Small States, Innovation and Administrative Capacity

Abstract

‘What distinguishes the small nations from the large’, writes Milan Kundera (2007, p. 28), ‘is not the quantitative criterion of the number of their inhabitants; it is something deeper. For small nations, existence is not self-evident certainty but always a question, a wager, a risk; they are on the defensive against History, that force which is bigger than they, which does not take them into account, which does not even notice them.’ Kundera expresses the rational and reasonable fear felt by small nations and states of ‘going under’ and succumbing to history; that fear also explains why there is a specific research interest in small states and their unique challenges.