Issue published: 31 December 2012

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Touristic Trails: Central Europe between Niche Marketing and Brand Management

Petra Bernhardt, p. 7–14

Abstract: The essay addresses nation branding as a recent political and cultural practice in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) with a special emphasis on the role of tourism marketing. Taking a comparative perspective on the region, the essay focuses on the paradox that CEE countries seek to create distinct and unique images by employing very similar sets of communicative strategies and symbolic articulations.

Keywords: branding, nation branding, image politics, tourism, CEE

Public diplomacy and nation branding as the instruments of foreign policy – Czech Republic in (Central) European context

Ladislav Cabada and Šárka Waisová, p. 15–44

Abstract: Abstract: During the 20^th century, especially in its second half, a substantial transformation of political instruments used by countries to create their own roleand position in international relations took place. Countries started using so-called public diplomacy to legitimise their foreign policy activities, during the last two decades they even intensified the marketing elements of their presentation within the scope of so-called nation-branding policy. The aim of public diplomacy and nation branding is to create a positive image of a country and make the country attractive to its neighbours. In our work, we present the grounds of a theoretical discussion on public diplomacy and nation branding, and subsequently apply themto the example of the Czech Republic. We focus especially on strategies used by theCzech Republic, their limitations, and possible alternatives. Our case study is set into a broader (Central) European framework, which corresponds to the characteristics of the Czech Republic as a small country and also to the most significant post-November foreign policy narrative, i.e. the journey, the accession and the membership of the country in the European Union.

Keywords: public diplomacy, nation branding, brand-state, corporate design, marketing, soft power, culture, tourism

“Immer noch Sturm”. The Intimate Perception of a Neighbourhood

Oto Luthar, p. 45–57

Abstract: As the member of the project team involved in the historical, political and sociological study of the relationship between Austria and its Neighbours, the author tries to explain the attitude of the Austrian state towards the Slovenian minority in Austrian Carinthia. In doing so he is not interested so much in majority-minority relationship, but on how the Austrian or so-called Carinthian Slovenes reflect on this relationship. Rather than the usual historical reconstruction of it, he is interested in a more personal consideration. Being inspired by the work of four creative people and eager to avoid the usual political narrative he is using their biographies to explain why, despite the tectonic changes in relationship between Austria and Slovenia, the lives of Carinthian Slovenes remained more or less the same. He wants to know if and why being Slovenian still affect their emotional biography? Why their double identity (and loyalty) still influence their professional career? And finally, intrigued by Peter Handke’s book Immer noch Sturm, he was interested in how stürmisch (storm-like) they personally found the minority-majority relations in Austrian Carinthia and Austria after Slovenia joined the EU. The text at hand therefore is a compilation of self-reflections of authors informants and his own (in)capacity to use their life-stories in an attempt to reconstruct the dynamics of this particular relation.

Keywords: Austria, Carinthian Slovene, biographical method, Austrian-Slovenian relations

Changing Slovak Memory Patterns - Seeking a useable past?

Silvia Miháliková, p. 58–70

Abstract: As well as in all of Europe, various changes affected the way of life, the towns and villages, politics, economics, culture but also the symbolic representation of different states and regimes on the current Slovak territory. Times of regime changes or crisis are opportunities to reaffirm as well as to rethink and reformulate not only fundamental values but also state symbols, myths and rituals in which they are encoded. Just after the Velvet revolution there was a widely shared expectation that “the new beginning” should be represented by the “new generation” of the transition which might symbolised innocence and the potential for democratic politics. The reality did not meet such expectations, moreover, the complaint that “there is a lack of competent people” leads in Slovakia to the acceptance of there-cycle model of recruitment by the ruling elite. The evolution of Slovak society during the period of transition reflects the contending political traditions, frequent changes in official political values (both before and after 1989), the splitting of social structures and both continuity and disruption within civic society. A closer look to these phenomena opens up a perspective which also includes the elementary semantics by which a society develops its self-image and its conception of political meaning. Against this background, the study of the symbolic representation of the new/renewed states allows for a closer look on the symbolic space of politics which frames policy-making processes and political decisions.

Keywords: memory patterns, useable past, Slovakia, post-communism

Monuments and the New Morality of Memory. Transformations of the landscape of public memory in Vienna and beyond

Heidemarie Uhl, p. 71–81

Abstract: The disintegration of the post-war myths and the development of the memory of Holocaust as a central point of reference in a new memorial culture showed the existing landscape of monuments in a new light. The resurgence of interest in monuments in public discourse as well as in contemporary art is a phenomenon of the 1980s. Our findings corresponded to the generally low esteem that looking to the past had in modern society, which was characterised by progress-led optimism and certainty in the future. Monuments and other markers in public space (e.g. street names) represent the social order of this knowledge of the past because they link levels of discourse with social relationships of power.

Keywords: monuments, memory, public memory, Vienna, post-war myths

DISCUSSION

Andreas Haaker: Blackmail in Brussels? A Game-theoretical Epilogue to the Euro “Rescue” Summit

Iztok Prezelj and Šárka Waisová: Humanitarianism and development assistance as a weapon of war Transformation of civil-military cooperation and armed forces as agents of development

BOOK REVIEWS

Helena Hricová: The Europeanization of Migration Policy. The Schengen Acquis between the Priorities of Legal Harmonization and Fragmentation