V-Dem’s 2025 Report: Georgia Marked Largest One-Year Democratic Decline Since Independence

Swedish research organization V-Dem Institute has downgraded Georgia to an “electoral autocracy” in its Democracy 2025 report, citing a sharp democratic backslide from the country’s previous classification as an “electoral democracy.” The report describes 2024 as the year of Georgia’s most significant democratic decline since regaining independence, pushing the country below the threshold for democratic classification. According to V-Dem, Georgia’s democratic deterioration began in 2018, following a period of progress from 2013 to 2017.

The report entitled “25 Years of Autocratization – Democracy Trumped?” indicates that 2024 “marked the largest one-year decline since Georgia’s independence,” pushing the country below the threshold for democratic classification. The report highlights that Georgia’s democratic deterioration began in 2018, following “a period of democratization with improvements in judicial independence, freedom of speech, and civil liberties” which lasted from 2013 until 2017.

V-Dem’s findings point to external interference, specifically Russian meddling in Georgia’s electoral process. “In Georgia, electoral irregularities and Russian meddling in the electoral process brought the European Parliament to not recognize the electoral outcome,” the report stated.

In contrast to the two Eastern European nations -Montenegro and Poland that are moving toward democratization, Georgia is now among the eight countries in the region undergoing autocratization.

“In Eastern Europe, 65% of the region’s population live in electoral autocracies, such as Hungary, Russia, and Serbia. Georgia joined the list in 2024, descending from an electoral democracy,” the report says.

Alongside Armenia, Belarus, Moldova, Romania, Ukraine and Serbia, Georgia is deemed particularly vulnerable to Russian influence, whether through political interference, economic dependency, military pressure and meddling in election processes, the report explained.

The report ranks Georgia among the top ten countries where the fairness of elections has significantly deteriorated over the year. “Among countries that held elections in 2024 and where these were significantly less free and fair than a decade ago are Comoros, Georgia, and Mozambique,” the V-Dem Institute noted.

“The 2024 electoral process was marred with accusations of fraud and massive protests, the government labeled political opposition as criminal forces, threatened to ban opposition parties, protesters and civil society actors faced arrests and charges, and a new “foreign agents” law was introduced,” the report highlighted.

Furthermore, the report highlighted media bias as a growing concern, noting that Georgian is among the countries where opposition parties and candidates faced increasing discrimination in favor of the incumbent party. During the 2024 elections, OSCE observers documented “a clear political bias in the media and a disregard for the legal requirement of impartial coverage.”

In the context of assessing the media freedom and civil society indicators around elections, the report cites that in Georgia “the OSCE mission found a clear political bias in the media and a disregard for the legal requirement of impartial coverage.”

Georgia is listed among 19 countries where the governments impose legal and financial barriers to party formation, further tightening its grip on the political landscape. “Legal and financial barriers to forming a party are becoming increasingly more common in 19 countries, among them Georgia, Guinea, Kyrgyzstan, Hong Kong, India, and Mexico,” the report highlights.

Despite these setbacks, the report notes that democratic mobilization efforts have been on the rise globally. However, while protests and opposition movements successfully halted democratic erosion in Botswana and Sri Lanka, similar efforts in Georgia have so far failed to reverse the trend. “Mobilization failed in Georgia and Venezuela,” the report states, indicating a failure of the pro-democracy forces countering autocratization.

Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) produces the largest global dataset on democracy with over 31 million data points for 202 countries from 1789 to 2024. Involving over 4,200 scholars and other country experts, V-Dem measures over 600 different attributes of democracy.

Also Read:

• 12/04/2024 – Freedom House: Georgia on its Way to Becoming Semi-Consolidated Authoritarian Regime
• 23/09/2021 – Georgia in Freedom House’s Internet Freedom 2021 Report
• 15/10/2020 – Georgia in Freedom House’s Internet Freedom Report

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