Representative Offices of the Federal Subjects as an Institute for Interregional Cooperation (Experience of the Republic of Tatarstan)

Abstract

Introduction. The issues of interregional cooperation of Russian regions are of particular relevance in the face of drastic changes in the foreign economic relations. Reasons of interregional cooperation induce Russian regions to open representative offices in federal subjects. The purpose of the article is to consider the Republic of Tatarstan experience of using remote representative offices and improving their performance in order to suggest a generalized model for organizing the activities of representative offices taking into account the modern trends in the development of interregional cooperation. Materials and Methods. The study includes analysis of up-to-date publications on the research topic, documents of state origin and is based on evaluation of the long-term experience of development the system of representative offices of the Republic of Tatarstan. The institutional and structural-functional methods of political science were used to determine the place of remote representative offices in the regional government authorities, the conditions of their activities, and the implemented functionality. General scientific methods of comparative analysis and classification were also used to develop a basic concept and work organization model of representative offices, to assess trends in the performance indicators of their activities, to work out development proposals for representative offices of federation subjects. Results. The current trends in the development of interregional cooperation in Russia together with questions of using the representative offices of federal subjects are considered taking into account corresponding experience of the Republic of Tatarstan. Ways to organize the work of federal subjects’ representative offices and to estimate their efficiency were studied. Approaches to improve activities of the representative offices and to expand their operations to new sites are suggested. Discussion and Conclusion. The study has showed the importance of the representative offices of the subjects of the Russian Federation for interregional cooperation. The authors describe a general model for organizing the work of regional representative offices and identify the ways to increase their contribution into interregional cooperation. The results of the study may be useful for experts in regional development policy and government officials.