In 1994 he was among the founding members of the Georgian Young Lawyers' Association (GYLA), a non-governmental organization dedicated to promoting human rights and the rule of law, which he led as its first chairman from 1994 to 1997.

He was active in the NGO-organized protests during the November 2003 Rose Revolution, which swept Mikheil Saakashvili to the presidency of Georgia.

Usupashvili then distanced himself from the alliance with Saakashvili and withdrew into opposition, becoming, in June 2005, the chairman of the Republican Party of Georgia, a position he held until being succeeded by Khatuna Samnidze in November 2013.

[4] The Republican Party broke with the Georgian Dream and ran independently for the October 2016 parliamentary elections in which it failed to clear the required threshold.

In June 2016, Usupashvili announced the creation of a new centrist political movement with the aim to contest the upcoming municipal election in October 2017.