Journal of Constitutional Law (Nov 2022)
Unitarianism with Attributes of Regionalism – Certain Aspects and Relevant Georgian Context
Abstract
The territorial organisation of Georgia in the current context is difficult to describe with complete precision, but it can be defined as unitarianism with regional autonomies. In this respect, the regional autonomies are the Autonomous Republic of Ajara and the Autonomous Republic of Abkhazia. In addition, the temporary administrative-territorial unit established on the territory of the former Autonomous Region of South Ossetia has a special status. In general, three classical models (conventional classification) are relevant in the context of territorial organisation: unitarianism, regionalism, and federalism. There are several configurations of these three models. Federalism, in a broad sense, is a subtype of regionalism, while unitarianism can also be represented by attributes of regionalism. Regionalism, in a narrow sense, refers to a constitutional-legal format which includes the classification of territorial units into regions and the territorial division of the unified state into regional autonomies (for example, Spain and Italy). Given all of the above, the main aim of the Article is to overview the extended standard of regional/political autonomy, with a focus on the idea of improving the Georgian model of territorial organisation, only using Catalonia and South Tyrol as examples so far. This Article was written as part of a research mission to the Faculty of Law of Humboldt University of Berlin. It aims to implement the research project “Strategy for Georgia’s De-Occupation and Future Perspectives of Territorial Organisation”. The Article presents only one of the topics that have been developed in the framework of this project. In particular, what exactly, for example, Abkhaz political autonomy should look like (power structure, regional institutions, the structural composition of the central bicameral parliament, the issue of local citizenship, judicial organisation, etc.). All of this is the subject of ongoing research in the framework of the above project. This project covers an overview of as many essential models and configurations of territorial organisation as possible in the Georgian context, and is quite multifaceted. In general, everything depends on a political decision to be taken by the Georgian state, taking into account the political rights of Abkhazians as an ethnic minority (or people), and this path may end up in the process of federalisation of the country. In this perspective, the concrete prospect of federalisation of Georgia is among the topics to be explored and is the subject of ongoing research within the framework of the above project. As a result of the constitutional reform in 2017-2018, it was clarified that the territorial structure in Georgia would be reconsidered once jurisdiction over the entire territory was fully restored, and it should be emphasised that the de-occupation process should start with defining legal benchmarks and identifying a specific model of a territorial structure. The political process cannot outpace the legal process and vice versa.
