On February 26, Elene Jibladze successfully defended her PhD dissertation on "Suspended Development: Institutional Transformation and Lack of Improvement in the Higher Education System of Post-Revolution Georgia" receiving the distinction magna cum laude. Jibladze has earned a PhD in Political Science from the CEU Doctoral School in the higher education stream of the public policy track.
Investigating the higher education system reforms in Georgia that were influenced by global and regional developments, such as the Bologna Process, Jibladze offers an alternative conceptual framework to analyze higher education system transformation in post-Soviet countries in transition.
In the mid to late 2000s, Jibladze witnessed firsthand the major reform efforts going on in Georgia, particularly with her work on USAID projects with the Ministry of Education and Science. "After working with USAID to build the capacity of a quality assurance agency for higher education in Georgia, I was inspired to pursue further research to find out why well-intended reform initiatives so often failed at the implementation stage," Jibladze explained.
In her dissertation, Jibladze analyzed why reforms in the field of higher education in Georgia failed despite the joint efforts of local policymakers and transnational agents like the World Bank, USAID, and EU institutions. In most post-Soviet states, policy failure is blamed on widespread corruption and a pervasive Soviet legacy that prevents the quick adoption of new institutions. Jibladze highlighted that in the case of Georgia, these two issues were not as problematic following reforms in 2003 by the post-revolution government.
Rather than corruption and a Soviet legacy as the underlying causes of the reform failure, Jibladze found two different factors that mattered in the Georgian case. First, she argues that the role of transnational agents must be analyzed in addition to local actors. Reforms in Georgia are situated in a globalized world, she emphasized, and transnational agents promote a set of ideas based on a neoliberal agenda. "You can't analyze policy reforms and implementation in a developing country without considering the global context and motivations of external actors," said Jibladze.
Second, she argues that the way in which reforms are implemented matters. "Policy solutions promoted by transnational agents are framed from the point of view of institutional redesign," she explained. "The idea is that if a country like Georgia establishes institutions like those in the West, then it can transition more quickly to a neoliberal understanding of a democratic state." However, Jibladze suggests that countries like Georgia adopt new institutions only symbolically, for the sole purpose of being legitimized by their international partners on the global political and educational scene. "Institutional redesign is not enough," she continued, "and perhaps is not always a relevant policy remedy for system improvement."
From 2013-15, Jibladze took a break from her PhD studies to head the national quality assurance agency for education in Georgia. Working in the field, she gained an in-depth understanding on how a higher education system works from the inside. This experience positively affected her dissertation writing process.
Jibladze is the first PhD student to graduate from the higher education stream in the public policy track under supervisor, professor, and provost Liviu Matei. Professor Matei commented, "Jibladze's research brings a fresh view in studying higher education in the countries of the former Soviet Union, but it is also relevant for the broader understanding of transition and policy transfer in the region."