Abstract

Democratic coexistence rests on a fragile capacity: treating those we disagree with as fellow members of one community rather than as enemies. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has pushed geopolitical alignment to the center of domestic politics in Georgia, Moldova, and Armenia, straining that capacity. Analysis of these countries’ electoral discourse reveals two distinctive features of polarization in these small, war-adjacent democracies. First, fusion: the opposing camp is merged with the image of an external enemy – cast as the hirelings or “fifth column” of a foreign power, in practice Russia or the European Union – so disagreement becomes a question of national loyalty. Second, epistemic asymmetry: the camps differ systematically in how they handle certainty, evidence, and threat, and share a lack of evidentiary ground. Together these make common ground especially hard to reach. This combination erodes empathy because it renders the opponent both untrustworthy and unintelligible. Building on a validated computational pipeline and the region’s flagship surveys, the project tests dialogue interventions that repair the epistemic conditions of dialogue – disentangling the opponent from the external enemy and rebuilding shared evidentiary ground – to restore empathy, mutual respect, and constructive dialogue despite geopolitical conflict.

Field

Political Science

Extramural Partners

Civic IDEA, Institute for Development of Freedom of Information (Georgia); Eurasia Partnership Foundation Armenia and the Caucasus Research Resource Center (Armenia), the Institute for Public Policy (Moldova); The Party of Action and Solidarity (Moldova), Civil Contract (Armenia), The United National Movement (Georgia)