The Region and the World

This paper gives a thorough account of the factors that foster or inhibit Nizhnii Novgorod's efforts to become a player in the national and international arenas. The author of this study sees opportunities and hurdles for the region's integration into international economic (but also political and social) structures. This process, which started in the early 1990s, was much more lengthy and time consuming than was initially expected. There have been objective reasons for this development (the general crisis of the Russian economy, lack of a globally oriented sector of the regional market) as well as subjective ones (foreign policy misperceptions of local elites, administrative inertia and lack of well-trained managers). The author argues that the region's economic and financial projects might in the future realistically be integrated into a wider international geopolitical and geoeconomic framework. Thanks to a relatively liberal leadership, experiences in the field of international cooperation and the strong presence of foreign economic actors in the region, business professionals and policy-makers from Nizhnii Novgorod are gradually adapting to the basic norms and rules of the international business and political community and understand the necessity to improve the quality standards of domestic production.