Influence of changes in administrative-territorial division of the Russian Federation on social and economic indicators

Administrative-territorial division is the basis of all forms of social life. But the state policy in the area of administrative-territorial division is not fully formed and requires constant changes and adjustments. First of all, the administrative-territorial organization is rather archaic, fragmented and haphazard. It is mostly connected with peculiarities of the Russian Federation. The steady, balanced, harmoniously developing federation cannot exist without ensuring a full real equality of all its subjects. Taking into account all problems, it is necessary to develop objective criteria of reforming (restructuring) of the Russian internal geopolitical space. All this leads to the question of possible consolidation of some regions. The authors consider the unrealized Soyun Sadykov reform. He proposed to unite a whole range of areas in six districts and one region. According to the expert, enlarged regions may lead to significant reduction in bureaucracy and structures that do not provide any economic benefit. However, there is some lack of ethics of the proposed project. Each region has its own cultural heritage, its history, that is why it is impossible to combine two regions, when one of them has been existing for 150 years and the other one, for example, for 500 years. After analyzing the statistics for Soyun Sadykov's idea, it is clear that not all associations are appropriate, as some of them are negative, and have a negative impact on the economy, while others do not have any positive or negative effect, leaving economic indicators at the previous level. However, there is an increase in living standards among new administrative-territorial units, as well as a positive impact on the economic condition of the whole country. One of such areas, for example, is the Western District. After assessing Soyun Sadykov's proposed reform and making preliminary calculations, the authors note that region integration can solve a number of problems. For example, the federal government would focus on strategic issues, and lots of performing, tactical functions would belong to the regional level. But such reform is possible only with the enlargement of the territorial government. If to talk about changes in administrative-territorial units of Russia for the recent years, the results of region integration are highly controversial. The socio-economic efficiency of transformation is not obvious, despite the fact that short-term economic objectives have been achieved. A significant reduction of numerous subjects of the Russian Federation did not occur; however, federal stability is achieved with a larger number of subjects.

Keywords

Authors

References