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10 The Advanced Special Economic Zones: Over-Politicised Anti-Politics Machine
Abstract The paper focuses on the Advanced Special Economic Zones (ASEZs), which should serve as growth engines for the Russian Far East (RFE). It may appear that, in launching this programme, lessening administrative barriers for businesses, and opening borders for capital and labour force, Russia prioritised a liberal, market-led method of regional development. However, experts doubt both 1) assumptions about liberalisation and 2) the contribution of the programme to the economic performance of the RFE. The article joins the choir of critics but, in contrast to them, does not try to answer the question of how to make this development programme work. Instead, it aims to reveal how the programme works and where it leads. The author argues that ASEZs work concurrently as a machine of depoliticisation and over-politicisation. Depoliticisation turns political issues of pumping resources out of the periphery into technical issues of regional development. At the same time, over-politicisation disguises problems of resource distribution with geopolitical threats, leading political content to be whitewashed and camouflaged.
