Networks of Profit in Georgia’s Autonomous Regions: Challenges to Statebuilding

By the mid-1990s, Georgia had lost de facto jurisdiction in most of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Over time, informal trade originating during wartime burgeoned into networks of profit, enlisting a broad spectrum of actors. Scholars have suggested that networks of profit should either eventually harden into state institutions or weaken the state as a result of the economics of deliberate violence. This article follows the state-formation approach, determining that statebuilding efforts during President Shevardnadze’s reign were usurped by the largely unconscious and informal interaction between state and non-state actors detracting from the legitimacy of the Georgian state. Despite attempts by President Saakashvili to narrow their influence, these networks have persisted, leaving the Georgian state in a hybrid condition that neither tends to consolidation nor decay.