INTERREGIONAL COOPERATION IN RUSSIA ON THE EXAMPLE OF THE NORTH-WEST FEDERAL DISTRICT

In recent years there has been a trend of growth and dominance of stagnant regions in the Russian Federation. The reasons for this are, among other things, low innovative activity of the periphery, deindustrialization, predominance of the share of extractive industries, growth of social and property stratification, and other, no less urgent, reasons. So it becomes extremely necessary to search for new drivers for the regional economy, support the most promising sectors, and effectively allocate resources. Interregional cooperation is one of the most important factors of the regional development on the basis of establishing long-term, equal and mutually beneficial relations between the regions. The barrier in its' development is the absence of a well-thought-out socio-economic policy of the state in relation to the regions. In this regard, the current task is to systematize the best domestic and foreign practice of interregional cooperation, and to develop on this basis methodological aspects of interregional cooperation evaluation. The developed proposals may be applied by the public administrations to increase the efficiency of using the factor of interregional cooperation as a driver of the growth of the regional economy when developing normative, legal, strategic and program-planning documents at the regional level