Strategies of Withdrawal

Abstract

A lengthy period is necessary for building a country’s scientific and technological capacities. The evolution of such a system takes decades. The research systems of Eastern Europe’s small states, moreover — due to their miniature size — hardly have an impact on the organization and direction of movement of world scholarship. Thus, they are formed not through active (structuring) strategies but rather through reactive (adaptive) ones. Consequently, the decade of the change of regime can be a period of active search for consciously disengaging solutions. In the next 15 years, however, the overwhelming proportion of options for the S&T system must be known now at least in terms of their elements and potentials.