In Slovakia...

In Slovakia, it was the SAS, specifically the Institute of Economics as co-ordinator, which was appointed to realise the project. The decision to entrust this task to an academic body followed from the idea of achieving a very global view of the possible ways of development of the socialist society in a longer period of time, where economic indicators and tendencies would be one of the development parameters, themselves influenced by the changing of many social, cultural and demographic factors.

But also some political and governmental bodies were designed to be the major consultants, and receptors of the final and partial results of the projects, and were to be regularly informed on the course of investigations. This new type of forecasting, was considered to be part of the planning process as a whole. The global social and economic forecast of Slovakia was published as a book in 1991 (Markus, J. et al.). Most important conclusions were subsumed under following six points (pp.

162 - 170): At the turn of the 1980s and 1990s, Slovakia again stands at a historical crossroads. Due to internal and external factors and contingencies, further progress forward is not possible without a deep social breakthrough, without a radical restructuring of the society, without its overall qualitative change or transformation. The essential trait not only of the day but of the entire decade and perhaps of decades is not continuity, but discontinuity.

This involves a disruption of the evolutionary progression which began dangerously and irreversibly to increase downwards, towards stagnation and decline. In this situation, long-term prognosis has for task to outline the course of two qualitatively divergent developmental roads; they simultaneously form the framework, the boundaries of Slovakia’s possible future development.

To these two roads there correspond two scenarios of a comprehensive prognosis of the Slovakian Republic: their common feature is that both are in a certain sense discontinuous.

They can be succinctly characterised as leading upwards and downwards; as a dynamism of ascent, naturally painful, complex, full of problems and antagonism, and as an apparently less risky tactic of small changes; this, however, will lead to an impossibility of maintaining what we may still assume to possess - a relative welfare and an appurtenance to advanced, or relatively advanced countries of the world. These were scenario of the desirable development and warning scenario.