Writing Russia's Future: Paradigms, Drivers, and Scenarios

Abstract

The development of prediction and forecasting in the social sciences over the past century and more is closely linked with developments in Russia. The Soviet collapse undermined confidence in predictive capabilities, and scenario planning emerged as the dominant future-oriented methodology in area studies, including the study of Russia. Scenarists anticipate multiple futures rather than predicting one. The approach is too rarely critiqued. Building on an account of Russia-related forecasting in the twentieth century, analysis of two decades of scenarios reveals uniform accounts which downplay the insights of experts and of social science theory alike.

Notes

¹Variously attributed to the Swiss scholar Johann Bluntschli, and the historians Sir John Seeley and Edward Freeman, respectively (Bevir 2006, p. 584; Burke 2001, p. 3; Hartogensis 1927).

² The Washington Post, 14 July 1989.

³In terms of process, scenario planning, in its most comprehensive form more likely to be employed in the business and policy worlds than in scholarly analysis, entails a robust, detailed, research-based, and considered process. A scenario-planning exercise by a company or a government concerned with how to orient its efforts in relation to Russia over the coming decade would be carried out in a number of facilitated stages. A group of key actors responsible for policy in relation to Russia would identify the central problems and key drivers, undertake detailed research, draw up several narratives of the future, and then anticipate appropriate strategies to provide an effective way forward in the light of the possible scenarios (Ogilvy 2002, p. 176). Scholarly use of the scenario approach tends to be less normative and to be written by those more likely to be observers of the Russian scene than participants in the worlds of policy and business. Absent of the specific setting of the business or policy worlds, academic scenarists tend to the development of a limited number of scenarios without the need for a normative, problem-based response.