Chinese investments as part of infrastructure-led development: multi-scalar contestations around Georgia’s flagship infrastructure projects

ABSTRACT

Drawing on an analysis of major infrastructure projects in Georgia, we propose a reconceptualization of infrastructure-led development as constituted by multi-scalar contestations. We illustrate that actors associated with different great powers more often pursue similar rather than significantly different strategies and tend to collaborate when financing and developing particular infrastructure projects. We find that hegemonic rivalry is either similarly important or at points even less significant than contestations at other scales in defining the fate of infrastructure projects. We suggest that environmental and class struggles should be considered as integral to the analysis and theorization of infrastructure-led development.

KEYWORDS:

• Infrastructures
• infrastructure-led development
• contestations
• Chinese investments
• post-socialist East
• Georgia

Introduction

Since early April 2023 the key transit road that connects eastern and western parts of Georgia has been repeatedly closed down due to recurring landslides. This section of Georgia’s East-West Highway, lauded as the “project of the century” by Georgian politicians, has received financing from various multilateral development banks (MDBs) and is being constructed by Chinese state-owned construction companies (Ocaklı and Ibele 2023). Local seismologists and environmentalists quickly pointed out that the landslides were likely related to a lack of research prior to the construction of a highway through a geologically complex mountain pass (Nikoladze 2023). Strong public outcry did not hold the Chinese companies working on the highway culpable, instead problematizing the Georgian government’s inability to assure safety of large infrastructural projects (Simonia 2023).

Such reluctance to place blame on Chinese developers when faced with infrastructural failures is an exception in the post-socialist East, where Chinese investments are portrayed as particularly risky and menacing (Benner et al. 2018). China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has been changing infrastructural geographies (Li and Taube 2019), triggering anxieties in Europe regarding its peripheries falling under the geopolitical influence of China (Politico 2018). Such worries are exacerbated in light of China’s reluctance to distance itself from Russia’s brutal war on Ukraine. This article advances emerging debates on Chinese investments in Eastern Europe and discussions on infrastructure-led development (Schindler and DiCarlo 2023; Schindler, DiCarlo, and Paudel 2021) through investigating key infrastructure projects in the so far relatively understudied context of Georgia in Europe’s eastern periphery, and through introducing the concept of multi-scalar contestations as constitutive of infrastructure-led development.

The article addresses two gaps prevalent in existing literature. First, it attempts to overcome the nation-state centric analysis dominating the literature on Chinese investments in the post-socialist East. Such accounts frame the rise of Chinese investments as a series of political and economic threats for Eastern European states (Garlick 2019; Vangeli and Pavlićević 2019) and tend to presuppose the superiority of European/western financing institutions (Makocki 2017), all the while avoiding direct comparisons with similar projects financed by other actors. To overcome these limitations, we suggest embedding discussions on Chinese investments in Eastern Europe in the literature on infrastructure-led development (Schindler, DiCarlo, and Paudel 2021), and the broader spatial reorganization of capitalism (Williams, Robinson, and Bouzarovski 2020). While such works help overcome the exceptionalization of China, they are tainted by an overwhelming focus on geopolitical rivalry and the transnational and national scales of analysis (Schindler, DiCarlo, and Paudel 2021).

This leads to the second gap we intend to address, namely the need to discuss local political struggles and transnational processes in their entanglement and relationality (Hart 2018). Research that links locally unfolding contestations of large infrastructure projects by subordinated classes to the debates on infrastructure-led development is only recently emerging (Apostolopoulou 2021). We suggest deepening the dialogue between anthropologically grounded accounts on place-based contestations of infrastructures in the post-socialist East (Tuvikene, Sgibnev, and Neugebauer 2019) and beyond (Danyluk 2021), with recent discussions on China’s rise and infrastructure-led development.

We contribute toward overcoming the aforementioned gaps by reconceptualizing infrastructure-led development as constituted by multi-scalar contestations. Contestation is understood as a process through which social actors strive to alter the status-quo by mobilizing critical narratives and (collective) actions, or repertoires of contention (Wiener 2017). Multi-scalarity emphasizes that scales – the spatial reaches of actions – are continuously redefined by various actors (Swyngedouw 2004), and that actions on one scale shape and are shaped by processes occurring on other scales (Gong and Hassink 2019). We contend that through emphasizing multi-scalar contestations, methodologically we transcend the singling out of infrastructure financing and construction practices of a particular great power by examining the meeting points and confrontational frontiers of different infrastructural integration projects. Conceptually, this emphasis de-centers the overwhelming focus on China and on hegemonic rivalry, acknowledging theoretical relevance of local, yet sometimes transnationalizing, class- and place-based struggles.

To illustrate the relevance of conceptualizing the rise of China and infrastructure-led development as a multi-scalar process, we draw on examples of key greenfield infrastructure projects in Georgia, a small but open and investment-friendly economy in Europe’s Eastern periphery. We ask at what scales and due to what circumstances are various large infrastructure-projects contested, how are contestations at transnational, national, subnational and local scales interconnected, and what can be learned about the unfolding of the infrastructure-led development in lived spaces (Klinger 2020) by examining them through the prism of multi-scalar contestations.

In what follows we first scrutinize existing knowledge on Chinese investments in the post-socialist East, illustrating the limits of methodological nationalism and exceptionalization of Chinese infrastructure investments. Secondly, we suggest embedding discussions on Chinese investments in Eastern Europe in the literature on infrastructure-led development and offer the conceptualization of infrastructure-led development as influenced by multi-scalar contestations. Next, we provide an overview of the data and methods of this explorative study, and offer the analysis of the five largest infrastructural projects in Georgia, focusing on various scales of contestation and configurations of contending actors. We conclude by drawing lessons from the empirical analysis and indicate venues for further research.

Infrastructure-led development and China in the post-socialist east

Nation-state-centric analysis of China and post-socialist east

Competing mega-infrastructure integration schemes have been driving capitalist accumulation and are interwoven with geopolitical and geo-economic rivalries. China’s Belt and Road initiative (BRI) is said to be “perhaps the most ambitious [infrastructure project] in human history with conservative estimates suggesting that its cost will reach US$1 trillion” throughout 2017–2027 (Apostolopoulou 2021, 831). To counter the BRI, the U.S.A. and the European Union have put forward their own large-scale infrastructure programs, such as the American “Build Back Better World” (B3W) and “Europe Gateway”. Even prior to these counter-initiatives scholars suggested a “global infrastructure turn” (Dodson 2017) and the emergence of infrastructure-led development (Schindler, DiCarlo, and Paudel 2021) to highlight the increasing role of infrastructures in growth strategies globally.

Up until very recently, the post-socialist East has been left out of debates on infrastructure-led development (see Szabó and Jelinek 2023). Instead, changing geographies of infrastructural and trade connectivity (Williams, Robinson, and Bouzarovski 2020) in the region were studied with a particular emphasis on Chinese infrastructural investments. These studies have taken important initial steps in understanding Chinese investments, identifying divergent patterns of investments across the post-Socialist East (Karásková et al. 2020) and emphasizing the agency of local political elites in directing “Chinese finance towards politically expedient projects of their own choosing” (Rogelja 2020, 3). While laying grounds for understanding China’s engagement with the region, this body of literature has important shortcomings.

First, current research methodologically isolates Chinese investments, making only indirect and abstract comparisons with the supposedly superior Western investment and funding structures. Consequently, Chinese investments are not understood as part of the global capital accumulation circuits and global competition/collaboration in pursuing infrastructure-led development. Instead, China is systematically singled out as a threatening actor, advancing “offensive mercantilism” (Garlick 2019) and undermining the allegedly sound and sustainable lending policies of the World Bank, thereby potentially turning Eurasia into a “dumping ground for China’s ‘ecological civilization’” (Tracy et al. 2017, 78). Such one-sided accounts systematically dismiss the role of Europe, the U.S.A., and Western financial institutions in: [1] the emergence of post-socialist economies as FDI and/or debt-dependent economies (Bohle and Greskovits 2012; Bohle and Jacoby 2017), [2] the promotion of infrastructure as developmental heyday (Buier 2020), and [3] the financialization of infrastructures, or transformation of infrastructures “from a public and collective good into an alternative asset class within the international investment landscape” (O’Brien, O’Neill, and Pike 2019, 1293). The accounts that single China out as a monolithic, system non-complying actor “normalize, by contrast, neoliberal practices of exploitation across the globe and mobilize neo-containment policies in the West” (Klinger and Muldavin 2019, 3).

Second, existing literature is predominantly nation-state-centric, primarily interested in the threats and opportunities of Chinese investments in the states of the post-socialist East (Garlick 2019; Pavlićević 2019). State interests are often equated with the interests of national political elites, dismissing diverse class-, race-, and gender-based differences and spatial unevenness (Klinger 2020) that determine the beneficiaries and the victims of the social and environmental impact of debt-driven and financialized infrastructural projects. Construction of new large-scale infrastructures are increasingly questioned locally in Eastern Europe (Torsello 2010), and elsewhere (Danyluk 2021), sometimes leading to the cancellation of a number of small and large projects (Piletić 2023; Rekhviashvili 2022). These struggles illustrate that state interests cannot be taken at face value and that the projects endorsed or perceived beneficial by national political elites are resisted for their adverse and uneven socio-environmental impacts.

Chinese investments as part of infrastructure-led development

We suggest that research on China and post-socialist East should learn from scholarship from beyond the region (Mohan and Tan-Mullins 2019). While a major increase of Chinese investments in Eastern Europe came in the early 2010s, such investments have been pouring into Africa, Latin America as well as Central Asia since the 2000s. Consequently, scholars started contesting the dominance of nation-centric ontology and stereotypical portrayal of Chinese actors in the African context already a decade ago (Ayers 2013). Since then, studies of Chinese investments in Africa have successfully deconstructed the perception that the diversity of Chinese investments feeds into a coherent Chinese global vision (Goodfellow and Huang 2021), and questioned economic sustainability of the BRI (Carmody, Taylor, and Zajontz 2022). Further, such research has started emphasizing the agency of African national and subnational political elites in negotiating Chinese infrastructural investments (Alden and Otele 2022; Wang 2022). Critical scholarship that subverts the exceptionalization of Chinese investments has also expanded to the fringes of what we broadly call the post-socialist East, particularly Central Asia (Klinger 2020; Klinger and Muldavin 2019). Such approaches do not downplay the exploitative relations that China or other emerging economies have with the third countries, but emphasize the need for “understanding and confronting the historically specific dynamics of capitalist accumulation” (Ayers 2013, 237) when studying Chinese investments in particular world regions.

To understand the specificities of capitalist accumulation we turn to the literature on shifts in global development politics since the financial crisis of 2008 (Gabor 2021; Gabor and Sylla 2023), and the emergence of infrastructure-led development (Kanai and Schindler 2022; Schindler 2019). The emergent regime of infrastructure-led development as the worldwide developmental heyday since the financial crises of 2008–2009 has been theorized as a process that aims to produce “functional transnational territories that can be ‘plugged into’ global networks of production and trade” (Schindler, DiCarlo, and Paudel 2021, 40). This new regime is far from being driven solely by China; rather, it is driven by a “global growth coalition” that includes multilateral development banks, multinational corporations, multilateral governmental institutions, consultancies and some of the most powerful governments in the world” (Schindler, DiCarlo, and Paudel 2021, 40). Many scholars warn of the exploitative terms under which infrastructure-led development unfolds. They point out that financial capital extracts public natural and financial resources (Hildyard 2017), and that states are expected to de-risk infrastructure projects through assuming financial and political responsibilities on behalf of infrastructure financiers and development asset holders (Gabor 2021; Rowden 2019).

Drawing on this body of literature, we move beyond seeing Chinese investments as outstanding, system non-compliant developments, and analyze China’s rise as embedded in global capitalist accumulation dynamics (Lim 2010). Embodying a typical capitalist response to the over-accumulation crises through geographic expansion, the Chinese BRI exemplifies “the reproduction of capitalist developmental ideas” (Summers 2016, 1638–39) and engenders important new spatial reorganizations of global capitalism (Williams, Robinson, and Bouzarovski 2020). Therefore, we suggest understanding Chinese investments in the post-socialist East as part of the global turn to infrastructure-led development.

Theorizing infrastructure-led development as a multi-scalar contestation

While the literature on infrastructure-led development has moved beyond the dominant approaches toward China and the post-socialist East, such works also tend to overlook the sub-national and local contestations around large infrastructure projects. So far such scholarship is primarily concerned with how third states respond to the rivalry and competition within the ostensibly great power dominated developmental context. This body of literature argues that states use hedging strategies to achieve spatial objectives (Kuik 2016). They tend to transform themselves into the infrastructure states similar to those of the 20^th century, “introducing regulatory reform to fast-track infrastructure projects, and augmenting state capacity” (Schindler, DiCarlo, and Paudel 2021, 2). However, anthropologically rooted studies show the severity and disruptive power of local political struggles around large-scale infrastructures (van Veelen et al. 2021), stemming from the socio-economic and environmental impact of those infrastructure projects (Apostolopoulou 2021; Danyluk 2021). To integrate these significant insights with the theorization of infrastructure-led development, we (re)conceptualize infrastructure-led development as contested at multiple scales.

We rely on a broad definition of contestation as a social practice of objection with a dual role of “a social activity (reactive contestation) and a mode of critique (proactive contestation)” (Wiener 2017, 109). Further, we root the concept in definitions offered by social movement and resistance theories, emphasizing, on the one hand, the importance of public and collective claim making, which, if realized, would influence interests of respective parties (Tarrow 2013; Tilly and Tarrow 2007), and, on the other hand, the importance of mundane and non-spectacular everyday resistances (Aidukaite, Fröhlich, and Professor Carola Silvia Neugebauer and Lela Rekhviashvili 2015; Scott 1989). Contestation thus emerges as a process through which social actors object and strive for the alteration of a given status-quo or power balance through mobilizing critical narratives and diverse repertoires of contention. We understand multi-scalarity as a “context (regional, national, global scales) where dynamics of relevant populations (e.g. industries, institutions) at one scale influence, and are influenced by, interactions of populations at other levels” (Gong and Hassink 2019, 1349). Yet, we understand scales not as pre-set geographical constructs but rather as “arenas around which sociospatial power choreographies are enacted and performed” and are “perpetually redefined, contested and restructured in terms of their extent, content, relative importance and interrelations” (Swyngedouw 2004, 132–33).

Analyzing infrastructure-led development as a multi-scalar contestation allows us to look beyond the geopolitical and geoeconomic rivalry (Cowen and Smith 2009) between great powers. This approach can reveal the complexity of how transnational actors engage with “real spaces” in which infrastructures unfold, as all strategies of rationalizing space “are formulated within the context of local territorial struggles in specific times and places” (Klinger 2020, 658). We propose that infrastructure-led development is shaped not only by contestations between and across great powers (U.S.A. and China) and their regional allies (in the context of Eurasia – EU and Russia) but also by contestations between national political elites and various transnational infrastructure financing actors, local and regional civic, private and public stakeholders, international construction companies and national authorities. Moreover, taking multi-scalarity of such contestations seriously implies tracing how involved actors (re-)scale their actions and how contestation at one scale trigger and shape contestations at other scales of action.

Unfolding of infrastructure-led development in Georgia

Empirically, this article focuses on flagship infrastructure projects involving diverse transnational actors in post-socialist Georgia. In the East European and Eurasian context, Georgia emerges as a 21st-century infrastructure state par excellence. In line with 21st-century infrastructure states pursuing their own spatial objectives through largely debt-ridden transnational connectivity infrastructures (Schindler, DiCarlo, and Paudel 2021), the Georgian state envisions becoming a key transport hub between Europe and Asia (Government of Georgia 2014, 2022; Smolnik 2018). Georgia’s “longstanding commitment to capitalising on its geographic location by turning itself into a transit corridor” (Gambino 2019a, 10) started already in the early 1990s (Barry 2013). Since the Rose Revolution of 2003, the two main contending parties dominating Georgian government pursued state restructuring with the primary goal of creating a foreign investment-friendly institutional environment (Rekhviashvili 2016). Up until very recently, Georgia has been positioning as a westward looking, Europeanizing state, taking pride in keeping good relations with all major powers, and in being a rare state that has signed free trade agreements with both the EU and China. Despite geopolitical tensions with Russia, Georgia has also stayed open to and is a receiver of Russian FDI. Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine and the decline of China – Europe cargo transportation through Russia has only reinforced Georgia’s positioning as a transit hub for Euro – Asian trade through increasing the significance of the Central Asia – Caucasus route, or the so called “Middle Corridor” of BRI (Gabritchidze 2022).

With help from Western governments and financial institutions Georgia has climbed up the ladders of global competitiveness indices (Schueth 2011), and attracted infrastructure-related investments (Smolnik 2018). At the same time, the country stands out in terms of the strength of environmental movements against large infrastructure projects (Antadze and Gujaraidze 2021; Kochladze 2021). Therefore, Georgia serves as a good starting point for assessing the involvement of various infrastructure-financing actors operating side-by side across a number of infrastructure projects, and contentions that arise at various scales.

Data and methods

The article grew out of a 16-month-long ethnographic fieldwork on contestations against large infrastructures in Georgia, primarily focusing on the Namakhvani HPP in western Georgia, carried out throughout November 2020 to February 2022. One of the coauthors pursued participant observation at multiple sites of contention in Georgia in the scope of three, one- to two-month-long stays in Georgia, in Kutaisi, Gumati and Tbilisi. During these stays she attended various protest actions organized by the movement, held repeated interviews with key members of the movement, and inquired into the history of the movement stretching back to the late Soviet Union. She has kept steady engagement with the anti-dam struggle throughout a year and a half, relying on virtual anthropology methods (Góralska 2020), drawing on the heightened reliance of social movements on digital media (Antonelli 2017), especially throughout the pandemic times. This included: being part of regular online meetings with leaders of local environmental movement as well as a range of human rights and environmental civil society organizations, taking part in organizing public discussions on Namakhvani HPP, collecting and reposting existing media stories on other large infrastructural projects across Georgia, and participating in public hearings on the National Climate and Energy Development Plan organized by the Ministry of Economy and Sustainable Development and the Ministry of Environmental Protection and Agricultural of Georgia.

In-depth research on the Namakhvani HPP, as along with participation in various activities of the movement, included reaching out to actors involved in contestations of other large infrastructural projects. From this starting point, we extended our research, relying on a range of secondary materials, to other contestations of large-scale infrastructure projects. We primarily looked into the activities and reports of local environmental and human rights non-governmental organizations (such as “Green Alternative”, “Social Justice Center”, and “Georgian Young Lawyers” Association (GYLA), to understand key contestations around infrastructure projects. Additionally, we analyzed Socio-Economic Development Strategy documents of Georgia to observe the state’s priorities in terms of infrastructural development (Government of Georgia 2014; Ministry of Economy and Sustainable Development of Georgia, and Ministry of Environmental Protection and Agriculture of Georgia 2022). Drawing on ethnographic research and secondary data, including academic and semi-academic research (often carried out by local NGOs), journalistic investigations, news reporting, and the official communication platforms of respective companies, we performed qualitative content analysis (Mayring 2000) to understand: who are the contending actors; at what scales and for what reasons are large infrastructure projects contested; and how contestations at various scales are interconnected?

To account for the cases that followed the emergence of the so-called “infrastructure turn” (Dodson 2017), we studied projects that have been kickstarted since 2008 (for the study of earlier key infrastructural projects see Barry 2013). In order to investigate cases shaped by infrastructure-led development thinking, we primarily focused on new, greenfield infrastructures and predominantly excluded the cases where preexisting transport, energy or mining infrastructures were privatized. We identified the cases of Anaklia Port, the East-West Highway, Hualing Tbilisi Sea New City, Nenskra HPP and Namakhvani HPP as representing key and flagship greenfield infrastructure projects in Georgia in the past decade (see Figure 1).

Figure 1. Case study Locations.

All of these projects were envisioned by the post-revolution government of the United National Movement (UNM) under president Saakashvili during the late 2000s and early 2010s. While Hualing Tbilisi Sea New City was kickstarted prior to the governmental change, all other projects were pushed forward by the Georgian Dream (GD) in the second half of the 2010s. Two of the five projects were lauded as “projects of the century”. Besides the two large hydropower plants, all other projects were framed as part of the BRI and discursively used to assert the significance of Georgia in Euro-Asian connectivity. In turn, the power plants were presented as key to Georgia’s energy independence. Overall, these projects represent some of the largest and most strategic infrastructure projects in sectors in which greenfield infrastructural projects have been promoted for regional development purposes in the Georgian context, namely transport and connectivity, energy infrastructures and urban real-estate projects. In terms of urban real-estate projects, Hualing Tbilisi Sea New City (TSNC) has been matched only by the highly contested Panorama Tbilisi project. Yet TSNC was selected for this study due to the involvement of Chinese private investors.

In what follows, we present the cases of contested large infrastructure projects from the Namakhvani HPP, the most fiercely contested large infrastructure project of the past decades in Georgia. Afterward, we move first to the case of the other energy project, the Nenskra HPP, and then to the three transport and real-estate related cases.

Namakhvani Hydropower Plant (HPP)

Contestations around the Namakhvani HPP have sprung from a small and marginal local resistance, but have later engaged various actors operating on local, national and international scales. Not just the engaged actors and their scope of action, but even the discursive articulation of the problem has been rescaled multiple times during the process. The case of contesting the Namakhvani HPP is illustrative of what multi-scalar contestation of infrastructure-led development can mean in practice, and how contestation at one scale can trigger and shape contestations at other scales of action and narration.

The wider public learned about the resistance against Namakhvani HPP, in October 2020, through news of police brutality against the local population. However, the protest drew on longer lines of resistance. Local population had mobilized against the idea to build a large dam on the Rioni river, near the village of Namakhvani in mountainous West Georgia, already in the late Soviet Union. With the revival of the plan in the late 2000s, local residents mobilized once again. Discontent intensified in the Rioni Valley since the Turkish-Norwegian consortium Enka Renewables (from now on Enka) was selected by tender to build a double-dam facility with a total capacity of 433 megawatts in 2015, and started construction works in 2019. The years-long discontent was disregarded, and the local population was excluded from formal channels of democratic participation, such as meaningful engagement in public hearings. In response, a handful of residents put up tents and started a permanent protest to physically hamper the construction process of the dam in October 2020.

The public outcry caused by police brutality against protesters and the fact that they had managed to actually hamper the construction process compelled the Georgian government as well as Enka to react to the protest that had passed unnoticed for years. The government started framing activists as fighting against “progress, modernity and development” and greenlit harsh repressions locally. The government also started publicly justifying the project as key to Georgia’s energy independence, emphasizing that US$800,000 worth of FDI was very important for the Georgian economy in times of the pandemic. The company in turn set up a Facebook page and a website to argue for the social benefits of the project and mobilize voices of local residents who supported the project.

As such confrontations deepened, the local protesters as well as the government and the private company started rescaling their actions and discourses, triggering the mobilization of contentious arguments from various sides, and revealing new and previously concealed facets of the project. From October 2020 till May 2021 a handful of local residents became the leaders of the largest environmental movement in Georgia’s recent history. The local residents were supported by critical civil society actors and media, volunteer groups, and other movements in various mountainous regions of Georgia. By summer 2021, there was hardly any professional group, community, or labor union in large cities, mining and industrial towns or peripheralized agricultural regions, that had not expressed solidarity with the Rioni Valley movement. Various international actors, ranging from members of the European Parliament to leftist anti-dam activists from Turkey, also spoke out in support of the protest. The movement organized almost 600-day-long continuous overnight stays near the construction site, staged numerous protests in the nearby city of Kutaisi, and took the protest to the capital city, Tbilisi.

Importantly, the movement departed from problematizing local concerns, arguing that the HPP project was compromising national interests and was illustrative of global injustices. Initially, by the end of 2020, they concentrated on the issues of human rights, exclusion from decision-making and possible environmental risks of the HPP project. In the early 2021, the protesters learned that already in 2019 the government had sold all previously state-owned land alongside a 50-kilometer-long stretch of the Rioni Valley to Enka for 99 years for a symbolic price of a few hundred Euros. Furthermore, journalists got hold of and publicized a previously classified contract between the government and the company. Experts who finally got an opportunity to analyze the document deemed it an “enslaving” contract (Rekhviashvili 2021). According to the contract, the state was assuming all environmental, political and fiscal risks. It guaranteed returns for the company by promising to purchase electricity at a set price (in USD) for 15 years. Besides gifting land to the company, the contract also granted the investor free use of the Rioni river basin as well as other river basins in the region. The state would not become a shareholder of the HPP and was deprived of other mechanisms of regulating the production, distribution and consumption of electricity generated by the plant. Drawing on the criticism of the contract, the movement argued that the HPP project was not only harmful for the residents of the Rioni Valley but was also placing fiscal burdens on the national budget and would not benefit the Georgian economy in any meaningful way. Importantly, they emphasized the colonial and extractive character of the project, and the global and universal relevance of their struggle. One of the leaders of the movement, Maka Suladze stated: “I feel the ownership not just over my yard but over the whole earth. This earth is mine, I occupy a specific place in it, and it is my responsibility to protect this place” (cited in Rekhviashvili 2022, 96).

The government and Enka also started rescaling their actions and mobilizing their allies. They organized a number of public relations campaigns, reaching out not only to local hydropower lobbyists but also transnational actors in support of the HPP project. For example, a Facebook page set up by the Georgian government engaged a representative of EBRD (Imedi News 2021), while Enka drew on public support from Turkish and Norwegian ambassadors. Beyond discrediting the local protest movement, the ambassadors did not only take part in discrediting the local movement but also explicitly articulated the importance of the HPP project for inter-state relations, especially between Turkey and Georgia (Civil Georgia 2021). Much like the protesters, the supporters of the project also stressed regional and international geopolitical ramifications of the HPP project. The protest movement was growing in spite of and due to (dis)information campaigns and repeated police repressions. In response, the Georgian government rescaled its actions again, and called upon the European Energy Community representatives to mediate the conflict between the government, the private construction company and the protest leaders in June 2021. During this mediation, the investor demanded the deal to be canceled, and by early 2022 the project was declared formally canceled, with the investor taking the Georgian government to arbitration court. In other words, the local protest ended with contestation between the Georgian government and the Turkish-Norwegian construction company. The involvement of the European Energy Community failed to soothe the conflict.

In response to the cancellation of the project, the Georgian government placed blame on the movement for the expected costs the state would have to endure after the conclusion of the arbitration process. Moreover, the representatives of the ruling party explicitly declared the protest leaders to be Russian agents aiming to undermine Georgia’s prospects of energy independence. Thus, the complex geopolitical context and rivalry was exploited by the government to responsibilize and discredit resistances against greenfield energy infrastructures.

Nenskra Hydropower Plant (HPP)

The case of the Nenskra HPP in yet another mountainous region of Georgia, Svaneti, preceded the struggle against the Namakhvani HPP, and represents one more instance of multi-scalar contestation over energy projects, this time involving European development banks. Much like Namakhvani HPP, Nenskra was conceived in the early 2010s, and obtained environmental and construction clearance in 2015. Yet the construction by JSC Nenskra, a joint venture of the Korea Water Resources Corporation & the Georgian State Partnership Fund, as well as the active phase of resistance would start only in 2018, a bit earlier than the events in Namakhvani.

Nenskra HPP illustrates the strong interest of the EBRD, and more broadly of the EU, to support development of hydropower in the Balkans and the Caucasus, justified as part of “green energy transitions” (Barry and Gambino 2021). Beyond being hailed as investment in renewable energy production, HPPs are also framed locally and transnationally as Georgia’s path to reducing dependence on energy imports from Russia. While the Nenskra project is primarily supported by European banks (EBRD and EIB 2021), Asian banks like KDB, ADB and China’s AIIB are also lining up to partake in the financing of this contested project, currently hindered by powerful local opposition.

The national government marginalized concerns of the local population and deprived them of institutional means of opposing the project (Qeburia and Chubabria 2017). Similarly to the resistance in the Rioni Valley local residents here were portrayed as “backwards” and “anti-modern” in mainstream media. Yet, their subaltern struggle found effective extra-legal means to hamper the construction process on site. They mobilized relying on the traditional oath-taking rituals. Taking oath or swearing on (nominally) Orthodox icons to commit to a collective claim is a long-standing tradition in Svaneti. When resisting the Nenskra HPP, Svans have employed oath-taking as a strategy to mobilize collectively, ensuring community solidarity and sustained resistance against the construction process (Antadze and Gujaraidze 2021).

Compared to the contestation of the Namakhvani HPP, solidarities on the national scale were more limited in the case of the Nenskra HPP. However, national environmental NGOs started collaborating with their international peers to mobilize international solidarity on the European scale. With the help of a global network of environmental organizations operating in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE Bankwatch), up to 10,000 signatures were collected for an EU-wide petition to put pressure on the major financing institutions, EBRD and EIB. The latter indeed published the results of their investigation in 2021, concluding that “Nenskra is non-compliant with the banks’ own standards on indigenous peoples’ rights, the protection of cultural heritage, gender issues, the assessment and management of environmental and social impacts, information disclosure and engagement of local communities” (Kochladze 2021). This slowed down the construction process, subjecting the Nenskra project to protracted uncertainty.

Similar to the Namakhvani HPP case, where the previously classified contract for the Nenskra HPP was made public in 2019, civil society organizations started pointing to grave problems with the project beyond local social and environmental challenges. By signing this contract, the Georgian government not only took an obligation to purchase electricity from the Nenskra HPP for a fixed price far above the market average, but also committed to insuring a range of commercial risks that the private developer company could possibly face (Chipashvili 2021). The IMF and the World Bank also spoke out against the project, citing expected hikes in electricity prices and extensive fiscal burden on Georgia’s national budget.

The case of contesting the Nenskra HPP is illustrative of tensions across various western financial institutions’ assessment of a particular project. More importantly, it shows that reputable donors such as the EBRD and the EIB are not above greenlighting a gravely problematic project, but if their reputation is put at stake, they may flip sides in favor of civil society organizations. In other words, multilateral development banks first facilitate the drafting of projects in which the national governments provide extensive guarantees to private companies and insure risky infrastructure projects through national budgets. Once national governments fail to defend such fundamentally unjustifiable projects in the face of local opposition, the same banks emerge as supposedly impartial judges of the process, once again making governments responsible for their failure in their transparent and environmentally sound implementation.

The struggle against the Nenskra and Namakhvani HPPs not only hampered or canceled the construction of these particular projects but have also had tangible policy implications. In light of the criticism of unequal deals with international private companies, the Georgian government started considering making public (co-)investments in large energy infrastructure projects (Gelantia 2021). European development banks, EBRD and EIB, have also started downplaying hydropower in favor of developing other renewables such as wind and solar power (EIB and EBRD 2021). While such policy changes may be temporary or might fail to address the full scope of concerns raised by anti-dam movements, they testify to the relevance of local contestations in shaping infrastructure-led development in Georgia.

Anaklia Deep Sea Port

The Anaklia Deep Sea Port “is presented by its developers and the government alike as the jewel of Georgia’s infrastructural portfolio” (Gambino 2021, 118), but has been hampered and protracted due to various overlapping contestations. Unlike the hydropower plants, the Anaklia project was primarily contested not by the local population but rather by various transnational and national political forces.

Like most large infrastructure projects in Georgia, the Anaklia port was envisioned already by Georgia’s post-Revolution government under Saakashvili, but the tender for the project was announced only in 2015 by the successor Georgian Dream government. The first deep water container port in Georgia was planned to be developed on 340 ha of land on the Black Sea coast of Georgia. The port should have been developed by Anaklia Development Consortium (ADC) which claimed that it aimed to create “a world-class port complex for Georgia and position it as a vital point of trade to and from Central Asia, as well as to serve the New Silk Road trade between China and Europe” (Anaklia Development Consortium 2020). Besides positioning as a key infrastructural node alongside the BRI, the project was to carry strategic importance for the Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T). It was backed by the U.S.A. and the EU and primarily financed by western multilateral development banks (ADC, OPIC, EBRD) as well as by Asia-based banks like the Japanese-led ADB and the China-led AIIB.

The Chinese state company Hubei Hongyuan Electrical Power Engineering Co. Limited expressed interest and competed for the tender, but the project was awarded to a consortium led by an American company, SSA Marine and its local partners. However, the Chinese Shanghai Zhenhua Heavy Industries won a tender to construct 12 gantry cranes in 2018. Due to disagreements between the Georgian government, ADC, and the involved MDBs, the project was put on hold in early 2020, after several years of development. Despite this fiasco, US-based think tanks already recommend the U.S.A. continue its attempts at reviving the Anaklia project. They argue that unless the U.S.A. invests in Anaklia, there will be a high risk that China steps in to finance the most ambitious developmental project in Georgia (Zalinger, 2021). In a meeting with Georgia’s prime minister, the foreign minister of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) indeed emphasized that cooperation in relation to ports, alongside the energy sector, free-economic zones, and 5 G infrastructures is important for China (Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China 2022). The Georgian government announced a new tender on Anaklia in mid-2023 and it is yet to be seen whether Chinese actors choose to compete for the project again. So far, Anaklia port presents itself as a case of contestation across various financing actors, operators and construction companies, aligning across great powers such as the U.S.A. and China. Yet, it also illustrates how contestation is hardly ever a fully zero-sum game. Rather, it is also shaped by collaborations and simultaneous engagement of numerous financing bodies and developers.

The Anaklia project also exemplifies contestations between national public authorities, transnational developers and development banks of various origins. The Georgian government blamed the transnational consortium responsible for developing the Anaklia project (ADC) for being unable to mobilize investments. The consortium, in turn, claimed that government representatives sabotaged the project due to political rivalry between the involved actors and thus scared away potential investors (Gaprindashvili and Tsitsikashvili 2021). The government and the developers’ consortium appeared as the main opposing parties, but this case also showed how tensions can emerge between national governments and financial institutions. Multilateral development banks of all origins (ranging from the U.S.A. and the EU to Japan and China) collaboratively presented the Georgian government with an eight-point plan, the primary issue of contention between the engaged parties. While generally in support of the deal, the government proved unwilling to accept one of the key aspects the plan offered by the MDBs, namely commercial risk insurance. This disagreement eventually led to an open conflict with the consortium and the discontinuation of the project. Interestingly, the Georgian government was willing to support the Namakhvani and Nenskra HPPs by assuming the political, regulatory and even environmental risks of these projects, but refused to do so in case of Anaklia. Moreover, when criticizing the ADC for taking the Georgian government to the arbitration court, Georgia’s prime minister adopted the language that activists had used when opposing the Namakhvani and Nenskra HPP projects:

Land was ours and we were requested to hand it over. We did. Roads and railways were built to the site. Hundreds of millions were to be spent by the Government to receive nothing in return […] After dropping this project and failing to implement it for 4–5 years, these individuals [ADC] decided to rob our country and why do we have this assumption? They sued against the country and took the case further to the court of arbitrage. They are currently claiming US$1.5b. (Georgia Today 2022)

In the case of the Anaklia port project we see that the refusal to assume financial and political risks by a state can lay grounds for contestation between the government, the developer companies, and the MDBs that might undo the infrastructure projects that were regarded by the same actors as particularly strategic and important.

Rikoti section of the East-West Highway

Up until early 2023 the Rikoti section of Georgia’s East-West Highway was embraced in the local political context without any significant contestation. As Ocakli and Ibebe suggest, “beyond its constituting function in the ‘Middle Corridor’ [of the BRI], the Rikoti project is also the latest in a series of logistics and infrastructure projects of the century that, all together, strive to mold Georgia’s unruly geography into an inviting transit corridor” (2023, 76). While the project was financed by various MDBs, it was the China Railway Construction Corporation (CRCC) that won the open tender for the project in 2017 and thus became responsible for the construction together with two subsidiary companies. The project had previously become subject to relatively low-key contestations. For example, in 2019, the Georgian infrastructure minister alerted the World Bank regarding the misconduct the ministry found in the tender documentation submitted in 2017. This led the WB to use its disciplining power and announce a nine-month-long debarment of the Chinese CRCC company from any WB financed project globally (World Bank 2019). The company continued the construction of East-West Highway after the debarment period.

The victory of Chinese companies in the tender for constructing the Rikoti section of the East-West Highway, as well as in a number of other large road construction projects, sparked yet further contestation between local private construction companies and the state. Georgian road construction companies were upset about being excluded from tenders for the highway and large road infrastructure construction projects. According to local business associations, local construction companies have become unable to compete in large-infrastructure tenders since the mid-2010s. Around that time, the Georgian government established tendering criteria that privileges large and experienced transnational companies and disadvantages local construction companies in the processes of bidding, leading to the bankruptcy of a number of such companies (Commersant 2019). Local construction companies have only made a few public statements and have not put up any publicly visible sustained fight to change the tendering conditions.

Since April 2023, the Rikoti bypass is no longer celebrated by Georgian mainstream media and politicians because the road was affected by and temporarily closed down due to multiple landslides. From then on up until August 2023, the Rikoti road has been subjected to and hindered by landslides numerous times. This kind of infrastructural failure heightened criticism and brought to the fore previously overlooked contestations around the project. New reports and short movies by investigative journalists revealed multiple problems, including a lack of labor rights protection and the devastation of people’s livelihoods and built environments for the populations of villages across the Rikoti pass (I fact, Investigative Journalists’ Team 2023). More than any other issue, the media covered dissenting opinions articulated by Georgian experts: engineers, geologists, and seismologists. These professional groups emphasize the depth of the challenges related to the project, arguing that the highway section has not been planned carefully enough, triggering landslides that will be very difficult to manage in the years and decades to come (Nikoladze 2023). Importantly, these professionals articulate their anger at being excluded from the decision-making process throughout the past years. Similarly to the concerns raised in the case of challenging the Namakhvani HPP, such contestations hinge on articulating knowledge and power hierarchies when executing large infrastructure projects and call for inclusion of local knowledge (Investigative Reporter 2023).

Hualing Tbilisi Sea New City (TSNC)

Hualing Tbilisi Sea New City (TSNC) is the oldest and the least contested megaproject. TSNC is a large multi-purpose urban enclave project in Georgia’s capital that was kickstarted in 2012 with development plans stretching to 2025. The Chinese private company Hualing serves both as the investor and constructor of the urban megaproject, with 10-year-long on-site investment liabilities of US$150 million. The Hualing group aims to turn this district into the most significant wholesale, retail trading, and distribution area in the South Caucasus (Group 2015), while the Georgian government hopes that the project will transform Georgia into an important transit node between Europe and Asia (Gogishvili and Harris-Brandts 2020).

The company has benefited from an exceptional preferential treatment, with the Georgian government approving the sale of the 4.2 million m² greenfield site for a symbolic price of US$0.001 per m², providing a range of tax breaks and exemptions, and granting the company exclusive rights to develop a Free Industrial Zone, a Special Trade Zone, and a range of multi-purpose facilities. Additionally, the Georgian government has purchased sixteen residential buildings (about 200 apartments) from Hualing and distributed them to internally displaced persons as part of the state housing program. However, the provision of social infrastructure (such as schools, hospitals, and cultural centers) promised by the Hualing group has been delayed and the municipality has failed to provide sufficient public transport offers, leaving 200 households living in a remote enclave cut off from the rest of the city infrastructure (Kankia 2020).

Unlike most large-scale infrastructure projects in Georgia, TSNC did not cause major social grievances. Several years after the conception of the project urban planning professionals and researchers spoke out on behalf of the residents, emphasizing averse social consequences of the enclave’s detachment from urban social infrastructures (Kankia 2020). As we learned from the interviews conducted in October 2020 with two former employees of Tbilisi City Hall, the most important kind of contestation of the TSNC project proceeded rather silently within the City Hall walls throughout 2019–20. In 2019 Hualing approached the City Hall with a request to approve an altered development plan. The City Hall representatives argued that while previously TSNC seemed willing to provide a humane scale of construction, pedestrian, and social infrastructures, the altered development plan disregarded urban planning principles in favor of business interests. The new plan aimed to produce the maximum number of condominiums, envisioned entirely car-oriented infrastructures, and dismissed any other social needs for neighborhood development. The mid-range professionals from the City Hall fiercely negotiated the new plan with Hualing and managed to avoid approving it for almost two years. Yet, in 2021 the City Hall caved to the pressure from the investor and allowed the Hualing group to pursue its more commercially oriented plan.

Beyond hegemonic rivalry: the toll of multi-scalar contestations in disrupting infrastructure-led development

The most obvious and fairly striking observation one can draw when analyzing Georgia’s flagship greenfield infrastructure developments is that despite Georgia’s outstanding eagerness to form an investment-friendly infrastructure state, many of its key infrastructure projects came to be mired with significant problems (see Table 1). Besides Hualing Tbilisi New City, all the other projects discussed were either canceled (Namakhvani HPP and Anaklia HPP), or their construction process was complicated and their completion delayed (Nenskra HPP and the East-West Highway). In line with Gambino’s insistence that infrastructures are not as seamless as they are portrayed in visionary infrastructural integration schemes like China’s BRI or Europe’s “green energy transitions” (2019b), this overview of the making and un-making of Georgia’s flagship infrastructure projects attests to the malleability, fragility, contradictions, and disruptions in planning and implementing these projects.

Table 1. An overview of the five infrastructure projects.

Project name	Status	Since	Cancelled	Developer/Shareholder origin	Financing	Type of deal
Nenskra HPP	On hold	2018		South Korea	EBRD, EIB, ADB,AIIB	PPP
Namakhvani HPP	Cancelled	2019	2022	Turkey	Unknown	PPP
East-West Highway	Protracted	2017		China (predominantly)	WB, EBRD, EIB, ADB,AIIB	Loan
Anaklia Deep Sea Port	Cancelled	2016	2020	U.S.A., Georgia	EBRD, OPIC, ADB, AIIB	PPP
Hualing Tbilisi Sea New City	Active	2012		China	Hualing Group	FDI

Second, looking at Chinese investments as part of broader turn to infrastructure-led development shows that while Chinese investments in Eastern Europe might be characterized by some specificities, they are not unique, outstanding, or disconnected from the rest of the infrastructure financing and development landscapes. The analysis of Georgia’s flagship infrastructure projects attests to the arguments of literature on infrastructure-led development, namely that Chinese investments are, on the one hand, shaped by competition between rival great powers, but on the other hand are embedded in global growth coalitions, often tightly collaborating with Western development banks and financial institutions (Kanai and Schindler 2022; Schindler, DiCarlo, and Paudel 2021). The Chinese state and private companies engage in projects developed by Western private companies or financed by Western financial institutions. The China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank consistently collaborates with other MDBs (Summers 2020), putting downward pressure on the Georgian government to assume responsibility for a variety of commercial risks and therefore to fully assure returns on the otherwise risky investments in infrastructure projects. In this sense, China is rather part of what Daniela Gabor calls “The Wall Street Consensus” (WSC), a developmental paradigm that has emerged after the Washington Consensus and strives to de-risk (primarily infrastructural) investments for international financial actors by placing financial and political risks on states (Gabor 2021). Companies of various origins benefit similarly from the extremely flexible institutional architecture of the Georgian state, the unbalanced contracts they strike with the government of this small, FDI-dependent country, and from Western arbitration courts that ensure that the government will pay lavish compensation if it cannot deliver on the implausible responsibilities it took on in such contracts. Some of the social and environmental challenges are also similar across various infrastructure projects with and without the involvement of Chinese companies and China-based financial institutions. Even if existing literature might be justified in its claim that Chinese investments carry particularly grave threats for small Eastern European states, future research as well as policy-making will hardly benefit from simply assuming that investment practices of Western multilateral development banks are “sound and sustainable” (Makocki 2017). Instead of singling out China as a system non-compliant actor, we suggest attention to be paid to the relational and variegated character of China’s involvement in the emergent regime of infrastructure-led development.

Third, the analysis of Georgia’s flagship infrastructures as multi-scalar contestations challenges the nation-state-centric focus in the literature on Chinese investments in the post-socialist East, but also the overwhelming focus on the transnational scale of contestation on infrastructure-led development (see Table 2). The central kind of contestation discussed in “new Cold War” literature (Schindler, DiCarlo, and Paudel 2021) is the contestation between the rival great powers that engage smaller states (such as Georgia) in their infrastructure-led territorial integration projects. The cases of Georgia’s flagship infrastructure projects illustrate that [1] transnational contestations are accompanied by a range of equally significant contestations at other levels and that [2] contestations at one scale are often accompanied by actors’ attempts to rescale their scope of action involving further actors, and triggering further contestations at different scales. Contestations between governments of small states such as Georgia versus transnational companies, powerful states, and financial institutions overlap and interact with great power rivalry. In the case of the Anaklia port, MDBs of various origins united in their demands against the Georgian state. An inability to negotiate risks and benefits of the Anaklia project with financing bodies resulted in further conflict between the state and the developer companies.

Table 2. An overview of the scales of contestation.

Project name	Civil Society			State			Company		MDBs	Outcome of contestations
	Local	National	Intl.	Local	National	Third	Local	Intl.
Nenskra HPP	O	O	O		O			O	O	Project slowed down, reports on the shortcomings of the project by EBRD, EIB and European Energy community
Namakhvani HPP	O	O			O	O		O		Project halted, Involvement of European Energy community in negotiation process, withdrawal of Turkish company
East-West Highway	O	O			O		O	O	O	World Bank penalised Chinese construction company temporarily, continuous local concerns
Anaklia Deep Sea Port					O	O	O	O	O	Project halted, plans for restarting emerging in 2022
Hualing Tbilisi Sea New City		O		O				O		Project majorly completed

Furthermore, contestations initiated by local environmental movements, national, and even transnational civil society actors and professional groups also significantly shape the fate of specific infrastructure projects and illustrate that interests of nation-states as represented by national political elites cannot be assumed to be fully dominant. While national governments also struggle in face of unfavorable foreign investment deals, they nevertheless regularly ally with MDBs and private investors against their constituencies and, as seen in case of the Nenskra and Namakhvani HPPs, mobilize the state institutional apparatus to repress resistance movements. Structural constraints, and fierce competition for FDI among small Eurasian states (Appel and Orenstein 2016), partially explains why national governments sign exploitative investment deals. Yet another important reason lies in the political elites’ capacity to benefit and bear minimal costs from large investment deals. In a state with notoriously regressive taxation system and in the context of the inseparability of political and economic elites, policymakers do not end up facing the consequences of fiscal burdens they place on the state budget, but “usually the people who end up paying the debt are the least privileged and most marginalized population” (D. D. Harvey and Nak-Chung 2017, 253). As Klinger observes in the example of Central Asian governments’ tight alliance with Chinese investors in repressing local populations’ mobilizations against extractive infrastructures, this alliance “highlights the primacy of class interests over shared national identity, although the two are flexibly deployed in both promotion of and resistance to major construction projects” (2020, 10). The socially and spatially uneven distribution of the costs and benefits of large infrastructure projects explains why so many of such projects are continuously contested and emphasizes the need for further research to overcome existing state-centric analyses when discussing the beneficiaries and the victims of the current infrastructure-led development race.

Conclusion

Drawing on an analysis of major infrastructure projects in Georgia we propose a reconceptualization of infrastructure-led development as constituted by multi-scalar contestations. First, we contribute to the emergence and elaboration of scarce critical research on Chinese investments in the post-socialist East (Klinger 2020; Rogelja 2020; Szabó and Jelinek 2023). We do so by decentering the dominant nation-state centric accounts that treat Chinese investments in the region as an exceptional threat. Instead, we suggest that Chinese engagement with the post-socialist East should be seen as part of the spatial reorganization of capitalism (Summers 2020) and growing importance of large connectivity infrastructures for developmental politics globally (Schindler and Miguel Kanai 2021). We challenge the methodological approaches that single out Chinese investments in favor of studying them as embedded in the changing landscapes of infrastructure financing, development, and governance. Based on the example of Georgia we show that far from standing out as unique or disconnected, the infrastructural engagement of diverse Chinese actors is closely intertwined with the infrastructure financing, development and governance practices of Western actors.

Second, our analysis speaks to the burgeoning literature on developmental promises and enchantments of infrastructures (Anand, Gupta, and Appel 2018; P. Harvey and Knox 2012), financialization of infrastructures (Buier 2022; Hildyard 2017; Pike et al. 2019), and the augmented role of the state in derisking infrastructure projects (Gabor 2023, Gabor and Sylla 2023; Rowden 2019). We particularly engage with discussions on the emergence of infrastructure-led development as a globally hegemonic growth strategy (Kanai and Schindler 2022; Lim and Limbach 2023; Schindler et al. 2023), and the emergence of 20^th century infrastructure states (Schindler and DiCarlo 2023). While drawing on this research to enrich discussions on Chinese investments in the post-socialist East, we also reveal the drawbacks of the extensive focus on the great power rivalry characteristic of scholarship on infrastructure-led development. In assessing competition between the U.S.A. and China as the most significant structuring aspect, this body of literature underestimates the significance of contestations unfolding at various scales.

Our analysis of infrastructure-led development in Georgia finds hegemonic rivalry either similarly important or at points even far less significant than contestations at other scales in defining the fate of infrastructure projects. While diverse Chinese, Western and other regional actors engaged in infrastructure financing and development more often tend to collaborate than to compete, numerous conflicts arise between the state and diverse transnational developers and financiers over risk-sharing. Further, the deeply uneven distribution of financial as well as environmental risks and benefits (Gabor and Sylla 2023) and the degradation of nature and labor in the service of infrastructure-led accumulation is consistently, increasingly, and often successfully contested by locally rooted but transnationalizing social movements. Our empirical analysis stands in support of the accounts that pay more attention to multi-scalar environmental and class struggles (Apostolopoulou 2021; Danyluk 2021; Lehmann and Jenss 2022) in shaping infrastructure-led development. Our conceptual emphasis on multi-scalar contestations aims to make such struggles integral to the analysis and theorization of developmental politics and its transformations.

Acknowledgements

While carrying out the research and writing up this paper we have greatly benefited from the generous engagement of various colleagues in academia and beyond. We particularly thank Gvantsa Nikolaishvili, Nano Zazanashvili, Kean Fan Lim, Andy Pike, Giles Mohan, Sebastian Lentz and three anonymous reviewers for their comments and recommendations. We warmly thank members of the movement to save Rioni Valley and Fair Energy Politics Collective for the collective process of collecting and analyzing information about key infrastructure projects in Georgia. Last but not least, our warm thanks to Tornike Chumburidze for carefully copy-editing the text.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).