RESEARCH ARTICLES
The article deals with the development of industrial policy in the Russian Federation in the coming years. The subject matter is the key challenges for the industrial development of Russia on the time horizon of 2018-2030, the risks and conditions for the Russian industrial policy and for its possible strategic alternatives. The research methodology is based on structuring the factors that shape the state industrial policy and bringing them into line with the existing or prospective elements of the policy. For the prospective industrial policy, I consider the emerging approaches in state authorities and the expert community.
The main results include the following. The global risks of strengthening sanctions are the most important factors to consider during the implementation of industrial policy in Russia. Among the possible strategic policy alternatives, it is expedient to implement an intermediate variant between «the basis of economic development and the key source of budget revenues» and «the means of diversifying the risks of the Russian economy». It involves concentration of resources on building long-term global competitive positions. Achieving this aim in terms of export volume requires constant high growth rates of industrial production – at least 4.2% per year. The industrial policy should be concentrated on several key directions (technological policy, investment, foreign trade, etc.) with a general exportoriented approach. For each of the directions, updating of both strategic planning documents and a set of industrial policy instruments will be required in the next 1-2 years. With the 3-5 years duration period of most investment projects in industrial sector, the roadmap for implementing a new model of industrial policy should be updated by the end of 2018. This timeframe limits or forbids the development and use of tools that require substantial changes in legal regulation.
The current economic regions in Russia were zoned in the 20-30s of the last century by the soviet State Planning Committee. Back then they played an outstanding role in economic development. However, today they do not correspond to the contemporary Russian realities of market economy.
We tried to identify new regions, considering natural, economic, social, geo-ecological conditions. Therefore, the identified regions have a complex geographical nature. We carved out ten such regions: Stolichny, Central, European North, European South, North Caucasian, Uralo-Povolzhsky, West Siberian, North Siberian, South Siberian and Far Eastern.
The authors collected statistical information of land area, population size and density, physical and geographical conditions, natural resources and economic activities for each district. Using the data, they identified for each region the natural population dynamics, the share of the population below the poverty line, the gross regional product, its structure, the supply of arable land, the rank of the geo-ecological tension, the balance of direct foreign investments and a number of other indicators. In particular the discrepancy between the area and the population in each region is shown. All regions are very different. While in European regions the share of the population is much larger than the share of area, in the Asian regions the situation is reversed: a very small proportion live on enormous area.
In the era of globalization, it is important to consider transboundary fluxes of population and environmental pressure. We analyzed the immigration potential and environmental externalities of neighboring countries for the identified regions of Russia. It is shown that Ukraine, Kazakhstan and China represent the greatest environmental danger for Russia.
Efficient geographical zoning is a necessary condition for improving the regional economy, and ultimately ensuring national security of the country.
The article explores a process of gradual consolidation of disparate set of Muslim economies into an increasingly influential, though internally contradictory center of geo-economic and geopolitical gravity in contemporary multipolar world. It uses a theory developed by the authors explaining the patterns of formation and succession of models of global economic development. The article builds upon this theory by testing quantitative and qualitative parameters of the process on a specific geo-economic case.
The contemporary developments within the economic basis of the Muslim pole and the practical requirements of economic analysis reveals the need for categorical correction and refinement of political economy. Two following terms «Muslim economy» and «Islamic economy» must be differentiated. «Muslim economy» is a civilizational form of national economies in Muslim countries and an integral part of the global economy, including both the economic life and welfare of the global Muslim population and the economic potential, sustainability and the ability for self-development of the economies of Muslim states. «Islamic Economy» is an economy that implements in practice the primacy of Shariah norms over conventional market norms, procedures and mechanisms. Both of them constitute important material conditions for sustaining the Muslim civilizational identity
In recent academic literature political, legal and religious aspects of Muslims upholding their identity have been sufficiently researched. In contrast the process of Muslim’s world achieving a new qualitative status of a global economic power center (not to speak about its competition with other old and new powers for a place within a new global economic order), is practically absent from the Russian and international research.
The authors propose a vision of a new quality of Muslim economies in the global balance of power, in emerging model of the global world order, in financial globalization and global governance – the gradual consolidation of the Muslim world. The article argues that this process is still very far from reaching mature forms. Today it is hardly possible to reliably predict specific configurations of the future self-organization of the «Muslim pole» in the polycentric world and the nature of its influence on specific issues of the global world order. However, the point of no return is already passed, and the painful and contradictory process of development of such a center is unlikely to stop.
The article deals with perspectives for integration within Central Asian region. The existing experience of integration in the region is perceived as an important factor. Currently the discourse of regional integration is gaining ground in Central Asia. It can be seen by the updates in the foreign policy concepts of most of the post-Soviet Central Asian countries. Another driver of the issue is the growing international activity of Uzbekistan which is due to the new President of the republic elected in 2016. The article defines the context of regional development, challenges which the region face, specific traits of political process.
The rationale for integration is linked to economic problems which cannot be solved by each Central Asian country on its own. Construction of any transport and logistical infrastructure in the region as well as tackling security threats determine regional cooperation. Although the researchers give arguments for advantages of integration in the region, Central Asian leaders are still looking for more efficient format of interregional cooperation. This process is not linear with its ups and downs. The article reveals the institutional experience that Central Asia gained over 1990s in search for its own integration project. Today this experience can be treated as an important step to maturity of national governance in the region.
But the reason why there is no implementation of integration initiatives discussed in the region earlier is that the current Central Asian political elites are not favorable to any kind of cooperation that will lead in the future to the formation of supranational bodies in the region. They perceive it as a threat to a stable national development. Another factor is a higher commitment of Central Asian countries to cooperate with non-regional economies rather than within the region. In such context a strategy of “bandwagoning” (as it describes S. Walt) will hamper any regional integration project.
The article analyzes the perspectives of globalization from theoretical premises of international economics and international political economy. For decades globalization has been looking like a non-alternative direction of economic development of the world. But today economists are no longer unanimous about its future. In practice, the ambiguity in views on the development of global processes has manifested itself in the return of national governments to protectionism in foreign economic policy. In theory - in the actualization of new conceptualizations of globalization and its perspectives.
The article compares the axiomatics of monodisciplinary and interdisciplinary economic analysis of globalization. The author shows that the main subject of the discussion here are the changes in the understanding of international economic relations, the role of the state and non-state actors in global processes and the global governance. The comparison of the economic approaches to the study of globalization brings to the forefront the economic nature of the factors that contribute to it and the political nature of the factors that limit it. In modern economic knowledge globalization manifests itself as an irreversible process of growth of cross-border economic interdependence leading to the creation of global supranational political institutions. The key constraint here is the institution of sovereignty: states remain the only subject of global processes that is formally free to ignore international agreements.
The future of globalization also rely on the political realization of its economic prerequisites. The evolution of global processes will directly depend on the search and implementation of foreign policy decisions, which on the one hand represent a political compromise at the international level, and on the other, are the result of a consensus of internal political, economic and other social preconditions for the actions of the subjects of global processes. Globalization is the non-alternative direction of the evolution of international economic relations. The protectionism observed today is an inefficient and temporary, at least in the long run. State regulation of national economies would gradually give way to self-regulation of the world market. Such self-regulation de-politicizes global economic relations, making interstate conflicts impossible and weakening manifestations of nationalism and protectionism.
The article is about the history of US involvement in the Korean War (1950–1953) in the middle of summer 1950. This problem is considered as a prototype of Washington’s general approach to the organization of diplomatic support for its intervention in local conflicts. Research is based on published and unpublished documents of the diplomatic departments of the USSR and the USA, declassified CIA materials and memoirs of direct participants of the events.
A convenient instrument for legitimizing US interference in the conflict was the UN Security Council. Washington’s actions were justified by its resolutions adopted thanks to a boycott of the UN SC by the Soviet representative. At the same time, the history of local conflicts of the 20th and 21st centuries show that the US can use other rather weak excuses for military interventions.
Along with legitimization of intervention, in the early days of the Korean War, American diplomacy worked on localization of the conflict, isolation of the theater of war, formed an UN based international coalition to participate in war, neutralized Washington’s political opponents in the international arena, and coordinated assistance to Republic of Korea. The US State Department and intelligence agencies usually perform these functions in support of armed interventions in conflicts in various regions of the world today.
The content of Washington’s reaction to the situation in Korea illustrates another important feature of US foreign policy, which still remains relevant today – the rejection of any deals with violators of the US-established world order, even in the initially unfavorable military and political conditions. Washington did not refuse to negotiate a truce, but even in the conditions of catastrophic defeats of the South Korean army, a peace dialogue could be started only after the restoration of the status quo.
BOOK REVIEWS
Book review: A. Torkunov, N. Noonan, T. Shakleina: Russia and the United States in the evolving world order. Moscow MGIMO-University 2018. 414 p.
The title of this English-language book «Russia and the United States in the evolving world order» makes a reader think about the expert discussion on the «new», «transforming», «evolving» world order, and even as some researchers propose «disorder». The authors try to answer, perhaps, the most important question of the current international relations: what the world will look like tomorrow.
Book Review. Identity. Personality, Society, Politics. Encyclopedic Edition. Ed. by I.S. Semenenko. Moscow: Ves Mir Publishers, 2017. 992 p. (In Russian).
The Encyclopedic Edition represents a seminal volume devoted to the research of the present-day scientific discourse on the problems of identity and the practical application of this category to explanation of social reality. The authors view the problems of identity from various perspectives, focusing on the conceptual meaning, main types and dimensions, methodological approaches and research methods, portraits of scholars studying identity at different times. Dozens of leading scholars from academic institutions and university centers of Russia contributed to the publication.
ISSN 2541-9099 (Online)