In the globally very turbulent 2024, Georgia was under the spotlight in the global arena, but not for a good reason and with nothing to celebrate. On the contrary, this spotlight was earned by its government’s risky shift away from the EU trajectory and, post the 26 October Parliamentary election, the powerful, non-stop peaceful street protests of the pro-European population in the capital Tbilisi and other cities, those demanding free and fair new elections.

On May 14, 2024, Davit Keshelava, Lead Economist of the ISET Policy Institute, presented the newly developed Media (de)Polarization Index at the FREE Network conference titled: “Online Political Influence and Misinformation”. The presentation outlined the motivation behind the research, methodology, framework, and key findings.

While there is a consensus on high polarization in Georgia as confirmed by the public perception of increasing polarization on one hand and the call of the country's development partners towards depolarization, there has not been any tool available to measure and monitor the polarization dynamics. On this basis, the ISET Policy Institute developed a media polarization index to explore and measure the dynamics of media polarization in Georgia.

ISET Policy Institute developed an advanced quantitative model to simulate the potential impacts of energy and environmental policies on the Georgian economy, the Climate Policy Analysis (ICPA), and investigated the economy-wide implications of three alternative policy options (the introduction of differentiated – by sector – carbon taxes, sectoral emission standards, and uniform carbon tax), complying with the emission targets defined in Georgia’s Climate Strategy and Action Plan, to find out the most effective measures and their welfare effects.

Hosted and moderated by ISET Policy Institute’s Salome Gelashvili, Acting Head of the Agricultural and Rural Development Policy Research Center, the German Sparkassenstiftung Southern Caucasus and Ukraine (DSIK) have recently developed a presentation looking into their Climate Risk Pattern Analysis in Georgia.