International Relations of Russian Regions: Genesis and Institutionalization (On the Example of the Komi Republic)

The article studies the phenomenon of strengthening the role of domestic regions in international politics. The state-centric West-phalian political system of the world, which has served as the basis for the system of international relations and world order for several centuries, is now meeting challenges from new actors of world politics. That is why there is a problem of identifying the parameters of the ability to be an actor of world politics among new actors. At the same time, the domestic state's regions as international actors begin to play an increasingly active role in international affairs. The authors identify the key actor's criteria for sub-national actors in world politics and represent their authorial integral stadial-periodic pattern of the processes of the genesis and institutionali-zation of international relations of intra-state regions. These processes began in the West in the 1950s-1960s; other regions of the world, including Russia, joined in in the past two or three decades. Usually, researchers analyze the international relations of constituent entities of the Russian Federation since the beginning of the 1990s. Meanwhile, the authors argue, the processes of the genesis of international relations of the Russian regions started earlier. The authors apply their research approach on the example of the Komi Republic. According to the authors, the domestic regions' acquisition of the status of an actor in world politics goes through three stages: latent/incubation (the region acquires initial experience of transnational cooperation in limited technical forms in the absence of its own subjectivity or with a fragmented nature of the latter), formal (the region receives legal grounds for its international activities), relevant (the region begins to conduct independent international activities, but its becoming an actor depends on whether it can acquire the necessary influence). These stages correspond to three periods: the fore-actor period (availability of resources, including the ability to influence economic processes at the national level; transnational activity of a secondary type (ability to interact with foreign governmental and public structures, negotiations, self-presentation), but the region only acts as a continuation of the centre in a specific space), the pre-actor period (legal framework appears for the implementation of the region's own international relations; resources acquire transnational capacities; the centre acts as a coordinator and controller), the actor period (resources through strategy and transnational activities are converted into influence). This integrated stadial-periodic pattern can be applied to other Russian and foreign domestic regions. This will enhance understanding of the genesis and institutionalization of international relations of sub-national actors in world politics.

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