Development by Decree: The Limits of ‘Authoritarian Modernization’ in the Russian Federation NADIR KINOSSIAN and KEVIN MORGAN Abstract The apparent success of state-managed market economies has challenged the conventional wisdom that liberal democracy is the norm around which all capitalist countries tend to converge. If the link between democracy and development is more tenuous than we often think, the authoritarian variety of capitalism is not without its own problems, especially with respect to political legitimacy, innovation and regional development. This article explores these issues through the prism of ‘authoritarian modernization’in Russia. We argue that this strategy is unlikely to succeed, even in its own terms, because (1) the political system fails to create favourable institutional conditions for modernization; (2) the economic system is beset by deeply embedded structural problems; and (3) the regional policy apparatus is torn between the goals of spatial equalization and spatial agglomeration. The article focuses on the Skolkovo Innovation Centre, the main symbol of Russian modernization, to demonstrate the territorial repertoire of the mega-project, a state-sponsored development strategy to create innovation clusters from above because they cannot emerge from below. Introduction: the allure of the authoritarian state The spectacular growth of Brazil, Russia, India and China — the so-called BRIC economies — and the political prominence of the G20 relative to the G8, are the most tangible signs that a new balance of power is being fashioned in the world economy. Economic commentators in the West are concerned by two particular aspects of this changing balance of power: first, that it could presage the ‘decline of the West’, and second, that it challenges the deeply held (Western) belief that liberal democracy and economic development are natural bedfellows, the norm around which all capitalist countries tend to converge. The ascent of China causes most consternation because, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), it will become the world’s largest economy by 2016. If it does so, and if it remains a one-party state, then ‘the confident western slogan that “freedom works” will come under challenge as authoritarianism becomes fashionable, once again’ (Rachman, 2011). Political scientists, too, are becoming alarmed by the fact that authoritarian regimes around the world, especially those of China and Russia, are showing that they can reap the benefits of economic development while evading the pressure to relax their political control, proving that the link between development and democracy is quite weak and may even be getting weaker (Bueno de Mesquita and Downs, 2005). These concerns are well founded because the notion that economic wealth automatically leads to liberal democracy has been convincingly demolished by the seminal work of Adam Przeworski and colleagues, who found that wealth has a causal effect on the survival rate of International Journal of Urban and Regional Research DOI:10.1111/1468-2427.12159 © 2014 Urban Research Publications Limited. Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main St, Malden, MA 02148, USA