Towards a biopolitical assessment of democracy. A case study on population, protest and war in Georgia

Abstract

Concerns are mounting that democracy is at risk globally. However, the definition of democracy is contested and there is no consensus on how it should be measured. Drawing on the theories of Foucault, Agamben and Mbembe, this thesis reconceptualises democracy through the prism of biopolitics, foregrounding the protection, exception and governance of bodies within national communities and nation-building processes. Using Georgia’s recent democratic backsliding as a case study - situated between Russian imperial biopower and wavering European liberal governmentality - the research analyses electoral developments, populist legislation and mass protests following the 2024 parliamentary elections through a biopolitical lens. It contends that Georgia is experiencing an exceptional typology of politics, produced by biopolitical competition, authoritarian populist rhetoric and the spectre of the war in Ukraine, yet not unprecedented in its revolutionary democratic history since independence from the Soviet Union. Ultimately, the thesis proposes that democracy should be evaluated not only through legal norms and institutional practices but through the ways in which it governs life itself. Keywords: democracy, democratic subversion, biopolitics, bare life, necropolitics, populism, illiberalism, state of exception, protest, Georgia