Second paragraph of third section: On the political level, there were two main competing elites. An alternative political elite
emerged out of parties and movements that challenged the existing regime on a combination of pro-democracy and strong nationalist agendas. They confronted the existing Communist nomenklatura that was keen to preserve its ( Read more... )

My previous post stimulated useful discussion on both Twitter and Facebook, with three more books flagged up to me as potential candidates. On the numbers alone, one of the three, a classic Russian novel from 1839/1841 about a young officer posted to the Caucasus, is way ahead of any other book I had previously considered. It looks like a brilliant ( Read more... )

Edited to add: See update

Gone With the Wind, of course.

Oh, hang on.

There is another, older Georgia.

See note on methodologyIt took an awful lot of pruning of the lists to get down to books set in the real Georgia, the country that was known by that name many centuries before James Oglethorpe settled the Savannah river. Even then I'm afraid ( Read more... )

Blogging has been a bit light over the last week, because I have been in Tbilisi, working with Bidzina Ivanishvili and his Georgian Dream coalition on this week's parliamentary elections. As you may have heard, he won, scoring 54.85% of the vote to the government's 40.43% (officially at least; the campaign's exit poll showed a bigger margin) and is ( Read more... )

The single-mandate constituenciesIt has been inaccurately suggested that the UNM might quite naturally maintain a lead among the single-mandate constituencies in the Georgian election, even if it loses the proportional vote by a significant margin ( Read more... )

• 
  BBC NEWS | Europe | Movie star plays Georgian leader
  Andy Garcia to play Saakashvili in big-budget Holywood movie about last year's war filmed in Tbilisi. Meanwhile Emir Kusturica will be in South Ossetia, directing a film taking the other point of view. I am not making this up.
  (tags: caucasus war films)

Stratfor have published a "Red Alert" about a potential revolution brewing in Georgia. (The former Soviet republic, not the U.S. state.) I'm a bit sceptical. It's clear that Saakashvili is not as strong as he was a year ago, but neither is his popularity at the single-figure depths plumbed by Eduard Shevardnadze toward the end of his rule. The ( Read more... )

10) Reclaiming Democracy: Civil Society and Electoral Change in Central and Eastern Europe, edited by Joerg Forbrig and Pavol Demeš ( Read more... )

1. Is this legal? Due to the large number of applications we are receiving and the particular nature of the position, please only apply if you hold a degree from any of the following institutions:
   • Oxford University
   • Cambridge University
   • University of Edinburgh
   • London School of Economics
     Although I clearly am qualified on that basis alone, I'm not sure I ( Read more... )

...I generally like talking to students about my work; graduate, undergraduate, heck I've even done the odd high school group in the past. But sometimes I wonder why I bother ( Read more... )