Elite Engineering - the Precondition of the Formation of Qualitative and Effective Elite

Abstract

The standard of living, quality of democracy, stability, and successful social and economic policies are determined by political elites' governing ability, intellectual potential, and professionalism. Successful regulation of elite circulation and practical implementation of democratic values largely depended on elite engineering. Elite engineering is the set of implementation mechanisms of personal state policies, which elaborates criteria of elite mobility and creates suitable conditions for free competition. To appoint capable and honest personals to positions, elite engineering should answer the following questions: what kind of person does a particular society and political system need, what positions correspond to specific professional knowledge, how to select personnel, what is needed for carrier advancement, which mechanisms should be created to form "open elites" ("open elites" function in Western democracies, while" closed elites" are characteristic of totalitarian and authoritarian regimes, where artificial restrictions are created in the selection process). Elite engineering includes elite recruitment- the process of joining the elites (incorporation), horizontal mobility of the elite (rotation), and the process of leaving the elites (ex-corporation). The competence of the political elite includes the management of personal policy, which implies ensuring the presence of persons of appropriate qualifications and abilities in the government and the institutionalization of the elite renewal process. For these purposes, the state should create pre-elite and post-elite zones. The task of the former is creating a social base for the renewal of the elite; ex-elite one aims to "calm down" the cadres withdrawn from the elites. The ruling elite must control both zones since there are many cases when the people expelled from elite ranks(in Georgia, T.Kitovani, T.Sigua, I. Ioseliani, and others, showing the public the "internal kitchen" of the government, called into question its legitimacy) punch country into deep conflicts and civil war. Researchers identify guild and entrepreneurial modes of elite recruitment that mainly characterize modern democracies. The guild system implies the gradual rise of candidates through the hierarchical levels of power. It excludes the appointment of unqualified personnel to positions. This method is used mainly for the selection of the bureaucratic elites. In the USSR, it was used for the selection of nomenclature. In developed democracies, political elites are completed through the entrepreneurial mode of selection, which makes it possible to skip bureaucratic levels and routine procedures. It is not a problem for countries with strong democratic governance and institutional traditions. However, it became an absolute disaster in post-soviet countries with the actual absence of institutionalized governance. In modern Georgia, there is no institutional system for the selection of elites. It needs to be clarified what requirements and criteria the candidate must meet. There are no such education, knowledge, and skills the acquisition of which will guarantee incorporation. The theoretical exception is elections, which may open the door to enter the elite to the winning candidate. The article analyzes the formation of post-soviet elites: features of the formation of the national elite of Z. Gamsaxurdia, which had an "ethnocratic coloring" and was close to the model of an open elite, which contributed to the development of political instability; the neo-nomenclature elite of Ed. Shevardnadze was mainly staffed by formal communists and was utterly unprepared for activities in the conditions of uncontrolled, chaotic processes characterizing market relations in the transition period. Much attention is paid to the selection criterion of the authoritarian elite united around M. Saakashvili, who was focused on western education and youth, and, like Gamsaxurdia, denied heredity in the personal policy. The personal policy of the Georgian Dream is contradictory; professionalism and other criteria are underestimated. Standard features of the Georgian elites of the transition period are self-sufficiency (party membership, clan-kinship ties, and loyalty play decisive roles in the incorporation), recruitment of new members only from their adherents according to the will of their leaders, and underestimation of professionalism and managerial abilities. It follows from the above that a significant task of the Georgian authorities is developing relevant technology and its implementation, without which it is impossible to form high-quality and effective elites.