Introduction

Political parties in the post-Soviet states of the South Caucasus have been very different types of institutions from their counterparts in western democracies. In Armenia ‘no party fulfills the fundamental roles of aggregating the public's interest, offering policy alternatives, or organizing meaningful debate over public concerns’. According to a former country director of the National Democratic Institute in Azerbaijan, a U.S. organization that trains parties in many countries, parties in Azerbaijan ‘are a disaster. That assessment includes the ruling party, the opposition parties and the ones created on behalf of the government to placate the West.’ In Georgia, parties have been viewed as ‘fundamentally different sorts of organizations from their western counterparts’. Evidently then, the study of party politics in the South Caucasus is challenging and demands an unconventional approach.

The two key outcomes that distinguish party politics in the South Caucasus from party politics in western democracies, since 1991, are the impact of authoritarian practices and a great degree of volatility. The impact of authoritarian practices has been manifest in the creation of political parties, mainly by regime actors, that have distorted the electoral playing field. Volatility in party politics in the South Caucasus has been reflected in a continuously changing supply of parties – in Georgia more so, in Azerbaijan less so – as well as in shifting electoral coalitions and volatility within parties, and is fed by the inherent weakness of most party organizations.

A common conclusion about party politics in all three South Caucasus states is that parties are short of credible roots in society and are essentially driven by elite actors. Considering the combination of a low degree of party system institutionalization and the elite-driven nature of party politics in the post-communist world, it has been suggested that ‘much more emphasis should be put on understanding the incentive structures of elites that encourage or discourage stability [of party systems]’. This article takes up the call of studying the incentive structures of the elites who are behind the creation and operation of parties in the South Caucasus, in order to better understand the dynamics of party politics in the region.