The Power of Stigma How Georgia’s “Foreign Agent” Law—and Others Like It—Can Damage Democracy

Maxim Krupskiy

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In May, the Georgian parliament passed a “transparency of foreign influence” law amid large-scale protests. The new legislation requires Georgian media and nongovernmental organizations that receive more than 20 percent of their annual funding from abroad to register with the state as entities “pursuing the interest of a foreign power.” The law has met with intense criticism, spurring tens of thousands of Georgians to take to the streets. Opponents of the law—including Georgian President Salome Zourabichvili, who had attempted to veto it—have called it the “Russia law” for its similarity to the Kremlin’s legislation targeting so-called foreign agents.