The photo is taken from radicalgraffiti instagram account.
The October 26 election in Georgia is a paradox of our times. In a country where the majority yearns for EU integration, we see the ruling party, Georgian Dream, clinging to power through tactics that might seem like the failure of democracy but, paradoxically, is democracy's fulfillment. And this isn’t just about Georgia; it’s a microcosm of a far larger drama: the decline of liberal hegemony and the façade of representative democracy, giving rise to a neo-authoritarian bloc. Behind every ballot box, every vote count, lies a hidden truth about our age of ideological disillusionment.
On paper, Georgian Dream won 54% of the vote. But to what end? There is a comical absurdity in claiming victory amidst widespread allegations of ballot-stuffing, voter coercion, and the blatant manipulation of ethnic minority communities. In a scene that reads almost as a caricature of democracy, these minorities — Azerbaijanis and Armenians — handed Georgian Dream unprecedented levels of support, up to 90% in some areas. Not out of enthusiasm, but due to a deeply ingrained system of dependent relations in which precarious communities vote as they’re told, kept in line by local lords in a quasi-feudal structure.
Georgian Dream’s political maneuvers are strikingly similar to those of other “managed democracies” in Eastern Europe. Their tactics borrow from Viktor Orbán's Hungary, where elections maintain a veneer of legitimacy while the system is locked in the ruling party’s favor. Georgian Dream has adapted these methods to its own purposes, enacting laws that restrict NGOs and media outlets, branding themselves as protectors of Georgian "traditions," against an ambiguous and supposedly hostile Western liberalism. They embrace a model where democracy is merely cosmetic: a show of democratic rituals hollowed of substance.
And here we arrive at the ideological heart of the matter. The once-unquestioned supremacy of liberal democratic values is now a fading myth, a remnant of the 20th-century Western triumphalism. We live in a post-ideological moment where even the West — once the vanguard of democratic values — stumbles in a crisis of its own. The Georgian people hopefully now will see liberal democracy not as an ideal to aspire to, but as a system mired in internal contradictions and economic inequalities. The West, far from offering a compelling alternative to rising authoritarianism, seems mired in its own institutional fatigue, a sign of representative democracy’s inherent instability.
In its essence, representative democracy operates on a contradiction: it claims to empower the people, yet in practice, it transfers power into the hands of elected officials, creating a hierarchy between rulers and ruled that inherently limits self-governance. Worse yet, the state’s sprawling bureaucratic apparatus alienates citizens from meaningful engagement, reducing their participation to a mere ballot in a system that perpetuates itself without their active consent. What we find, then, is that liberal democracy does not so much empower as pacify, offering an illusion of choice while deferring actual power to the ruling class.
And this is precisely here, in the ambiguity of liberal democracy's decline, that neo-authoritarians like Russia and Hungary play their parts. For Russia, supporting a country like Georgia subtly, through nuanced but relentless pressure, is a victory won with little expense. Russia doesn’t need to declare Georgia an ally; it only needs to see Georgian Dream mimic Russia’s own domestic propaganda, positioning itself as a defender against the West’s supposedly corrosive influence. Russia’s game is one of ambiguous influence— a colonial past re-enacted through psychological warfare, not tanks. Similiarly Hungary presents a model of "illiberal democracy" that appeals to governments seemingly rejecting Western liberal norms.
Western responses to these democratic failures are telling. In their cautious, almost paralyzed hesitancy, we see the limits of a Europe that cannot agree even on its own values. The European Union, constrained by Hungary’s pro-authoritarian leanings, may express concern but will likely fall short of meaningful action, tied up in internal discord. Georgian Dream leverages this ambiguity to its advantage, pushing anti-Western narratives while positioning itself as the custodian of “real Georgian values” to cement its power.
The protests in Georgia today may well follow the familiar path of “revolutionary democracy,” but the Georgian Dream regime is more sophisticated than previous administrations toppled by popular dissent. It wields control not through brute force, but through calculated, targeted coercion and legislative tools that stifle dissent without inciting large-scale revolt. This is a system where democracy has become revolutionary theater, a “democratic ritual” that conceals an authoritarian structure beneath.
And here lies the true paradox: democracy has become a tool for authoritarianism, wielded to entrench power rather than challenge it. We see a system in which voting becomes an act of submission, and protests are rituals tolerated only until they threaten the system. For the Georgian people, the desire for integration into the EU is more than a wish for prosperity; it is a yearning for freedom, for a future beyond the manipulation of the state. But under the present regime, this vision of Georgia is a fading mirage.
What Georgia teaches us is the fragile nature of democracy in a world where liberalism no longer commands the moral high ground. The illusion of democracy sustains a system that increasingly embraces authoritarianism as its true form. The question then is no longer whether democracy will survive in Georgia but whether the concept of democracy itself has been hollowed out, leaving us with the ghost of its former promise — a promise that now serves as little more than a pretext for control.
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