The role of economic conferences and public forums in GR

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Government of Russian Federation

National research University Higher School of Economics

Faculty of Communications, Media and Design

MASTER THESIS

Author

Anna Khamitova

Supervisor

Leonid Burmistrov

Moscow, 2016

Table of contents

1. Introduction. Public forums and conferences as a platform for government relations

2. Public economic events in paradigm of market economy. International examples

3. Typology of public economic forums in Russia: main platforms, their origins and the present day

4. Public events as means of political communication

5. Forums and conferences as GR-platform: strategies and practices

6. The payoff: tangible and intangible profits for business community. “Public good”

7. Media coverage of the public economic forums. Comparative analysis

8. Conclusion. Assessment of the survey results

1. Introduction. Public forums and conferences as a platform for government relations

This master thesis is based on the course paper titled “The role of economic conferences and public forums in GR” carried out by myself, Anna Khamitova, under the guidance of Leonid Burmistrov and defended on the Department of Integrated Communications in 2015. That work was an introduction and a proposal for the current survey, which is aimed to learn the nature and modus operandi of Russian government relations on the basis of collective business gatherings - public conferences and forums.

Moreover the thesis aspires to step a little further out of the GR area and look closely at the role that public events and economic conferences play in the case of emerging institutional economy in Russia and construction of new relationship between the government and the business.

For the last ten years the concept of public forums has seen speedy evolution which has brought them today to the “front burner” of political and business life. These institutions serve not only as a mirror but also as a frame to the present country's agenda. In 2015 the Yalta International Economic Forum was set up by the Russian government on a just-annexed territory of Crimea to “promote successful implementation of investment potential of the Crimea as a federal subject of the Russian Federation”. The Second Yalta International Economic Forum is to be held in April 2016 is to emphasize investment and innovation of the peninsula on the basis of the Federal Targeted Social and Economic Development Programme of the Republic of Crimea and Sevastopol as a City of Federal Significance.

This research can be considered innovatory since it is the first attempt to analyze the mechanism of forums and conferences as a sort of civic institute, which is fundamental not only in relation to GR practice, but also in a broader socio-economical framework. A number of publications have been reviewed on the corresponding subjects. A good deal of them focuses on necessity of collective action within the business community as it enables business to mitigate external pressure of the state and bureaucratic predation in transition economies.

P.Schmitter and W.Streeck studying the associative action of business in “The Organization of business interests” claim that “collective action in the business community substitutes for democratic pressure in constraining public officials” P.Schmitter, W.Streeck “The Organization of business interests”.

A similar point of view is expressed in the work “Industrial associations as a channel of business government interactions in imperfect institutional environment: the Russian case” by A.Yakovlev and A.Govorun. The feature is saying that business associations are “a link in the framework of government-business exchanges”, “interface units between the authorities and businesses” and can be regarded as a “possible instrument for promotion of economic development” A.Yakovlev, A.Govorun “Industrial associations as a channel of business government interactions in imperfect institutional environment: the Russian case” . Doner and Schneider (2000) call associations a “market-supporting” institution, which is crucial “in transition economies, where old mechanisms for coordination of enterprise activities have been destroyed, but the new ones have not been established yet” Doner, Richard and Ben Ross Schneider, 2000. “Business Associations and Economic Development: Why Some Associations Contribute More Than Others”.

A set of publication addressing the subject of Russian government relations and evolution of this sphere has been also thoroughly analyzed. I. Bykov in his work “Government Relations in Russia: (dis)connecting business and state?” presents the results of the conducted poll among the corporate camp: the results of the study indicate that most respondents consider communication as a core to GR process in Russia, but oppositely to the world's best practice Russian mediators mostly aim to communicate at the executive level, but not at legislative, with the view to influencing law-enforcement rather than law-making process. Moreover most of the respondents spoke against legal institutionalization of the process and rejected “the lobbying bill” since they consider “unexpected legal changes usually produce new problems for doing business in Russia” Bykov I. “Government Relations in Russia: (dis)connecting business and state?”, Saint Petersburg State University 2015.

However, very few of these works refer to business forums and conferences as one of the “links” or “interface units” for communication between the government and the private sector, capable of becoming a uniting platform for the business with a view of advocating its problems and challenges in the face of the regime. The closest and the most relevant to ours study has been conducted by E. Balatsky (2013) on the platform of CEMI RAS, State University of Management, which describes the forums as an intermediate form of a regional development institution and a new instrument of regional investment policy. Áàëàöêèé Å.Â. Èíâåñòèöèîííûå ôîðóìû Ðîññèè êàê èíñòèòóò ðåãèîíàëüíîãî ðàçâèòèÿ// «Æóðíàë Íîâîé ýêîíîìè÷åñêîé àññîöèàöèè», ¹2(18), 2013. Ñ.101-128.

The author of this master thesis has thoroughly examined the entire theoretical framework and expects that this, along with the author's personal professional background as an economic journalist, will provide a valuable insight into the subject. This work, inspired empirically, seeks to reflect on the landscape of the public economic events and show a new perspective of this political and public life sphere, giving a profound overlook of costs and rewards of this GR method.

Correspondingly with the course paper “The role of economic conferences and public forums in GR”, we set out with our analysis on agreeing on definition of a term “GR” or “Government relations”. In this work it will mean “building and maintaining professional public affairs and strategic communications with the government with an act of attempting to influence decisions made by officials, most often legislators or members of regulatory agencies”. The synonyms such as “government public relations” or widely used in the US term “governmental affairs” will also be applicable in the publication.

In developed countries the relations between the state and the corporations are considered to be a kind of public activity with some legal regulation norms (Wilcox et al., 2001). Government relations in Russia both in Soviet and post-soviet period have always been non-transparent and informal, -write D.J. Galligan and M. Kurkchiyan in their “Law and Informal Practices: The Post-Communist Experience”, highlighting the necessity of legal framework for post-soviet societies. Galligan D. J., Kurkchiyan M. Law and Informal Practices: The Post-Communist

Experience. Oxford: Oxford Scholarship Online, 2012. 228 p.

In the 1990-s when the country made a u-turn to the market economy, Russian business entities, both small and big, continued building ties with the government on a personal level while the GR-sphere remained unstructured and non-transparent. In the situation of absence of business institutions the communication between the government and the business was predominantly non-public, lagging in professional development and predominantly contained corruption component. A. Khamitova “The role of economic conferences and public forums in GR”, HSE 2015

A.V.Ledeneva (2006) writes that “rule of law” is among key factors of successful business performance Ledeneva, A.V. (2006). How Russia Really Works: The Informal Practices that Shaped Post-Soviet

Politics and Business. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press. 288 ð.. At the same time on conducting a set of field studies and interviews, Ledeneva detected that most successful businessmen in Russia had to have informal relations with executives and officials in the government.

The rise of the country's economic development in the early 2000-s and the process of civil society institutionalization have triggered creation of new mechanisms of public communication in GR sphere. When the working Russian President Vladimir Putin came to power a new economic and social development framework was introduced and the ground for a stronger state vertical was broken. For example, in 2000 Putin established an institute of Presidential plenipotentiary envoys. Other initiatives, like constitution the procedure of governors' appointment or introducing a manual administration of financially insolvent regions with delegation their powers to the federal centre have redoubled the centralization of the authority in Russia. A. Khamitova “The role of economic conferences and public forums in GR”, HSE 2015

The extension of the government's roles and objectives has called for business being represented on a completely different institutional level and new communicational patterns appeared to connect the government and the business. All previously existing closed interest clubs, lobby envoys and other preliminary forms of contacts has become insufficient and outdated.

Political domineering has been established after the Presidential Elections of 2003-2004 and new relations between government and business emerged. “Public mistrust towards big capital has become an official status quo, ” - writes A. Zudin in his report “Business Associations and the Government: what has changed”, linking political regime transformation with the case of Yukos in 2003 À.Çóäèí «Àññîöèàöèè áèçíåñà è ãîñóäàðñòâî: ×òî èçìåíèëîñü?», 2010

. Yakovlev (2006) describes Yukos case as the watershed in the evolution of local business environment, when “the state gained absolute dominance over business” and it was the high time for business to unite in order to protect its interests. Yakovlev, A. (2006). The Evolution of Business-State Interaction in Russia: From State Capture to

Business Capture? Europe-Asia Studies, 58: 1033-1056.

According to W. Coleman “political centralization of a state restricts the access to the policy domain and motivates business interest units to consolidation and centralization Coleman W. Business and politics. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1988. After 2004 all the corporate camp operating in Russia, whether foreign or domestic, has realized the urge to build and maintain links with the legislative and executive authorities on the regular basis. Most headquarters operating on the Russian territory established government relation entities and public affairs departments.

In 2006 one of the biggest and the most important economic conferences in the country - The St. Petersburg International Economic Forum http://www.forumspb.com/ - fell under the auspices of the President of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin.

With Dmitry Medvedev coming to power in 2008 the legislative trend turned in favour of democratization and innovation: in 2012 the project of an “Open Government” was launched in order to make government data open to the wide public while a great deal of governmental activities became transparent and accountable. Many governor incumbents and state officials became representative on the internet and the social networks, which compelled official Russian bureaucratic bodies to be more open and available for feedback from the citizens.

The period of liberalization labeled as “Medvedev's thaw” fell in with unfolding large public campaign against corruption in the civil service and the Force. That was the time when the first reading of a law on “lobbyism” appeared, which was to become the first step towards regulation and formalization of business and government relations, where public gatherings became a cornerstone of the building.

In the wake of modernization and centralization tendencies in the Russian politics, new instruments of dialogue and coordination between the government and the business were created, where strategic disposition was obtained by economic forums.

Albeit the first forums appeared in the 90-s in 2000 they obtained attention from the government, launching a new spin of their development and popularity, that peaked in the period of 2004-2008.

The St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) and The Sochi International Investment Forum became the two major platforms of communication between the authorities and the public. Both of them were set up with the support of the Russian Government and featured themselves as venues for “constructive dialogue between business and government” helping “to discuss the outlook for investment and innovation in the country and to showcase ambitious investment projects”, according to the statement on the website of The Sochi International Investment Forum http://www.forumkuban.com/ , which is traditionally considered Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev's terrain.

Both St.Petersburg and Sochi forums headline speeches of Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev as centerpieces of the program. Their speeches, especially one by the President Vladimir Putin, deliver key messages to the investors and the mass media, determining agenda not only in realms of these events, but also for the following year and its commercial and political processes, that will be undergoing in the country. A. Khamitova “The role of economic conferences and public forums in GR”, HSE 2015

This fact leads us to one of the cornerstone questions of the research - is communication between government and business two-sided indeed and is it efficient and constructive for both sides of the dialogue?

Otherwise, these forums may exist as a megaphone for the authorities and other powerbrokers using these platforms to “send the message” and not to receive the feedback, to advocate the official policies but not intending to build a successful communication with domestic and foreign private sector. Our final question would be - if any real changes in business and political life come in the wake of these discussion panels or is it a façade to hide unvarying patterns in the Russian business and political life.

In this work we will inquire for the empirical confirmation of the hypothesis on the possibility of building successful relations between the government and the business via economic conferences and industrial public events. Firstly, our study aims to confirm whether public forums may become a new institute, a network facilitating vertical and horizontal coordination of state, business and society interests.

Using the theoretical basis of institutional economic theory we will prove interdependence between the level of civil society institutionalization, where public forums are among the important institutes, while the evaluation of GR sphere in Russia and abroad is the procedure of building a transparent two-side dialogue between the business sector and the state.

Secondly, the research is to figure out the character of the government public relations which are formed under the influence of this civil society institute and will provide an outlook of GR mechanisms employed by the corporate camp on the basis of forums and conferences.

And the last but not the least research question will address the theory of “public good” and will inquire whether GR-communication processes happening at public forums do serve for “the public good” and accomplish to this country's economic development level rise or do they just serve the interests of the specific company or a business niche which is involved in the process.

Within the framework of above-named general objectives, we set a number of specific goals. For this purpose a descriptive research will be carried out, that will apply to empirical data and will give us a wide scope of GR practices and the formats of communication between private sector and the state officials during public economic events.

On the ground of this research we will explore what are the main conferences and public forums in Russian economic life, their origins, the pool of organizers and what place each event occupies in Russian GR sphere. A look will be casted not only at Moscow and Saint-Petersburg, but also at the regional scene.

The subject of the research is the practice of Russian economic conferences and forums and the unit of analysis is public GR practices and activities of Russian and foreign companies, business associations and probably individual businessmen on the basis and in terms of these events.

Following this prior classification of the communication platforms a comparative analysis will be conducted to respond on a question: what forums are considered as the most efficient by the corporate camp.

As long as we consider GR-process a two-way communication, an essential part of the research will inspect who are the main actors from the government side, what is their level of authority and influence peddling.

We also aim to collect and analyze empirical data on who are the main GR actors from the business side. A range of criteria will be implied in this analysis such as nationality of the enterprise (domestic or foreign), type of ownership (state or private), its size (number of employees), sector of economics, investment and innovation activity. Using such a wide range of variables will allow us to formalize the findings of this research and make its conclusions precise and trustworthy. The other actors from the business scene - such as professional associations will also be observed in the survey.

In the course paper “The role of economic conferences and public forums in GR”, we were going to send out a questionnaire to the abovementioned GR-actors and also GR experts inquiring on how useful participating in this kind of events may be for the business side as well as what strategies and working formats should be opted for. On a closer elaboration of this research strategy we came to a conclusion on the objective obstructions of this method verging with a poor relevance and empirical applicability.

In preference a desk research responding to the suggested objectives will be executed with a set of closer case-studies of business enterprises, their lobbyism activities and the payoffs.

Since we are considering public forums as platforms for a civic dialogue it is evitable to take into account who is allowed to the dialogue and if there is any barrier for any companies or organizations and what are they (given that the participant fee is paid).

This unit of survey will scrutinize the aspect of accessibility of various forums and conferences, especially those of a grander scale, and inquire on whether the GR-actors from the official side can be reached by the corporate lobbyists.

Another trajectory is devoted to the verification on how public forums interact with Mass Media and how their respective attitudes shape different political communication cultures. For these purposes a desk research will be carried out to look at mass media coverage which will also display what place do this events occupy in media, and what tone is given to them and their headline speakers. A comparative media analysis will focus on two different communication platforms to contribute a more nuanced understanding of how positive or negative the interaction is and whether feelings trust or suspicion prevail in this environment.

In this part we will employ media and monitoring analysis system “Mediology”. Additional methodology of efficiency assessment or key performance indicator called MediaIndex will be suggested in the context of the survey. This index is meant to measure PR value of a publication, indicating its place and prominence, where the most influential media are on top, and positive publications are ranked higher than negative.

Finally there is one research question left - “public good” aspect of this GR-process - whether this process is beneficial for the Russian society and for the government (here we decide to put the sign of equality in order not to make our research too complex).

For the time being no foundational study investigates the credibility, accessibility, and neutrality of communication between government and business. This master thesis seeks to provide a comprehensive survey of government and business relations established in the setting of public economic and investment forums.

2. Public economic events in paradigm of market economy. International examples

public forum economic government

According to the theory of Peter A. Hall and David Soskice the relationship between the government and the business highly depend on the national variety of economic system. They classify two “varieties of capitalism”: liberal market economies (e.g., U.S., Canada, Australia) and coordinated market economies (e.g. Germany, Japan, Sweden). The first one is conducted by the free market, prices balance and formal contacts. While coordinated market economies heavily rely on the government and non-market forms of interaction in the coordination of their relationships with other actors. The inter-firm relations in the latter type tend to be more collaborative and cooperative, while in liberal market economies they are more competitive.

This framework describes the principles of economic procedures in the developed economies, indicating various patterns of interaction within business community and its relations with the state.

Depending on economic paradigm, each country has established its own strategy of business-government cooperation. In such a way in post-war Britain, there were forums that gave big business preferential access to Whitehall avoiding trade unions and other watchdogs. A conference called Spring Sunningdale was one of obscure but very endurable forms of interaction in the UK between the British business elite and the civil servants. It arose out of an informal dinner party in August 1962 attended by six of the most senior officials and six equally senior businessmen, who gathered to discuss the relationship between the civil service and private enterprise and how it might be improved.

Sir Norman Kipping, the Director-General of the Federation of British Industries, came with the initiative for the dinner, and the following formation of regular dinner groups. Kipping together with Archibald Forbes from the Ministry of Aircraft Production belonged to a group of businessmen who were incorporated into the government machine during the war and maintained the personal links afterwards, but were facing upcoming retirement. Possible solution to this problem, suggested by the gentlemen included staff interchange between the civil service and the private enterprise and formation of joint committees and it was from this that what became Spring Sunningdale emerged.

These meetings' importance can be illustrated by in a number of ways, their longevity and the frequency of senior civil servants and major company chairs attended them. The continuity and stability of the conference stands in contrast to wider changes in the nature of business-government relations in Britain during that period, which indicates that the captains of industry who attended those annual meetings obviously gained from them Rolling N. “The twilight world of British business politics: the Spring Sunningdale conferences since the 1960s”, 2014.

On the contrary to the non-public Sunningdale some of those events became the world's high spot and the biggest newsmaker. So was the famous London Economic Conference taking place in 1933 at the Geological Museum in London. The gathering, initiated by the League of Nations, aimed at reaching an agreement on measures to fight global depression, revive international trade, and stabilize currency exchange rates by restoration of a gold standard monetary system. The event, welcoming 8 Prime Ministers, 20 Foreign Ministers and 80 Ministers of Finance, ended with no result after the U.S. President Roosevelt rejected to enter a commitment on the most important issue - stabilizing the dollar exchange rate - provided by the European leaders and accordingly “destroyed the Conference” as the press wrote afterwards.

Today one of the most influential and high-profile gathering in the world is the World Economic Forum in Davos, “the international organization for public-private cooperation”, involving the foremost political and business elite in order to shape global and regional agendas. The institution was established in 1971 as a non-profit foundation by a Swiss academic Klaus Schwab, who decided to bring a number of European business leaders to the Swiss ski resort in Davos. The organization introduced a system membership for the business elite, constricting the list to “the 1000 leading companies of the world”. First called as European Management Forum the happening was renamed the World Economic Forum later in 1987 to finally become the pre-eminent five-day event for global leaders and academics on the annual calendar.

The efficiency of high-profile communication, spurred during the meeting, has been multiply showcased throughout the history of the forum. One of the remarkable cases happened to a previous naysayer Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London. When suggested to attend the World Economic Forum in Davos, Johnson expressed uncertainty on whether it was ethical to spend money in the throes of the global financial crisis on such a lavish occurrence Based on the material “All eyes turn to Davos” published in The Sunday Telegraph, January 2015. He completely changed his opinion when in January 2010 he bumped into billionaire steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal in a cloakroom at the Forum. The two men who had never met before briefly discussed Johnson's idea of interactive sculpture in London's Olympic Park for the 2012 Games. This impromptu conversation ended with a major contract on steel supply from Mittal Steel, this steel later became the monumental Orbit statue.

However contracting is generally not the main goal for economic forums in the developed countries. Most of them function as facilities serving to specialized interest groups or professional groups, such as Tourism Investment Forum in Canada. Some of them attract high-profile consultants on investment market and aspects of investment planning like biennial event the World Investment Forum held for the UN country-members or North-West Investment Managers Forum in the USA, consulting its attendants on the principles and opportunities of alternative investments.

Nowadays the multiple forums and conferences are expanding the juxtaposition of business, politics and academia, giving brain food for the world elite on the current agenda and casting a view into the future. However, there is also place for criticism on the lack of progress, solving some of the acute problems that could be solved provided that there is a political and moral will for doing that.

3. Typology of public economic forums in Russia: main platforms, their origins and the present day

Unique nature of the Russian government and poor public perception of government communication has always posed significant barriers to building democratic and transparent government public relations. In order to comprehend and analyze GR process in Russia, it is appropriate to refer to the institutional economy theory, which allocates a significant role in the economic development to the civic institutes. According to the definition by Warren J.Samuels, institutionalists are primarily “concerned with the organization and control of the economy, that is, its power structure, which governs resource allocation and whose interests count”.

On the contrary in a country, where economy is commanded by the government, the capital doesn't depend on financial openness and the contracts are relational and not binding, there is very high dependence on non-market conditions. The inter-firm relations tend to be more collaborative, than competitive and that is why issue networking plays the key role in the information exchange in such a system.

Public forums perform in opposition to the cloakroom lobbyism where GR-actors from the business side obtain very high dependence on the powerbrokers, their personal wills and prerogatives. This aspect has an adverse effect on a long-term investment process and places the GR-actors in non-equal conditions. “Business today tends to use public policy as a tool of influence, preferring to impact on law-making through legislative branches and abstaining from personal arrangements with officials representing executive powers” (Wilcox et al., 2001).

That is why the format of public conferences and forums has brought communication between the business and the authorities to an entirely new level. Public meetings with the key state and regional officials have become regular and inevitable aspect of the business practices in the country, also offering some room for a debating club and interest groups inside the business community.

Zudin (2006) in his report calls economic forums “a product of institutional import” and “soft forms of coordination” which appeared on the contrary to “direct contacts” with the powerbrokers: “Multifunctionality made forums favorably different from other forms of coordination since they comprised functions of negotiation platform, science conference and a high-society reception” Zudin A. (2006) State and business in Russia: evolution of interrelations // Neprikosnovenny Zapas, No. 6 (50), p.200-212. The author speculates that Herman Gref was one of the enthusiasts and initiators of developing economic forums in Russia, which were unrolling in opposition to then popular Russian Economic Forum in London, that failed to coordinate but often ended up with conflicts between Russian businessmen and civil servants.

The existing forums can be attributed to the several categories: cross-country forums (i.e. Russian-German Forum, Russian-Chinese Forum), regional investment forums (Kaluga Investment Forum, Tver Economic Forum), industry forums (i.e., Russian Wood&Timber, PROESTATE) and thematic forums (i.e. Open Innovations, Anticorruption Forum, Summit “Strong Russia”).

In fact, all the varieties of such events serve to the mission of gathering investment and almost every event is a place for signing contracts and agreements. Therefore the focus of the research will predominantly lie on the regional investment forums most of which gained international status and soon became the main platforms for attracting investors and building government relations with federal and regional officials.

Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs (RSPP) together with communication agency FleishmanHillard Vanguard conducted a survey in July 2015 called “Actual issues of communication between the business and the state”. The poll involved some 50 domestic and foreign companies which were asked on the principal trends in government and business intercourse.

The study revealed that personal contacts with civil servants and local governors remain on top of the most efficient strategies of communication with the power: up to 86% of Russian and half of (50%) foreign respondents mentioned this instrument. Participation in the Presidential advisory bodies was ranked second effective, being named by 71% and 67% domestic and foreign businessmen respectively. The third most perspective means of communication was equally called membership in business associations and public communication via conferences and round-tables (named by 57, 10% Russian companies and 50% of foreigners).

The most influential and popular platforms for public communication turned out to be St. Petersburg International Economic Forum - it's attended by 87, 5% national businessmen and 60% of foreigners. The second popular event - The Sochi International Investment Forum - is lagging far behind in popularity: only 37, 5% of domestic and 20% of not-domestic respondents use it in their GR practices. The third place is occupied by the Krasnoyarsk Economic Forum, which is surprisingly more favored by nonresidents (20%) rather than the nationals (12, 5%). Further a more detailed account of those three as well as other communication platforms will be given featuring their role and assignment on the Russian GR scene.

St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) was designed to become a so-called “Russian Davos” on the post-Soviet arena to bring together the chief executives of major Russian and international companies and heads of state, political leaders, prime and deputy prime ministers, departmental ministers, and other governors. The Forum Foundation was formed in 1998 in St. Petersburg, when the President Boris Yeltsin signed a decree giving the go-ahead to the economic forum in St. Petersburg, and recommended that the required funding be allocated. Herman Gref, then the Vice-Governor of St. Petersburg, and chairman of its Municipal Property Management Committee, was appointed in charge of its activities.

In 2005, President of Russia Vladimir Putin took part in the Forum for the first time and arranged for an annual event to be held in St. Petersburg. Since then the forum attained the status of a "presidential" event. Responsibility for the organization of the forum was given to the Russian Ministry of Economic Development and the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum Foundation was established in March 2007 to deal with the organizational duties at the event. The same year, 2007, St. Petersburg International Economic Forum signed a Memorandum of Cooperation with the World Economic Forum in Davos.

The second major “pow-wow”, the Sochi International Investment Forum, is “the country's main investment event, public officials, representatives of the business communities and experts address the most pressing issues of economic development in the form of an open discussion”. It emerged on the basis of the Regional economic forum “Kuban” held from 2002-2007, first drawing endorsement of the Ministry of Economic Development and finally obtaining salutation and honor of Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev. The meeting aims to build a “constructive dialogue between government and business “necessary for the successful implementation of major investment projects in Russia” http://www.forumkuban.com/ . The special stress is put on industries modernization and development of the Russian regions, as well as import phase-out program and overcoming the economy crisis.

The third popular regional investment forum (according to the RSPP survey) that offers contacts with regional and federal officials is the Krasnoyarsk Economic Forum. It has been held for 12 times by 2016 and became a milestone institution for the region. The Krasnoyarsk Forum boasts to be practice-oriented that “have proved that it is possible to dispense with the management gap between talk and action that the guarantee of success is precisely in speedy and dynamic implementation”. The main focus is the regional development and public-private partnership and implementation of investment projects on the territory. In 2008 the congress headlined a speech of President-elect Dmitry Medvedev. There Medvedev first announced his election program, which featured the basics of his presidential initiatives: fight against corruption and support for small and medium businesses.

Looking at these three major communication platforms we can see that all of them have been set up under the federal initiative and definitely all of them receive regular political and administrative support.

A relative freedom that regional governments have in developing the region together with the shortfall of financing has brought the evolution of regional investment forums into a full swing. For the period of their formation, which counts approximately 10-15 years, almost every region has obtained its investment ground, and in some regions there are more than one economical forums (i.e. the Far Eastern Federal district, Leningrad region or Tver region).

Therefore we can see that the market of investment forums has become rather competitive, where each entity is in rivalry with each other for the attention and resource of the investors. “Since the resource is restricted the regional forums are striving for attracting the federal budget and foreign investment projects to the region, ” - claims E. Balatsky (2013).

Today the regional investment forums have become a sort of informal institution that bears multiple functions: along with being some kind of marketplace for attraction investments, they play the key role in image-making of the region in the eyes of domestic and international community. A good example is a major regional event is the Eastern Economic Forum, happening annually in Vladivostok in September and offering a platform for cooperation between the business and political elite and the local community in the Asia-Pacific region. The event, which is aimed at developing Russian Far East's economic potential, and “increasing the region's competitiveness and financial appeal”, have soon become a highlight activity in the region and a landmark in relationship with the Eastern partners.

As Zudin writes in his report “Business and Government: what has changed?”: “Forums played an important role in overcoming the provincial narrow-mindness of Russian officials and businessmen, switching them to more perspective viewpoint. The forums have become a platform with an outlook on the future and the global scene”. Çóäèí A. (2010) «Àññîöèàöèè áèçíåñà è ãîñóäàðñòâî: ×òî èçìåíèëîñü?»

Not only regional public gatherings resort to the support of the state officials, attracting them as speakers to the plenary sessions and round tables in order to give weight and publicity to the discussion. Being founded by a Russian investment company VTB Capital in 2009 an annual international investment forum Russia Calling! features a high-profile conversation in the two capitals - London and Moscow. The conference is traditionally welcomed by the President Vladimir Putin.

Moscow-based Gaidar Forum is another prominent economic gathering: established in 2010 in memory of Perestroika-era Russian economist Yegor Gaidar by the liberals (the Institute of Economic Politics, the Yegor Gaidar Foundation and the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration) it soon came into the orbit of governmental interests. Today the event draws top speakers of the economic world including Nobel Prize laureates, top professors of leading global universities along with representatives of the political establishment such as Prime Minister of Russia Dmitry Medvedev, former Prime Minister of Italy Mario Monti, Director-General of the WTO Pascal Lamy and other governors. The forum seeks to “maintain an ongoing high-level dialogue on key political and economic matters” and “elaborate strategic proposals and recommendations on national economic development”.

In the opposition to the Gaidar Forum another economic forum is held since 2013 on the premises of the Moscow State University - Moscow Economic Forum (MEF), “an international expert platform for working out strategic decisions and anti-crisis programs aimed at the development of Russia's economic policy”. MEF 2016 was dedicated to “25 years of market reforms in Russia” and re-evaluation of Gaidar economic reforms and the following course of Russian economic development. The program implied a critical viewpoint on the current economic policy and promised the participants “to offer an alternative course of development”. The gathering has been recognized by the mass media as the most controversial and worth covering, while some of its speakers (a businessman Potapenko, MEF 2015) fell into spotlight after dire critics of the state authorities. However the chosen venue and the lineup of speakers (which regularly includes loyal statesmen and governors) on the congress doesn't allow to assume the meeting has reached out of the federal surveillance.

The given analysis displays the disposition of the government public relations top-down strategy, suggesting that the main initiative in political communication and relations with the business community and the citizens in terms of the public events is coming from above.

In parallel with the lack of enterprise during the state-founded events, there are gatherings launched by the business associations and various business unions, where policy makers act like quest speakers. One of the most prominent is the Russian Business Week held by the above-mentioned Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs (RSPP), taking place annually in March. The event is traditionally visited by the President, ministers and other members of the government. The target of the congress is to discuss and articulate the key trends and policies on relations with the government. For instance, speaking on the VIII Russian Business Week the head of the union Alexander Shokhin called for more transparency and predictability of the government's politics.

Additionally to the self-established conferences the Union also represents the business interests of its members at the governmental events. Thus on the ground of the SPIEF the association arranges its own facility for government relations and cross-business communication Business 20, embracing representatives of 20 developed countries for discussion and consultancy on acute economic problems.

Another business association Business Russia (Delovaya Rossiya, Rus.), “a union of entrepreneurs from the non-resource sector of the economy”, addresses the issues of business development in Russia in realms of the annually held Business Forum of Delovaya Rossiya, attended by its members along with the government officials. The ninth business forum “Lets stake on competition!” was visited and opened by the Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev.

The third biggest business association, the Support of Russia (Opora Rossii, Rus.), which was designed to serve to the interests of small and medium business, promotes the interests of its members in the dominion of government-founded events. In 2016 the organization was to participate in Krasnoyarsk Economic Forum, Yalta International Economic Forum, Saint Petersburg International Juridical Forum, Saint Petersburg International Economic Forum, Russian Forum for Small and Medium Business, Eastern Economic Forum, Forum “The week of competition” by Federal Antimonopoly Service, Sochi International Forum, Moscow International Forum “Open Innovations”, along with a range of cross-country forums on partnership with European countries, Japan and China.

The disposition and the status of the occasions conducted by the business community heavily depends on the political weight of the organization and its chairman. The two associations for big business - RSPP and Delovaya Rossiya - are headed by the prominent officials - Alexander Shokhin and Boris Titov, both of them have a record of civil service and an access to the top of the Russian government.

4. Public events as means of political communication

The changes in political architecture in Russia have opened a new era for political communication and public government relations in the country. To create political discourses, governments might employ various forms of communication: over the mass media, in brochures, through advertising, or in public events.

The political communication hypothesis may become another framework for conceptualizing and comparing the modern economic public events in Russia. In this chapter we set out to discuss the public political communications emerging at the forums and conferences with respect to three objectives. The first part will highlight the three levels of political communication: starting with a broadened scope of a global level and finally focusing narrowly on the regional study of the field. Secondly, we will dig deeper into the nature of political communication and government relations beyond the international, countrywide and regional events. In the final part of the block, we will find out who the main GR-actors from the government's side are and what their political mission is.

The concept of political communication system, introduced by Blumler and Gurevitch (1995) focuses on the construction and dissemination of political messages under the influence of specific cultural and structural conditions and the effects of those messages on individuals, publics, organizations, cultures and institutional arrangements. The authors established that political communication systems can emerge at subnational (local, metropolitan), national or supranational (transborder) levels.

Economic and investment forums can be seen as political communication environment that reaches out to the three levels of localities. Among the most important is an international or “supranational” level since the international forums hallmark themselves as a stage for presentation of Russian investment potential and business opportunities for the international community. The St. Petersburg International Economic Forum was established as a discussion platform alternative to Davos Forum and aimed at bringing together major-league partners from CIS countries to cooperatively form the investment landscape and showcase it to the overseas stakeholders. Later Russia became the one and only centerpiece of the exposition and the Forum's organization committee worked hard to attract top world's producers, financiers, politicians and mass media.

The Sochi International Investment Forum, which was created on the basis of the regional conference “Kuban”, has been reformed to a global gathering on the basis of fast-developing location. The Forum “Sochi-2010” was attended by the delegates of 32 countries and it was covered by some 1000 journalists from 18 countries. The same year Saint-Petersburg venue gathered up to 4200 foreign representatives from about 90 states, who met with about 200 Russian officials, including 83 heads of Russian territorial entities.

Within these top-tier meetings the government relations process corresponds with international relations. Reporting the official position of the state and sending messages to the political elite of a foreign country can also be considered as GR-activity. Moreover the business and the state in general coordinate their strategies and activities on the international arena.

Since the deals are being signed between the countries and not only between the companies, this aspect offers the highest efficiency in negotiation process and the most prolific working procedures for the parties involved. The examples of such deals are i.e. the financial agreement between Russian state bank “Gazprombank” and the state Azerbaijanian state oil company on construction of polypropylene plant in Azerbaijan (2015) or a five-year 2 billion dollar contract on oil trading between Rosneft to Venezuelan company PDVSA (2014), which was signed under the auspices of the Russian President Vladimir Putin.

On the one hand, forums become a realm for international and government affairs and a splendid medium to serve multifaceted news covering Russian political agenda and delivering the country's point of view to the world, create favorable conditions and greater prominence to the country's news and contribute to the smaller cross-country knowledge gaps. On the other, as it have already been mentioned, the forums offer higher level of personification and politization to the Russian business substance regardless to the good or to the bad.

As following the political crisis in Ukraine in 2014, the St. Petersburg Forum, which had always been recognized as the façade to the country's foreign policy, fell into the center of diplomatic scandal. Because of tensions in cross-country relations between Russia and the US, the White House administration talked the biggest American corporations out of attending the event. Eventually the gathering was disregarded by Boeing, International Paper, Goldman Sachs, ConocoPhillips, Siemens and other world's financial and production giants.