Business and Graduate Studies

Western-based nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have been working on civil society initiatives in Georgia since the end of the Soviet Union in 1991. The original focus was on teaching what were known as democracies in transition how to adopt Western-style democracy. Thomas Carothers’ work, The End of the Transition Paradigm (2002), challenged the aid community to stop thinking of the newly independent states of the former Soviet Union as in transition, and to deal with realities on the ground, focusing less on democratic transition and more on building civil society. The new approach is to become more engaged with the communities in which they operate, to encourage more citizen participation, and to promote the sustainability of local NGOs, focusing on community-based initiatives related to politics, education, health, and the economy. As a consequence of new methods of engagement, the individuals tasked with engaging the Georgian public must adapt their thinking about what they do and how they do it. This phenomenological qualitative study shows what new initiatives NGOs are undertaking in Georgia in response to this challenge, the ways NGO personnel are changing their methods, and how NGO personnel experience the shared phenomenon of encouraging citizen participation in Georgia. Face-to-face and Skype interviews were conducted with NGO and aid professionals, scholars of democracy and civil society, and officials of agencies involved with civil society development in Georgia to learn how NGOs and their representatives are adapting to the new paradigm.
Keywords: NGOs, CSOs, civil society, democracy, nonprofits, international development, international affairs, Georgia, the Caucasus, community-based initiatives, grassroots initiatives, citizen participation, capacity building, sustainability