The opening quote from 2012 illustrates how, according to then president Mikheil Saakashvili, the Georgian government had consolidated democracy and eradicated corruption over the previous decade (Saakashvili 2012). From this perspective Georgia was rapidly moving towards a bright future, increasingly distancing itself from its dark and corrupt past. Officially corruption did decline dramatically after the Rose Revolution that brought Saakashvili and his United National Movement (UNM) to power (Jones 2013, 195–98). Hence, in the years following the revolution Georgia was in many ways considered a textbook example of the rapid development of good governance and transparency in public institutions (see Kbiltsetskhlashvili 2008; Companjen 2010).

Commencing fieldwork in the provincial town of Gori in 2010, I was initially determined to get in contact with the local municipality to obtain official statistics and figures about the town I would be studying. I asked around. Most of the people I addressed seemed puzzled, such as Olga, a middle-aged woman: