ABSTRACT
The term “nation brand” made its appearance only in the 1990s, but it addresses attempts at reputation management that build on institutional networks and promotional practices of older origin. They can be traced back to the late 19th and early 20th centuries when the nation state took its modern shape. This “Leviathan 2.0” (Charles Maier) knitted together governmental, parastatal and private organisations that converged around new techniques of governing the social. The “governmentality” (Michel Foucault) of the nation state included persuasive communication, which as an area of expertise integrated the concern of promoting the nation and its goods and services. This article investigates two small industrialised nation-states. They are well suited as case studies because their dependence on exports incentivised coordinated efforts of honing the country image. However, it took Austrian elites until the second half of the 20th century to make their peace with the post-imperial reality of a small nation-state. The Swiss case shows a smoother and more continuous build-up of institutional arrangements that eventually morphed into what today is called nation branding. Both countries have been quite successful, though, and rank high on current nation band indices.
