Economic geography and regional studies as a science. Political regional studies

Regional science (regional studies, regional studies, regional studies) was formed in the West in the mid-20th century and was designed to study regions as integral systems. The term “Regionalism” is used as a synthesis of approaches various sciences to regional studies. As a science, it studies the patterns of systemic ecological-geographical, socio-political and economic functioning of territorial societies, forms and methods of regulating these processes. The central element of regional studies (regional studies) is regional economy, studying the patterns of territorial (spatial) organization of farms.

At the first stage development of regional studies as a science prevailed placement aspect of a business organization, productive forces of the country. Thus, the rings of I. Thunen (a German economist of the 19th century) for the placement of agricultural activities are widely known, the method of the weight (or location) triangle of W. Launhardt (another German scientist of the 19th century) is a method for finding the point of optimal placement of a separate industrial enterprise relative to sources raw materials and product markets. In 1909, the work of the German economist and sociologist A. Weber “On the location of industry: the pure theory of the standard” was published, which was based on the principle of minimization total costs production when choosing the location of an industrial enterprise. In 1940, the work of the German scientist A. Lesch “Spatial Organization of the Economy” was published, in 1956 the book by W. Isard (USA) “Location and Economics of Space” was published. As a result, a general theory placement of productive forces.

In Russia, regional economic complexes received theoretical justification in the works of N.N. Kolosovsky. Key concept in his theory of territorial organization came the concept of the energy production cycle, which meant the entire set of production processes unfolding in the economic region. N.N. Kolosovsky identified 8 steadily repeating sets of production processes to identify economic regions and subdistricts: the pyrometallurgical cycle of ferrous and non-ferrous metals, the petrochemical cycle, the hydropower cycle, the set of cycles of the processing industry, the forestry and energy cycle, the industrial-agrarian cycle, and the irrigation and drainage cycle. In 1930, the Council for the Study of Productive Forces (SOPS) was created, and a General Scheme for the development and distribution of the productive forces of the USSR was developed.

Second phase (50s) development of regional studies is associated with the problem of economic regionalization of the country, with the formation of a special economic science - regional economics. The development of these problems belongs to academician N.N. Nekrasov. The whole country was divided into economic and geographical regions. Currently, there are 11 regions in Russia: Central, Central Black Earth, Northwestern, Northern, Volga-Vyatka, Volga Region, North Caucasus, Ural, West Siberian, East Siberian, Far Eastern.

The basis for economic zoning is not the energy production cycle, as before, but production specialization individual regions, arising from their geographical location and features of natural - climatic environment. Macroeconomic zones are also distinguished: Western ( European part Russia and the Urals) and Eastern (Siberia and Far East). Nekrasov N.N. Regional economy. Theory, problems, methods. - M.: Economics, 1978

Third stage of development regional studies (90s) is caused by the processes of federalization of the economy, the formation special subject economy - regional farms. Created in Russia now 7 Federal districts are not economic entities, nor are they subjects of the Federation. Their role is to carry out a unified social and political line of federal authorities.

The transition to a territorial system of national economic management was carried out earlier. In the early 60s of the 20th century, the sectoral management system in the USSR was eliminated and Soviets were created National economy by administrative entities (regions, territories, republics). Then the Economic Councils were enlarged, and in 1964 they were liquidated. The transition to a territorial management system is currently being carried out on a new qualitative basis; regional economies are being formed as independent economic entities.

Regional studies

Regionalism (sometimes called regionalism) grew out of the depths of the regional economy, which gradually became more and more complex, filled with social, environmental and other non-economic aspects of research. At first, this name (regional studies - regional science - Regional Science) was proposed by the American economist Walter Isard in the first half of the 50s of the 20th century. (“Methods of regional analysis: an introduction to the science of regions”, 1966). He created the first department of regional science at the University of Pennsylvania instead of the department of geography. Later, the international Association of Regional Science was created with its center in Philadelphia. According to V. Izard, regional science considers the spatial aspect of socio-economic processes that can be displayed using mathematical methods. Regional studies consisted of a very pragmatic science (without any special theoretical subtleties) for solving specific problems regional development, regional planning and urban development. Thanks to this, it has come significantly closer to regional planning (engineering and architectural science for landscaping). Later, significant attention was paid to solving environmental problems(Isard W. Ecological-economic analysis for regional development, 1972).

So, the essence of regional studies as an interdisciplinary science is an integrated (systemic) approach to solving the totality of all socio-economic, political, historical, natural-ecological and other aspects of regional development. With this approach, regional economics becomes part of regional studies, which directly examines only the economic features of regional development. However, in reality, as a rule, they do not see a fundamental difference between the two sciences.

Regional science has played a major constructive role in solving the problems of growth of backward regions, especially through the creation of “technopolises”, “technoparks”, industrial production, service and other special economic zones. It achieved its greatest success in the USA, Great Britain, Germany, France, Italy and other highly developed countries. She made an important contribution to solving the problems of overcoming negative situations in areas of environmental disaster.

Regionalism

The processes of internationalization (globalization) of the world economy contributed to the emergence of another area of ​​regionalism - regionalism, which in its content is an applied direction for the creation of international (open to foreign capital) zones (regions) economic development. Both regionalism and regionalism are based on the theory of “growth poles” by F. Perroux and the concept of creating “special (free) economic zones,” which can certainly be considered as a consistent development of the ideas of “growth centers.”

The second direction is based on the ideas of developing local self-government based on the formation of civil societies. A striking example of this new approach was the creation of the so-called “Euroregions” of the European Union.

The third direction is directly related to the problems of geo-economics and geopolitics. He explores the formation of international regional unions and other associations between countries - both specialized (for example, OPEC, IAEA, etc.) and integral (for example, the European Union, MERCOSUR, NAFTA, etc.).

Regionalology (regional studies)

The concept of regional studies, as well as the closely related concept of regional studies, is traditional. It usually covers issues of the natural resource potential of the region, the characteristics of the demographic situation and the formation of labor resources; development and location of economic sectors, inter-industry complexes and economic territorial structures of the region, its international and interregional relations, socio-economic and environmental problems of development. Traditionally, such studies have been carried out in economic geography.

Also appears new trend, which complements traditional research with an analysis of the history of the development of the region, the national-ethnic and religious characteristics of the population, the specifics of its culture and traditions. This direction is gradually moving closer to local history.

The economization of regional studies (country studies) results in the study of additional economic aspects of the development of regions and countries: the nature of the economic system and structure, problems of forming regional markets for goods and services, the specifics of financial and tax regional systems, investment problems, regional pricing policy. In Ukraine, this direction is just beginning to take shape. In our opinion, it brings regional science closer to regional economics and predetermines the emergence of a general science of regions. Well-known Russian scientist on regional economics A.G. Grandberg believes that the concepts of “regional studies”, “regional studies”, “regional studies” are unambiguous,

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Introduction

Political regionalism is a new scientific direction that is in its infancy. This discipline owes its emergence, on the one hand, to political science, and on the other, to regional studies, or regional studies. At present, the economic, historical, legal, cultural and civilizational aspects of regional studies can be considered sufficiently developed; in turn, political issues should take their rightful place in the range of regional studies knowledge. At the same time, political regionalism can both absorb the body of knowledge accumulated by other scientific directions within the framework of a variety of social sciences, and focus on the achievements of modern regional studies.

Important changes taking place in modern society at the regional and global level, starting from the second half of the twentieth century, are associated with the processes of integration and regionalization. The increasing role of regions in evolution international community and in the lives of many modern states makes regional development processes increasingly important.

Such dynamic transformations in the field of regional development are of increased interest to political scientists. They are also constantly in the field of view of a significant part of the national and local political elites who decide issues regarding the prospects political development, political transformations taking place in society, and their consequences in the process of developing cross-border relations of a fundamentally new type.

Objective and subjective processes occurring in modern world and shaping the political reality in the regions, differ significantly from those that took place at previous stages historical development world community. Fundamentally new are the roles assigned to regional elites and communities in the decision-making process related to domestic and foreign policy problems of regional development. The model of modern federalism is constantly being improved, which is due to stable trends towards granting individual territorial units a certain political status and powers, observed in different regions peace.

It is also of interest to study the features and patterns of development of modern regional socio-political systems, identify the relationship between integration and disintegration trends in regional communities, study the influence of modern social change on the structure of center-peripheral relations, consideration of the possibilities of adaptation and stabilization of regional systems in the context of the formation of a new world political configuration, analysis of the influence of globalization processes on the functioning and development of modern regional communities.

It is these kinds of political trends that determine the main features of regional development processes in the modern world that are the focus of political regionalism.

The study of regional political issues as an independent direction appeared in regional studies relatively recently and reflected the trend towards expanding interdisciplinarity of research in modern science.

Section 1
History and theory of political regionalism

The formation of a theoretical and methodological basis for political regional studies is associated with such social science disciplines as history, ethnography, economics, law, etc.

An analysis of interdisciplinary studies devoted to the problems of regional development shows that they form a political science component, develop concepts and models, approaches and methods that are used by modern political scientists and regional scientists.

The scope of interests of this scientific direction includes a wide range of issues related to the study of the political development of regions. For example, researchers V. Gelman and S. Ryzhenkov understand political regionalism as “a set of studies of both macro-political institutions and processes at the regional and local levels (the study of elites, elections, etc.), and specific aspects of regional and local government related with processes on a national scale."

Chapter 1
Brief outline of the development of political regionalism

Political regionalism has emerged as an independent scientific direction in 90s XX century, which was quite consistent with the fundamental change that occurred in the principles scientific knowledge and marked the rejection of the theory of revolutionary paradigm change Thomas Kuhn and recognition that from now on scientific theories, concepts and approaches should not be considered as mutually exclusive alternatives, replacing each other as science develops, but rather be presented as complementary ways of knowing or constructing reality.

The interdisciplinary approach to the study of complex phenomena has a long history. Even in Antiquity, almost all sciences consisted of just one thing - philosophy. In the Middle Ages, law, theology and medicine already existed as independent disciplines in universities. By the middle of the 18th century. philosophy was divided into natural and moral philosophy and there was a process of gradual separation and emergence of new scientific disciplines. At that time, natural philosophy included chemistry, physics, biology and other disciplines, which later became known as “natural sciences.” Within the framework of the moral sciences, social and political phenomena, processes and institutions were mainly studied (in the 19th century they began to be called “humanities”).

The emergence of political regional studies is associated primarily with two sciences - political science and regional studies, the history of which, as well as their formation as sciences, have their own specifics.

The appearance of the first works on politics dates back to the 5th century. BC e. Since then, an extensive experience of political thought has been accumulated. The emergence of political science as a modern science is associated with the opening of the first department of political science in 1857 at Columbia College (now Columbia University), as well as the subsequent development of political science in other leading universities in the USA and Europe, the creation of national and international associations of political science and publishing journals devoted to key problems of political science.

The science of regions does not have such a long history. One of the first studies devoted to regional processes can be called the work I.G. Thunen"An isolated state in its relation to agriculture and National Economy", published in 1836.

On initial stage(late 19th – early 20th centuries) the development of regional science was associated mainly with historical geography, within the framework of which it was called “local history” or “regional studies”. At the same time, the role of historical geography in the system of socio-economic sciences was very insignificant and was reduced to a description of the geography of the population, economy, migration processes, etc.

It developed very actively during that period domestic science about the regions, mastering a new problem field. Russian scientists made a significant contribution to the development of local history P.I. Melnikov-Pechersky And A.S. Gatsisky, who systematized research in the field of history and ethnography of the Nizhny Novgorod region, as well as provincial scientific archival commissions that prepared materials on the state of the economic, demographic and ethnic structure of the periphery of the Russian state.

Throughout the twentieth century. Research areas such as regional archeology, regional anthropology, regional ethnography, and regional linguistics were actively developing. Each branch of knowledge operated with its own research methods and set its own scientific tasks and goals.

At the end of the twentieth century. Regional studies is beginning to be viewed as a kind of macro-discipline that operates with the generalized, final results of specialized research carried out within the framework of sectoral humanities disciplines.

On at this stage there is a generalization of previous achievements, there is an attempt to develop multifactorial approaches to explain the processes of regional development.

The same period includes the systematization of extensive knowledge in the field of regional development obtained by individual scientific disciplines, the inclusion of economic, political and legal research into regional issues, as well as the formation of regional science itself. The term “regional studies” was introduced into scientific circulation by the American economist W. Izard, author of Methods of Regional Analysis: An Introduction to the Science of Regions. Currently, along with this concept, the term “area studies” has also become widespread in Western science.

In the process of development of political and regional sciences, the foundations were laid for the emergence of a new scientific interdisciplinary direction - political regional studies.

Based on interdisciplinary research devoted to the analysis of various methods, concepts and theories of studying regional political issues, it seems possible for us to highlight three main groups of approaches, closely related to each other and had the greatest influence on the formation of the theoretical and methodological foundations of political regionalism.

1. Political-geographical and geopolitical approaches.

2. Political-historical approaches.

3. Socio-political approaches.

Researchers developing these scientific directions have laid the foundation for the political component of the science of regions, directly or indirectly indicating the importance of political issues in the process of studying social, economic, cultural, etc. aspects of regional development.

1. Political-geographical and geopolitical approaches

The main attention of researchers developing these approaches is focused on comparing the political, economic, cultural, etc. potentials of state and regional communities, on which the formation of the structure of socio-political interaction depends.

Founder of the German school of geopolitics F. Ratzel believed that the justification of key processes occurring in states (or regions) should be carried out from the position of recognizing the constant desire of socio-political systems for territorial expansion, which can lead to the absorption of smaller and weaker regions. At the same time, regions that are under pressure from their geopolitical position, in order to avoid the loss of territorial autonomy, must carry out a radical functional transformation of their internal structures in the process of political modernization.

This approach characterizes global trends in political development, based on consideration of the prospects for the evolution of leading regions and states of the international community.

In this regard, we can highlight some historical factors that determined modern tendencies regional political development.

First of all, the long-term global trend was territorial expansion.

English geographer P. Taylor identifies four main periods of [overseas] colonization.

The first non-competitive era of colonization (late 15th - early 17th centuries) - the main subjects of expansion were Spain and Portugal.

First competitive era of colonization (1600–1800) – Spain, Portugal, Netherlands, Great Britain, France, parts of Denmark, Sweden and Prussia.

Second non-competitive era of colonization (starting with the First Industrial Revolution in Great Britain and the French bourgeois revolution end of the 18th century until the 1870s) – Great Britain and France.

The second competitive era of colonization (late 19th - second half of the 20th century) - Great Britain, France, Belgium, Germany, Italy, Japan and the USA.

The desire of powerful countries and regions to make profit through territorial military expansion is gradually being replaced by other types of colonial dependence, mainly political and economic. Austrian Marxist R. Hilferding pointed out the determining role of financial capital in the system of center-peripheral relations, in which colonized regions, under the political control of metropolitan states, are considered primarily as sources of cheap labor and sales markets. In this regard, the Scandinavian political scientist J. Galtung distinguishes two types of states: “core” - metropolis and “periphery” - colonial dependent territories, as well as two types social groups– dominant and submissive. Moreover, both dominant and subordinate classes can be found both in the states of the “core” and in peripheral countries, and relations between them can be built in the form:

Cooperation, which involves the joint exploitation of the “periphery” by both elite groups;

Social imperialism – the elite’s suppression of the “core” of its own people;

Repressive imperialism - the suppression by a privileged group of the “periphery” of its people;

Divided imperialism, which is manifested in the interest of the unprivileged class of the “core” in the exploitation of the subordinate class of the “periphery”.

At the same time, starting from the middle of the twentieth century. forms of expansion take on an even more severe character. Using the resources of the controlled territories is no longer enough; the agenda includes the tasks of assimilation and unification of the population of other cultures and civilizations.

Simultaneously with the process under consideration, pockets of modernization are emerging everywhere, contributing to the structural transformation of regional communities that have retained their independence, the manifestation of activity of which in this context can be perceived as a response of original societies to an external challenge.

At the same time, the population of the regions, included in other systems of socio-political relations during the waves of colonization, is fully aware of the degree of uniqueness own culture, its path of historical development, in connection with which disintegration, centrifugal processes arise within the borders of the former metropolises.

The concept of “the state is a container of power” Giddens–Taylor covers a wider range of issues regarding the functioning of the state.

E. Giddens considers the power of the state from the position of its ability to accept generally significant political decisions and defines the state as " power container" The theorist points out that the state, within its borders, exercises control over all spheres of society and, if the scale of the problems goes beyond these territorial boundaries, seeks to expand its influence and demonstrate it beyond its borders.

The development of this theory was continued by the previously mentioned P. Taylor. According to his concept, states go through several stages of complication of their structure.

1. The state - the “container of power” performs the function military protection of its population.

2. The state – the “economic container” – is engaged in regulating socio-economic relations.

3. The state is a “container of nations”: this process is characterized by the fact that the state is assigned the function of stabilizing socio-political relations through the formation of an ideology of national unity, political institutions, social system values, etc.

4. The state - a “cultural container” forms a certain system of social ideas about the commonality of the historical past and modern interests of all residents, strives to unify the heterogeneous composition of the population to preserve the state.

For political regional studies, it is of interest to consider the nature and degree of influence of national power structures on political, economic, national, etc. processes in regional entities.

Block Review political-geographical And geopolitical approaches allows us to significantly expand the field of research devoted to political problems of regional development. The main conclusions that can be drawn as a result of the analysis of the author's provisions are as follows:

The process of state formation is explained in terms of interests of common defense;

The state continues to maintain trends towards various types of expansion;

The state acquires a new quality, which determines the desire for self-reproduction and the reluctance to lose its territorial “mass” by granting individual regions independence;

In the course of interaction with the periphery, the center in many cases is characterized by the manifestation of a desire to establish relations of domination and subordination;

The basis of relationships at the interregional and international level is the environmental factor, i.e. the development strategy of various regional communities and states is determined by their external relations and external balance of power.

At the same time, the following can be identified as the main disadvantages of these approaches:

Firstly, all relations in society, the state and in international relations explained from the perspective of the use of force and resistance to this force;

Secondly, one of the central themes of research is the recognition of relations of dominance and subordination.

At the same time, political-geographical and geopolitical approaches have had significant influence on the formation of a theoretical and methodological basis for political regional studies.

2. Political-historical approach

Central moment for everyone scientific schools based on this methodological approach, is the desire to identify the genesis of regional communities and trace their evolution in the context of historical development, analyze the process of formation of natural and artificial borders, and study the factor of the geopolitical position of states and regions.

Within the framework of this approach, researchers are making attempts to determine the optimal ratio of production and communication facilities in the region, to formulate the principles of their effective placement in order to identify ways of complex interaction of the studied objects, to justify the direction further development region.

This kind of research allows us to develop concepts of joint development, aimed at forming regional political and economic alliances that combine the advantages of various territories.

At the same time, these factors influence the formation of the economic potential of the region, the significance of which, in turn, determines the formation of the vertical power relations, the spread of centripetal or centrifugal (separatist) tendencies in a given local political space, and the formulation of value expectations and preferences.

Each regional entity has individual economic potential, special political culture, excellent historical traditions, etc. This circumstance, as noted by the American researcher R. Putnam, leads to the coexistence on the territory of one state of all kinds of political and economic modifications of regions - from post-industrial, democratically developed, to agricultural, based on an authoritarian style of management.

In turn, consideration of individual regions makes it possible to apply the results obtained to explain processes in federal level. The main factors in this regard are not only the cultural, political and economic potentials of specific regions, but also the ability of territories to communicate, regardless of whether this interaction is integrative or disintegrative.

The main emphasis is on understanding the historical and political development of the state from the point of view of political and other types of changes initiated at the regional level, which becomes possible thanks to the internal dynamics inherent in the regions, through which structural and functional changes are initiated and stimulated. Such changes can serve as a reason for transformations on a statewide scale. At the same time, to understand the current political events and determining the prospects for further development, it is advisable to turn to historical traditions characteristic of a given country.

An important place within the framework of political-historical approaches also occupies "Unified Field" theory American geographer S. Jones, according to which the formation of territorial-political systems includes five interrelated stages:

The emergence of a key, basic idea;

Making a political decision;

Movement of people, goods, capital, ideas;

The emergence of a “field of tension”, similar to physical fields, in which the ratio of political forces acting behind or against key idea, changes from point to point;

Formation of a political-territorial unit.

For studying the phenomenon of regional development, the systematization of the process of emergence of a socio-political system, proposed by the American scientist, is of great importance due to the following political science aspects contained in his theory. Firstly, an approach S. Jones highlights the problems of forming a core political ideology, a system of values ​​and expectations of people in the process of building a national state and a political nation. Similar problem reflects the debate between primordialists, who emphasize that communities of people are the product of consanguinity, a shared historical past, language, culture, and mutual obligations, and instrumentalists, who argue that “objective” interests underlie the emergence and maintenance of individual/group identity.

Regional science (regional studies, regional studies, regional studies) was formed in the West in the mid-20th century and was designed to study regions as integral systems. The term “Regionalistics” is used as a synthesis of the approaches of various sciences to regional studies. As a science, it studies the patterns of systemic ecological-geographical, socio-political and economic functioning of territorial societies, forms and methods of regulating these processes. The central element of regional studies (regional studies) is regional economics, which studies the patterns of territorial (spatial) organization of farms.

At the first stage of development of regional studies As a science, the placement aspect of the economic organization and the country's productive forces prevailed. Thus, the rings of I. Thunen (a German economist of the 19th century) for the placement of agricultural activities are widely known, the method of the weight (or location) triangle of W. Launhardt (another German scientist of the 19th century) is a method for finding the point of optimal placement of a separate industrial enterprise relative to sources raw materials and product markets.

In 1909, the work of the German economist and sociologist A. Weber “On the location of industry: the pure theory of the standard” was published, which was based on the principle of minimizing total production costs when choosing the location of an industrial enterprise. In 1940, the work of the German scientist A. Lesch “Spatial Organization of the Economy” was published, in 1956 the book by W. Isard (USA) “Location and Economics of Space” was published.

As a result, a general theory of the distribution of productive forces was formed. In Russia, regional economic complexes received theoretical justification in the works of N.N. Kolosovsky. The key concept in his theory of territorial organization was the concept of the energy production cycle, which was understood as the entire set of production processes unfolding in the economic region. N.N. Kolosovsky identified 8 steadily repeating sets of production processes to identify economic regions and subdistricts: pyrometal lurgical cycle of ferrous and non-ferrous metals, petroenergy-chemical cycle, hydropower, a set of cycles of the processing industry, forestry, industrial-agrarian, irrigation and drainage. In 1930, the Council for the Study of Productive Forces (SOPS) was created, and a General Scheme for the development and distribution of the productive forces of the USSR was developed.

The second stage (50s) of the development of regional studies is associated with the problem of economic regionalization of the country, with the formation of a special economic science - regional economics. The development of these problems belongs to academician N.N. Nekrasov. The entire country was divided into economic and geographical regions. Currently, there are 11 regions in Russia: Central, Central Black Earth, Northwestern, Northern, Volga-Vyatka, Volga Region, North Caucasus, Ural, West Siberian, East Siberian, Far Eastern. Economic zoning is based not on the energy production cycle, as before, but on the production specialization of individual regions, resulting from their geographical location and the characteristics of the natural and climatic environment. Macroeconomic zones are also distinguished: Western (European part of Russia and the Urals) and Eastern (Siberia and the Far East). political federalism state

The third stage of development of regional studies (90s) was caused by the processes federalization of the economy, the formation of a special subject of the economy - regional farms. The 7 Federal Districts created in Russia today are not Nekrasov N.N. Regional economy. Theory, problems, methods. - M.: Economics, 1978 are economic entities, as well as subjects of the Federation. Their role is to carry out a unified social and political line of federal authorities. The transition to a territorial system of national economic management was carried out earlier. In the early 60s of the 20th century, the sectoral management system in the USSR was liquidated and National Economic Councils were created for administrative entities (regions, territories, republics). Then the Economic Councils were enlarged, and in 1964 they were liquidated. The transition to a territorial management system is currently being carried out on a new qualitative basis; regional economies are being formed as independent economic entities.

Along with geography and historically - after geography, but not instead of it, a new one arose general definition field of knowledge, with the help of which in world practice it is customary to combine regional studies of social and humanitarian profiles. This concept is "regional science"(regional science; another translation of this concept is also possible - “science of regions”). Regional science studies the spatial dimension of social, economic, political and behavioral phenomena. It has been developing quite actively since the middle of the 20th century. Valid International Association regional science , founded in 1954, its headquarters are in the British city of Leeds.

Concept "regional studies" etymologically very close to the concept of “regional science”. It is the result of word formation that occurred in the Russian language and does not have a direct translation into English and other languages ​​most common in world science. In essence, the only adequate option for translating the concept of “regional studies” into English is precisely “regional science”. At the same time, the principle of distinguishing the levels of regional studies allows us to highlight the subject field of political regional studies, considering it as a separate part of regional science.

Regional studies cannot be carried out “in general”; they still must have a more specific object. We are talking about the fact that regional studies take objects from other sciences and consider their spatial dimensions. But at the same time, each specific regional study must proceed from the presence of its own special object. For example, the work published in New York in 1960 and translated into Russian in 1966 W. Izard "Methods of regional analysis: an introduction to the science of regions" dedicated to socio-economic issues. This work sets out in detail the methods of collecting and analyzing regional socio-economic information, but the conceptual framework and guidelines for regional science itself remain undefined. At the same time, the author himself notes in conclusion: “the very vast area of ​​this science (regional science) cannot be limited to the development of methods of analysis, even if these methods are supplemented by abundant, well-thought-out and organized research by geographers and other scientists. The science of regions must invade the area theory in which district and inter-district structures and functions will take a central place. Such a theory should reveal and generalize the interdependencies between the system and its divisions... It should go beyond orthodox theories social sciences and to emphasize those fundamental interactions of political, social and economic factors which have hitherto generally been neglected."

Thus, there is a conditional sectoral structure regional science related to specific research objects. Although we must understand that complex connections between phenomena in a specific territory do not allow us to consider the selected object in isolation from others, for example, political phenomena - in isolation from economic or cultural ones . Therefore, having selected one object and identified through it the sectoral direction of regional science, it is possible and often necessary to consider the influence on it of other objects acting as factors. For example, political regional studies can be considered as factors influencing territorial features of its object, economic and cultural factors. Not by chance W. Izard in his works he emphasizes the interaction of political, social and economic factors . The result of such interaction is the placement of certain phenomena (objects), the analysis of which and the identification of relevant patterns is carried out by regional science.

Political regionalism is, by definition, interdisciplinary, since it explores the subnational (intrastate) level of political space in its development and structural organization, in interactions with other levels of space.

The relevance of political regionalism is explained, first of all, by the fact of the heterogeneity of the political space inherent in most countries of the world. Globalization aggravates territorial disproportions, simultaneously giving rise to dialectically opposite processes of globalization and regionalization. The formation of a global information society has resulted in opportunities for fragmentation of elements of the social system based on their autonomy and subsidiarity. The territorial contradictions “center - periphery” manifest themselves with particular force in post-Soviet Russia. Particularly pressing issues are such issues as the degree of centralization of power, finding a balance of interests of political actors in the regions, the choice of models of federalism and administrative-territorial structure, goals and methods of regional policy. Ultimately, Russia’s role in a globalized world largely depends on the resolution of these issues.

Distinguishing between political regionalism and political geography is not and cannot be tough. It associated with some , In fact, slight differences in emphasis . Both sciences are interdisciplinary in nature.

Political geography places greater emphasis on the application of specific methodology developed in theoretical geography . The well-known theorist of modern Russian geography B. Rodoman said that geography has a “disassembled subject” and a “collective method.” Typically, geographical methods are understood as those methods that make it possible to study the territorial differentiation of phenomena, differences from place to place, as well as localized complexes of phenomena, each of which is separately studied by other sciences. In other words, political geography is based on attempts to theorize the principles of differentiation and localization and the spatial dimension in general .

At the same time, the insufficient development of theoretical geography leads to the fact that political geography is sometimes still recognized by its descriptiveness, which is inherent in it “by definition” (“geography”). In practice in simple form Political geography is usually based on the study of geographical objects (countries, localities, settlements, etc.), it describes their characteristics and differences. Political geography is more characterized by spatial modeling and interpretation of the relationship between phenomena in space. To a lesser extent - analysis of the essence of these phenomena , which remains the prerogative of specialized subject-oriented sciences.

According to one Western textbook, political geography "is concerned with the study of territorial organization, spatial distribution and distribution of political phenomena, including their impact on other territorial components of society and culture." Typical concepts that political geography operates with are territorial organization, distribution (from the word “space”), distribution in space (in territory). These concepts are clearly descriptive in nature, and the research in this case is usually a geographical modeling of phenomena and can be presented in the form of a map, simple or synthetic.

Political regionalism, as a part of regional science and political science, simultaneously places emphasis on its object, suggesting complex use geographical and political science methods. Thus, political regional studies is a transition zone of political science and regional science. It starts from a political phenomenon and further studies its territorial projection. Political regionalism, like political geography, also comes to study the spatial dimension of political phenomena, but in its own way.

The difference between political regionalism is that it is closer to political science than to geography. The specialization of political regionalism within the framework of political science is determined by the need to study the spatial dimension of politics. At the same time, political regionalism has every right to use geographical methods, which certainly enrich its theoretical baggage. It means that there cannot be a definite boundary between political geography and political regionalism . Trends in the development of political geography in the second half of the 20th century. and in the 21st century. also indicate a blurring of the lines between political geography and political regionalism, as geographers increasingly engage in the study of social objects. In addition, political geography is a scientific discipline with a long history, and within its framework many theoretical schemes have been developed that are applicable in political regionalism, a younger science.