of 164 statements as well as 15 interviews from two collective actors (the Coalition for an Independent and Transparent Judiciary and the Group of Independent Lawyers), I look at (1) discursive (goals) and (2) action-oriented opposition strategies of Georgian civil society actors against judicial oligarchy in Georgia throughout 2013-2022. This article demonstrates that opposition strategies change and evolve in response to opportunities or threats emerging from internal and external contexts. Civil society actors could adapt to the changing environment, however, not without challenges. The incremental process of judicial backsliding, disguised in a stalled reform process, created obstacles for some actors to change and adapt their strategies accordingly, sometimes becoming the cause of internal dissensus and dilemmas on how to act. At the same time, judicial oligarchy emerging as a main threat to the independence of the judiciary provided an impetus for a new type of collective actors to mobilize. The analysis also shows that despite the intensification of Georgia’s relations with the European Union, we see mixed results regarding the Europeanization of civil society actors’ opposition strategies.