As Stephen Dowling put it in his BBC News article a few years ago, “when it comes to crossing the road, there's no such thing as an international standard. Every country does it differently.” How people drive and cross the road, according to Dowling, is a matter of a country’s cultural values. Is it really?

In Georgia, there is a clear policy trade-off between having smaller local self-government units (LSGs), which would be closer to voters and service users, and the higher overall costs of a larger number of LSGs. In November, 2012, the Georgian Ministry of Regional Development and Infrastructure (MRDI) began to design a major policy initiative to reform the existing system of sub-national government in Georgia.

There are many pressing challenges and issues that command the attention of people interested in politics in Georgia. Some of these issues are emotionally charged, and there is not necessarily a consensus across society. However, there is one issue on which there should be a consensus, and it matters tremendously to the Georgian people.

The mountain of promises to modify Georgia’s liberal labor code has recently produced a little mouse in the shape of a statement by Deputy Prime Minister Giorgi Margvelashvili who, according to GeorgiaNews.ge, “branded the new labor code project a “dream of Rosa Luxemburg”.

Does Georgia have a well-developed financial sector? Certainly, the proliferation of bank branches and automated teller machines in the capital city of Tbilisi might suggest that it does. And yet, the data indicates that for a country of its size, Georgia has a relatively small financial sector.