Ivanishvili is the linchpin in the current Georgian political system.  If we are to understand the nature of Georgia’s political system today, we need to examine Ivanishvili's personality and history more closely.  In Georgia, outsized personalities have always played a decisive role in politics and have consistently abused their power.  Ivanishvili is no different. But we argue that he has gone beyond his predecessors, Eduard Shevardnadze and Mikheil Saakashvili, to create an illiberal and anti-European system which leaves no political space for either party opponents or civil society activists. Currently, almost all of Georgia’s major opposition party leaders are in prison.  We call it a quasi-dictatorship. In 2025 Ivanishvili’s Georgia has moved closer to the model of Alexandr Lukashenko in Belarus than the illiberal model established in Hungary of Victor Orban.