{"id":478,"date":"2015-11-24T21:20:24","date_gmt":"2015-11-24T21:20:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/onthinktanks.org\/?p=478"},"modified":"2024-04-06T16:57:19","modified_gmt":"2024-04-06T21:57:19","slug":"making-energy-matters-matter-entering-the-electoral-field","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/onthinktanks.org\/articles\/making-energy-matters-matter-entering-the-electoral-field\/","title":{"rendered":"Making energy matters matter: entering the electoral field"},"content":{"rendered":"

[Editor\u2019s note: This is the seventh\u00a0post in the series<\/em>\u00a0<\/strong><\/em>Thinking about Think Tanks in the South Caucasus<\/em><\/a>. It was written by\u00a0<\/em>Tutana Kvaratskhelia<\/a>\u00a0of World Experience for Georgia (WEG)<\/em>.\u00a0The series is edited by\u00a0<\/em>CRRC-Georgia<\/em>\u2019s\u00a0<\/em>Dustin Gilbreath<\/em>.<\/em>]<\/em><\/p>\n

Elections are coming in Georgia. Although some thinktankers suggest that elections are a difficult time for think tanks to find an audience, it has also been pointed out that they present opportunities to contribute to the democratic process. At World Experience for Georgia (WEG), in part inspired by On Think Tanks’ work on elections, we decided to see whether we could indeed help to shape an important debate.<\/p>\n

To do so, we developed a set of activities (more on this below) to try to introduce\u00a0energy policy into the pre-electoral debate. Before getting into the details, some background is important.<\/p>\n

WEG, Georgian elections and energy policy<\/h2>\n

WEG is a boutique think tank in Georgia, primarily focusing on the energy sector but also on sustainable development more broadly. Energy issues have strategic importance for the country, but the growing role of foreign interests in Georgia\u2019s energy sector, the lack of transparency in government dealings, and the pre-election populist promises by politicians, increase the country\u2019s vulnerability to external influences during the electoral\u00a0cycle.<\/p>\n

In previous Georgian elections, political parties have promoted populist, vague and sometimes unrealistic promises that they can rarely keep. While this may not be unusual in some respects, some of the promises have been particularly outlandish when it comes to energy policy. For example, during the 2012 electoral campaign, the then candidate and now former Prime Minister, Bidzina Ivanishvili\u00a0announced<\/a>\u00a0that it was possible to instantly slash electricity bills in half, using Georgia\u2019s sizeable hydroelectric resources. Two months after coming to power, he\u00a0confessed<\/a>\u00a0that the calculations about tariffs were wrong, and that he may\u00a0have overstated what was really possible.<\/p>\n

In order to safeguard Georgia\u2019s interests through developing energy security and an European political orientation, WEG has decided to actively participate in pre-election discussions surrounding energy policy in Georgia.<\/p>\n

Our proposal: Introducing evidence based policy into the campaign<\/h2>\n

Electoral campaigns have yet to reach full speed as the elections are still a year away, but to accomplish the above goal, we have started to think about how to make political promises rely on realistic policy options and how we (and think tanks more broadly) can incorporate\u00a0our proposals and data into pre-electoral campaigns, leading to impact. As a result, we have developed a strategy for advocating for evidence based energy policy during Georgia\u2019s upcoming electoral campaigns. The strategy consists of three main areas of activity -research, monitor and communicate:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Critical examination of energy issues before the elections<\/strong>\u00a0\u2013 here, we intend to review and analyse the main problems in Georgia\u2019s energy sector. These include the growing influence of other countries in the domestic energy sector, grey areas in legislation and practices, which when coupled with unrealistic populist promises by political parties pose risks to the country\u2019s independence.<\/li>\n
  2. Monitor the party programmes during the run up to the elections \u2013\u00a0<\/strong>this will enable engaged citizens to independently compare\u00a0the different policy positions of parties and make an informed choice in the elections. If political parties have not publicly declared their policies, then WEG will contact them directly and request their positions on energy issues. We will analyse their manifestos on a number of relevant indicators.<\/li>\n
  3. Increase public awareness about populist and potentially harmful policies \u2013\u00a0<\/strong>we are going to communicate with journalists and send them questions to ask while covering the election campaigns. We will also organise roundtable discussions and presentations of our monitoring results during this period.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    We hope that our activities will have some impact on the pre-electoral discourse and, if successful, that it will provide a framework for think tanks in other sectors in Georgia to emulate.<\/p>\n

    It is important to note that we are not reinventing the wheel here \u2013reviewing the problems facing a society, monitoring political programs and promises, and public awareness and roundtable events- are bread and butter think tank activities. We are simply focusing our efforts on the electoral process. This suggests that if it works, the model should\u00a0face low adoption costs by other think tanks and provide some organisations which are skeptical of election years with a familiar model to work off of.<\/p>\n

    We\u00a0are still in the process of thinking and discussing what our options are and how we can improve our strategy. Any additional suggestions or remarks would be highly appreciated. If you have some, please do share them in the comments section below.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Think tanks can play a critical role during election processes. For boutique think tanks, elections can present important opportunities to get their messages on their sector of expertise across. In this post Tutana Kvaratskhelia discusses how World Experience for Georgia plans to work during the upcoming elections to promote the use of evidence for policy in sustainable energy. This post is part of the Thinking about think tanks in the South Caucasus series.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","footnotes":""},"tags":[184,186,181],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/onthinktanks.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/478"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/onthinktanks.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/onthinktanks.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onthinktanks.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onthinktanks.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=478"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/onthinktanks.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/478\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2842500,"href":"https:\/\/onthinktanks.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/478\/revisions\/2842500"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/onthinktanks.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=478"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onthinktanks.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=478"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}