Georgia's not-so-big society

By G.E. | TBILISI

HAVE dinner with a typical Georgian man, and you will be struck by his attentiveness and warmth. Accept a lift home afterwards, and you will notice that fellow drivers are unlikely to receive the same courtesy. The rules of hospitality are of great importance in modern Georgia; driving regulations tend to matter only when the traffic police are nearby.

This disparity is not merely perilous to pedestrians in the capital, Tbilisi, who avoid the city's underpasses when crossing the road. As a recent report from the Caucasus Research Resource Center (CRRC) argues, it is part of a much broader trend. In the lexicon of social science, Georgia has insufficient “social capital”: that blend of trust, habits and institutions that glues society together.

The country's famed hospitality is part of a tradition of strong families and friendships. In the jargon, this is known as “bonding” social capital. The road, though, pits relative strangers alongside each other. The CRRC report finds a wider reluctance among people who do not know each other to collaborate for the common good. This shortage of “bridging” social capital, the CRRC suggests, inhibits the country's development.

The roots of this are in part historical. Communism conscripted people into organisations such as the Young Pioneers without choice. The drab reality of the immediate post-Communist era quickly dashed the great expectations that had arisen. Distrust and disillusionment with public action are pervasive; apathy and fatalism are common. Little wonder that less than 1% of Georgians belong to public or professional associations.

In this, Georgia is no different from many other ex-Soviet countries. But, arguably, it matters more here than elsewhere. Ever since the Rose revolution in 2003, the government has pursued a radical liberal economic model based on a quasi-theological belief in the power of the market. For a market-driven, democratic country to function effectively, collaboration is as important as competition.

One example is the country's farmers. Once an agricultural powerhouse of the Soviet Union, Georgia now farms less than 50% of its arable land. More than half the workforce is in agriculture, yet farming is responsible for less than 10% of GDP.

To address high food prices and reduce the country's dependence on imports, the government recently decided to invest 150m lari ($90m) to boost domestic agricultural production. To many a raised eyebrow, it is also inviting Boer farmers to bring their expertise from South Africa.

But money and foreign expertise will only go so far. Georgians tend to farm small landholdings; to reduce costs and boost productivity, they need to collaborate. As one senior Eurocrat has argued, agricultural co-operatives could decrease transaction costs and increase farmers' bargaining power with bulk buyers. Yet such collaboration is deterred; co-operatives are taxed twice, first as businesses, and then as individual income.

Another example, this one not mentioned by the report, afflicts the political opposition. Georgia has a huge number of opposition parties, whose differences have as much to do with personal rivalries as they do policy.

They cannot even agree how to oppose the government. Some, such as Nino Burjanadze, are pushing for a new, jasmine-style popular uprising, beginning with a "national disobedience day" on 2^nd May. This is unlikely to succeed, not least because Irakli Alasania, President Mikheil Saakashvili's most credible opponent, strongly rejects street activism in favour of the ballot box.

At elections the opposition has been unable to choose unity candidates—hence, in part, the ruling party's strong showing at the polls last year. What divides opposition politicians often overshadows the common ground they share, occasionally with unseemly consequences. Last month, two usually loquacious senior opposition figures reportedly let their fists do the talking when they met in Munich airport.

Such disunity only strengthens the government's hand. The Messenger, a newspaper, recently ran a telling April Fool's article entitled “Georgian opposition goes religious”. “We have realised that we can do more good for the country by praying for it than by participating in political turmoil,” one party leader supposedly said.