Brand States: Postmodern Power, Democratic Pluralism, and Design by Metahaven

8/7/2019 Brand States: Postmodern Power, Democratic Pluralism, and Design by Metahaven

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Metahaven

Brand States:Postmodern

Power,DemocraticPluralism, andDesign

In the New EuropeA rainy autumn day in Tallinn at 10 am. Betweentwenty and thirty experts convene in a tinyclassroom. Their meeting is about the nationalbrand of Estonia. A former Soviet Republic,independent since 1991 and now a member ofthe European Union and NATO, Estonia sitsbetween Scandinavia and Russia, and it is onlypartially happy to be doing so. Almost everyone

in the room thinks that Estonia doesnt say theright things about itself to the world. No one likesEstonias current national brand and itstrademark, Welcome to Estonia. Allegedly, anIrish proxy for the Interbrand corporationcreated it and ran away with an excessiveamount of money. An official in charge moansthat Estonian citizens should be programmed tosay better things about their country wheninterviewed by foreign travelers (Estonian humortends to be self-deprecating). Someone suggeststhat Estonia may not be a place where many

things started, but it is the place where a lot ofthings came to an end. Everyone laughs.Estonian promotion mainly leads to Tallinn,the capital. But what about the countrysunspoiled countryside? Estonia has inheritedheavy industry and massive shipyards, but whatabout its emerging IT sector? The currentpresident considers Estonia a Nordic countryalong with Finland and Sweden, but the countrydoesnt boast anything close to a social-democratic Scandinavian welfare state. Forgeographers, Estonia is part of a belt of formerSoviet states stretching all the way toMurmansk, many of which are little known tointernational audiences. For the British, Tallinn isa target destination for stag parties, thanks toEasyJets direct flights from London Stansted;no-holds-barred drinking and misbehaving onthe safe ground of foreign soil. For the Russians,Estonia is contested ground. With a renewedfaith in the politics of Russian empire, manyRussians living in Estonia refuse to speak orlearn Estonian, clanning together while dreamingof an Anschluss. Estonia is the birthplace of thecomposer Arvo Prt. Andrej Tarkovskys seminal

movie Stalkerwas shot in a derelict Tallinnwarehouse. And the massively popular Internetphone and text messaging application Skype isfrom Estonia.The discussion began with a logo, Welcometo Estonia, which nobody found attractive orinspiring. Soon however it was no longer aboutthat but about the way Estonian citizens shouldbehave on the streets. The person in charge ofthe logo made no secret of her ambition tochange that behavior if she could.Consequently, our meeting was open to the

public. That alone, however, didnt make itdemocratic. We had all been invited because of

e-fluxjournal#1december2008Metahaven

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tmodernPower,DemocraticPluralism,andDesign

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Estonian presentation at a tourist fair in Helsinki in 2004. The backdrop has the current national brand, Welcome to Estonia.

our proximity to the issue of nation branding andnot because of our capacity to represent theEstonian people. We were part of a network ofexperts.In recent years, branding has come to beconsidered as appertaining to a much widerarena than one of commercial trademark alone.This has made it both easier and more difficult todiscredit branding. While it is easier to condemn

it for its hegemonic role across the spectrum, itbecomes harder to pinpoint exactly what thathegemony implies. Beyond the commercial logo,the place brand signifying a nation, region, orcity is a trademark for a place. Branding, in thissituation, is both less autonomous and moreelusive in its role and position.A place brand is essentially little more thana first impression. It is the first two, threethoughts people have when they think about aplace. To change these assumptions in a morefavorable direction may require a stylish (or

terrible) logo, but it may also consist of morefundamental policy shifts which affect the livesof people: defining the most realistic, mostcompetitive and most compelling strategic visionfor a country, region or city; this vision then hasto be fulfilled and communicated, as the place-branding expert Simon Anholt describes it.1

What makes place branding slippery in terms ofits politics is that it increasingly stands as both avisual practice and a modality of governance.In this article we will examine two politicalconcepts that currently inform place branding,focusing on nation states. Soft power, the firstof these two, is already widely identified withbranding. Network power, the second, is not yetfully considered as such. We will argue that in its

current stage, state branding has not yet seencritical, alternative, or counter-hegemonicapproaches. We will conclude that therecognition of network power as a form ofstructural coercion provides the best startingposition for the development of such alternativeapproaches to state branding.

Soft Power and State BrandingIt is a widely accepted idea that place brandingdraws on attraction and legitimacy in atransnational network of relations. What is

employed is a genuine form of power called softpower the ability to obtain the outcomes youwant by attracting others. Joseph Nye, whocoined the term, says that, power today is lesstangible and less coercive among the advanceddemocracies than it was in the past. At the sametime, much of the world does not consist of

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Metahaven, Eurololly, poster, 2008This poster puts the French EU presidency slogan LEurope Qui Protge into question by means of an alternative: LEuropeQui Protge de Quoi?Courtesy the artists and CAPC muse dart contemporain de Bordeaux.

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advanced democracies, and that limits the globaltransformation of power.2

Not surprisingly, soft power blossomedafter the end of the Cold War. It specificallyworked for the United States during the Clintonadministration, across the spectrum of politicalideas, cultural products and commercial brands,as well as in the field of diplomacy. For example,someone like Richard Holbrooke was able to put

international conflicts to an end in volatile andplayful ways, replacing Henry Kissingers ColdWar-style chess with what Holbrooke calledjazz. In subsuming cultural factors, soft poweris understood to have included the Hollywoodfilm industry as well as commercial brands likeCoca-Cola and Nike in its overall objective ofgaining influence and legitimacy.Soft powers single most important asset isits allegedly non-coercive nature, the capacity toreach desirable outcomes without involvingforce, threat, or payment. Political theorists such

as Chantal Mouffe would have problems withsuch a claim, on the grounds that there can be nopolitical order that does not exclude alternatives,and indeed soft power is strongly premised onthe American possession of military andeconomic hegemony and thus on a form ofstructural coercion. Of course, the idea of

structural coercion is more recognized in thetheory of network power, which we will explore ata later stage.3

Peter van Ham asserts that likecommercial brands, we talk about a statespersonality, describing it as friendly (i.e.,Western-oriented) and credible (ally), or, incontrast, as unreliable (rogue state).4 VanHams idea of a successful and attractive

corporate brand personality consists in anexplicit attraction to the West (the U.S. and itsEuropean allies). He classifies soft power andstate branding under the wider umbrella ofpostmodern power, which exercises power(generally considered to be the ability to alter thebehavior of others to get what you want) withoutusing coercion and/or payments.5 Van Hams2001 essay The Rise of the Brand State,published in Foreign Affairs, opened up the fieldof political science to the topic of state branding(subsequently, Van Ham became involved in a

project to create a national brand for TheNetherlands). At the same time, his articlehaving been written prior to the September 11attacks prior also to what is perceived as aglobal decline in American hegemony giving wayto the end of the post-Cold War unipolar model some of the most elementary assumptions may

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Metahaven, Structural Hole, poster, 2008Visual research into the structural properties of networks and the political role of weak ties and peripheries.Courtesy the artists and CAPC muse dart contemporain de Bordeaux.

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need to be reexamined in light of an emerginggeopolitical situation.Van Hams extensive article on the topic,entitled Place Branding: The State of the Art,examines three case studies: the EuropeanUnion, the United States, and Kazakhstan. VanHams most substantial departure from his initialideas concerns the EU, which he now suggestsshould promote itself more assertively as a

security brand capable of wielding militarypower.6 Secondly, he states that the U.S. needsto rebuild its soft power resources. For theUnited States, it has proven difficult to branditself as a force for good and democracy, withstories about torture and human rights abuses inAbu Ghraib and Guantnamo hitting theheadlines of newspapers all over the world.7

Here we are reminded of Joseph Nyes ownreapplication of the soft power concept duringthe Bush administration.Van Hams third example is Kazakhstan.

Being unknown and unbranded makes a statevulnerable to negative branding and imagehijacks by third parties. This happened toKazakhstan with the release of the film Borat:Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit

Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan.8 Borat, played bycomedian Sacha Baron Cohen, makes use of thefact that global audiences are unaware of whatthe former Soviet republic of Kazakhstan lookslike. The film reshapes Kazakhstans image intothat of a grotesque backwater inhabited byvillage idiots, interpersed with Soviet-erafootage of agriculture and heavy industries. VanHams analysis concentrates on thecontroversies following its release. The Kazakhgovernment felt obliged to hire public relationsfirms, running advertisements in majorinternational newspapers and on television, totell the world what it really was a fiction of anentirely different kind, of course. Van Hamconcludes that Cohen could have easily made afool of other unknown countries (likeTurkmenistan and Uzbekistan), pointing up thefact for all unbranded countries the risk of notbeing in charge of their image and reputation and

the inability for a country to be in full control ofones own brand.9

Negative Brand Value and PeripheriesAs much as Borat was fictitious, everythingabout it produced real effects. Sacha BaronCohen recorded the greater part of theKazakhstan scenes in a remote Romanianvillage.10 It is sometimes claimed that Boratconfronts Western audiences with their owndeeply held prejudices about foreign places andpeoples. But much of Borat is itself

representative of this attitude. The new nationsthat emerged after the collapse of the Soviet

Union continue to inspire mockery on the part ofthe West, interrupted occasionally bydeclarations of intent to help these nations moveforward.In 1999 the British branding expert WallyOlins wrote in a book chapter called Putting theunknown nation on the map : How many people apart from real specialists can tell the fiveformer Soviet Central Asian stans apart? In

reality, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzystan, Turkmenistan,Kazakhstan, and Tajikistan are very different.Some large, some small, some have hugeresources, others dont, some are old-stylecommunist dictatorships, others are evolving in amore or less democratic direction and, of course,they all dislike each other. But theyve got a realproblem in establishing who and what they are ina world increasingly cluttered with newnations.11

At present, the negative brand value ofmany of these entities, some of which have split

up into breakaway regions, is expressed by termslike quasi states, pseudo-states, and hollowstates. The geographers Vladimir Kolossov andJohn OLoughlin identify pseudo-states by theirpartial governance, possessing transitional orincomplete statehood.12 Francis Fukuyamaspeaks about weak states, in whose poorlygoverned regions terrorism and anti-Westernpractices flourish.13 But for Wally Olins, the issueis invariably a simple one: emerging nations allhave problems with their brand, as no one reallyknows or cares what they are. In 2006, whenOlins was asked which would be his favoritenation to brand, the same ambiguity that hadpreviously befallen the former Soviet stansnow applied to new EU countries. Olins repliedthat he would like to brand almost any CentralEuropean country. Who the hell knows thedifference between Slovenia and Slovakia?14

When we asked Simon Anholt to respond tothis quote, he wrote that, Olins was trying toemphasize the indifference that most people feelabout most countries, especially smaller and notvery famous ones. I dont think he was expressinghis own views. Anholt continued, he was

parodying public opinion.15 However, it is thisalleged indifference of public opinion,combined with offhand jokes about countriesnames and their marginality, that keeps theengine of revenue running for some of the worldsbranding agencies. Branding experts andmarketing gurus may have a vested interest intelling peripheral and unbranded countries howhopelessly obsolete they appear without a statebrand of their own, but the threat to anunbranded state is a serious decline in visibility,legitimacy and social capital. However positive

and friendly the idea of state branding maysound, it seems that there is a structurally


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Belgian-Dutch governmentpress conference in Brussels

about ill-fated banking firmFortis taking place underBelgians .be national brand anddomain suffix, 28 September2008. Photo: REUTERS

Romano Prodi and Francesco Rutelli presenting Italys new national brand, It, on 21 February 2007. See also Social Design Zine.

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coercive force in the background, leaving theunbranded nation no choice but to join thebrandwagon, as Van Ham calls it.

Network Power and State BrandingStates which have acquired a large amount ofsocial capital in the form of positive ties withinnetworks of other states, non-governmentalorganizations, corporations, and other actors are

more likely to be seen as legitimate andauthoritative than those operating on their own,without many friends. In order to fully grasp theconsequences of such a condition, we need tounderstand state branding in the context ofglobalization and look beyond soft power. Weneed to approach state branding, as it were, notfrom the position of the former sovereign rulerbut from the vantage point of the networks thatdecide the standards of sociability. In theprocess of globalization, networks become socialstructures that tie parts of the world together,

independent of sovereign borders and evenindependent of international relations. Whileindeed, sovereign coercion may have become athing of the past in this new situation, there maybe structural coercion involved through thestandards which networks adopt. According toDavid Grewal, network power is a dynamic thatcenters around certain standards (conventionsaccepted and used by many), and potentiallyleading to the progressive elimination ofalternatives over which otherwise free choicecan effectively be exercised.16 While networkscross sovereign power divisions, the paradox isthat network power is granted by a popular vote,expressed by the voluntary subscription to anetwork standard. This vote however acts likethe value of capital under an interest rate. Manysubscriptions generate more capital. Theygradually, but steadily, suppress the viability ofalternatives, as these progressively lose theirbenefits.Grewal offers a compelling analysis of thesepower structures. While Van Ham mentionsthinkers like Michel Foucault and AntonioGramsci as part of a constructivist view of

power,17 Grewal asserts that both theorists sharea view of power that is heterodox: it is notexerted top-down but instead works throughthe structure of social relations. These theoriescan, however, have trouble locating orarticulating the role of agency in socialstructuration.18 For what concerns Grewal is thereal freedom of choice made under networkpower. He argues that, under network power,formally free choices ultimately become forcedchoices made without authoritative commandbeing needed:

Two features are relevant for theconsideration of choice in situations ofnetwork power. First, the consequences ofan individuals choice are determined incoordination with the expectations ofothers who face similar, interdependentchoices. Second, since network powergrows through the operation of choice, asindividuals must choose to join networks, it

must always involve consent of a formalkind, at least. I ignore here cases in whichnetworks move to ascendancy through theforced conversion of outsiders because themore interesting case is not when directforce brings about conformity to adominant standard, but when thestructural condition of formally free,interdependent choice drive communitiesto that point.... The concept of networkpower reveals complexities in theconnection between the idea of consent

and the idea of freedom. Beyond what Iearlier called the threshold of inevitability,a standard is pushed toward universality,and its network becomes poised to mergewith the population itself. It is pushed bythe activity of people evaluatingconsequences and, ultimately, choosing toadopt a dominant standard because of theaccess it allows them to forms ofcooperation with others.19

Soft power, according to Joseph Nye, is theability to get the outcomes you want withouthaving to force people to change their behaviorthrough threats or payments.20 Whatcomplicates this premise is that a paymentcould be made in the currency of social capitalrather than in money, while a threat could bemade by controlling or restricting access tosocial capital rather than through an economicsanction. If for Nye a payment belongs to thecategory of hard power because it is based noton attraction and free subscription but on theissuance of cash to achieve an outcome, forms ofreward and punishment implicit in networks are

still left unconsidered; that is, on occasions or insituations where subscription to a standard wasnecessary rather than voluntary.

Pluralism and Standards in State BrandingMost state brands are designed under the powerof consent, the impact of which we haveattempted to illustrate here with briefexplorations of soft power (which is alreadylinked with place branding) and network power(which comes relatively new to it).State brands signify a communications

standard of sorts they are about the diplomaticand aesthetic requirements of post-sovereign


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and transnational networks identified with theterm globalization. These networks involvevarious forms of temporary and long-termcoalitions between states and non-state actorssuch as NGOs and corporations, as well as flowsof tourism, information, and foreign investment.On the other hand, state brands are also stillfirmly rooted in the idea of promoting distinctplaces on the world map where an otherwise

disorderly and disoriented world21

is kept at bayby rendering distant (and potentiallyunattractive, illegitimate, and scary) places intoreliable, welcoming, and indeed, attractivedestinations.Overlaps between places and informationnetworks are already present in some of thesebrands themselves. States as varied as Belgiumand Italy use their countrys Internet domainname suffix as a national brand. While Belgiumhas more fully embraced its .be suffix as anetworking protocol, Italys .it is still

reminiscent of traditional tourist brands in thevein of Joan Mirs famous 1980s trademark forSpain.22 Scotland is well on its way with .sco,an Internet suffix of its own. The Spanish regionof Catalonia boasts an independent image withits newly acquired suffix .cat . Such aproliferation of sub- and supranational domainsuffixes becoming place brands may indicateincreasing overlaps between the soft power ofattraction and the network power of standards.For Van Ham, establishing a state brand is amatter of supranational competition. Althoughmany places offer the same product territory,infrastructure, educated people, and an almostidentical system of governance they mustcompete with each other for investment,tourism, and political power, often on a globalscale.23 Van Ham suggests that place brands

need to be distinguishable precisely in order tosurpass their structural similarity, which in theglobal marketplace could be regarded as a kindof redundancy. In practice, this idea ofcompetition does not result in a great variety ofapproaches to state branding, but to a stalematesituation of relatively uninspired safe choices.The iconography as well as the ideology of statebranding has become so constrained by

marketing and so identified with promotion that,indeed, many place brands are now becomingdemonstrations of their own incapacityto assessa difference of place with a difference ofapproach.Either this diversity is, in reality, notgenuinely experienced as such (indeed, somebrand experts do seem to identify more with thegeneral publics alleged disinterest than with anyintimate knowledge of distinct geographies) orsuch diversity is genuinely nonexistent andperhaps obsolete (i.e. globalization and its non-

places, spaces of flows, or junkspace arebecoming more and more alike). If the latter isthe case, then a higher degree of supranationalstandardization of nation brands would at leastdo away with the quasi-choice and inequalitiescurrently on offer. A patented state brandingstandard perhaps according to the Internetdomain suffix or to the DIN system would atleast generate a new sense of networkingrationality operating parallel to, for example, therealm of national flags.Another option altogether would be toexplore pluralism in state brands, based on newglobal redistributions of political power, bothsovereign and in networks. Much of the formerunipolar global dominance that informed softpower is now in disarray. This is not to imply thatsoft power is now ineffective, but only that it is

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underwritten less by a single hegemony. Wecould also say that some of the ideas theoristssuch as Foucault and Gramsci had about powerbeing distributed through social relations are tobe increasingly observed in the geopoliticalarena instead of merely in the former privatesphere of social relations.Richard Haass writes that power is nowfound in many hands and in many places, giving

way to a geopolitical spectrum he callsnonpolar :

There are many more power centers, andquite a few of these poles are not nation-states. Indeed, one of the cardinal featuresof the contemporary international system isthat nation-states have lost their monopolyon power and in some domains theirpreeminence as well. States are beingchallenged from above, by regional andglobal organizations; from below, by

militias; and from the side, by a variety ofnongovernmental organizations (NGOs) andcorporations.24

While the unstoppable maelstrom ofglobalization does away with many of the formerassets of sovereign power, Haass speaks of how

difficult and dangerous nonpolarity is.On a different theoretical premise, ChantalMouffe has argued for a multipolar world ageopolitical spectrum seemingly less obsessedwith the flows of power in networks than with adistributed and plural sense of local, regional,and national sovereignty. Mouffe asserts that wehave to:

take pluralism seriously instead of tryingto impose one single model on the wholeworld, even if it is a well-meaningcosmopolitan one. It is therefore urgent torelinquish the illusion of a unified worldand to work towards the establishment of amultipolar world. We hear a lot today aboutthe necessity of an effectivemultilateralism. But multilateralism in aunipolar world will always be an illusion. Aslong as a single hegemonic power exists, itwill always be the one that decides if it will

take into consideration the opinion of othernations or act alone. A real multilateralismrequires the existence of a plurality ofcentres of decision and some sort ofequilibrium even if it is only a relative one among various powers.25

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It seems that the theoretical battle concerningwhich kind of polarity applies to the currentsituation remains unresolved. For Haass in 2008,models of unipolarity and multipolarity alreadybelong to the recent past, while for Mouffe in2005, unipolarity hasnt ended yet andmultipolarity remains an emerging futureprospect. Haass recognizes the rise of regionalsovereign power hubs across the continents as

an important part of his nonpolar model, but stillplaces more emphasis on the many kinds ofelusive networked agents as well as thewithering away of traditional structures ofdiplomacy, accountability, and coalition.Typically, a place brand is created by thinktanks, focus groups, consultancies, and otherpublic-private alliances.26 Often, in order to gainpublic support and sympathy, additionalpromotional campaigns are initiated to appeaseits stakeholders (the citizens). Some placebrands have used open-ended opportunities for

citizens to become part of the brand message,such as in the case of the current brand for thecity of Berlin.27 Though this provides an incentiveto enhance social capital for citizens, it is notnecessarily democratic: while offering anopportunity, the brand creates new inequalities(just as acquiring an employee of the week

status at McDonalds is not the same asunionizing to get a pay raise). Once again, thedynamics at play look more like a networkingprotocol. That protocol itself is privately crafted it is not open to public deliberation.State branding ultimately requires a newparadigm that goes beyond soft power one lessfocused on promotion and indeed moreconcerned with both the structural

standardization implied by network power and apluralistic understanding of decentralized anddistributed political alternatives being developedon various scales. The involvement of designersand other branding experts becomes necessaryto take state branding out of its currentsingularity of approach and into an engagementwith its theoretical and political premises, aswell as its application. What was revealed by theEstonian branding session described above wasthat the complexity of Estonian representationand self-image combined with the reality of its

position between Russia and the Nordiccountries makes mere promotion of itsdesirable assets an impossibility. Rather thanregard state brands as promotional tools, weshould perhaps see them instead as diplomaticand journalistic accounts of a nations ownself-reflexive awareness with regard to the

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multi-faceted reality of globalization.The latest news is that the Unites Statesnow identifies its soft power more fully withnetwork standards. Undersecretary of State forPublic Diplomacy James Glassman hasannounced that as part of its state brandingefforts, U.S. public diplomacy now sneaks intoforums and social networking platforms on theInternet to promote the positive aspects of U.S.

democracy. When asked by a journalist about thefreedom to have ideas other than those favorableto the American point of view, Glassmanresponded, Were not using Facebook to launcha war. Absolutely not. In fact, what were usingFacebook for is to invite exactly what youretalking about, which I tend to call the maybetoo grandiosely the grand conversation. Wewant a conversation.28

Images in this article are from Metahavens project Blackmail,2008.

Metahavenis a studio for research and design basedin Amsterdam and Brussels, consisting of Daniel vander Velden, Vinca Kruk, and Gon Zifroni. By research,the group intends a gathering of data, inquiry,imagination, and, ultimately, speculation, whichinforms their work in graphic design, branding, andiconography, as well as in architecture. Metahaven haspreviously created a visual identity for the mini-stateSealand, for research projects around the formerHouse of People in Bucharest, and for the EuropeanInternet search engine Quaero. Metahavens work is

exhibited as part of the traveling exhibition Forms ofInquiry: the Architecture of Critical Graphic Design atthe Architectural Association, London, and in OnPurpose: Design Concepts at Arnolfini, Bristol, "Sincewe last spoke about monuments at Stroom, TheHague, and Affiche Frontire, a solo exhibition atCAPC, Muse d'Art Contemporain, Bordeaux. At the2008 Venice Architectural Biennial, Metahaven wasrepresented with a lecture at the Dutch pavilion. Inaddition to design, research, and writing, Metahavenlectures widely, and its members teach at institutionsincluding Yale University in New Haven, the Academyof Arts in Arnhem, the Sandberg Institute inAmsterdam, and the School of Visual Arts in Valence,France. www.metahaven.net


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1Simon Anholt, Branding Placesand Nations, in Brands andBranding, ed. Rita Clifton andJohn Simmons (New York:Bloomberg Press, 2003), 214.

2Joseph S. Nye, Jr., Soft Power:The Means to Success in WorldPolitics (New York: PublicAffairs,2004), 30.

3

This thesis was developed inChantal Mouffes books TheReturn of the Political (London:Verso, 1993) and On the Political(Abingdon, Oxford: Routledge,2005).

4Peter van Ham, Place Branding:The State of the Art, in TheAnnals of the American Academyof Political and Social Science616 (March 2008): 130. Seehttp://ann.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/616/1/126.

5Ibid., 132.

6It seems like the spirit of VanHams analysis has alreadytranslated into Eurobranding.Casually messianic, the Frenchslogan for 2008 EU presidency islEurope qui protge (the Europethat protects).

7Van Ham, Place Branding, 141.

8Ibid., 142.

9Ibid., 143.

10

See Poor Romanian villagersnot amused by Borat moviesuccess at their expense,International Herald Tribune,November 14, 2006,http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2006/11/14/arts/EU_A-E_MOV_Romania_Borat_Backlash.php(accessed November 1, 2008).

11Wally Olins, Trading Identities:Why Countries and Companiesare Taking on Each Others' Roles(London: Foreign Policy Centre,1999).

12

See Vladimir Kolossov and JohnOLoughlin, Pseudo-States asHarbingers of a New Geopolitics:The Example of the Trans-Dniester Moldovan Republic(TMR), in Boundaries, Territoryand Postmodernity, ed. DavidNewman (London: Frank Cass,1999).

13See Francis Fukuyama, StateBuilding: Governance and WorldOrder in the 21st Century(Ithaca:Cornell University Press, 2004).

14Wally Olins, Country code London, Monocle 1 (September

2007).

15Simon Anholt, e-mail messageto author, April 2008.

16See David Singh Grewal,Network Power: The socialdynamics of globalization (NewHaven: Yale University Press,2008), 4.


18Grewal, Network Power, p. 106.

19Ibid., 107.

20Nye, Soft Power, 15.


22For a survey of a Mir-stylesurrealist tradition in touristbrands, see Metahaven, ANation Brand Paradox, in HTV72 (February 2008),http://www.metahaven.net/mhP

DF/metahaven_nationbrandparadox.pdf.

23Van Ham, Place Branding. 129.

24Richard N. Haass, The Age ofNonpolarity, in Foreign Affairs87 (May/June 2008),http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20080501faessay87304/richard-n-haass/the-age-of-nonpolarity.html (accessed November1, 2008).

25Mouffe, On the Political, 116.

26For example the Paris-basedFondation Europe Plus. Mission:to make Europe more attractiveand competitive; seehttp://www.europeplus.org/(accessed 1 November 2008).

27See Berlins city brand BeBerlin,http://www.sei.berlin.de/(accessed 1 November 2008).

28See U.S. Department of State,Briefing on U.S. Diplomacy andthe War of Ideas, October 28,

2008,http://www.state.gov/r/us/2008/111372.htm (accessed 1November 2008).


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Brand States: Postmodern Power, Democratic Pluralism, and Design by Metahaven