| 1. |
- Cassinger, Cecilia, et al.
(author)
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Translating public diplomacy and nation branding in Scandinavia : An institutional approach to the Cartoon Crises
- 2016
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In: Place Branding and Public Diplomacy. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 1751-8040 .- 1751-8059. ; 12:3, s. 172-186
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Nation branding has been criticised for leading to the homogenisation and depoliticisation of national interest and identity. This study examines the politics of nation branding in relation to its configuration with public diplomacy and the institutional policy context in which they are embedded. Informed by Scandinavian institutionalism and the analytical concept of translation, the study reveals that the way that nation branding relates to public diplomacy within an institutional context sets the frame for its politicisation. Translation enables the understanding of nation branding as a dynamic process of becoming that unfolds in relation to time and place. The research contributes to a more nuanced view on nation branding in presenting its toolbox practices as less determined by a corporate marketing logic. Despite the uniformity that allegedly characterises nation branding practices, the processes by which nation branding initiatives are implemented in Scandinavia are found to differ profoundly.
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| 2. |
- Merkelsen, Henrik
(author)
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En systemteoretisk analyse af retssystemets håndtering af singulær lovgivning. : Et studie med udgangspunkt i Tvind-dommen
- 2020
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In: Retfærd: Nordisk juridisk tidsskrift. - 0105-1121. ; 1:164, s. 43-57
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- The paper takes up a well-known constitutional subject concerning the limitations of private bills by reformulating the problem in system theoretical terms. This move allows for examining how the law as a social system carries through the task of establishing distinctions between legal/illegal in a situation where there is no precedence in the form of prior court decisions. After a short introduction to Niklas Luhman’s theory about Law as an autopoietic system, including a comparison with Jürgen Habermas’ discourse theory of the law, the analysis proceeds to the only case in which the Danish Supreme Court has ruled against a parliamentary statute, the so-called Tvind-verdict. When analyzing the verdict and its reception in legal theory, the thesis points to how the court through a line of paradoxical arguments recursively construct the foundation for its decision. While remaining unobserved, these paradoxes through their reception in legal theory becomes subject to de-paradoxification and by this the theoretical self-description of the law contributes to improving the conditions for the autopoiesis of the legal system.
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| 3. |
- Merkelsen, Henrik, et al.
(author)
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Evaluation of Nation Brand Indexes
- 2018
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In: Bridging Disciplinary Perspectives of Country Image Reputation, Brand, and Indentity. - 9781138281349 - 9781138281356 - 9781315271224
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Book chapter (peer-reviewed)
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| 4. |
- Merkelsen, Henrik, et al.
(author)
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Institutional Risk
- 2018
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In: The International Encyclopedia of Strategic Communication. - 9781119010722
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Book chapter (other academic/artistic)abstract
- The concept of institutional risk is defined as the risk that the regulator will not meet its organizational and policy objectives. The counterpart of institutional risk is societal risk, that is, the risks in society that regulators are entrusted to manage. In recent decades risk management has for various reasons become an attractive solution for societal regulation on all levels. Despite this successful risk colonization regulators increasingly seek to protect the institutions that manage social risks against criticism from the public. This leads to a spiraling, even pathological, effect whereby risk management expands even further to new societal domains and increasingly centers on the reputational risks of risk management institutions.
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| 5. |
- Merkelsen, Henrik
(author)
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Legitimacy and reputation in the institutional field of food safety: A public relations case study.
- 2013
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In: Public Relations Inquiry. - 2046-147X. ; 2:2, s. 243-265
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- The overall objective of this study is to examine how the institutional context of food safety affects and is affected by concerns for legitimacy and reputation. The paper employs a neo-institutional approach to analyzing the institutional field of food safety in a case study of a multinational food service provider where a tension between conflicting institutional logics implied a reputational challenge. The study shows how food safety as a well-defined operational risk is transformed into a high-priority reputational risk and how actors in the field of food safety are caught in a state of mutual distrust, partly as a consequence of an intense politicization of food risk over the past years and partly as a result of their respective concerns for legitimacy. The study points to how the field of food safety is colonized by a reputational logic that is paradoxically reproduced by actors at all organizational levels even though they strongly oppose to this logic.
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| 6. |
- Merkelsen, Henrik, et al.
(author)
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Nation branding as an emerging field – An institutionalist perspective
- 2016
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In: Place Branding and Public Diplomacy. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 1751-8040 .- 1751-8059. ; 12:2-3, s. 99-109
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Nation branding is a remarkable phenomenon. In less than two decades, it has established itself as the preferred framework for interstate strategic communication and as an emerging academic field. The paper describes how this extraordinary expansion was possible by showing how nation branding presents itself as a theoretical possibility and a practical necessity. We propose that what made a travel possible from product branding via corporate branding to nation branding was the semantic flexibility of the brand concept. We argue that the brand concept is almost void of meaning and that this feature has been an indispensable requisite for establishing nation branding as a field of practice and as an academic field. Despite the indisputable academic productivity that is a result of the vagueness of the brand concept, we suggest that to reach a normal science-like situation in the field of nation branding a clarification and systematization of central concepts is needed.
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| 7. |
- Merkelsen, Henrik, et al.
(author)
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Post-colonial governance through securitization? : A narratological analysis of a securitization controversy in contemporary Danish and Greenlandic uranium policy
- 2017
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In: Tidsskriftet Politik. - 1604-0058. ; 20:3, s. 83-83
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- The complex constitutional relationship between Greenland and Denmark has had no clearer manifestation than the last decade’s juridical and political wranglings over the control for uranium. In the article, we argue that the quarrel between Nuuk and Copenhagen found in their diverging uranium policies can be seen as what we term a ’securitization controversy’. That is, a form of negotiating process which delicately postpones securitization proper due to the entangled role of the uranium issue in the independence debate. Through narrative analysis of contemporary Danish and Greenlandic government policy documents (2008-2016) we thus demonstrate how Greenlandic documents attempt to desecuritize risks pertinent to extraction of uranium and REE while Danish government papers seek to risikfy uranium in order to keep the issue open to future securitization. In the analysis, we further show how certain risks in the policy papers are connected and constitute a narrative conflict involving identity and sovereignty. We argue, that the controversy found at policy level in turn is the result of the underlying ‘sovereignty game’ in the constitutional relationship between the two countries. The article introduces a methodological framework for studying such securitization controversies drawing on risk analysis and narratology. We argue that in order to account for the entangled and narrative nature of the discursive movements in the policy texts, structural narratology can be a viable methodological alternative to the Copenhagen School’s preferred method of discourse analysis.
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| 8. |
- Merkelsen, Henrik, et al.
(author)
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The Construction of Brand Denmark: A Case Study of the Reversed Causality in Nation Brand Valuation
- 2015
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In: Valuation Studies. - 2001-5992. ; 3:2, s. 181-198
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- In this article we unpack the organizational effects of the valuation practices enacted by nation branding rankings in a contemporary case where the Danish government employed branding-inspired methods. Our main argument is that the use of nation branding was enabled by the Nation Brands Index via its efficient translation of fuzzy political goals into understandable numerical objectives. The Nation Brands Index becomes the driving force in a powerful bureaucratic translation of nation branding which in turn has several reordering effects at organizational level. We thus demonstrate how the Nation Brands Index permits bureaucratic expansion in central government administration as it continuously maintains and reconstructs problems solvable by the initiation of more nation branding initiatives and projects and hence more bureaucratic activity.
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| 9. |
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| 10. |
- Rasmussen, Rasmus K., et al.
(author)
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The risks of nation branding as crisis response: A case study of how the Danish government turned the Cartoon Crisis into a struggle with Globalization
- 2014
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In: Place Branding and Public Diplomacy. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 1751-8040 .- 1751-8059. ; 10, s. 230-248
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- In this article, we investigate the limitations of organization-centric models for crisis communication in handling place crises. Two distinct types of place crisis are identified as what we respectively term the ‘sudden’ and the ‘ongoing’ type. We point out that place branding traditionally has been used to handle the latter type. We then demonstrate how the inspiration from corporate communication in place branding has led to a fixation on reputation, which becomes salient when place branding is used as crisis communication in sudden crisis. Here the corporate inspiration tends to rule out alternative strategies for handling crises based on ‘societal models’. Through a case study of Denmark’s so-called Cartoon Crisis we demonstrate how crisis communication falls short of coping aptly with the complexity of the crisis due to the branding-inspired translation from ‘sudden’ to ‘ongoing’ crisis. We thus argue that the Danish government’s solution in nation branding aimed at the reputational implications failed to address the immediate consequences of the crisis vis-à-vis national security and exports. And that this solution in turn created the reputation as additional risk. We conclude that a broader societal perspective on crises therefore is needed in the emerging academic literature on place crisis communication.
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