The role of economic conferences and public forums in GR

The second “national” level of political communication is also of key importance in terms of economic forums. Thus discussion of strategies and concepts of Russia's development evolved into the key feature of the biggest Russian forums, like the Sochi International Forum, the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, the Eastern Forum etc., which is not common for a traditional format of investment forum. Most of the conferences introduced a special briefing practice, meetings of the leaders and panel sessions to let senior governors answer the questions from the audience.

The format of these events has been changing through the years and today they have become very much formalized and bureaucratized. “This {bureaucratization} happens on all the levels: the security measures are rising, the form of “closed meetings” has become widespread, many happenings and sessions are closed for the mass media” Балацкий Е.В. Инвестиционные форумы России как институт регионального развития// «Журнал Новой экономической ассоциации», №2(18), 2013. С.101-128..

Regarding this transformation the modern economic conferences and forums as a form of “national” political communication may be compared to the Congresses of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), where the politics directive and the strategies for ruling the country were formed. This institutional form of communication offered the political elite a so-called collegiate way of discussion and resolving the country's problems and issues in a variety of spheres: the international relations, industry, agriculture, social sphere, ideology etc. In terms of the Party Congresses big events in country's life happened, making some of them major newsmakers not only for domestic electorate but for the international community as well. Such were the XIX congress, where the First Secretary Nikita Khrushchev delivered the "Secret Speech", denouncing Stalin's purges and escorting a less repressive era in the Soviet Union, known as the Khrushchev Thaw. Another major Congresses of the CPSU happened in almost 30 years during which the Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev criticized tagged the former period as “stagnation” and introduced the country to the “perestroika” and “glasnost” era.

The nowadays public gatherings do not stand on a par with the Soviet Congresses with regard to their significance, however they still remain a prominent affair on the political scene. Both the CPSU Congresses and the modern economic forums construct an abstract of democracy and discussion in the national political communication, offering a platform for the dialogue but retaining the main tribune to the powerbrokers.

The St. Petersburg conference, the Forums in Sochi and Vladivostok are usually headlined by the speech of the President or the Prime Minister, in terms of which he announced the priorities of economic politics for the following year. In 2013 SPIEF the main topics became the amnesty for the big business, which aroused the first stride of rumors on the liberation of Mikhail Khodorkovsky. In relation to economic issues and investment climate the key news became the fight with inflation and unpacking of the National Wellfare Foundation in order to spend the budget on the key infrastructural projects, including construction of Central Automobile Ring Road and high-speed railway from Moscow to Kazan, and modernization of TransSib.

Due to the presence of the chief country's personalities on the regional investment forums, some of the regional occasions draw federal advertency and extensive media coverage by the state media. This makes national and subnational levels of political communication merge, bringing a local event to the imperial spotlight.

The thesis can be illustrated with the example of the “Forum of Action” held in April 2016 in Yoshkar-Ola by the All-Russia People's Front. The All-Russia People's Front is a coalition of the social and political communities launched by then Prime Minister Vladimir Putin in 2011. The coalition embrace around 1600 political, business and social organizations, including RSPP, Support of Russia (“Opora Rossii”), some veteran and patriotic associations.

The organization was designed to align both party and non-party supporters of the United Russia Duma party in order to “collaborate for the weal of the country”. http://onf.ru/

The “Forum of Action” in Yoshkar-Ola became the second forum organized by the All-Russia People's Front, the first one took place in Stavropol in January, the two will follow in the Russian regions - Yakutia and Crimea, the final All-Russia forum is to take place in the end of 2016. The Yoshkar-Ola forum hosted some 450 participants including the regional activists of the All-Russia People's Front from the Volga region, Ural and the North. The gathering covered the topics of industrial development, preservation of the water resource, utility services in the region, developing effective and transparent local policies.

The visit of the President became the pillar of the two-day program of the event. Delivering the opening speech to the participants Vladimir Putin announced that public forums are “the instruments of direct democracy that allow us to comprehend the life of the country, including the most remoted regions”, and that they “have proved their efficiency”.

Communication with the President became the basic gr-activity during the event, since most of the activists applied to him with direct questions for solving a variety of issues: starting from bee-keeping and fishing industries up to lack of diligence from the regional authorities. The senior official promised to resolve the controversial situations.

As far as we can see the greatest deal of national and subnational political communications are personality-centered and proceed under patronage of the country leader. Along with that the lobbying process also happens on the local or metropolitan level, where regional, municipal and city officials step appear as the chief stakeholders of the process.

A case of agreement between Krasnoyarsk krai and the Federal corporation for development of small and medium (established in 2015 for support of the Russian small business in response to the foreign economic sanctions), signed during the Krasnoyarsk Economic Forum may become an evidence of government relations practice taking place on the local level. Following the compliance the financial and administrative support was allocated to a range of the regional companies: “Tekchpolimer”, “The plant of geosynthetic materials”, “Rosnanoclimat” and “Svyazcom”.

The Moscow Urban Forum and the Moscow Economic Forum are the model institutions for the municipal or metropolitan political communications. The Moscow Economic Forum, taking place on the basis of the Moscow State University premises, has been described in the previous chapter. Here we will focus on the Moscow Urban Forum - an annual architectural and city planning conference, held from 2011 under the auspices of Moscow City Hall. The event, hosting regularly around 15 000 guests, became a platform for discussions among the eminent city's and world's urbanists, city managers and local business communities. The side of the government on the Urban Forum is usually represented by the Moscow Mayor (Sergey Sobyanin), Deputy Moscow Mayor (Marat Khusnulin) and other city officials. The popular topics discussed on the forum's discussion panels and round tables are technological breakthrough in the city design and construction, incorporation of the global experience and expertise in Russian realities, transport system innovation and creating of multiple public spaces. In 2016 the Moscow Urban Forum stepped out of the city borders to be hosted in other Russian metropolises: Rostov-on-Don, Voronezh, Tyumen, Krasnoyarsk and Perm.

In terms of political communication, the local and metropolitan gatherings offer the business executives real opportunity of communication and building government relations, where presentation stands of the infrastructure, architecture and construction projects may obtain the observance and consideration from the influence peddlers.

Comparative analysis on public government relations on the various political levels guides our attention to the third objective of the research: exploring who the main GR-actors and policy-makers from the side of authorities are and what their influence is.

The studies of key actors in political communication and lobbyism practices have gained pace recently. The most regular and trustworthy one is conducted by the Independent Newspaper (“Nezavisimaya gazeta”, Rus) and the Agency for Economic Information “Prime”. The rating “Best lobbyists in Russia” measures the efficiency of the senior state officials, professional lobbyists and regional leaders in “legal promotion of their interests and activities excluding bribing and other corruption deeds”.

According to the rating by the end of 2015 the top five state power-brokers are the Head of Presidential Administration Sergey Ivanov, the head of state-owned “Rosneft” Igor Sechin, the head of the federal government Igor Shuvalov, the head of Gazprom, a businessman and philanthropist Alisher Usmanov. Among the most efficient “professional” lobbyists there are members of the Presidential Administration and Federal Government Vyacheslav Volodin, Dmitry Rogozin, Dmitry Kozak, Anton Siluanov and Arkady Dvorkovitch, as well as the heads of two business organizations: RSPP and Delovaya Rossiya - Alexander Shokhin and Boris Titov. The “regional lobbyists” list is headed by the Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin.

On comparing these data with the lists attendant of the forums and conferences we may conclude that all these people can be frequently or permanently met among the high-profile guests and speakers of the events, which makes them to some extend accessible to the general business public and government relations professionals from the corporate camp.

At the same time the question rises on the autonomy of the officials and their ability to stand up for their interests. A memorable occasion can be recalled with regards to this question, when the First Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian Federation Igor Shuvalov was publicly admonished by the Prime Minister Vladimir Putin during a government Presidium meeting in the wake of the Saint Petersburg International Economic Forum in 2008. The official delivered a resonating speech at the forum, promising to reduce state control over the economics and diminish share of “strategic” enterprise locked for foreign investors http://www.kommersant.ru/doc/901850 , which was hailed by the latter's but obviously uncoordinated with the leader of the country.

The analysis of the concept of political communication and government relations within the officials gathering of various scale we can conclude that the public platforms of forums and conferences are highly defined by the political environment and act as prototypical events of mobilization in which national political communication traditions crystallize and see their new development.

Presence of key federal and regional regulators and decision-makers on the economic and investment gatherings turns the public forums into a ground for potential activity in government affairs and a means of promoting individual business interests within political agenda.

The publicity and media coverage of economic forums and the government activities happening on their basis obviously facilitates to the matter of fulfillment the commitments given by the civil servants. In this case social support and accountability as well as wide media coverage make the execution irreversible, while the traditional behind-the-scenes lobbyist activities can be easily debunked by the influence-peddlers.

However, the high concentration of political power in the hands of a very few power brokers makes the lobbying process highly obstructed. The issue of approachability to the decision-making bureaucrats still remains. The ever-increasing security measures and the process of increasing bureaucratization of the public events riddles many small players off the communication, leaving room for only large corporations with significant administrative resource.

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

The theorists who analyze the concept of lobbyism from the point of economic theory treat it as a communicational strategy, aimed at increasing the company's profit. As a result of corporate lobbyism (or government relations) a company may obtain a range of preferential advantages over the rivals such as: access to the national resources and procurement, gaining subsidies and discount credits, allocation of state budget, obtaining free licenses and tax exemptions, legal enforcement and regulation initiatives over the competing firms and industries.

In terms of forums there is opportunity for business for pushing and enforcement of legislative amendments. Speaking on the opening panel at “Forum of Action” in Yoshkar-Ola the President Vladimir Putin noted that the forums are not about just a talking process but about searching for the right decisions: “It's not a complete success, but the meetings of this kind form the position of the government and the Presidential administration, in order to evolve into amendments to the Federal Law and the normative acts”. http://rg.ru/2016/04/25/reg-pfo/vladimir-putin-vstretilsia-s-uchastnikami-regionalnogo-foruma-onf.html

There is a significant record of legislative activity, spurred by the activities on the forums. One of the most resonant bills, passed in the wake of a forum has been mentioned previously, it followed the President's speech on the SPIEF in 2011 and gave amnesty for thousands of Russian businessmen, judged for economic crimes. Other groundbreaking amendments following the Forum's plenary session included diminishing the stakes of the government down to less than controlling (except infrastructure enterprises crucial for the state safety) and granting easier long-term visa procedures for investors.

Another success of the legislative lobbyists happened on the SPIEF in 2015 when the business associations managed to promote a rebate for the industrialists allotting budget to modernization. To include the tax exemption to the Russian Internal Revenue Code was the first assignment of the President Vladimir Putin subsequently of the event. The measure was supposed to boost investment and modernization mobility of the major producers.

There are probably plenty other precedents of law-making initiatives successfully pulled forward in the settings of the public forums. However the research conducted by RSPP (see App. 1) has proved the overwhelming personalization and domination of executive power in the government relations in Russia. Some 60% of the Russian respondents named the leaders of the country as the main target audience of their communication and 100% of them regularly appeal to the bodies of federal executive power. On the opposite only 25% of the foreign company's participating in the research named the leaders of the country and the federal executives as the objective recipients of their communication. Along with that the Russian players appear to be slightly less interested in elaborating Regulatory Impact Assessment of the normative legislative acts and amendments, than the foreigners are: 28, 6% vs. 33, 3%.

Such focus on the executive authority rather than legislation would be unusual for developed countries, where traditional government relations begin with influencing the law-making processes, write Bykov I., Filatova O. in “Government Relations: modern theoretical approaches and practical solutions”. Быков И. А., Филатова О. Г. Government Relations: Современные теоретические подходы и практические решения // Средства массовой информации в современном мире. Петербургские чтения: матер. 52-й междунар. науч.-практ. конф. СПб.: СПбГУ, 2013. С. 137-140.

For now the vast majority of Russian GR-actors have chosen the strategy of engaging executive power: building relationship with the federal and regional officials is among the key fields of labor for the local GR-specialist. Their main practices are aimed at raising income of a corporation at the expense of getting access to the public procurements, winning the tenders and obtaining direct and indirect support from the government.

Such lobbyism activities are especially wide-spread and legitimate in the sectors where the government is the main contractor and consumer of goods and services: it regards state procurements in medicine, defense, hi-tech and machinery, construction and other clusters. In this case the GR campaign employs a wide variety of instruments aimed at promotion of its advantages and superiority over the rivals, including participating as experts in terms of conferences and forums, unveiling presentation stands and promoting its services as a sponsor.

This work seems especially challenging if we take into account that the process of attracting investments and getting involved in the public procurements in Russia experiences quite visible disparities. In their work Frye, Yakovlev & Yasin (2009) Frye, T., Yakovlev, A., & Yasin, Y. (2009). "The 'Other' Russian Economy: How Everyday Firms View the Rules of the Game in Russia." Social Research: An International Quarterly. 76 (1): 29-54. submit a hypothesis of “system of exchanges” between the business and the government, suggesting that the state support and liabilities are predominantly allocated to the large, often state-run, enterprises that preserve jobs and offer the region stable economic development. That study revealed that large companies are more often involved in the state procurement process and receive support from all levels of government - both regional and federal. This thesis of the paper goes along with another one: “large-scale investment are made by the firms that had earlier received government support or were recipients of the rent from government limitation of new entry to their markets”.

The hypothesis can be proved by a range of projects, which were launched or promoted after the successful work at the SPIEF. On the basis of agreements reached at the Forum in 2010, four domestic pharmaceutical companies - Gerofarm, Biocad, Samson Med and Neon - signed on allocating their production capacities in the special economic zone of Saint Petersburg “Pushkinskaya”. All of these enterprises have a record of receiving direct and indirect support, including stimulation of demand for their goods and services.

In Russia the executive authorities, starting from the federal down to the regional, municipal and metropolitan levels, perform as the richest and most dedicated investor. The total sums spent on infrastructure and social development in the country reach billion of dollars. In 2011 the Russian President set up the Russian Foundation for Direct Investments in order to boost the rise of economy and the cash flow coming to the country.

The vast majority of investment forums are also designed for attracting direct investments, which respectively creates the precedent for communication with the government. In developed countries, this mission is given to the multiple market and financial institutions, banking and investment mechanisms, while developing countries cannot build such a far-flung investment system overnight without intermediate institutions.

In transition economies like Russian one there is a deficit of capital and its flow and relocation is obstructed, Y. Balatsky writes in an article “Investment forums in Russia as an institute of regional development”: “In this regards economic agents in such countries are in search of alternative ways of organizing the investment market and regional investment forums are gaining this role in Russia”. Е.В. Балацкий. Инвестиционные форумы России как институт регионального развития, ЦЭМИ РАН, ГУУ, Москва 2013 According to the author, investment forums in this case are not an ultimate and self-sufficient, but a transitive and supplemental institute, supporting and constructing new economic reality in the country.

A specialized Russian Internet resource “The Capital of the Country” on behalf of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of the Russian Federation has conducted a research to classify the regional investment forums on several criteria. The seven criteria include: awareness, prestige, bureaucracy, financial accessibility, desirability, record of attendance, efficiency.

Based on comparison and co-locating these factors the final rating of the investment forums has been designed. According to the survey top three events are the Saint Petersburg Economic Forum, the Sochi International Investment Forum and Krasnoyarsk Economic Forum. We can see that the rating coincide with the results of the poll conducted by RSPP and mentioned prior in the text.

At the same time if we look more closely at the chart, which is ranking forums according their efficiency, we will find the Saint Petersburg Economic Forum on the 8th place, the Sochi International Investment Forum is on the 13th place and Krasnoyarsk Economic Forum on the 22d place. On contrary the top positions in this chart are preoccupied by the regional conferences of a less grander scale such as the International Investment Conference “Lipetsk region: development through investments”, Ivanovo economic forum “The Golden Ring” and Yaroslavl investment forum “Technology of regional development”. All these three events got the highest rate among other forums and conferences - 10 out of 12 points on “efficiency” and “productivity”.

This can be linked with the fact that the main country's forums have turned into a top-profile ritzy events with high level of administrative bureaucracy and formality. Many enterprises and investment foundations tend to assign important meetings, negotiations and signing contracts to these occasions to add more publicity and media coverage to the process.

It would be fair to state that the obvious means of assessment for efficiency of the forums is to calculate the summary of the investment contracts, signed on their basis. However we can argue that in some (if not many) cases these means of assessment is not quite representative.

This aspect can be vividly demonstrated referring to the context of the Sochi International Investment Forum. On gathering relevant information on the Forums' website, we can see that in 2006, at the point of its establishment, the total sum of attracted investment counted some 140 bln roubles. The very next year it rose three times more - the level of investment soared up to 455 bln roubles.

Such a rapid rise of the budgets flow brought up by the forum was presumably inspired by the regular session of the International Olympic Committee that took place in July 2007 in Guatemala that entitled Sochi to be the next city for winter Olympic Games in 2014. That event accurately preceded the Sochi International Investment Forum, taking place several months later - October 2007. It would be also unwise to presume that 132 conventions, signed by the Krasnodar region authorities that calculated at 455 bln roubles (approximately 17 bln dollars) could be agreed and signed just in the realms of the two-day conference. The years following 2007 were also prolific for the Sochi Forum but the level investment was sliding each year on to 328 bln roubles in 2008, 351 bln roubles in 2009, and finally in 2010 some 179 agreements were signed accounting for only 295 bln roubles.

These dynamics may indicate that general political and economic factors have a defying impact on the degree and form of investment activity in realms of the forums, which is not dependent or catalyzed by the communication strategies and government relations processes undergoing on the event.

The criticism of investment activity of the forums lies in the aspect of fair distribution of the finances and the availability of all the participants to the contest. The Saint Petersburg Economic Forum may become the best example to look into this discourse. The total sum of annual contracts varies between 250 and more than 300 billion rubles, which on the one hand can testify on a prolific government and business collaboration.

On the other hand the parties to the agreement mainly included the biggest state companies or the companies with high administrative resource. Taking the Saint Petersburg Economic Forum as an example it can be argued that the forums provide equal and unbiased access of their participants to the investment process. Thus in 2013 the Forum boasted having signed some 102 contracts for some record 9, 6 trillion roubles, which was 31 times more than the last year. In fact the biggest contracts reported to the energy sector, while most of the other contracts turned out as agreements on cooperation and memorandums of partnership. The real contracts involving financial and juridical liability were 11 only and they included i.e. a record 9 trillion rouble contract between state-owned hydrocarbon giant Rosneft and Chinese government on supply of 365 million tons of oil within the next 25 years. The other contracts include a line of credit up to 100 billion roubles offered by VTB bank to Rosneft and dedicated to the regional projects of the oil giant. The next year summit featured contracts on creating a joint venture between Rosneft and British oil enterprise BP for extracting hard-to-recover resources in Volga-Uralsk region and a five-year 2 billion dollar contract on oil trading between Rosneft to Venezuelan company PDVSA.

The regional and municipal authorities are also involved in the give-and-take GR process, where they can act from the government's side and place bids for the private business or they may become the opposite side that is competing for the federal budget. Therefore the Saint Petersburg administration frequently call for tenders for realization of infrastructure projects (i.e. creating an agriculture venture in the vicinities of the city, 2013). Either way a region may sign a facility agreement with a bank on preferable conditions - that was done by the Kemerovo region administration in terms of SPIEF 2015, which attracted financing for the regional ski-resort Sheregesh from the Federal Center for Project Finance, the daughter structure of state financial corporation VEB.

In sum the comparative study of the key actors of investment activity on the basis of the Saint Petersburg Economic Forum demonstrates that the main role in the process is allocated to the state companies or the enterprises and institutions close to the federal or regional executives.

Furthermore unlike the foreign investment affairs rolling out as some sort of expositions of investment opportunities, innovative projects and goods, Russian events are progressively abandoning this practice. Despite the significant investment contracts reaching billions of dollars, the focus of investment forums in this country is moving away from traditional process of “pitching” and investors meetings to the format of discussion panels and round tables. “We can claim that the platforms such as SPIEF and Sochi Forum, are devolving in the role of investment facilities which may be caused by excessive participation of the state-ranked officials” - writes Balatsky in the article “Regional Investment Forums in the Russian Economy” Балацкий Е.В. Инвестиционные форумы России как институт регионального развития// «Журнал Новой экономической ассоциации», №2(18), 2013. С.101-128..

The same fate is apparently awaiting other major regional investment events. Take an illustration of the Eastern Forum in 2015, when after participation of the President Vladimir Putin was announced, many Russian and foreign investors had to cut their delegation by several times, including translators. Along with the groundbreaking agenda on the reclamation of the Far East, on the basis of the forum some 80 contracts were signed totaling more than 1, 3 trillion rubles. However the priority on investment activity was again allotted to the Russian state-owned companies: Gazprom, Rosneft, Rushydro, VTB Bank.

According to the website zakupki.gov.ru (a data base of state procurements), the exhibition department of state-owned primary giant “Gazprom Expo” spent around 34 million rubles on the corporate presentation stand. Another federal energy giant RAO Energy Systems of the East contributed 61 million rubles to the business session with the members of the federal and regional government, heads of foreign companies and financial enterprises. Presentation session consumed 5, 7 million rubles by state financial leader Sberbank. Along with that one of the headline investment and discussion panels of the forum “Far East - new opportunities for reclamation of Asia-Pacific region” was not popular with the delegates, as far as Vedomosti correspondent reported. http://www.vedomosti.ru/economics/news/2015/09/03/607331-vef-polovinu-zala

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

In the introductory part of the research we set out to explore whether public communication facilities, such as economic conferences and forums may be regarded as agents of positive changes that bring good not only for a selected group of businessmen and politicians but for a wider community of citizens.

Here we can refer to Mancur Olson's “Logic of Collective Action”, a theory where he concerns whether large groups of businessmen or political agents (e.g. officeholders, voters, lobbies, or political parties) can pursue their collective interests to achieve “public good”, assuming that these gatherings do not always foster collective welfare. In this part of the paper our findings may be interpreted to allow us to reflect on this hypothesis.

Reaching balance between state and private interest may be considered as an example of a successful lobbying campaign. Here lays the clue why the issue of public-private partnership is drawing so much attention nowadays in the discourse of the public forums and with political and business communication communities.

In developing countries such as Russia the public regional events deliver indirect positive effect. Investments attracted by these institutions corroborate development of the region, bring job opportunities and increase employment within the locality, foster related production activities. Regional budgets are positively affected as tax collection increases along with new tax-payers emerging.

In May 2016 news agency Interfax published a report on 10 business projects that succeeded after the SPIEF. One of the largest economic effect was brought by several automobile giants - Hyundai, Toyota, General Motors and Nissan allocating their manufactories in the Leningrad region. Another major example may become the high-tech Center for Proton Radial Therapy, which is able to host up to 800 oncology patients a year. The resolution on its construction in Saint Petersburg was signed by the City Hall and the Center for Nuclear Medicine at the International Institute of Biosystems n.a. S.Berezin.

It is yet a highly debatable question whether import-substitution practice should count as public good in realms of the Russian political and social agenda. However, on the SPIEF 2015 following the political crisis, the authorities agreed on establishing the Center for import-substitution on the basis of the Forum venue LenExpo. The ground will host a permanent exhibition of the domestically produced goods, including local products. Starting from 2016 the Forum which occupied LenExpo is to move to another conference venue in Shushary (Suosaari, Fin) in the vicinities of Saint Petersburg.

When looking at the financial outcomes of the investment forums we can see billion-ruble contracts manifested by the organizers. Nevertheless not all the contracts imply direct engagements from investors and their realization may lag behind the signed on paper resolutions and agreements on intent. Many contracts are terminated and never see the final implementation. For example the statistics on the Sochi Investment Forum records only 50% of agreements on intent are finally converted to contracts. Therefore the direct economic effect of such investment activities is generally far lesser than the official statistics claims.

However it would be unfair to reduce the “public good” effect to figures only. There are intangible profits offered for the business community by the institutes of forums and conferences such as communication with the government officials, partners and investors, increasing of mutual trust and respect, obtaining and developing knowledge of the political and economical agenda, affecting on federal bureaucracy.

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

In this part of the study we address the aspect of the relationship between the economic and investment forums and the Media, cast a look at the general media image of the forums, as well as the political and business actors, taking part in these events.

A rapid glance at the media coverage of our study objective demonstrate that these public communication platforms find their reflection in the Russian federal and regional mass media. The media attention predominantly occurs in the period of staging the event - a week beforehand announcing the occasion and its program and a week or two after, as far as the monitoring system shows us.

For this block of analysis two conference platforms have been chosen - the Sochi International Forum (SIF) and the Moscow Economic Forum (MEF). Despite the fact that the two platforms are close to each other thematically - they are both aimed at revealing and resolving economic problematic in the country, they differ significantly. The Sochi Forum is a state-founded platform for attracting investments to the regions while the Moscow Economic Forum and attracts speakers who shares oppositional economic views running in contrast with the mainstream political agenda. For this media analysis a media monitoring and analysis system “Mediology” was employed. The system conducted monitoring of media coverage of the two most recent events - the last Sochi International Forum was held in October 2015, the last Moscow Economic Forum took place in March 2016. On composing a report within a week of coverage of both events we can see approximately equal number of reports - 180 for MEF and 240 for SIF, the prevalence of Sochi event in the media may be explained with its active coverage by the state run regional and municipal press which may have been obligatory, while Moscow Forum draw attention of mostly independent social-economic media.

In order to calculate the rating of each event with the mass media we will use MediaIndex, which was designed to measure PR value of publications. It indicates the prominence of each message in the local media field, putting the most influential media on top and giving points for the bigger media effect.

The highest MediaIndex for the Sochi Forum reached 55, 9 scores placing reports by the state-run news agency RIA Novosti on top of the chart. The top important news on the subject include “Sobyanin showed Medvedev the system of investor support in Moscow”, “Adygea has signed contracts totaling 5 bln rubles”, “Yamalo-Nenets Okrug is awaiting for foreign and federal domestic investors in Arctic”. These and other topics of the event were also most widely covered by the federal state-run press: Rossiyskaya Gazeta, TASS, Vesti FM.

The most influential news on the Moscow Economic Forum called “Russian Economy is asking Primakov for help” by MK newspaper obtained MediaIndex rating of 194 points. Other reports in “Slon”, “Echo Moskvy”, “Nezavisimaya Gazeta”, “Novaya Gazeta”, “Gazeta.ru”, “Kommersant” were ranked also very high - from 100 to 30 scores by MediaIndex. The titles turned out rather critical to the governmental economic politics: “The Kremlin can't find the exit out of the deadlock”, “The officials got afraid of the economic forum”, “Finding the way back: the soviet economy is returning”.

As far as we can see from the given analysis the perception of the two events by the Mass Media vary dramatically respectively to the orientations, attitudes and priorities that govern the relationship between the actors of political communication - the media and powerbrokers. In the case with a high-profile Sochi Forum the government and the regional authorities become the main actors of communication, and the state media is the main stakeholder in this process. At the same time the independent and oppositional press are not engaged with the top-profile speakers, treating these events with suspicion and maintaining distant relationship with the political newsmakers. In this regard autonomous and less bureaucratized Moscow Forum draws more attention and coverage with them, offering room for critics and analysis.

In sum the study stimulates a reflection about meaning and consequences of journalists predispositions for how they perceive and report the news from the economic forums and other public events under the influence of different political and economical contexts. The comparative media analysis of two communication platforms also vividly demonstrates that the institute of the economic forums itself cannot be expected to be the only measure to stimulate any significant transitions in the country.

8. Conclusion. Assessment of the survey results

Public forums and gatherings, along with other public institutes and initiatives play an important role in developing Russia's economy and the process of interaction between the government and the business responsively. The changes in Russian governance and market have opened a new era for political communication and government relations in the country. Successful communication between citizens and government is critical for the effective implementation of governance, and very few governments fully exploit the potential benefits of the direct communication instruments at their disposal. Today we can see actualization of public communication format since new forums and conferences are emerging in the country, including its new territories.

New communicational platforms appear in various spheres of social and economical life, some of them, such as “Forum Baltic Artek”, all-Russian educational youth forum “Terra Scientia” on Klyazma river, “Iturup” (all three organized by the Federal Agency for Youth Affairs - strive to involve new audience with a view of upbringing future political and economical elite.

These communicational platforms became a phenomenon in political, social and economical spheres and offer grand scope for future analysis.

The focus of this study lied in realms of government and business relations, which are constructed with the help and on the basis of these gatherings. Many critics admit that the institute of economic forums has become an instrument of “soft coordination” of the state and the business interests, which is rather efficient, especially in conditions of a developing economy. However the rapid expansion of this format made it excessive and devalued at some point both for the high-profiled bureaucrats and for the corporate camp as well, creating vacuum for new ideas, disabling real dialogue, and downgrading their prestige.

The major forums and conferences in the country are organized under the paradigm top-down, with the initiative from the government and not upwards from the side of the business community. This fact reveals that government remains the gatekeeper and holds exerted power and control over the information available to the public. At the vast majority of events one-way communication still rules, while interactive and participatory elements are used with caution, which may be an indicator that the power-brokers fear to lose control of the communication.

The most revolutionary ideas and initiatives are demonstrated at the forums initiated by the oppositional business community or business associations with a viewpoint alternative from the government's. The comparative media analysis of two communicational platforms - a state-run Sochi International Forum and an oppositional Moscow Economic Forum - discovered the hidden potential and the public interest in the events, that provide tribune to the business side (as MEF) and the growing mistrust to the high official speakers at state-founded events (SIF).

One of the key missions of public forums in Russia is improving investment image of the country and attracting investments to the certain projects or locations. Moreover getting an access to the state investment activity and public procurement is one of the key KPI for the local GR-actors. With this respect local investment forums substitute for developed institutes of investment market and become a kind of mediators in the case of transitional economy. Along with that the comparison of the regional investment venues revealed that the three biggest and the most prominent forums - the Saint Petersburg Forum, the Sochi Forum and the Krasnoyarsk Forum are considered nevertheless not as efficient as some other more modest and low-key regional investment gatherings, that experience lower levels of bureaucratization.

The case-study of the contracts, signed at the major investment events, has led us to verification of the hypothesis of “system of exchanges”, claiming that large state-run tax-payers and employers in Russia receive a greater deal of direct and indirect support from the federal and regional authorities.

Addressing the aspect of political communication at the forums we attempted to categorize these events according to the three levels of government relations starting from local up to international. Our findings testify that the international government communication is highly efficient but may be a subject to the political pressure, which inevitably effects commercial performance.

Against this background, public government affairs - and professional management of interest representation at the economic forums and conferences - fulfill an important function within the political system. They enable links and mutual comprehension between civil society, economics and politics, which creates healthy basement for the social and economical changes.

Moreover public forums offer the grand space of working with the public opinion - so-called grass-roots lobbying and building relationship with the media community, which also may become the part of government relations campaign.

For the time being the biggest challenge for the public communication platforms is to foster a constructive egalitarian dialogue within the political and business community of all levels (including small and medium business) and to find the mechanisms of conversing of its potential in favor of the country's development.

References

Балацкий Е.В. Инвестиционные форумы России как институт регионального развития. «Журнал Новой экономической ассоциации», №2(18), 2013

Григор Г. Использование лоббизма в реализации экономических интересов предприятия: диссертация кандидата экономических наук, Москва, 2004

Зудин A. Ассоциации бизнеса и государство: Что изменилось?, 2010

Doner, Richard and Ben Ross Schneider, 2000. “Business Associations and Economic Development: Why Some Associations Contribute More Than Others, ” Business and Politics, 2, 261-288.

Frye, Timothy, 2002. “Capture or exchange? Business lobbying in Russia, ” Europe-Asia Studies 54, 1017-1036.

Galligan D. J., Kurkchiyan M. Law and Informal Practices: The Post-Communist

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

Grunig, J. E. (2001). Two-way symmetrical public relations: Past, present, and future. In R. L. Heath (Ed.), Handbook of public relations (pp. 11- 30). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Olson, Mancur, 1965. The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups. Harvard University Press.

Recanatini, F., Ryterman, R., 2001. Disorganization or Self-Organization? The Emergence of Business Associations in a Transition Economy. World Bank Policy Research Working Paper Series, January 2001.

Schmitter, P., Streeck, W. (1999). “The Organization of business interests: studying the associative action in business in advanced industrial societies”, p.15. Koln, Germany: MPIfG

Waymer., D. (2012). Democracy and government public relations: Expanding the scope of “Relationship” in public relations research, Public Relations Review, pp.31-35, Texas, USA: Elsevier

Yakovlev, A., Govorun, A. (2011). “Industrial associations as a channel of business government interactions in imperfect institutional environment: the Russian case”, Economics Working Paper No.116, pp. 2-5, 14. London, UK: Center for comparative economics

Yakovlev A., 2010. State-business relations in Russia in the 2000s: From the capture to a variety of exchange models? - Paper presented at ISNIE Conference 2010, University of Stirling, June 2010

Zudin A. (2006) State and business in Russia: evolution of interrelations // Neprikosnovenny Zapas, No. 6 (50), p.200-212

Размещено на Allbest.ru