The Smart specialisation’s methodology in overcoming the spatial asymmetry of Russia’s economic federalism

The unevenness in development of the Russian regions has risen dramatically over the last one and a half decade, the interregional gap in the main socioeconomic indicators has widened, all of this threatening the integration of economic space and unity of federalism relations. The paper studies the problem of Russia’s spatial asymmetry in conditions of economic federalism, which is not comprehensively addressed by the currently adopted federate policy. Methodologically the research relies on spatial and regional economics, as well as takes on the concept of Smart specialisation. The author identifies six groups of Russia’s territories according to their functional role in a federal state, and assesses spatial asymmetry of the territories in terms of industrial, budgetary and social components of the economic federalism through the lens of the regions’ functional specialisation using statistical methods. Based on the obtained measures of variation and dispersion the author concludes about a higher asymmetry and irregularity in the country generally, than within the groups of regions having one specialization despite the fact that the groups consist of regions with different level of economic development. The findings of the analysis allow theoretically justifying the necessity of changing the direction of the economic federalism policy to reduce the asymmetry of regional development. The author suggests adopting a new model of the relations between the federal center and the regions, which implies a transition from the presently applied levelling to the state regulation of the regions based on their specialisation. The proposed model of federalism involves differentiating measures of the state regulation and support of regions depending on their economic and political specialisation.