The Outward Dimension in Russia ’s Regional Development Strategies: A Mapping of Prospective Cooperation

Abstract

There is a critical spatial component in the emerging cooperative Russian planning model for economic growth across the federation. Although in Russia, as in the EU, this spatial modeling for joint action and cooperation has not entirely displaced the older model of competitive fiscal federalism and public policy doctrine of the 1980s, the newer cooperative model, emerging from the globalization of supply chains and cross-regional externalities, encourages integration rather than competition within larger functional macro-spaces. It embraces both cross-regional and cross-national pooling of human and other resources. There has been considerable Russian research on regional integration (Shishkov, 2001; Butorina, 2011; Kolesov, 1996; Kulikov, 2002) and internationalization (Vardomskiy, 2002; Kosolapov, 2005; Belousov, 2011; Skatershchikova et al., 2002; Tsygankov, 2004). This paper contributes to the existing research by developing a new database to map the strategies of regional authorities. In this paper, we develop three case studies to show program development and implementation of bilateral and multi-lateral strategies. Our information represents a complete survey of selected regions from the material available at this time, showing design and strategy, and some implementation. Our survey is the first attempt we are aware of that traces the new cross-regional arrangements.