Homeland, Language, Faith: How Georgia Embraced Traditionalist Conservatism

Since the end of the 2010s, Georgian Dream, the ruling political party in Georgia for over a decade, has adopted a markedly traditionalist conservative ideological framework, breaking with the previous model of amorphous, mostly personality-driven politics.

As a symbol of its new ideological course, the party has chosen a 19th-century motto, “Homeland, Language, Faith”, as its main electoral slogan in the October 2024 Parliamentary elections. This domestic political shift was followed by a shift in the party’s foreign policy, abandoning the exclusively pro-Western course Georgia had followed since 2003 in favour of a more pragmatic, multipolar approach.

The present paper analyses the evolution of traditionalism, the Georgian national idea, and what is referred to as “traditionalist conservatism” in Georgia, as well as its impacts in Georgian Dream’s domestic and foreign policies. It also analyses present-day relations between Georgia and Hungary, which has been cited by two Georgian Prime Ministers as a model for conservative governance.