Methodological Approaches to Regional Policy Designing, Siberia1
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Europ. J. Econ. Bus. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.20936/EJEB/160203 ORIGINAL ARTICLE Methodological Approaches to Regional Policy Designing, Siberia1 Novoselov Alexander S,* Marshalova Asya S, Volyanskaya Tatyana V Department of Regional and Municipal Governance, Institute of Economics and Industrial Engineering,Siberian Branch, Russian Academy of Sciences, P.O. Box 630090, Novosibirsk, Russia ABSTRACT This research focuses on methodological approaches to the developmentof regional policy in Siberia. Principles, forms, and methods of regional policy implementation are studied. Set are the fundamental objectives of regional economic policy, its structure and content. Analyzed are prerequisites for and constraints to the economic development of a region affecting its competitiveness. Consideration is given to regional policy implementation tools performing and guiding catalytic functions. Authors justify and offer the use of the cluster approach to the regional economic policy design and implementation for gaining benefits from competitive advantages of a region. Considered are the priority directions of clusters development. Using the example of Novosibirsk oblast, different types of clusters are examined. The authors analyze the international experience of regional policy implementation and consider the possibilities of its borrowing and applying in Siberia. In this article, new governance mechanisms are proposed to ensure the implementation of effective regional economic policy. KEYWORDS: regional policy, regional economic development, regional clusters, regional governance INTRODUCTION and municipal units and ensuring their economic advance. In an increasingly competitive environment in the context of transition Currently, the increased importance being placed on regional to a new governance system, it has also become essential to give policy issues is due to many factors, the major ones being the fol- credence to the priorities of spatial socioeconomic development lowing. First, state economic strategy detached from the prob- and to substantiate the need for strengthening the role of lems of regional economic development becomes non-viable as innovation-based economic growth, developing business sector shown by declining economic growth that goes on despite the and providing a sustainable regional development. relatively high prices for the energy resources on the world mar- ket. The second factor is the national economic policy inconsist- Regional economic policy challenges are studied by researchers ency manifested in the fact that its declared priorities have little through various aspects, including: coordination of State to do with the extremely expensive image-generating investment interests with those of regions (Bennett, 2012; Blair & Carroll, projects, the costs of which are incommensurate with their 2008); integrated solution of the problems of socioeconomic negligible effect on the economic development of the projects’ development of a region on the basis of its competitive advantages implementation territories. The third factor is the increasingly (Seliverstov, 2009; Klistorin, 2013); a whole complex of regional growing disparity in the regional socioeconomic development. aspects of different types of policies (Melnikova, 2008); regional The longer this tendency will proceed, the farther a significant integration and sustainability in the common economic space part of them will plunge into a depression, and the more diffi- cult and expensive will be their way out of the impasse. Nobody (Leksin, 2013). doubts in the seriousness of economic and social consequences of this situation. METHODOLOGICAL APPROACHES Each subject of the Russian Federation is characterized by its own spatial factors that influence the regularities of its economic The methodological basis for the regional economic development growth and opportunities for interregional cooperation. and management of a region’s economy is the theory of regional This has created a need for subfederal policy challenges to study sustainability (Shniper & Novoselov, 1991). The practical value with the aim of fostering socioeconomic development of regions of the sustainability (economic reproduction) approach to the 1The research is funded by the Russian Foundation for Basic Research, No.16-02-00157. * Address reprint requests to Novoselov Alexander S, Department of Regional and Municipal Governance, Institute of Economics and Industrial Engineering, Siberian Branch, Russian Academy of Sciences, P.O. Box 630090, Novosibirsk, Russia. E-mail: [email protected] Methodological Approaches to Regional Policy Designing 37 governance of a region’s economy is the possibility for the creation of long-term stable financial–economic of a balanced substantiation of the power distribution ties based on some balance of interests. among different levels of the administrative setup, i.e., For the integration of these interests, a mechanism federal, regional and municipal. These powers and func- is needed to provide the interaction between interests tions of governance should be determined by a com- in the process of consistent implementation of priority plex of regional sustainability (reproduction) cycles, directions of a region’s socioeconomic development, spatially distributed according to the administrative economic interests taken by a region’s economic agents in level of a given entity. The criterion for the distribution the achievement of objectives at each stage; monitoring of socioeconomic functions between different levels of economic relations and resolution of arising differences the territorial system is the degree of localization in the between some agents of the regional economy, and use of the results of their governance functions. It is not conditions allowing for the adaptation to the existing the scale or quantitative parameters of socioeconomic mechanisms of regional governance. development but the system of performed functions The study proceeds from the following that should become a distinctive feature of the political methodological premises: (1) regional economy is unit of a given rank. The approach to this problem in viewed as a system of interacting agents (enterprises, terms of the regional sustainability theory concretizes associations, organizations with different forms of the responsibility for a certain objective at each level ownership, independent entrepreneurs vested with of the regional system. extensive right in production and sales); (2) agents Thus, the sustainability approach first of all means can be grouped with regard to their activities into the the adjustment of development cycles at the level of following subsystems: material production, circulation, a region of a given rank. In the generalized form, the finance and credit system, local authorities, population; governance function performed by regional executive (3) regional sustainability (reproduction) process evolves bodies can be presented as the creation of a system through interaction of agents in production, distribution, effectively using the competitive advantage and resource exchange and consumption; (4) over the preceding potential of the region. It is possible to say that the period there formed stable production-technological, process of governance of a region’s development is the socioeconomic and organization-management relations creation of proportions among various elements of the (vertical and horizontal) which show considerable inertia; regional system that provides its efficient socioeconomic (5) in the period of transition to a market economy as growth. Different regional units make up the uniform changes take place in property relations, management administrative system of the federal state; its units not structure, economic relations sphere, the system of only differ by the scale and status in the system of federal vertical and horizontal ties undergo change as well, new setup, but also by the objectives they are to achieve and relations take shape, transformation occurs in the agents’ by the mechanism of their administration. economic interests, incentives and motivation. The governance of a region is control over its The structure of regional policy of the Russian functioning and development. A question naturally arises Federation subjects includes the following subsystems: concerning the essence of socioeconomic development (1) regional economic policy aimed at the improvement governance, because economic and social processes of regional economy competitiveness, support and directly meet here in decision-making results at all levels development of the real sector of the economy, the of governance: federal, regional and business. The creation and development of regional infrastructure, competence of each power level implies the creation the efficient use of state property and others; (2) of a favorable environment for people’s life activity and regional innovation policy aimed at creating conditions the preservation of the natural system and favorable and incentives for innovative activity in a region, environment for business and other organizations. development of regional innovative infrastructure, The socioeconomic functions at all levels of the innovative development territories, innovation clusters administrative system ultimately lie in the creation of and networks; (3) regional social policy aimed at achieving sustainability, rational application of regional resources a high standard of living in each region, harmonizing and maintenance of a balance