Ghia Nodia
Biographic Data
| ID | 1671763 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Ghia Nodia |
| GIVEN NAMES | Ghia |
| FAMILY NAME | Nodia |
| SIGNATURE | NODIA G |
| AFFILIATIONS | Ilia State University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-0873-918X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 16 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 130 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 16 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1992 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2023 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
Georgian and Soviet
Democracy's Inevitable Elites
Robert Michels's seminal treatise Political Parties: A Sociological Study of the Oligarchical Tendencies of Modern Democracy (1911) offers an important theoretical exposition of the core belief that underlies populist politics: namely, that the elites (inevitably) capture democracy from the common people. Michels's disillusionment with the elitist betrayal of democracy led the sociologist to embrace Mussolini's fascism, a biographical note that s…
The End of the Postnational Illusion
With the advance of modernization, nationalism was supposed to fade away. Yet everywhere we look, even in advanced democracies, nationalism’s influence seems larger than ever. What did we get wrong? The assumption (sometimes implicit) in most theories of nationalism is that it belongs to early modernization and therefore is bound, as development advances, to outgrow its utility and become marginal or even (in the Marxist view) vanish altogether. …
External Influence and Democratization
Discussion of democracy promotion is usually isolated from that of geopolitics. It is seen as an affair between democratic countries on the one hand and governments or civil societies of autocratic and semi-autocratic states on the other. The recent crisis in Ukraine has demonstrated the inseparability of democracy promotion and power politics, especially in faultline regions where democratic and autocratic states and political cultures compete f…
The August 2008 war
The purpose of this paper is to take stock of the major political consequences that the August 2008 war had (or did not have) for Georgia: how the war affected Georgia's internal political dynamics and its policies toward its separatist conflicts, its neighbors, and the world. I start by briefly summarizing my views on the nature of and reasons for the war, and on its impact (or the lack thereof) on the global security architecture. These constit…
Twenty Years of Postcommunism
Twenty Years of PostcommunismFreedom and the State Ghia Nodia (bio) In many developing and postcommunist countries today, friends of democracy find themselves wrestling with problems that are at once staples of abstract political theory and sources of the all too real, urgent, and even agonizing quandaries faced by societies in transition.1 How does one reconcile security and liberty? How is it possible to forge a state that is at once potent eno…
Reading Russia
Reading RussiaThe Wounds of Lost Empire Ghia Nodia (bio) Broadly understood, Russia is another one of the many hybrid regimes that hover in the "gray zone" between liberal democracy and autocracy. In recent years, it has moved so close to full-fledged autocracy that the democratic element, without being fully forsaken, has worn exceedingly thin. But this does not make Russia a unique case, either in its region or globally. Russia is also a "petro…
Debating the Transition Paradigm
When I first read Thomas Carothers's essay, I agreed with all or nearly all that he had to say. But then a question began to nag me: What really was the target of his criticism? Or to put it another way: Did the sum total of the points that he made—and he was right to make them—add up to a demonstrated need for a "change of paradigm
Ten Years After the Soviet Breakup
Observers who comment on the slide toward "de-democratization" across much of what used to be the USSR often neglect another development that is just as interesting: Why is it, just ten years after all of them were born from the same Soviet institutional womb, that these 15 countries have become so different from one another
Chasing the Meaning of ‘Post-communism’
Ian Bremmer and Ray Taras, eds., New States, New Politics: Building the Post-Soviet Nations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 743 pp., ISBN 0–521–57101–4 Bruno Coppieters, Alexei Zverev and Dmitri Trenin, eds., Commonwealth and Independence in Post-Soviet Eurasia (London: Frank Cass, 1998), 232 pp., ISBN 0–714–64480–3 Leslie Holmes, Post-Communism: an Introduction (Oxford: Polity Press, 1997), 260 pp., ISBN 0–745–61311–x Michael Mand…
Russia and the West
The End of Revolution
Nurturing Nationalism
Contemporary attitudes toward democracy and nationalism have been shaped by the natural human propensity to draw a hard and fast line between good things and bad things. Democracy today is synonymous with political goodness, while nationalism--firmly associated with "ethnic conflict" and "ethnic cleansing"--is usually considered the embodiment of political evil. Therefore, nationalism and democracy are regarded as opposed, rather than linked, phe…
How Different are Postcommunist Transitions
How Different Are Postcommunist Transitions? Ghia Nodia (bio) Transitions toward democracy in countries once ruled by communism almost invariably are described as “troubled” or “painful.” However appropriate such adjectives might be, and however much legitimate doubt might persist about the degree or quality of democracy in these lands, we should not underestimate the sheer significance of their desire to claim the title of “democracy.” Whatever …
Georgia's Identity Crisis
Georgia’s Identity Crisis Ghia Nodia (bio) People in the post-Soviet Republic of Georgia like to say that “nobody else has ruined their own country as much as we ruined ours.” Among foreign observers, Georgia has long had the reputation of being an especially messy and unruly place. To be sure, there are other newly established postcommunist states that can well compete with her in this: Bosnia and Tajikistan come to mind. Yet Georgia is notable …
Nationalism and Democracy
Nationalism and Democracy Ghia Nodia (bio) The collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union has led simultaneously to dramatic new gains for liberal democracy and to a resurgence of nationalism. Many analysts appear to regard these as contradictory phenomena, inasmuch as they consider nationalism to be fundamentally antidemocratic. I believe that this is a superficial view that distorts our understanding of what is happenin…
Nationalism and Democracy
Nationalism and Democracy Ghia Nodia (bio) The collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union has led simultaneously to dramatic new gains for liberal democracy and to a resurgence of nationalism. Many analysts appear to regard these as contradictory phenomena, inasmuch as they consider nationalism to be fundamentally antidemocratic. I believe that this is a superficial view that distorts our understanding of what is happenin…
How Different are Postcommunist Transitions
How Different Are Postcommunist Transitions? Ghia Nodia (bio) Transitions toward democracy in countries once ruled by communism almost invariably are described as “troubled” or “painful.” However appropriate such adjectives might be, and however much legitimate doubt might persist about the degree or quality of democracy in these lands, we should not underestimate the sheer significance of their desire to claim the title of “democracy.” Whatever …
External Influence and Democratization
Discussion of democracy promotion is usually isolated from that of geopolitics. It is seen as an affair between democratic countries on the one hand and governments or civil societies of autocratic and semi-autocratic states on the other. The recent crisis in Ukraine has demonstrated the inseparability of democracy promotion and power politics, especially in faultline regions where democratic and autocratic states and political cultures compete f…
Georgia's Identity Crisis
Georgia’s Identity Crisis Ghia Nodia (bio) People in the post-Soviet Republic of Georgia like to say that “nobody else has ruined their own country as much as we ruined ours.” Among foreign observers, Georgia has long had the reputation of being an especially messy and unruly place. To be sure, there are other newly established postcommunist states that can well compete with her in this: Bosnia and Tajikistan come to mind. Yet Georgia is notable …
The End of the Postnational Illusion
With the advance of modernization, nationalism was supposed to fade away. Yet everywhere we look, even in advanced democracies, nationalism’s influence seems larger than ever. What did we get wrong? The assumption (sometimes implicit) in most theories of nationalism is that it belongs to early modernization and therefore is bound, as development advances, to outgrow its utility and become marginal or even (in the Marxist view) vanish altogether. …
Debating the Transition Paradigm
When I first read Thomas Carothers's essay, I agreed with all or nearly all that he had to say. But then a question began to nag me: What really was the target of his criticism? Or to put it another way: Did the sum total of the points that he made—and he was right to make them—add up to a demonstrated need for a "change of paradigm
The End of Revolution
Democracy's Inevitable Elites
Robert Michels's seminal treatise Political Parties: A Sociological Study of the Oligarchical Tendencies of Modern Democracy (1911) offers an important theoretical exposition of the core belief that underlies populist politics: namely, that the elites (inevitably) capture democracy from the common people. Michels's disillusionment with the elitist betrayal of democracy led the sociologist to embrace Mussolini's fascism, a biographical note that s…
The August 2008 war
The purpose of this paper is to take stock of the major political consequences that the August 2008 war had (or did not have) for Georgia: how the war affected Georgia's internal political dynamics and its policies toward its separatist conflicts, its neighbors, and the world. I start by briefly summarizing my views on the nature of and reasons for the war, and on its impact (or the lack thereof) on the global security architecture. These constit…
Reading Russia
Reading RussiaThe Wounds of Lost Empire Ghia Nodia (bio) Broadly understood, Russia is another one of the many hybrid regimes that hover in the "gray zone" between liberal democracy and autocracy. In recent years, it has moved so close to full-fledged autocracy that the democratic element, without being fully forsaken, has worn exceedingly thin. But this does not make Russia a unique case, either in its region or globally. Russia is also a "petro…
Ten Years After the Soviet Breakup
Observers who comment on the slide toward "de-democratization" across much of what used to be the USSR often neglect another development that is just as interesting: Why is it, just ten years after all of them were born from the same Soviet institutional womb, that these 15 countries have become so different from one another
Nurturing Nationalism
Contemporary attitudes toward democracy and nationalism have been shaped by the natural human propensity to draw a hard and fast line between good things and bad things. Democracy today is synonymous with political goodness, while nationalism--firmly associated with "ethnic conflict" and "ethnic cleansing"--is usually considered the embodiment of political evil. Therefore, nationalism and democracy are regarded as opposed, rather than linked, phe…
Nationalism and Democracy
Nationalism and Democracy Ghia Nodia (bio) The collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union has led simultaneously to dramatic new gains for liberal democracy and to a resurgence of nationalism. Many analysts appear to regard these as contradictory phenomena, inasmuch as they consider nationalism to be fundamentally antidemocratic. I believe that this is a superficial view that distorts our understanding of what is happenin…
Georgia's Identity Crisis
Georgia’s Identity Crisis Ghia Nodia (bio) People in the post-Soviet Republic of Georgia like to say that “nobody else has ruined their own country as much as we ruined ours.” Among foreign observers, Georgia has long had the reputation of being an especially messy and unruly place. To be sure, there are other newly established postcommunist states that can well compete with her in this: Bosnia and Tajikistan come to mind. Yet Georgia is notable …
How Different are Postcommunist Transitions
How Different Are Postcommunist Transitions? Ghia Nodia (bio) Transitions toward democracy in countries once ruled by communism almost invariably are described as “troubled” or “painful.” However appropriate such adjectives might be, and however much legitimate doubt might persist about the degree or quality of democracy in these lands, we should not underestimate the sheer significance of their desire to claim the title of “democracy.” Whatever …
Chasing the Meaning of ‘Post-communism’
Ian Bremmer and Ray Taras, eds., New States, New Politics: Building the Post-Soviet Nations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 743 pp., ISBN 0–521–57101–4 Bruno Coppieters, Alexei Zverev and Dmitri Trenin, eds., Commonwealth and Independence in Post-Soviet Eurasia (London: Frank Cass, 1998), 232 pp., ISBN 0–714–64480–3 Leslie Holmes, Post-Communism: an Introduction (Oxford: Polity Press, 1997), 260 pp., ISBN 0–745–61311–x Michael Mand…
Russia and the West
The End of Revolution
Nurturing Nationalism
Contemporary attitudes toward democracy and nationalism have been shaped by the natural human propensity to draw a hard and fast line between good things and bad things. Democracy today is synonymous with political goodness, while nationalism--firmly associated with "ethnic conflict" and "ethnic cleansing"--is usually considered the embodiment of political evil. Therefore, nationalism and democracy are regarded as opposed, rather than linked, phe…
Ten Years After the Soviet Breakup
Observers who comment on the slide toward "de-democratization" across much of what used to be the USSR often neglect another development that is just as interesting: Why is it, just ten years after all of them were born from the same Soviet institutional womb, that these 15 countries have become so different from one another
Debating the Transition Paradigm
When I first read Thomas Carothers's essay, I agreed with all or nearly all that he had to say. But then a question began to nag me: What really was the target of his criticism? Or to put it another way: Did the sum total of the points that he made—and he was right to make them—add up to a demonstrated need for a "change of paradigm
Reading Russia
Reading RussiaThe Wounds of Lost Empire Ghia Nodia (bio) Broadly understood, Russia is another one of the many hybrid regimes that hover in the "gray zone" between liberal democracy and autocracy. In recent years, it has moved so close to full-fledged autocracy that the democratic element, without being fully forsaken, has worn exceedingly thin. But this does not make Russia a unique case, either in its region or globally. Russia is also a "petro…
Twenty Years of Postcommunism
Twenty Years of PostcommunismFreedom and the State Ghia Nodia (bio) In many developing and postcommunist countries today, friends of democracy find themselves wrestling with problems that are at once staples of abstract political theory and sources of the all too real, urgent, and even agonizing quandaries faced by societies in transition.1 How does one reconcile security and liberty? How is it possible to forge a state that is at once potent eno…
The August 2008 war
The purpose of this paper is to take stock of the major political consequences that the August 2008 war had (or did not have) for Georgia: how the war affected Georgia's internal political dynamics and its policies toward its separatist conflicts, its neighbors, and the world. I start by briefly summarizing my views on the nature of and reasons for the war, and on its impact (or the lack thereof) on the global security architecture. These constit…
External Influence and Democratization
Discussion of democracy promotion is usually isolated from that of geopolitics. It is seen as an affair between democratic countries on the one hand and governments or civil societies of autocratic and semi-autocratic states on the other. The recent crisis in Ukraine has demonstrated the inseparability of democracy promotion and power politics, especially in faultline regions where democratic and autocratic states and political cultures compete f…
The End of the Postnational Illusion
With the advance of modernization, nationalism was supposed to fade away. Yet everywhere we look, even in advanced democracies, nationalism’s influence seems larger than ever. What did we get wrong? The assumption (sometimes implicit) in most theories of nationalism is that it belongs to early modernization and therefore is bound, as development advances, to outgrow its utility and become marginal or even (in the Marxist view) vanish altogether. …
Democracy's Inevitable Elites
Robert Michels's seminal treatise Political Parties: A Sociological Study of the Oligarchical Tendencies of Modern Democracy (1911) offers an important theoretical exposition of the core belief that underlies populist politics: namely, that the elites (inevitably) capture democracy from the common people. Michels's disillusionment with the elitist betrayal of democracy led the sociologist to embrace Mussolini's fascism, a biographical note that s…
Georgian and Soviet
Political science (16 works) · Law (13 works) · Law (13 works) · Politics (13 works) · Sociology (12 works) · Democracy (10 works) · Political economy (10 works) · Economics (7 works) · Philosophy (6 works) · Philosophy (6 works)