“Staying Power” - Why New Political Parties Fail in Georgia

In his study, Joseph Alexander Smith finds that first the origin of a political party and second the choices party leaders make over the course of the first years determines the parties’ chance to survive on the political scene in the medium- and long-term. Party leaders’ choice to institutionalize the party and build extra-parliamentary structures, linkage to civil society movements, and programmatic distinctiveness, rather than focusing on keeping the power within the leadership, can help the party to overcome change in leadership, internal disputes, or electoral decline. Entrepreneurial parties that fail to institutionalize are most likely to be condemned to ephemerality after a few electoral cycles.

This comparative case study on three political parties, Girchi, State for the People, and Lelo, illustrates the tendency towards ephemerality in the Georgian party system after 2012. Out of the three cases, only Girchi, which managed to institutionalize the party by forming a coherent membership of young, affiliated Tbilisians and establishing a clear political mission outside of electoral contests, so far seems to have achieved a “modest degree of staying power”. Many other parties, however, were not able to overcome their leaders’ personal short-term ambitions and develop a long-term party identity and program outside of electoral campaigns. Thus, they are predestinated to “recede into irrelevance” after a few electoral cycles.