City Self-governments and Municipal Politics in Democratic Republic of Georgia, 1918-1921
18 Apr, 2018


A research project ''Urban Self-governments and Municipal Politics in Democratic Republic of Georgia, 1918-1921'' is carried out with financial support of Open Society Georgia in 2018-2019.

In 2015-2016, with the help of Open Society Georgia, Sovlab did a research on ''Eroba'' reforms of 1918-1919 in Democratic Republic of Georgia; as a result, a book was published. The research entailed studying and analysing the reforms of regional self-governments, the process highlighted the history of a long-time civic campaign since the 1870's for broad regional self-governance as well as the transformation of respective theories of self-governance in Democratic Republic of Georgia during the years 1918-1921. The research clearly showcased the level and quality of mobilization in the society and the significance of the culture of self-governance in a simultaneous process of dealing with fundamental issues. Due to compelxity and scale of the research topic (''Eroba'' reforms), Sovlab chose as the next phase to go on researching the history of city self-government.

The research project ''City Self-governments and Municipal Politics in Democratic Republic of Georgia, 1918-1921'' is the second phase of the research on ''Eroba'' reforms and is an attempt to analyse the process of reforming city self-governments and study closely the fundamental challenges and the practical ways of overcoming them in city self-governance, to assess the positive and negative aspects of 4 years of experience in self-governance and to prepare a publication in a printed format.

The project aims to showcase and revive the memory of the historical experience in Georgia of traditions of self-governance and democratic attempts, through research based on empirical facts from the country's history.