Disciplining Labour: Authoritarian Neoliberalism in Georgia

This article contributes to growing debates on the relationship between neoliberalism and authoritarianism by investigating labour disenfranchisement processes in Georgia from independence up to the early 2020s. In contrast to prevailing approaches that separate the analysis of authoritarianism in former Soviet states from questions of political economy, the article unpacks the authoritarian mechanisms deployed by successive governments over the last three decades to discipline labour. The article identifies repression, punitiveness and constitutionalisation of austerity as mechanisms that have undermined the organisational potential of labour, forced workers into flexible employment and entrenched social precarity, with the aim of suppressing wages, securing neoliberal reforms and attracting foreign capital.