Un-nation branding: the cities of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem in Israeli soft power

This chapter presents a theory of ‘un-nation branding’. We define this as the practice of promoting a nation-state with minimal or even no reference to the nation-state. In contrast to nation branding, un-nation branding involves states symbolising themselves as/through cities (or regions) in order to make themselves attractive to others. In articulating this theory, we focus on the case study of Israel’s ‘Two Cities. One Break’ advertising campaign. We highlight how this campaign serves to visually represent Israel as the cities of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. As a practice of un-nation branding, we argue that the ‘Two Cities. One Break’ campaign silences contentious aspects of the Israeli state, such as questions about borders, settlements and conflict. As such, this campaign is demonstrative of the importance of un-nation branding for states in the twenty-first century, and we suggest several implications of un-nation branding as well as future directions for research into the role of cities in contemporary accounts of soft power

Place branding, embeddedness and endogenous rural development: Four European cases

This article deals with place branding on the regional scale, in the rural context of food and tourism networks in Europe. Place branding is linked to the concepts of endogenous rural development, territory and embeddedness, by analysing how the valorisation of specific rural assets takes shape. The overall objective is to provide more understanding of how the branding of rural regions can contribute to endogenous rural development. Four European regional rural cases on place branding are explored, two from France, one from Ireland and one from Germany. Described are pre-conditions for branding, brand management, cooperation forms and development outcomes. The analysis is based on interviews as primary data and various secondary data. The cases all involve multiple stakeholders, and integrate the capacities and needs of local people. The findings show different levels of societal, structural and territorial embeddedness, and that higher degrees of embeddedness contribute to a successful branding process. The results indicate that place branding can support endogenous rural development and benefits from the adoption of common values and joint reflections on brand extensions, although there remains a need for more consistent impact measurement methods

Technology use and availability in entrepreneurship: informal economy as moderator of institutions in emerging economies

This paper investigates the contextual influences of institutions on the use of latest available technologies by early stage entrepreneurs in emerging economies. Hypotheses are developed and then tested using multi-level modeling techniques on a dataset covering entrepreneurs in 20 emerging economies. We utilized 10,431 individual-level responses from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor survey from 2002 to 2008 and complemented it with data on country-level institutions such as the size of a country’s informal economy, intellectual property rights (IPR) regimes obtained from the Index of Economic Freedom and inward foreign direct investment (FDI) from the World Bank Group. Results on the direct effects suggest that levels of FDI negatively influences the use of latest technology by entrepreneurs in emerging economies, while the moderation effects of informal economy suggest that as its size increases (1) the negative effects IPR on the use of latest technology by entrepreneurs strengthens, and (2) the negative effects of FDI on the use of latest technology strengthens. These findings support the overall proposition that the size of a country’s informal economy is an important moderator of institutional influences on technology use by entrepreneurs in emerging economies. More generally, the study proposes that institutions may not have the same effects on entrepreneurs in emerging economies that might be expected in developed countries, suggesting that future research should take the level of socio-economic development of a country into account when theorizing the role of institutions