ISSN 2079-9705, Regional Research of Russia, 2011, Vol
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ISSN 2079-9705, Regional Research of Russia, 2011, Vol. 1, No. 3, pp. 275–284. © Pleiades Publishing, Ltd., 2011. Original Russian Text © N.E. Abalmasova, E.A. Pain, 2011.
Symbolic Management in Creating Regional Identity1 N. E. Abalmasova and E. A. Pain
National Research University “Higher School of Economics”, Faculty of Politics, Moscow e-mail: [email protected], [email protected] Received April 4, 2011
Abstract — Symbolic management is more and more frequently becoming an integral part of regional and local policy. On the basis of empirical material, including examples from world and Russian practice, the paper examines the possibilities of symbolic management in encouraging modernization and development of regions owing to internal “resources”: consolidation of local communities, strengthening of their ties to place, and construction of authentic brands of cities and regions acceptable to the population. As well, it discusses the main features of symbolic programs and specific difficulties in construing identities that affect the selection and application of symbolic strategies. Keywords: symbolic management, regional identity, modernization, local community, consolidation, symbolic capital, culture, image of region, brand of city. DOI: 10.1134/S2079970511030026
Regional identity is how inhabitants identify themselves with a certain locality and the traditions and lifestyle that have evolved there. Such identities can arise both as a result of natural adaptation of a person to a place and as a consequence of applying special technologies. This paper examines the practice of action targeted at mass consciousness. We are talking about a particular and increasingly popular diversification of political technologies — so-called symbolic management. Symbolic management is widely used, e.g., for creating the positive image of a region designed for an outside audience — buyers. It is no accident that symbolic management programs mainly develop in the traditions of economic science, in particular, marketing, branding, and the economic theory of image. The largest amount of experience in symbol management has accumulated in these disciplines. A detailed analysis of its problems has been conducted in them.
Significantly more rarely, symbolic management is used to solve the domestic problems of a region, including the creation of a positive regional identity of the inhabitants of a particular region (or a particular locale). Meanwhile, symbolic policy can become an effective tool to involve domestic resources to modernize a region. A strong regional identity is one of the ways to strengthen the unity of a community, which in turn is a prerequisite for creating a civil society or pre-civil-society institutions, generating mass attitudes for supporting the political course of the elite in a certain territory or other conditions extremely necessary for modernization. Such an approach to the realization of symbolic programs can be called internal or internally consolidated in contrast to an external approach from the positions of the problems of attracting tourists and outside investment.
1 This article uses the results obtained in the course of the project “Policy management of interethnic relations in connection with the influx of alien ethnic migrants to major Russian cities. (Comparative analysis of the problem and development of the policy frameworks)” No. 11-04-0045 of the Higher School of Economics’ Academic Fund research project “Teacher-Students”, 2011-2012. This paper per se is one of the first attempts to generalize the experience of using the mentioned technology to solve a region’s intrapolitical problems in such cases when they are the priority of regional policy. This article also poses the question of clarifying a number of theoretical bases for using symbolic management. The paper relies both on foreign experience and examples from practices in Russian regions: Novgorod oblast, Perm krai, the cities of Yaroslavl and Suzdal’, and the cities of the republics of Marii El and Kalmykia.
SYMBOLIC MANAGEMENT: CONCEPT AND FUNCTIONAL POTENTIAL The conditions and outlooks of applying symbolic management in policy, including regional, are attracting the everincreasing attention of Russian and foreign researchers. The field of the problem stretches quite widely: from the applicability of these technologies toward optimizing electoral campaigns [8] and strengthening the authority of political entities [25] to the possibilities of creating regional identities based on them [4]. Publications at present interpret symbolic management analogously to the economic theory of organizational culture. It has been examined purely instrumentally as actions, behavior, pretenses, rituals, histories, legends, and codices, which arrange what to emphasize and announce new priorities [36, p. 279]. Similar formulations, in our opinion, weakly explain the specifics of political functions and the possibilities of symbolic management.
This paper understands symbolic management to mean a particular political technology used purposefully by elites to create any type of symbolic output (rituals, signs, traditions, legends, forms, slogans, images, myths, etc.). This entire symbolic resource can be applied in different varieties of symbolic management, such as image making (the procedure of creating a positive reputation or a memorable image of a certain subject), branding (a tool for creating strong associations and a positive emotional connection in people with a subject’s image), and public art (projects for integrating modern art into an urban environment in order to emphasize functions or a historical or cultural idea of the location in which it has been placed). Our definition of this political technology fits well (in a particular case) into the wider concept of symbolic policy. Thus, O. Malinova understands this policy as “the activity of political actors targeted at the production and advancement/intrusion of certain ways of interpreting social reality as the dominant ones” [11, p. 92]. If we accept this definition, we can characterize symbolic management as the main instrument of symbolic policy.
As the territorial unit of analysis we chose an administrative region and city. Our research task was to evaluate the potential of symbolic management in encouraging the updating of these territories via the creation of regional (local) population identities.
From the viewpoint of content, symbolic management programs are constructed in order to most efficiently create or accumulate symbolic capital for the subject—its reputational characteristics and attractive image in outward reflection and in its own estimations. In our case, regional political elites constitute such a subject. P. Bourdieu wrote that “symbolic capital is credit, but only in the widest meaning of the word” [1, p. 233]. He defined the goal of creating symbolic capital: “to easily understand that…[its demonstration] authors’ note constitutes probably everywhere one of the mechanisms owing to which capital goes toward capital” [1, p. 234].
The functional side of applying symbolic tools in regional policy unfolds in three principal directions. First, these methods bring order and represent features of regional life in certain understandable symbols and integral images. A very important function is a reduction in possible deviations between ideas transmitted by the symbols and the sense that people can attribute to them. The third function is restructuring of a region or city in accordance with the logic of symbols. As well, there also exist techniques that are applied in the case of “deviations” from the approved strategy — when it is required, e.g., already in the course of its implementation, to correct the vector of regional development or make an adjustment to the symbolic system itself.
An important component of symbolic management is the policy of civil identity. It is targeted at rallying local communities inhabiting certain territories, creating a certain idea of “us” based on particular interpretations of local history and culture. The policy of civil identity is extremely important for supporting the viability of modern states, regions, and cities. Such a policy is called upon to ensure integration of citizens above ethnic, religious, political, ideological, and other boundaries without destroying cultural differences.
More frequently, achieving a high degree of consolidation of communities has been proclaimed by the elites as an important, or even the main, component of their policy in cases when updating of the country is concerned. The wizard of modernization theory, W. Rostow, stated that rallying the population is hardly an unimportant preliminary condition of modernization [37]. In modern conditions for the spread and growth of postindustrial forms of organizing society, this pattern is taken into account not only on a national scale, but also at local levels. Strong regional and urban identities act in modernization processes (of cities and regions) as solid symbolic capital, which is spent by the elites on strengthening the internal unity of communities. A powerful modernization effect from this integration is that it creates favorable conditions for the active solidarity of the population, support for the political course of change, and creation of pre-civil- society institutions.
Regional identity answers the question “Who are we?” In relation to a certain locality, traditions, and the way of life that has evolved there. In the words of M. Krylov, this is “entire set of cultural relations connected to the concept of a small homeland” [10, p. 13]. Regional identity has three perspectives: self-identification with territory — the degree of identifying oneself with a territory; individuality — the combination of original cultural, natural, and historical characteristics; regional selfconsciousness — the degree of local patriotism and the feeling that the inhabitants have roots there [9, p. 79]. In the course of special studies, it was established that the prevailing process of creating regional identity of local communities uniting all three perspectives is an individual’s acknowledgment of himself as “local” [9]. As well, regional identity as individuality is a prerequisite for regional identity as the totality of an individual’s identifying himself with a given region. That is, before regional identity assumes the form of an individual belonging to the life of the territory and, moreover, becomes stable, it must evolve in the consciousness of people as an integral construction from local myths and attractive historical and cultural features of a territory. Precisely because of this are the chief efforts in carrying out symbolic management within a region primarily directed at confirming the notions, symbols, and narratives constituting the “collective self-portrait” of the community and definitely pointing to the integral bases of its unity; they are then directed at constructing an original and distinct image of the region.
The medium of regional identity is the “cumulative inhabitant of the region,” but regional ideas are always articulated by elites. And although they are not the only participants and initiators of symbolic policy, they occupy a particular place in its space, since they have the resources to impose the interpretation of the reality that they support.
THE CONCEPT OF NEOMODERNISM AS THE THEORETICAL BASIS OF SYMBOLIC MANAGEMENT As has already been mentioned, the participation of symbolic management in achieving the internal sociopolitical initiatives of regional elites is rarely acknowledged in modern science. Specialists in economic theories have a systemic view on the experience and problems of the involvement of these technologies in regional policy. In such studies, symbolic management appears as a large multilevel economic or PR strategy directed at an outside consumer. Due to the peculiarities in analysis perspectives, the internal sociopolitical advantages from its implementation are only very rarely mentioned in publications [3, 21, 33].
Political science has only recently begun to include these topics into its field of interest and, despite their increasing popularity, has not developed priority notions on a metatheory that might become the basis of further scientific study in this area. To our mind, the methodological basis of such regional political studies could be the theory of neomodernism. Analysis of the experience of applying symbolic management technologies or political elements that could be considered analogues of such management demonstrate that it is particularly successful when it is carried out in the course of purposeful modernization of territories. Substitution or correction of the political and economic course is accompanied by the creation and launching into the social environment of special symbolic constructs calling for the legitimization of transformation, the easing of the transition period where possible, or the reinforcement of transformation. Frequently, the use of symbolic technologies without observing the advances in modernization does not achieve significant results. Symbolic programs risk remaining costly and low-effective PR events, which occurred, e.g., in Uganda (“Uganda — endowed with nature”) or Nigeria (“Nigeria — the heart of Africa”), In 2006, Uganda paid USD 650000 to the Hill and Knowlton PR agency for the construction of its new image: an island of wild nature. Another USD 1 million went for its promotion in a commercial on CNN [30, p. 90].
The theory of neomodernism not only makes it possible to link symbolic images with real development, but it also determines the possibility and even the necessity of orientation toward regionally and culturally specific forms of development within the philosophy of “multiple modernity.” A methodological postulate important for the topic under discussion is the statement on the two main forms of modernization: administrative and organic [14]. The first form proceeds successfully where political elites achieve changes simultaneously along two vectors: reforms are suitably and efficiently initiated from the top down and rallying of communities is strengthened; i.e., in the final analysis, support for a new course is ensured among the population. The concept of neomodernism explains why countries whose modernization pertains to this bloc have proved able to quickly begin, support, and effectively reinforce transformation owing to the position of solid capital to conduct similar policies: administrative, personnel, financial, etc. These forms of capital either existed in the country before the onset of modernization or appeared as a consequence. Symbolic capital of changes has played a noticeable role in acquiring it. A symbolic attribute, in becoming an important element of a new policy, somewhere, in a way attractive and acceptable to the population, formulated the victories of modernization, aided organizers of transformations to advantageously and authentically present the new course in order to embark on a new way of obtaining access to sufficient resources — to convince the population that reform is necessary and to win over outside audiences.
Among such starkly pronounced successes, we can mention the modernization of the Canadian province of Quebec. Quebec’s symbolic program was initially devised to accompany the “quiet revolution” begun by the region’s new prime minister in 1960; nowadays, it is already in and of itself a tradition. Modernization has touched all spheres of regional development, because the territory had notably fallen behind in many indices compared to its largely successful neighbors. Under these conditions, rallying of the inhabitants and their support for modernization transformations became the chief task of the elite. From this stems the main idea of symbolic management approved in 1961: reinforcement of regional and ethnic identity of Quebec’s population as a counterweight to all other Canadian identities [28, p. 190]. In order to avoid conflict and instill the strategy in the overall state policy of multiculturalism, widely understood nationalist slogans were augmented with emphasis on topics of Canadian people’s unity and the traditional culture of French Quebecers.
The practice of modernizing China gives a large number of stark examples of using symbolic resources. As well, the public policy of every region of the country appeals to traditional and historical cultural establishment. The provincial elites have an arsenal of hundreds of historical, natural, ethnic, architectural, and religious monuments and attractions, as well as other symbols [19, p. 34]. The symbolic strategies of Chinese regions begin with the promotion of images that symbolically position a region and every large city. For instance, Shanghai is a bulwark of trade and industry; Xi’an is the “ancient capital of the Chinese government”; Guangzhou is the face of modern China; Suzhou is the “Chinese Venice”; etc.
To conduct any transformations in China, is characteristic of the authorities to appeal to cultural traditions and the historical memory of the population. Even the project “Updating the Toilet” of 2004–2006 [19, p. 52] conducted by the authorities of several provinces and rural regions was based on a countrywide unified symbolic strategy. In the regions, 200 mln rural latrines that had been used by nearly 1 bln peasants were replaced. The weighted argument in favor of changes was the following formula: “Even in the toilet Mao Tse Tung continued to labor for the good of the people.” There are quite real historical facts behind this phrase: in his personal toilet, the leader had a small library of ancient Chinese treatises and classic works on Marxism–Leninism, as well as a special collapsible writing desk for taking down important ideas.
An organic form of modernization can be less successful than controlled forms. This variety of modernization primarily relies on the evolving social and cultural capital of society—practices of mutual aid and structures of trust, various forms of unifying people, increasing educational qualifications, cultural norms, values, institutions, etc.
In the theory of neomodernism, is commonly believed that at a certain phase of the organic transformation of society, the elites begin to detect and direct sociocultural changes, fluidly channeling them for greater control. As an example of organic modernization, we can consider the changes that occurred in Taiwan in the mid20th century. Even under the authoritarian rule of Chiang Kaishek, precisely on an island to a greater extent than on the continent, such traditional elements of the social capital of the Chinese as trust, work ethic, and encouragement of education, were retained and developed [24, p. 154–155]. In the years of Chiang Chingkuo’s rule (1975–1988), who replaced his father as head of state, the social and cultural capital manifested itself to the fullest. At this time, the strategy of symbolic reliance on Chinese traditions formed. One of Taiwan’s main symbolic resources was the affirmation that precisely it was the authentic guardian of Chinese national traditions that had not been mutilated by totalitarianism.
GOALS, PRINCIPLES, AND THE EFFICIENCY OF SYMBOLIC MANAGEMENT IN REGIONAL POLICY The main guidelines of symbolic management theories are closely related to the internal sociopolitical goals of territories. For instance, it is commonly accepted that the brand of a region “plays the role of an instrument for increasing the vital motivation of regional inhabitants” [2, p. 116] and that the aim of the strategies is to create recognizability, prestige, and prosperity of the territory [27, p. 2]; therefore, the population of the region should obtain advantages from transformations. These goals are the nucleus of symbolic management philosophy and foster the realization of symbolic programs in regional policy. They serve as an indicator making it possible to differentiate effective strategies from knowingly doomed imitations of symbolic policy, or opportunistically and haphazardly applied fragments of it. As a rule, it is not enough to initiate several flamboyant myths and slogans into the social environment: they are quickly forgotten and hardly have any effect on the success of social programs. In regional policy, it is necessary to rely on integral symbolic programs that are well integrated into the strategy of regional policy. Without this, the majority of symbolic tools exert no effect on mass consciousness and they lose their meaning. It is impossible for spotty and haphazard actions to prosper in a territory. Another important principle of creating a symbolic system is the requirement of intelligibility and seamlessness of symbols for the cultural environment and historical context (of the city or region) in which they are introduced.
To illustrate the different effectiveness of integral symbolic programs and incomplete versions of symbolic management, we consider practices of implementing public art in Perm and in the Scottish city of Dundee.
In May 2010 Perm began the public art program PERMM. Its specific feature was that it was the first of such programs in Russia implemented with the support of the regional administration. The goal of the project was to integrate modern art into the urban environment. “Invited domestic and foreign sculptors, artists, and video artists are creating on the streets of Perm unique works of modern art. The main feature of Perm’s public art is the temporal character of the objects” [5]. In 2010, more than ten different projects were implemented. And what was their effect on the audience?
Public art is intended to arouse the attention of passersby and stimulate interest in public places. In Perm, this interest manifested itself in a specific way. A red letter “П” (P) was covered with the words “Полный П” (Total F***-Up) and “безвкусица” (lack of taste). The “little red people” on the Organ Concert Hall were upturned and their legs cut off. A grandiose presentation of illuminated graffiti did not take place due to poor organization: at the show, thousands of Perm citizens gathered; however, the square was not closed to traffic and the city lights were shining. “‘Little Walking People’ — photographs of green WALK signals from 77 cities of the world on a black banner 130 m long and 2.5 m high — were hung on a concrete barrier at the Northern Dam. Not even a day had gone by when anonymous people cut away part of the tapestry” [13]. We are talking not only about vandalism, but a complete lack of understanding of the goals of this artistic act on the part of the audience. It was not part of a wider concept — a symbolic strategy of urban or region development. The insufficient elaboration of the basis of the idea and the lack of clarity in implementing the program resulted in insult to the initiators of this, in essence, rather nice idea.
Symbolic management of the Scottish city of Dundee, in contrast, represented a widely formulated policy in which public art receptions were applied not as an independent cultural project, but as a deeply utilitarian and technological keystone. Dundee is Scotland’s fourth largest city: since the beginning of the 1980s, it has been subjected to an entire range of targeted reorganization to combat the drop in production, population drain, exacerbation of social problems, and housing dilapidation [31, p. 519].
The main idea constituting the basis of the new symbolic strategy for the city as a whole and the city’s identity, in particular, was expressed by the following formula: “Dundee—The City of discovery.” In a work devoted to Dundee’s history, Ogilvie writes that “it has always been a city of ideas. Inspiration, Imagination, and Innovation are the three I’s that characterize the past and present of the city” [32, p. 13]. It proved possible to create a favorable relationship based on the presentation of various discoveries made in the city. The city’s identity was “fortified” in museums, across the urban landscape, and via special marketing actions. Achievements in the most varying areas filled up the list: radar technologies, minimum-invasive surgery, computer games, and digital multimedia. This also included the invention of selfadhesive postage stamps and fine educational traditions.
The return to the city of the HMS Discovery, constructed in Dundee for Scott’s first expedition to Antarctica, played a major role in constructing the city’s identity, brand, and physical iconography [31, p. 521]. Constantly afloat at the city’s shore, it became the chief symbol of Dundee, its maritime history, and its inclination to searching for new things. The design of the surrounding urban space was also subordinated to the idea, just like the public art program. And in this aspect, the program left its mark on the external appearance of the streets: benches, urns, sidewalk (works of public art were set up on the road surface), building architecture — all of this was subordinate to a unified design, a common idea. In 1993, a large-scale public art object was built next to the ship: Discovery Point [31, p. 521], a special place for a permanent exhibition dedicated to the history of the vessel and the maritime adventures of inhabitants, and as a tourist and conference center. Other design initiatives celebrated the successes of city journalism. The local publisher DC Thomson is considered a pioneer of the worldwide industry of children’s comics. In Dundee’s city center, statues of the heroes in the stories have been erected on streets and in squares [17, p. 521]. Public art has brilliantly managed its task in modernizing this Scottish city. This program was included in the larger symbolic strategy of developing the territory, and thanks to the indepth elaboration of the idea and organization of the entire symbolic campaign, the public art projects were successfully implemented and took root on the city’s streets.
CONTROLLED MODERNIZATION AND SYMBOLIC CAPITAL OF RUSSIAN REGIONAL ELITES The Russian practice of regional and urban policy at present demonstrates the extremely scant experience in implementing integral symbolic programs. And even in cases when such programs have been carried out, they have rarely earned the elites sociopolitical “profit” valuable for the intrapolitical goals of a region. Although, some of these programs have been evaluated by experts as integral and successful in an artistic aspect or from the position of attracting tourists. Probably, these symbolic strategies would have also been unable to internally facilitate consolidation processes, since the majority of them were initially targeted primarily at attracting tourists to the cities and regions. Images of these territories became well-known tourist brands. First of all, among such brands it is possible to mention the cities of Russia’s Golden Ring — Vladimir, Yaroslavl, Suzdal, Uglich, Pereslavl-Zalessky — as well as Kazan and Sochi. In recent years new tourist-attraction centers have been added to these, e.g., Elista and Koz’modem”yansk. The images of these cities represent powerful symbolic capital; however it is difficult to say at present how it influences the self-consciousness of territorial communities, since studies on this topic have not been conducted. So, Yaroslavl’s symbolic program has made it possible to attract additional state funding for the building of cathedrals and objects for public use, as well as for placement of emergency housing. The signs of modernization of the city are distinct and evident, but attempts to link tourist brands, e.g., with the level of support of the local administration without special data would only be speculative constructions.
Developing and implementing programs have the added difficulty of regions not having the powerful resource of historical memory, since a large part of Russian history has been concentrated in the two main cities. Many territories have their own local heroes and commemorative events, but they are frequently regarded as an ordinary part of life and it is impossible to arouse the necessary level of interest (the abovementioned cities are an exception — they are historical and cultural brands for Russia). In such cases, sometimes historical and literal fabrications constitute the basis of symbolic programs. A strategy of changing the city of Koz’modem”yansk in the Republic of Marii El under a novel symbolic idea was carried out on a larger scale than in Perm [36]. Koz’modem”yansk’s symbolic program was based on a fabrication that allegedly it had become the prototype of the legendary Vasyuks — a city from Ilf and Petrov’s novel The Twelve Chairs. The entire urban landscape was constructed in accordance with this creative idea. At every step, tourists encounter chess symbolism, since the facades of houses are designed in the form of chessboards. There are multiple and multifarious plays on quotable expressions and idioms from this work that nearly every adult Russian knows both from the book and from several popular film versions of it. It is precisely expected that domestic Russian tourists will understand the sign on the restaurant “Kisa and Osya were here,” and that it will be a complete mystery to foreigners. Regular stores have also been included in the overall design: tourists make purchases in a shopping center decorated with signs with the names of characters from the novel — Father Fyodor and Madam Gritsatsueva — and food products in the store are obtained under the sign “Beer is sold only to trade union members” [36, p. 248]. This is a famous line from the novel.
The methods of promoting this strategy impressed citizens, and its idea was easily adopted by the urban community, despite the fact that Koz’modem”yansk could not be a prototype of Vasyuks, since it was already mentioned in the novel along with Vasyuks and in a completely different aspect. However, these inconsistencies mean little, since the symbolic windfall fostered growth in the informational attractiveness of the city, an increase in tourists, and correspondingly, augmentation of the city’s budget.
The heroes and motifs of The Twelve Chairs are very popular in Russia and unsurprisingly they have been utilized for symbolic management goals in other regions. In 1996, in Elista, the capital of Kalmykiya, a sculptural composition was set up that was devoted to Ostap Bender, the main character of the novel. This composition re-created a well-known episode from the work, a session of simultaneous chess play on the bank of that same legendary city of Vasyuks. In 1998, at the initiative of the president of Kalmykiya, who was also simultaneously the president of the World Chess Federation (FIDE), K. Ilyumzhinov, a complex was opened in which the City Chess tournaments are conducted, which was given the name New Vasyuks [10]. This complex became the symbol of the city, along with Buddhist cult monuments, perhaps to a larger extent than authentic historical structures.
The symbolic campaigns of Koz’modem”yansk and Elista in terms of implementation principles and their effectiveness are close to the standards of integrity. However, they also work on the outside consumer. Their results, the evolving brands of these cities, are successful tourist bait, to a larger extent than internally consolidated images. The strategy of using symbolic management to solve the internal tasks of a region, the consolidation of its population, in our opinion, has only been used once in post-Soviet Russia in Novogorod oblast.
In the years when M. Prusak was governor (1991– 2007), this blast became atypically successful in terms of economic growth and in the movement toward establishing institutions of a civil society, especially in comparison to neighboring oblasts of Russia’s North-west Federal District.
In our opinion, one of the prerequisites for successful modernization of the region was the decision of its elite to rely on a whole complex of interrelated symbolic resources. Primarily, the myth of “the progressiveness of medieval Novgorod” was revived. This served well to legitimize reform. In systematic ways emphasizing the heritage of Great Novgorod — the center of medieval trade and the cradle of Russian democracy — local elites presented reforms as a return to the values of Russia’s past and not something imposed from without [27, p. 10]. The initiative of applying symbolic management in Novgorod was a primarily spontaneous but effective step. In appealing to the policy of symbolic construction of regional identity, the regional administration as a consequence reproduced this logic in a whole series of other decisions. Thus evolved a peculiar style of administration, in which symbolism played an important role.
The marketing of symbolic production on the foreign market has been subordinated to the logic of presenting a territory as a growth point in Russia and therefore requiring attention and resources from without. In 1994, the regional administration began an active policy of attracting investment, primarily foreign, and already after two years was prospering in this. If on average over Russia direct foreign investment in 1995–1999 was almost 5%, then Novgorod oblast had up to half of it [7, p. 10–11]. Owing to a series of economic reforms and the establishment of a favorable investment climate, the region quickly became one of the leaders of the Russian economy. In a number of indices, Novgorod oblast overtook even the most developed Russian Federation subjects [6, p. 98]. It is unsurprising that as far back as 1997–1998, the mass media presented the region only in a positive light. As well, foreign publications presented the region as an example for other Russian regions and mention of it was frequently accompanied by the following headlines: “The Novgorod Model,” “Russian Success Story,” “Westernization of a Russian Province,” etc. It was to Novgorod oblast that Western foundations issued financial grants for implementing sociocultural development projects, more than the majority of other Russian Federation subjects [6, p. 100].
In the symbolic management designed for use within the region, the Novgorod administration accentuated the themes of the region’s glorious history and culture in any way it could [30, p. 46], and this rhetoric met well with voters. The culminating moment reinforcing the successes of symbolic management in constructing territorial identity was the renaming of the region’s capital to Great Novgorod in 1998.
The traditions of the veche (communal council), one of the symbolic elements of the new regional policy, were embodied in the development of territorial public self-rule and explosive growth in the number of social organizations. In the number of civil associations and nongovernmental organizations in the years when M. Prusak was governor, Novgorod oblast was considered one of Russia’s most “democratic” and was included in the top fourth in this index [27, p. 10–11]. According to the recollections of N. Petro, the number of civil organizations per capita in this region nearly coincided with analogous indices for the most “civil” regions of northern Italy [28, p. 243–244]. In truth, many researchers have noted the imitative character of this process, which was extrinsically accepted as the establishment of civil society in Novgorod oblast. So, organizations included in the governor’s Civic Chamber had in fact little influence on the decision-making process and had to approve documents that were coordinated without their participation. In local self-administration, much of that which to onlookers seemed like free and voluntary self-organization of citizens was in fact a well-camouflaged form of dependence on regional authorities. The interaction of the regional and business administration was constructed based on patron–client relations [6, p. 101]. All of these arguments are not without basis. Along with this, the emergence and growth of the number of civil organizations and the political course for their encouragement and retention cannot be ignored. If many of these organizations cannot be fully called institutions of civil society, then it is quite possible to define them as prerequisites for such a transformation, which were established in Novgorod oblast as a result of modernization with the use of symbolic management. It is difficult to deny that the goal of rallying the local community as a basic prerequisite for conducting reforms was achieved. The political course of the regional elite enjoyed mass support. M. Prusak remained a popular figure even after he left office in 2007. In the hands of the elite, symbolic constructs have become a powerful method and conduit for carrying out political and economic designs.
LIMITED FORM OF MODERNIZATION AND SYMBOLIC STRUCTURING OF A REGIONAL SPACE In the 1960s–1970s, Italy underwent a very noticeable sociopolitical transformation, which some experts even call a revolution. In the first postwar decades, the country was shaken by outrages and criminality in the bureaucracy at unheard of scales; an atmosphere of decay, lawlessness, and lack of trust reigned. “The police were considered the largest criminal gang, only it was shielded by the power of law. People tried to avoid the police and to not fall in the clutches of bureaucrats; they ducked army service, paying taxes, and frequently from being in the country itself” [22, p. 196]. The south of Italy at that time was everywhere glorified as the region where the Mafia held power. Francis Fukuyama relates a story of its behavioral code in the recollections of a retired mafioso. Once, during childhood, his gangster father set him on a tall fence and told him to jump down, promising to catch him. After much cajoling, the child leaped and smashed his face. “And the lesson that is father intended to impart to him was generalized in the following words: ‘You have to learn that you can’t trust even your own parents.” [9].
If we are talking about the role of elites, then the ruling movement toward rallying citizens and revitalization of the economy began with the regional reforms of the 1970s. Their initiators were mainly the representatives of central authority, primarily targeting the widening of regional autonomy in the financial aspect, as well as in the sphere of affirming the charter and legislative programs. Political, legal, and economic conditions were created so that new leaders emerging at the local level could go through regional parliaments and remain separate, even with a different share of success, from prior local and regional-capital patrons. In addition, regional inhabitants felt that they could influence the future of the region’s existence: the procedures for appealing to state organs and elected officials became even more rapid and transparent, similar initiatives themselves became more effective, and as a whole, regional policy began to take on a civil- societally oriented perspective. This particularly concerned the regions of northern Italy.
Reforms augmented and deepened the process, which had begun a decade earlier, of unifying small and medium-sized manufacturers of central and southern Italy into regional districts. At first, such unifications were only a way of combating expansion of the large northern capitals and protecting against corrupt state bureaucrats. However, caught up in transformations, these measures led to the fact that nowadays “two hundred industrial districts, in which less than One-fourth of Italy’s population resides and where a little more than onetenth of all employed people work, yields 46% of national export” [22, p. 198]. At the local level, the overflowing activity of the population spilled over into wide civil participation in the political life of regions and the country as a whole, putting an end to the rule of the corrupt “party of power,” the PDC.
New regional elites have begun to rush to symbolic management tools in order to reinforce the practice, which has arisen spontaneously, of formatting the local community. Traditions and manufacturer brands have been hugely significant in creating regional identities. “One of the typical institutions structurizing industrial districts [of southern and central Italy] is museums, that is, places that concentrate historical memory about a given place with its specific trades: the Shoe Museum in the Marche region, the Mountain Footwear Museum in Montebelluna, the Wool Academy in Biella, etc. The collective brands of an industrial district play a similar and no less important role: parmesan cheese from Reggio Emilia, Prato fabrics, San Daniele prosciutto, etc.” [22, p. 198]. Each of these brands has not only personified the quality of regional production and the corresponding regional identities, but has also been a symbol of the success of the territory and a reminder that it has become a reality thanks to the people themselves.
The history of the transformation of Italy’s regions demonstrate that symbolic capital without very deep historical roots, consequently reinforced by the regional elite, can prove a no less effective resource than the organic model of modernization and in cases of organic forms and their completely controlled analogs based on attribution of longstanding ways of life, symbols, and myths. In addition, management of “new” symbols in the formulas of regional identities can compensate the lack of stable traditions of civicism that more easily beget modernization initiatives, noticeably accelerating the transformation of communal culture toward larger consolidation.
FEATURES OF SYMBOLIC MANAGEMENT STRATEGIES INFLUENCING THEIR SELECTION AND APPLICATION The modernization history of various world regions demonstrates the high effectiveness of symbolic policy. However, in developing symbolic systems, it is necessary to take into account that the possibilities of applying these strategies are conditioned by certain factors, and their influence can both contribute and hinder. These factors are divided into external — characteristics pertaining to subjects of symbolic management — and internal — features pertaining to the programs themselves. V. Gel’man refers ethnicity, economic and geographic situation, the size of a region and the level of its urbanization, the characteristics of regional elites, and mass political behavior to the first group [6, pp. 96–98]. A sufficiently detailed explanation of this topic is also encountered in territorialbranding and place-marketing literature [23, 1].
The boundaries of the effective use of symbolic management are related to a number of internal features of this technology. So, the elites are prepared to a high degree to use these technologies to manipulate public opinion. In addition to this, enthusiasm for these approaches has limits. The outer makeover frequently cannot conceal unattractive features out the reality, since regional inhabitants — the internal audience — are sufficiently wellinformed of the state of affairs in their native area and are primarily inclined to criticize the image of the region that the elite is encouraging. That which may be accepted as pure coin by the external consumer is rejected by the local audience. In addition, new images can contradict the cultural traditions of a given population and the established stereotypes in a certain cultural environment.
An important feature of symbolic programs is the number and variability of combinations of elements differing in meaning but structured in one symbolic system cannot be unlimited and their contents arbitrary. Variations are placed in a rigid framework via the preferences of local communities, which determine the set of alternatives and the allowable degree of the transformation of images and symbols connected with their regional home. In practice, concurrence of mismatched notions and interests of various groups recalls an attempt to compose a unified picture from colorful parts of different mosaics. There can be a dividing line, for instance, between the positions of the local minister of culture and the opinion of a regional political leader (and whatever groups of the population that support them in these biases). The former wants to acquire authentic pastoral landscapes and restore the coloring of buildings distinguishing the cultural heritage of the territory, and the latter wants to foster ambitious plans for transforming the territory into a modern zone of business activity for large-scale industrial enterprises. Certain researchers in this case even recommend detailed segmentation of the internal audience of the region in order to, as a consequence, simultaneously highlight and promote several versions of the given symbolic systems [34, p. 89].
Such a division of opinion occurred in Romania after the fall of the Communist Bloc, and it was linked to a different evaluation and different approaches to using the image of the vampire Count Dracula. During the Ceausescu regime, there was a ban on publishing and translating Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula, as well as other works touching upon this theme. The authorities maintain that the vampire saga would create within the country a negative image for Transylvanian peasants, the inhabitants of the territory whence this legend appeared. The majority of Romanians recognized only at the beginning of the 1990s the attractiveness that the myth of Dracula held for people of other countries. Since then until 1995, this image became the subject of sufficiently heated discussions between politicians who wanted to use this image in order to develop Transylvania [13]. The then Minister of tourism Dan Matei in agreement with local political and economic players wanted to attract attention to the region precisely with the stark image of this famous personage in order to then revitalize the weak interest in Black Sea coastal and Danube Delta resorts, which by that time were all but dead. He said: “If tourists want to see hands coming out of coffins, we will set this up for them” [13, p. 274]. However, this idea also encountered strong resistance. The fact of the matter is that Vlad Tepe was the prototype for Count Dracula: a Romanian national hero, he is respected as a defender of the Orthodox faith and the organizer of Romania’s defense against the Turks in the 15th century; therefore the idea of displacing his legendary evil with the image of the vampire was not palatable to many inhabitants. Finally, the disparity of opinions was leveled by a compromise strategy. National and regional authorities decided in such a key issue to form up a territory and conduct conferences and tours so that they demonstrated the difference between the mythical image of Count Dracula and the historical facts from the life of the real Transylvanian ruler. In one way or another, after several years, Romania’s tourism sector became the most profitable direction in the country’s economy.
Even more dramatic contradictions between groups arose in the symbolic policy conducted in Suzdal. For already several decades, a brand has successfully been promoted here: the city of national antiquity, a city museum, and territorial preserve [36, p. 253]. Federal resources and local efforts were invested so that everything there remained unchanged. However, in 2005, the city mayor announced the intention to put up two new monuments (one to the WWII hero A.A. Lebedev, and second to Suzdal’s gardeners and planters) among the monuments of long-standing Russian architecture. Deputies of the local council and the head of the territorial preserve museum regarded such steps as a threat to the image of the city that had evolved [19]. A large body of citizens met the mayor’s initiative with protest marches. Despite all this, the head of Suzdal used his power and energy to unveil the monuments, but it cost the mayor his post. After only a few months, deputies ousted him, making use of the new legal norms on self-government [19].
Thus, it is by far not always successful to achieve a compromise in determining a symbolic management strategy, and even rarer does such a strategy become a source for consolidating territorial communities. It is even more interesting to analyze examples of such consolidation that manifested themselves in the course of regional and city policy in many world capitals, but which are still extremely rare in Russia.
* * * Analysis of the features of symbolic management programs and basic ideas of their philosophy in this paper primarily resulted from an attempt to demonstrate the rich possibilities of this technology from the viewpoint of an internally consolidated approach, which at present are weakly used in regional policy, especially in Russia. The symbolic construction that accompanied the political course of the Novgorod oblast administration (1991–2007) is a unique phenomenon for Russia, which it has not, in its space, reproduced in a similar key and scale. Meanwhile, there are grounds to suppose that the outlooks for subsequent and scientifically substantiated implementation of such a policy in other Russian regions and cities appear quite optimistic if they are included in programs of complex territorial modernization. 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