Discussions of the role of civil society in Georgia's Rose Revolution usually tend to fall into one of two traps. Either they fail to give sufficient evidence to substantiate assertions regarding civic groups' contribution to the Rose Revolution or they obscure the influence of Georgian activists by focusing almost exclusively on the foreign funding (from the US government or George Soros' Open Society Institute) that influential NGOs received. This dissertation seeks to avoid those pitfalls by analyzing, in detail, the role of domestic civil society actors in the Rose Revolution.

Relying on in-depth interviews and other primary sources, this work analyzes the role of NGOs in promoting democracy under Georgia's competitive authoritarian regime. Civic activists laid the foundation for the peaceful removal of President Eduard Shevardnadze by protecting Georgia's democratic liberties from government incursions, documenting the government's attempt to manipulate the 2003 parliamentary election in favor of its preferred political party, and advocating non-violent activism as the best way to challenge the Shevardnadze regime. Civic groups were aided in these efforts by the government's tolerance of certain areas of democratic contest, by NGO leaders' strong personal networks with reform-oriented politicians and journalists, and by financial assistance from Western donors. The Georgian case illustrates the role that civil society can play in advancing democratic electoral processes under competitive authoritarian governments: By providing concrete evidence of violations that occur during the electoral process, civic activists can empower other pro-democracy groups to challenge fraudulent electoral results and contribute to replacing obstructionist officials with reformist politicians – even, as in the case of the 2003 Georgian parliamentary election, playing a significant role in achieving a non-violent transfer of power from a decaying competitive authoritarian regime to a new, reform-oriented administration.