Roundtables with political parties and civil society
EPD's Georgia programme promotes knowledge sharing and cooperation between civil society and political parties.
In Tbilisi's highly competitive and polarised political environment, cooperation between political parties and civil society organisations is rare. Years of political infighting, wrecked political alliances and personal attacks have tired political parties and created a closed, highly competitive culture in which there is little space for mutual trust and long-term collaboration on joint responsibilities.
To bridge the gap between civil society and political parties, EPD seeks to bring representatives from both spheres of influence around the table in inclusive roundtables on key democratisation issues. EPD is currently implementing two sets of quarterly roundtables: the first set focuses on good governance topics, and is organised in cooperation with EPD's partner organisation the Caucasus Institute for Peace, Democracy and Development (CIPDD). A second set of roundtable dialogues is implemented by EPD and its partner organisation New Generation New Initiative (nGnI), and is discussing topics related to Georgia's integration with the European Union.
The roundtable dialogues are taking place in the informal setting of the rural town of Kachreti, where the topics at hand can be discussed in an in-depth and non-partisan manner, outside of the bustling and highly competitive political arena of Tbilisi. Through facilitating this open exchange of knowledge and lessons learned, EPD and its partner organisations aim at achieving the following three aims:
In the first place, through offering Georgia's key CSOs and political parties access to high quality debates moderated by international and domestic experts, EPD strengthens a more informed public discourse on key democratisation issues in Georgia, in which all participants can partake with an equal levels of knowledge. Secondly, by bringing representatives from civil society and political parties together on a frequent basis, EPD and its partner organisations seek to forge cross-cutting personal linkages for sharing information and lessons learned and building a culture of trust and cooperation. Finally, the roundtables provide parties with the content to sharpen their distinctive profiles - based on clear policy choices - thus increasing the options for the Georgian public to support a party based on arguments. EPD's Georgia programme is sponsored by the Netherlands' Ministry of Foreign Affairs