RELIGIOUS FACTORS IN GEORGIAN POLITICS (THE 2008 GENERAL ELECTIONS)
Abstract
Georgia has always been, and remains, part of the Christian Orthodox world, which means that the use of religion as a political instrument should not shock anyone.
Indeed, in the context of the struggling economy, the civil institutions are unable to inculcate democratic consciousness, without which a single civil expanse is impossible. The Church, sporadically aided by political actors, has shouldered the responsibility for performing at least some of the functions of these institutions.
In recent years, the Church’s stronger role in the country’s political, social, and spiritual life has been reflected in the results of the elections at the local and national levels. The religious factor is rapidly gathering political hues, a fact clearly demonstrated by the presidential and parliamentary elections of 2008.
Below I shall rely on the returns of the March 2008 sociological poll to identify the extent to which the religious factors affected the election results and the role of the Georgian Orthodox Church in the country’s social life. My conclusions are based on scrupulous analysis of the poll’s results.
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[http://conservatives.ge/en/?p=159].
The 2008 August events corrected the situation to a certain extent, but even after the war the level of trust in the armed forces is still high (especially when compared with the very low trust in the other state institutions). According to the public opinion poll the IRI conducted in March 2009, 79 percent of the polled trusted the armed forces, which came sec-ond after the Church (91 percent) in this respect (see: [http://www.iri.org.ge. Polling Data]).
Nowhere in Eastern Europe, even in Poland, which traditionally has the highest, 82 percent, level of trust in the Church among the European countries, is the level this high (see: D. Hulmand, European Values Study: The 3 Wave, Tiel-burg University, 2001, p. 35).
A more or less similar question “Should the Church be involved in politics?” was asked in Eastern and Central Europe. In Poland, 81.8 percent of the respondents have negative answers. In this respect, Poland was ahead of Germany,the Czech Republic, Hungary, and other European countries, which have a much lower level of religious feelings. In Ger-many, for example, 47 percent gave a negative answer to the same question; in the Czech Republic, 73 percent; in Hunga-ry, 63 percent, in Slovakia, 76 percent; in Croatia, 78.7 percent (see: S. Flere, “The Impact of Religiosity upon Political Stances: Survey Findings from Seven Central European Countries,” in: Religion and Social Change in Post-Communist Europe, ed. by I. Borowik, M. Tomka, Zakland Wydawnicy Nomos, Krakow, 2001).
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