The Foreseeable Future: Building Policy and Transition Strategy

In order to complete large-scale tasks, the implementation of which takes significant time periods, strategies and policies act as the main planning tools. Each of them has a strict scientific and managerial meaning, being an important component of the step-by-step process of decision-making and the formation of a rational system of actions. At the same time, the presented literature overview shows that the existing definitions of strategy, policy, conception, plan and program use the same basic concepts, being an example of cyclical definitions. This makes them indistinguishable from each other, ignoring their different ontology, instrumental specificity and place in the system of planning prospects development. The article proposes definitions of policy and strategy, on the basis of which an approach to delimiting their spheres of activity is formed, differences in functions in the strategizing system and methods of interactive interrelation in the process of achieving goals are shown. Policy deals with the structure of interests of subjects or actors of purposeful activity and the continuous alignment of this structure with the moving conditions of plan implementation. These conditions constantly change the assessments of the degree of complexity of goals accomplishment. Strategy is a set of decision-making rules under uncertainty. The author discusses the problem of developing decision-making rules within the strategy at the branching points of the directions of movement toward the goal under conditions of incomplete information and knowledge. The important role of development scenario options is pointed out. An analogy is drawn with the operation of evolutionary selection algorithms in the interpretations of W. Sellars and D. Dennet. The conditional space of causes, their selection in a certain value system and implementation of quality control are considered. Obviously, the spaces of policy and strategy are relevant to such an analysis and events in these spaces are proposed to be assessed using aggregate indexes in the form of indicators of the goal-implementation process. The analysis of such indicators does not determine, but helps to adjust the strategy for achieving a goal. The main theses of the article are accompanied by examples of the implementation of policy and strategy in the GOELRO plan, the program of industrial relocation to the east of the country during the Great Patriotic War and the Comprehensive Program of Scientific and Technological Progress and Its Socioeconomic Consequences developed in the USSR in the 1970s–1980s. The final part of the work examines the strategies for scientific, technological and innovative development of Russia, published in the period 2011–2024. It also highlights gaps in their development and indicates provisions for improving these documents.

policy, strategy, conception, indicators, planning