Against all odds: aiding political parties in Georgia and Ukraine

As part of a wider democracy promotion effort, political parties in Georgia and Ukraine, as in most other post-communist states, have received assistance from a number of non-governmental but government-funded western organizations for most of the post-communist period. This assistance, however, has persistently failed to contribute to making parties in the two former Soviet republics substantially more stable, democratic, and representative. In search for an answer to why the assistance has not been more effective, this thesis looks both at the nature of the assistance and the particularities of party politics in Georgia and Ukraine. The thesis argues that, as a consequence of domestic constraints on party development, political parties in Georgia and Ukraine were essentially unsuitable as recipients of party assistance and that, therefore, party assistance was poorly positioned to make an impact.