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A.N. Kulik
Russian Politics and Law (ISSN 1061-1940) is published bimonthly by M. E. Sharpe, Inc., 80 Business Park Drive, Armonk, NY 10504.
English translation © 1997 M.E. Sharpe, Inc. Translated from the Russian text © 1996 by the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Presidium of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and the author. "Tendentsii razvitiia politicheskoi nauki v Rossii," Obshchestvennye nauki i sovremennost', 1996, no. 2, pp. 111-21.
The totalitarian regime in Russia and its system of
administering science had ruinous consequences for the social sciences as a whole and for
political science in particular. The social sciences can develop only in a civil society,
where they are free of state pressure and where the development of knowledge about society
is a permanent need of society itself. Having swallowed up civil society, the totalitarian
state was not interested in developing the social sciences, because objective knowledge of
the laws of social development represents a real threat to an authoritarian bureaucratic
regime, raising a challenge to its ideological monopoly and calling its legitimacy into
question. Insofar as the state saw the progress of the technical and natural sciences as a
means to fortify its own power, its interest in the social sciences was distorted: a
totalitarian state needed an apologetic, biased "science," the purpose of which
was to provide a post factum justification and a "theoretical foundation" for
socially significant decisions made by the Party and state nomenklatura.
Political science shared the fate of the other social sciences. The
political practices of a regime characterized by the physical extermination of political
opponents and the punishment of entire social strata also unambiguously defined its
attitude (latent and overt) toward political science, political scientists, and the
political sophistication of a society that was deliberately and purposefully isolated from
political knowledge. The masses' estrangement from real participation in the political
process and their assignment to the role of crowd in the "leaders' " political
game naturally cultivated political ignorance and intolerance toward any form of dissent
while facilitating the acceptance by mass political consciousness of distorted moral
values and dogmatic stereotypes contrived by the official ideologues of the regime in
power.
The level of Soviet political science in the mid-1980s reflected the
state of Soviet society and the regime's political practices. Whereas the first schools of
political science were established in France in 1871 and in the United States in 1880,
political science received an official "residence permit" in the Soviet Union
(by being included in the Higher Degree Commission's list of scientific specialities) only
in the late 1980s, in the wake of a general liberalization of the regime.
The democratic process, which considered the building of a civil
society to be one of its principal values, gave political knowledge more social urgency,
and the speed and abruptness of the changes occurring within the country and in
surrounding areas objectively made the dynamic development of political science one of
society's top priorities. With the collapse of the totalitarian system, political science
ceased to be an ornament of the regime and became an important factor in the development
of society, which, though it broke with the political institutions of the totalitarian
past, remained hostage to that past's political culture.
Study of the fundamental problems of Russia's social development became
one of the high-priority directions supported by the Russian Foundation for Basic Research
(RFFI) when it was founded in 1992, and in 1994 an independent fund for support of the
humanities and public dissemination of the knowledge accumulated by the humanities was
established within the humanities section of the RFFI - the Russian Foundation for
Humanities Research (RGNF). In 1995 the RGNF planned to finance humanities projects to the
sum of more than 20 billion rubles [I]. The Russian Research Foundation
inaugurated a program of individual grants called Russian Social Sciences: New
Perspectives, aimed at supporting scientific research important to an understanding of
contemporary social processes within the country [2].
The difficulties the social sciences have experienced in Russia have
met with understanding from the world academic community. Numerous foreign and
international foundations, public organizations, and state structures are providing
tangible financial support to Russian scholars, either through national foundations or
through their own programs for supporting projects through grants (including long-term
grants) allocated on a competitive basis. Usually young scholars receive special
consideration.
In 1989 the International Research and Exchanges Board (IREX)- one of
the American organizations with the most experience in developing cooperation in science
and education - opened an office in Moscow. IREX holds annual competitions for stipends to
support basic research in the humanities and social sciences in the United States and also
provides grants for international projects.
In a competition for projects in me humanities held in 1994 by the
International Science Foundation, financed by its founder, George Soros, and the
government of the Russian Federation, 637 projects involving about 1,400 scholars in the
humanities received a total of $3 million in support.
The Central European University, also founded by Soros, recently
initiated "a program to support projects in the humanities and social sciences that
involve research on Russia's most urgent problems. On a competitive basis, the program
annually finances both individual and group projects lasting from six months to two years.
In 1993-94 the international foundation Cultural Initiative, part of
the Renewal of Humanities Education in Russia program, held an open competition for
textbooks and study materials for secondary schools and higher education, in which 1,500
scholars participated. The purpose of the competition was to encourage Russian authors, in
consultation with foreign experts, to produce a new generation of textbooks. The
foundation devotes considerable attention to publishing monographs and collections of
articles on economic and sociopolitical problems and to supporting independent publishing
centers.
The declared strategic goals of most programs for Russia coincide with
the goals of domestic foundations - to preserve the country's scientific potential, to
help the most talented scholars survive the economic crisis without abandoning the academy
or leaving the country, and to support new principles of financing and organizing
(managing) scientific research, as well as independent scientific and educational centers;
in other words, to help the social sciences make the transition to an organizational model
for scholarship in a democratic society at a lower cost.1
In a certain sense, having received support from various foundations,
political science has, along with the other social sciences, found itself in a privileged
position. In a democratic society, effective sociopolitical decisions that ensure the
society's viability and development are achieved through the constant growth of knowledge
about social processes. Studies of political processes provide a basis of academic support
for the practice of public administration, which has the systemic function of resolving
problems resulting from social tension. Recognizing the close relationship between
political knowledge and society's political consciousness, as well as between political
research and political practice, international programs for Russia give priority to
projects that promote the development in Russia of a civil society and a law-governed
state.
It is of prime importance that most programs of both domestic and
foreign foundations are oriented not merely toward supporting scholars, but also toward
helping Russian science embark on the path of intensive development that the rest of world
science is following. Intensification requires that a sharp increase in scientific
potential be accompanied by a relative decrease in the funds expended on its development
through a change in scholarship's means of existence.
Among the most important factors leading to an intensification of
political science, the following deserve particular mention: an interdisciplinary approach
to research and to use of comparative research; integration and intemationalization of
knowledge; scholarly communication; new information technologies; and a combination of
research and teaching.
Politics, defined as the relationship between society and the state,
embraces all aspects of society: economics, the structure of the state and law, the social
sphere, ethnonational and religiocommunal relations, and traditional social structures.
National historical and sociocultural traditions and a nation's psychological genotype, so
to speak, exercise a determining influence on political relations. Because of its systemic
nature, political science is interdisciplinary. Political research is more and more
frequently based on the findings of cultural anthropology, sociology, history, law,
psychology, sociolinguistics, and other social sciences and humanities. Close
interdisciplinary ties, impossible in a departmental administrative model of scientific
organization, are actively encouraged by a policy of competitive sponsorship of projects
staffed by interdisciplinary creative teams that work independently of the official
departments or entities to which their researchers may belong.
Political research has social significance because its results are used
in public policy. One of the most important objectives of political science is to find
optimal ways of politically organizing society and resolving social conflicts. A
comparative analysis of political institutions and the political cultures of different
societies has beett-a natural way to achieve this goal. In fact, to develop this area the
International Political Science Association was created in 1948 under the aegis of the
United "ytetions. Comparative research has a special social significance ''fo'r
countries that have embarked on the path of democratic development without the historical
experience of deep-rooted democratic traditions. Unthinkable in a closed society, this
area is beginning to acquire a place that befits its importance in post-totalitarian
political science.
The development of comparative political science is a particular
manifestation of the general law of dynamic development of science in the twentieth
century-the integration and intemationalization of scientific knowledge, which requires
that science be open. Contributing to the intemationalization of Russian science and the
integration of its scholars into the world community is one of the top priorities of
various foreign and international foundations operating in Russia. These foundations,
which finance group projects, give priority to projects that provide for the participation
of international, interdisciplinary teams working on problems or in scientific areas
within a comparative international context.
The conditions of competition established by the Russian Foundation for
Humanities Research also offer the possibility of supporting joint projects (on a parity
basis). The Russian Social Sciences: New Perspectives program established by the Russian
Research Foundation (in cooperation with the Ford Foundation) offers other ways to broaden
opportunities for scholars to participate in international projects. There is also an
intergovernmental agreement by which the Russian Academy of Sciences and the National
Science Foundation in the United States (the National Science Foundation finances more
than 70 percent of research in the United States) have committed themselves to support
joint research projects and jointly run schools and seminars [3].
Growth in collective knowledge is directly dependent on effective
communication among scholars. The new information technologies have had a radical effect
on the evolution of scholarly communications, transforming them into a powerful impetus to
the growth of scientific knowledge.
Usually the term "information technologies" means processes
of collecting, processing, analyzing, storing, transmitting, and receiving information
through the use of computers and appropriate software. The use of new information
technologies for communication is mainly associated with the Internet, an international
hypemetwork of thousands of interacting computer networks which is used by about a million
people every day. The networks that belong to it include "the National Science
Foundation Network (NSFN), which supports research in education in institutes and
universities, without which their functioning today is unthinkable. Users of the Internet
can connect with users of any other network.
New information technologies have accelerated the process of
integrating scholars into a single world community by tens and hundreds of times. Informal
personal communications, which play a tremendous role in improving the effectiveness of
research, have benefited particularly from the spread of information technologies. The
mechanism is extremely simple: I make my contribution to the general pool of knowledge; I
make use of the summary knowledge that derives from the contributions of other
participants in the pool. E-mail, teleconferences, and faxes enable scholars to
communicate with colleagues from different countries as easily as with colleagues in the
next room at the same institute, to form new interdisciplinary and international
communities regularly, to exchange ideas and information, and to criticize and compliment
one another. These technologies considerably reduce the period required for scholars to
establish themselves. In the United States, for example, political scientists today can
make an independent contribution to science at the age of thirty-five. The new information
technologies enable scientists to participate in several programs at the same time, which
also helps to maximize scientific manpower.
In Russia, computer networks such as glasnet, relcom, and IASNET, which
provide access to the Internet and other international networks, offer opportunities for
noncommercial use of telecommunications.
One of the dominant trends in the development of contemporary political
science is its transformation from an ideological, normative, and historico-descriptive
discipline into a science synthesizing theoretical and empirical knowledge. Political
theory deals with concrete events and the relationships among them. It develops by drawing
on and theoretically processing large volumes of information concerning empirical
manifestations of the political process over a specific interval of time. Factual
information serves as a basis for charting the progress of theoretical conceptions and for
testing their validity. The development of theory takes place through a gradual
convergence of a priori hypothetical and a posteriori empirical constructs, which serve an
integrative function at each step in the research. Theory and empirical data are two
complementary aspects of specific and ordered knowledge-without a theoretical basis, the
results of applied empirical research risk becoming trivial, while theory unsupported by
facts becomes barren.
Analysis of and search for solutions to the sociopolitical problems of
post-Soviet Russia are the province of applied research. The volume of factual information
(quantitative and verbal) that must be processed to obtain sufficiently complete and
accurate knowledge considerably exceeds the capacity of the human brain when traditional
methods are used, and a simple increase in the number of people in a research team does
not solve the problem. Without accurate and complete knowledge, all kinds of
semi-intuitive hypotheses concerning the cause-and-effect character of social processes in
society and political forecasts can be neither confirmed nor refuted. The often mutually
exclusive judgments presented by scientists, politicians, and mass media of different
political orientations help to create a virtual political reality, in which any kind of
action directed at a rational goal is impossible [4].
At the same time, there are now electronic data files of unique value
for obtaining political knowledge; these files can be accessed by a personal computer
using ordinary telephone lines. Consequently it is possible to download information to
create various problem-oriented (within a specific project) databases.
In the area of sociopolitical research, we also have now special new
information technologies of a higher grade. One of these is the Labyrinth information
storage system (run by the Panorama Information Research Center), which is structured as a
hypertext offering a retrospective of the most important events in social life since 1985,
with information about parties, parliamentary factions, state structures, social and
commercial organizations, and the mass media within the countries of the former USSR;
information concerning personalities within the political and economic elites; and so on.
Treating data as a kind of hypertext makes it possible to pose and solve a broad spectrum
of analytical problems that are inaccessible using other methods of data organization (for
example, tracing the extensive but latent connections between politics and business). To
this class of new information technologies belong the PartArkhiv (which covers parties,
parliamentary factions, and electoral organizations in Russia) and the Indem-Duma and
Indem Federation Council PC-installed information and analytical systems; these systems
contain information about deputies and voting results and make it possible to analyze the
deployment of forces in parliament. They were designed and built at the Indem (Information
for Democracy) Center for Political Research, headed by G. Satarov. The center has
also developed a program called Indem Statistika, which raises analysis to a new
qualitative level.
The Independent Institute for Contemporary Politics has designed an
analytical system containing a set of scenarios for forecasting the deployment and balance
of forces and ensuring that information is represented on an electronic atlas of Russia,
from which one can print maps, charts, tables, and so on. There are also several other
systems that offer extremely interesting possibilities for analyzing information about
political processes; in particular, systems based on methods of content analysis.
The new information technologies make it possible to conduct applied
research as continuous sociopolitical monitoring with data processed in real time, to
evaluate with qualitative and quantitative precision the essence of changes in progress,
to predict (to the extent that this is possible for unstable political processes) their
probable consequences for society, and, finally, to minimize the extent to which experts'
subjectivism influences such assessments.
Special computer programs for research (for example, the SPSS package
of programs for statistical processing of sociological information) usually provide for
factor and regression analysis, various methods of classification, discriminant analysis,
and other mathematical methods for processing statistical information. Even
general-purpose programs for personal computers allow the possibility of compiling tables,
representing statistical data as three-dimensional graphs and diagrams, and creating
various working files and individual databases with broad search capabilities. As
structured and quantified information is accumulated, with facts plotted as dynamic
series, the value of the information increases, not only for applied analysis but also for
political theory.
Among the important achievements of world political science is the
increased attention being given to the labor-intensive and costly processes of collecting,
systematizing, and processing initial information, the creation of vast databases that
enable various hypotheses to be verified, the development and publishing of powerful
program and testing packages for standard investigation procedures, as well as the
creation of an entire coordinated infrastructure for sociological research, including data
banks linked by computer information networks. Graphically presented factual data stored
in the memory of powerful computers is accessible to PC owners through information
networks.
The Russian Foundation for Basic Research is following such a policy,
in that it has inaugurated a special program of support for projects to create information
systems and databases serving basic research in various areas of knowledge, including the
humanities and social sciences; 5 percent of the foundation's 1995 budget was allocated to
this program. The program provides for the development and adaptation of tools (program
products) including those supporting hypertext, hypermedia, and intellectual information
technologies, as well as databases and information systems. Telecommunications access to
information resources constitutes a separate section of the program.
The foundation participates in various international telecommunications
projects for Russia, providing access for scientific and educational organizations to
information and computer resources used by the world community of scholars. These include
the vast telecommunications program of the Soros Foundation, the purpose of which is to
"bring the Internet to every scientific laboratory in Russia." The Moscow fiber
optics network, which provides access to the Internet, was created under this project.
The IREX Computer Communications Program provides links to
international computer networks for individual Russian scientists, universities, archives,
libraries, and noncommercial organizations, as well as training and technical help; it
also creates and provides financial support for free access to electronic mail at
universities and helps scholars to establish professional contacts with colleagues abroad
via e-mail. In addition, the IREX Special Projects Program supports projects in the
information sciences as well as in the humanities and social sciences. The international
Ve-Ga Laboratory, created on the initiative of Academician E. Velikov and D. Hamburg,
president of the Carnegie Corporation in New York, is engaged in the expansion of
professional international contacts among scholars by means of telecommunications
technologies.2
The new information technologies have had a significant impact on forms
of international cooperation in the sphere of teaching and dissemination of political
knowledge. In addition to the traditional exchange of teachers and students, a form in
effective and widespread use is, for example, a cycle of classes in political science
organized as a teleconference, in which the participants-for instance, students at Moscow
State University-can ask questions and receive answers by direct transmission from a
course leader at a U.S. university.
The tendency to combine teaching and research has recently intensified
in higher education. Political science faculties at colleges and universities are actively
participating in the study of public opinion, as well as in the development of political
and social technologies and the conduct of empirical sociological research commissioned by
state political information organizations and movements, thereby providing these faculties
with a "livelihood" and technical equipment while simultaneously accumulating
empirical material for theoretical research by teachers and professors and, finally,
giving students solid practical experience. Laboratories in which students acquire
research skills are being formed as independent structures within [political science]
faculties. Progress in this direction is much more modest in academic research. At the
same time, participation by scholars in the activities of higher schools is opening up
additional possibilities. Thus, for example, the TEMPUS program to aid the development and
modernization of higher education, initiated by the European Union in 1990, provides for
support of joint projects in the social sciences and humanities over a four-year period
with a budget exceeding one million ECUs.
Programs run by various domestic, foreign, and international
foundations, which we discussed above, are enabling Russian scholars to enter the world
community and take an active part in it. Nothing prevents a scholar or a collective from
seeking support from any national or international foundation. A scholar's entry into the
world academic community creates the objective premises for that scholar's professional
growth. Moreover, winning a competition, participating in a joint international project,
and conducting research at leading research centers abroad with publication of the results
in international scholarly publications enhance the prestige of scholars and their teams
and increase the chances of continued funding of their proclaimed area of interest
(as a rule, applications for a project require the applicant to indicate any earlier
grants obtained, their purpose, and the amount of funds provided).
After winning a competition and demonstrating its scholarly potential,
a project gains the opportunity to become an independent scientific school with regular
financial support. As a rule, foundations prefer not to dissipate funds, but to
concentrate them on long-term support of large projects that have demonstrated their
viability.3
However, democracy in science, just as in politics and economics,
requires a radical change in the conditions of existence-freedom of creativity is
inseparable from competition, and success depends primarily on scholars' individual
initiative, personal contribution, and personal responsibility for their own scientific
careers. Existence in the international community, one of the basic principles of which is
cooperation (competitiveness), requires constant maintenance of one's scientific
competitiveness and continuous growth of potential. The law guarantees only equal
opportunity for self-fulfillment in scholarship; how that opportunity is used depends
mainly on the scholar.
Despite the support of the international academic community, the
process of integrating Russian scholarship into world scholarship is objectively no less
complicated than, for example, the process of integrating Russia's economy into the world
economic system. Just as the convertibility of the ruble is a necessary precondition for
economic integration, "scholarly convertibility"-that is, the international
certification of our researchers' scholarly potential-is essential for the integration of
Russian scholars.
To become part of the international community, a scholar who has the
creative potential and the will (necessary but not sufficient conditions) must have
fluency in the language of communication. People applying for grants, whether for research
or for improving their educational and professional levels through study abroad, are
usually required to pass special tests. For the American academic system, as a rule, these
tests are the TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language), TWE (Test of Written
English), and TSE (Test of Spoken English). A professional knowledge of the language
(writing, reading, oral understanding, and conversational language) is one of the deciding
criteria in examining applications for participation in joint group projects, conferences,
seminars, and other scholarly arrangements. It is also necessary for preparing project
documentation, reports, talks, and publication of research results. One of the
consequences of the closed nature of Soviet society and Soviet science has been
insufficient language training in higher education and in postgraduate courses and severe
restrictions on contacts with foreign colleagues. For most scientists, mastery of a
language amounts to an ability to read the literature.
Thus, to enter the world community and remain in it as a full-fledged
member, a scientist must have access to the international telecommunications
infrastructure of academic research and contacts, as well as the professional skills to
work with the new information technologies on which that infrastructure is built. To a
large extent, however, the old administrative bureaucratic system's top-down provision of
information services and technology to scholars and society remained merely a declaration
of intentions: most social scientists were left out of grandiose projects for creating
"unified," "state," "all-union," and other such information
systems and networks and were not prepared for integration at this level.
Finally, the necessary conditions for the integration of our political
science into world political science (participation in joint projects, publication of
research results in international journals, etc.) include achieving compatibility on the
intellectual level-the level of scientific goals and values-and compliance with generally
accepted "rules of the game" and research requirements. Intellectual
compatibility requires, in particular, rejecting a monocentric notion of science, instead
acknowledging the simultaneous existence of different scientific ideas, styles of thought,
and so on, which cannot be reduced to a single whole and among which productive dialogue
is possible. The absence of such compatibility occasionally results, for example, in the
same political project receiving diametrically opposite evaluations from international
experts and from experts in Russian foundations. This is really one of the most difficult
problems: the consciousness of four generations of social scientists was formed under the
conditions of a totalitarian system and, as the ethnologists say, before a new culture can
be formed, "the still-unborn grandmother must die." However, scientific
consciousness, is more capable of self-development than mass consciousness.
The ultimate fruit of political research is recommendations for public
policy, with all the implications these have for society's development. Although
researchers cannot take the neutral and quite natural position of developing
recommendations for dealing with society's current practical problems before they can
understand and explain these problems, any hypothesis requires empirical verification.
Researchers are entitled to interpret empirical data and to make moral evaluations,
severally or together, but only if the data are clearly demarcated and the researcher does
not confuse the two. Compliance with this imperative is evident- in the structure of
Western and international political science journals. The reports of our own academic
teams, with their analyses and forecasts of the political process, can these days
sometimes be confused with engaged political journalism.
A change of paradigm-of all the conceptual schemata, attitudes, values,
and models determining the overall direction of development- is currently taking place in
Russian political science. Part of this process is the genesis of a new democratic model
for organizing research, a model that should provide for the intensive development of
scholarship by permitting a more complete utilization of human potential and by creating
conditions that stimulate scholars and enable them to apply the entire present set of
scientific tools and cognitive capabilities, while resolving the problem of scholars'
social adaptation to the new conditions under which science must exist.
In this model, projects carried out by creative teams financed on a
competitive basis by various foundations are essentially innovative enterprises in science
analogous to innovative entrepreneurship in business, the development of which in the West
in the 1980s was a leading factor in economic growth [5]. This
development would not have been possible on such a scale without the right state policy
for science and technology, a policy directed toward the creation of a secure, solid, and
supportive infrastructure. In addition to financial organizations and state agencies that
stimulate innovative entrepreneurship, an extremely important element in that
infrastructure has been developing a network for information and consulting services, for
teaching businessmen, and for training managers.
The period of genesis and initial establishment is critical to any
innovative undertaking. To improve the likelihood of success at this stage, special
organizations are being created that are called "incubators for new business."
The idea of an "incubator" comes from organizational theory and has been applied
in the practice of managing the economic growth of companies. Many specialists consider
incubators one of the most effective instruments of economic growth during the last
decade, and the problem of their evolution has had nationwide significance (especially in
the United States).
As a rule, an incubator is a small organization (of five to thirty
people) that gives special encouragement to people beginning a new business who lack
sufficient knowledge of how to do this professionally. The neophytes are helped in this
regard by experts ready, under certain conditions, to introduce them to running a business
and to watch over them for a certain period, offering advice and consultation, providing
premises and equipment, introducing them to other business people, and establishing their
relationships with financial backers and potential consumers of their final products.
Incubators assume a large portion of the internal administrative and office work and
provide various services related to using computers and other equipment, making xerox
copies, conducting business correspondence, and preparing documentation. Incubators
considerably accelerate and facilitate resolution of various procedural questions as
regards obtaining loans and subsidies, filling out various forms and applications, and
finding necessary specialists. Most incubators emerge within existing organizations-research
centers, universities, centers for regional development, and the like.
The similarity between the many problems that affect managers involved
in innovative entrepreneurship and those facing the directors of group research projects
is evident.
In organizing Russian political research, however, several problems lie
beyond the purview of an incubator. First of all are the problems connected with the use
of new information technology discussed above. Simply providing free access to a personal
computer or even providing a personal computer for individual use resolves none of these
problems. Even the functions of the new innovative technologies, listed briefly above,
give an idea of the diversity of programs available for the social sciences and of the
technical equipment necessary for their realization. In addition to purely functional
programs, there is a vast multitude of technological and service programs and operations,
without which it is impossible to work with the new information technologies. The cost of
equipment and programs, the costs of telecommunications services and for the use of
information from databases and data banks, and the intellectual costs of assimilating the
requisite volume of the various new information technologies used in the social sciences
exceed all the means conceivably available to individual scientists.
One solution to this problem in world practice has been the creation of
research centers for joint, multipurpose use of unique modem technology. In the technical
and natural sciences such centers, now called technoparks, facilitate the combination of
basic and applied research and the implementation of interdisciplinary projects devised by
creative teams.
Linking the idea and practice of a technopark for the use of innovative
technologies in science with the idea and practice of an incubator to promote innovative
entrepreneurship has great promise for ensuring the intensive development of a new model
of political science.
The technopark-incubator, which would have at its disposal experts and
consultants on scientific management and specialists in the information sciences, as well
as information resources and the technology to support them, would be able to provide
across-the-board support for competitive projects at all stages, from preparation of
applications to publication of articles reporting research results.
The "technopolis incubator" is the optimal form not only for
research projects but also for pure publication projects, projects providing creative
information systems and databases for basic research, and projects requiring the
development and use of the new information technologies for international professional
contact.
Another attractive aspect of the idea of a technopark-incubator is that
its creation does not require any major special appropriations from the state research
budget. Russian and international programs for the support of collective projects usually
cover expenses for equipment, materials, and information and grant as much as an
additional 20 percent of the project's budget to the organization that is to conduct the
research. Moreover, there are target programs for the development of the material and
technical base for research in various foundations, including the Russian Foundation for
Humanities Research. The pooling of resources from alternative funding sources by various
projects under the aegis of a technopark-incubator is the most rational way to invest in
the modernization of the political science infrastructure. As time passes and competitive
projects are realized, it will be possible to concentrate in them the special-purpose
equipment and programs of the new information technologies, as well as information
resources in the form of open-access databases that can serve as foundations for stable
long-term interdisciplinary scientific teams working on Russia's most pressing
sociopolitical problems and - this is no less essential - for accumulating experience in
the planning, management, and marketing of scientific research within the new model of
scientific organization.4
As it develops, the technopark-incubator
will naturally evolve into a local attractor for the intellectual potential of political
science and an incubator for its scientific elite, while the combining of such local
centers into a network will become the skeleton of an innovative infrastructure for the
intensive development of science.
In sum, we can say that, even as budgetary
allocations for research are falling, a radical change is taking place in scientific and
technological policy. Instead of using the budget to finance research organizations,
emphasis is increasingly being placed on systematic introduction of the idea of supporting
projects in priority areas of research on a competitive basis through research foundations
financed by the federal budget. At the same time, we see a revival of research in
educational structures that function on the basis of the principles of self-organization
and self-management and serve as alternatives to the departmental administrative system of
managing research.
These processes may be interpreted as a transformation of the
mechanisms that regulate research activity and as the genesis of democratic forms of
existence within the scholarly community, all of which have already developed in the
principal science-producing countries. Competitive support of projects by Russian and
foreign foundations is aimed at placing science on an intensive path of development, one
that presupposes a sharp increase in scholarly potential and a relative decrease in costs
to be achieved by the creation of conditions enabling scholars to use all the available
tools and all the cognitive capabilities of modem science.