Governor

The author analyzes the degree of influence and personal participation of representatives of the ruling elite of the Smolensk region in building relations with the Republic of Belarus in the framework of transborder cooperation between the regions of the two countries. The evolution of the composition and mechanisms of formation of the regional elite from 1991 to the present is considered as one of the criteria for determining the political regime of the region.

The article describes some approaches to definition of the category «regional political regime», studied possible indicators of formal analysis and typology of regional regimes, the most relevant holistic and consistent model of such analysis, assessed monocentricity regional mode of the Saratov region.