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02.05.2011

ON FORECASTS

   

Gagik Terteryan

The efficient activity of our political elite assumes adequate expert service. In particular, political leadership must have an opportunity to receive from the expert community the elaborations concerning:

  • patterns and peculiarities of the history of Armenia and Armeniancy (“knowledge of past”);
  • intellectual and economic potential and problems of the national society, taking into consideration the factor of multiculturalism, multilingualism and adherence to various confessions of some part of the Armeniancy;
  • social and economic, demographic and domestic political situation in the RA, NKR and Javakhq;
  • content and orientation of the military and political processes in the region;
  • logics and tendencies of global civilizational, geopolitical, macro-economic and social processes (“adequate perception of the world order”);
  • possible developments and scenarios in military-political, social-economic and other spheres in short-term, mid-term and long-term outlook (“knowledge of future”).

Such kind of work implies more orderliness and availability of appropriate expert community which is possible only under the consolidation of the resources of the entire Armeniancy with the usage of possibilities of modern informational and communicational technologies.

At the same time the efficient activity of the expert and research community is possible only when national and political elite:

  • defines clearly formulated goals to the implementation of which the whole Armeniancy should tend,
  • forms necessary and optimally arranged “critical mass” of the intellectual resources,
  • provides positive feedback with the expert community and political elite.

Let us single out among the aforementioned issues those to which, despite their topicality, today, in our opinion, not enough attention is paid.

Forecasting of possible geopolitical developments. This issue is especially topical, as Armenia is involved in military and political processes of regional and global character. Those processes are:

  • The process of recognition of the status of the NKR and the Armenian Genocide by the international community and the relations with Azerbaijan and Turkey in this context;
  • The issue of Javakhq and issues of transport communications connected with it, complicated relations between Russia and Georgia;
  • Confrontation of Iran with Israel and US which directly affects Armenia;
  • Radicalization of political and national orientation in Turkey, actualization of the Kurdish issue and relations with the Turkish republic in this context.

As a result of being involved in regional and global developments, Armenia is very sensitive in the aspect of the current process of formation of the multi-polar system. It is also known that multi-polar system is less rigid and less controlled structure that is why it tends to local conflicts and geopolitical shifts, i.e., there are more preconditions for risks for Armenia. So, it is obvious, that in order to implement efficient foreign policy both situational forecasting and evaluation of possible developments in the future, revealing of the tendencies, forecasting and drafting scenarios are necessary.

Forecasting of possible social transformations. Alongside with the changes in the global political realities in modern world large-scale changes in social sphere are also taking place. Mainly due to the permanently ongoing informational and communicational revolutions the content of inter-personal, social, intra-national and international relations has changed.

Today the shift of the democratic societies to “post-democratic” ones is taking place. Here the tendency of decreasing of the role of the state and increasing of the role of the big business can be observed. As a result of those processes in globalized network internet-communities new, virtual forms of democracy appear and formation of a “virtual human” (homo virtualicus) is taking place. Those changes, according to some researchers, may even acquire revolutionary form, the rudiments of which can be observed not only in developing countries but also in Europe. It is obvious that all those processes cannot but affect Armeniancy without any geographic restrictions.

It is natural that under such dynamic conditions the efficient managing of the state and society is possible only with the usage of data about evolution of the national and public consciousness and main trends of its transformations.

On the methods of researches. The researches in the aforementioned spheres are supposed to be carried out in the following way:

  • To analyze in the context of the national interests the forecasts and scenarios elaborated by leading research centers which concern the developments in the aforementioned spheres of both global and regional scale. This function should be undertaken by a group of specially chosen analysts.
  • To order works on forecasting to the restricted number of experts (no more than two experts in each sphere) who will be chosen in accordance with the criteria set in advance. Such a method, which is implemented in order to economize the resources, can conditionally be called “Focus Delphi” as, unlike “Delphi method”, it does not require involvement of a big number of experts. The works are carried out by the experts from Diaspora and Armenia with the involvement of appropriate specialists of the leading world centers.
  • Logical, comparative and content analysis of the acquired results.
  • Complex discussion of the results with the usage of interdisciplinary approaches and “brain storming” methods.
  • On the ground of the discussions resulting documents are drafted and conception for the implementation of the next stage of the researches is elaborated.
  • The resulting documents and recommendations based on them as well as the plans of further researches are submitted to the heads of the state and national structures which are responsible for decision making on the level of Armenia and Armeniancy.
  • Part of the materials is published in the form of the an annual and is widely spread over the information space (based on the concepts of “future formation” through the information on the futuristic forecasts).

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