Reshaping the Danube Region imaginary: A focus on digital transformation and HPC

Being part of a complex and changing environment, determines any region to have adaptive capabilities and rely on dynamin investment in order to survive. Additionally, it is important to mention that regions are not alike, thus there is a difference in “quality” or “efficiency” of the regional systems. Even more, these differences lead to different outcomes of development, though the inputs sometimes are identical in quantitative and qualitative terms.

In the end of 2010, the European Commission elaborates the European Union Strategy for Danube Region (European Commission 2010a). The strategy comes as a response to address the challenges of the economic crisis by reinforcing the efforts to overcome it in a sustainable approach. Thus, the Strategy has the main aim to provide continuous framework policy integration and coherent development of the Danube Region, from the core of economic developed (Germany – Baden - Württemberg and Bavaria) to the peripheral region (Moldova and Ukraine). As Besednjak Valić highlights (2019), the Danube Region is a very sensitive group of countries, since it comprises both EU and non-EU member states. Additionally, the group is not heterogenous, because there are most developed regions from Germany and underdeveloped regions from Moldova and Ukraine. Nonetheless, to having different development trajectories, it is adding up to these differences their dissimilarities in culture and economy, which affects the innovation system. This aspect is important, because as Rončević and Makarovič (2011a) show, the socio-cultural field represents an essential element of the environment, because it limits the options of strategic actors Following this line of argument, the re-industrialization of the Danube Region is important, because it has an impact on the economic development of the countries of the Danube (Besednjak Valić 2019, 44). As the author points, the digital transformation alongside the usage and applicability of high-performance computing is the path toward re-industrializing the region and helping to shorten the gap between innovation leaders and modest innovators. This argument is especially valid for the parts where the effects of the economic are still noticeable. Thus, by improving certain framework initiatives of the developmental performance of the Danube countries, the industrial base gives a solid starting point and offers possible success.

It is known that the most advanced HPC infrastructure and knowledge are located in well-off western parts of the Danube region. Meanwhile, enterprises from eastern part of the Danube Region have limited access and competencies. Even more, transnational cooperation in the region is limited, which is further hindering innovation and technology transfer (Coscodaru, Modic and Rončević 2019, 8). Thus, this aspect highlights one more time, the need of reshaping the economic reality, in order to redress the existing discrepancies between core and periphery regions. In the context of promotion of new economic initiatives, crises are comprehended as good opportunities to develop or reshape economic imaginaries, because any economic crisis affects the economic identity and performance. Additionally, it creates a cognitive and strategic disorientation and trigger proliferation in interpretations and proposed solutions (Jessop 2010). In the context of the new discourses at the EU level during the switch toward a knowledge-based economy, as Jessop (2004) points, this new type of economy can be regarded as a distinctive semiotic order. As a result, discourses and styles are (re-) articulated around, in this case, a new economic strategy. Nevertheless, it does need necessarily has to be a strategy, but it can also be perceived as a state project which affects diverse institutional orders and the lifeworld. Thus, knowledge-based economy is linked to notions or visions, like the information economy, learning economy, creative economy and information society (Sum and Jessop 2015, 270). Nevertheless, as Sum and Jessop point, the official economic strategies (towns, cities and regions through national states and supranational bodies like the European Union) have advanced knowledge-based economy on the global level. Also, it made the knowledgebased economy central to future growth and increase the critical role in longterm competitive advantage and sustained prosperity for new and old industries and services. Even if economies in general can be seen as being knowledge economies, but not all are described and governed, let alone find themselves so labelled in different discourses. As Sum and Jessop (2013) highlight, the economic imaginary identifies, privileges and seeks to stabilize some economic activities from the totality of economic relations. Asa result, these economic relations are transformed into objects of observation, calculation and governance (Sum and Jessop 2013, 16).

The Danube Region being so diverse, it is important to understand it not only from the legal or administrative boundaries, but also to grasp the historical and cultural diversity. The social, economic, and political differences in the period of transition can be explained by historical and cultural background (Adam, Makarovič, Rončević and Tomšič2005, 16). Consequently, in order not to neglect these primordial factors, this article addresses the Danube Region as an economic and political imaginary through the lenses of Cultural Political Economy, that focuses on the complexity of the reality. Following this line of argument, the aim is to understand the economic reshape of the Danube Region, and the consequences of the European Union Strategy for Danube Region.

The new complex realities concentrate on social, economic and political relations and identities (Paasi 2002). This statement is reinforced with the economic realities after the 2008 crisis, including in the EU. Thus, there was a need to reshape existing economic imaginaries. As Jessop and Oosterlynck point (2008), both history and institutional bodies matter in the perspective of the regional economic institutionalization. Economy through the lenses of Cultural Political Economy has both semiotic (discoursive) and extrasemiotic (aspects). These two coexist and influence each other (Sum and Jessop 2013, 265). As a result, the Cultural Political Economy’s role is to contribute in understanding of new regionalism (Makarovič, Šušterič and Rončević 2013). Thus, as Hughes, Sasse and Gordon (2003) point that the EU regional policy promotes institutional building, learning and policy-making innovation at regional and local levels. Following this line of argument, incorporating Cultural Political Economy, it has three main distinctive features:

Jessop (2010, 344) emphasizes that “imaginary” is a term for semiotic systems. These imaginaries frame individual experiences of the complex world. Thus, these shapes lived experience in a complex world. Additionally, these experiences consist of specific configuration of genres, discourses and styles. Even more, imagined economies are informally constituted and reproduced on many sites and scales, in different spatio-temporal contexts, and over various spatio-temporal horizons (Jessop 2010, 345). These extend through stable economic organizations, networks, and clusters to ‘macroeconomic’ regimes. The new economic imaginaries, are not static, but rather develop as economic, political and intellectual forces. These forces can be political parties, think tanks, bodies such as the OECD or World Bank, business associations and trade union, sand social movements.

Imaginaries are on their own, thus create a world where the space of possibility of imaginations and thought is present experience a different reality. As a result, this reality can differ from the real reality (Beckert 2011, 5). Nevertheless, in the complexity of the real world of the economic context, these imaginaries motivate actions in the real world, because at a certain stage something imaginary will turn in something existing at a later point in time (Beckert 2011, 11). Also, imaginaries have the property to adapt, but be vulnerable to contradictory experiences in the real world (Wilkinson 1970, 312). It is a dynamic process, where the order is created rather than inherited. At the same time, there must be a clear difference between the role of imaginaries and institutions. On one hand, imaginaries are semiotic systems, which have the role providing the foundation for the lived experience of the complex world. On the other hand, institutions embed the lived experience in broader social relations, and interpreting across various social spheres (Jessop and Oosterlynck 2008, 6). As stated earlier, crises are good opportunities to reshape an imaginary. As any other process, it needs certain mechanisms through which it triggers the proliferation in interpretations and proposed solutions. CPE emphasizes the integration of three evolutionary mechanisms of variation, selection, and retention into semiotic analysis (Jessop 2010, 341):

Additionally, Jessop also mentions about a fourth mechanism: reinforcement. It has the aim to also filter out contrary discourses and practices. Relying on discursive and material tools, appropriated genres, styles and strategies are strengthened. Furthermore, it allows to selectively eliminate inappropriate alternatives and to promote complementary discourses across society. As a result, these mechanisms influence the way a new imaginary is created and shaped through the frame of different discourses that actors chose. Thus, as Rončević and Makarovič (2011b) highlighted the role of the semiotic and extra-semiotic factors in strategy formation process through evolutionary mechanisms. The authors showed that the processes of societal steering are inherently social processes and attempted to develop analytical solution that would allow to fully acknowledge nature of these processes. Even more, the process is influenced by a variety of proximate and background social institution, which are also socially constructed and depend on respective social setting. At the same time, strategic steering is not only a simple technocratic process, but rather multilayered and complex social processes (Makarovič and Rončević 2010). As a result, as the authors point, this implies the involvement of both - possibility of strategic steering of development and dealing with some of the key sociological questions. In this context, actors’ actions are not only realisation of social trends, but also actors are autonomous in relation to operations of structure to certain extent.

Jessop mentions that in the case of successful economic imaginaries there are present constitutive forces in the social, political, institutional and material world, as for example the “knowledge society” (cited in Makarovič, Šušterič and Rončević 2013, 618). It has become such a powerful political and economic imaginary that it exerts influence in shaping policy paradigms, strategies, and policies in and across many different fields of social practice. At the same time, it is elemental to highlight that it does not exist at a national, let alone quasi- continental (e.g. European) level It is represented at a local or regional level and in certain forms of cross- regional economic spaces (Sum and Jessop 2015, 261).

By “knowledge society” or knowledge-economy, we can understand it as both a strategy and a discourse (Cummings, Regeer, Haan, Zweekhorst and Bunders 2017). As the authors highlight, the discourses that are part of the knowledge society includes and topics relating to ICTs, intellectual property, science, economic development and discourses related to the network society. It can be stated the embracement of a new imaginary regarding the European knowledge economy started with the appearance of a new hegemonic strategy – New Lisbon (Robertson 2007). This strategy can be seen a continuation of the final Communication by the EC tabled in 2003 The Role of the Universities in the Europe of Knowledge (TRUEK). Even more, the concepts such as ‘innovation’, ‘knowledge’ and ‘education’ shifted their meanings from the Lisbon 2000

Robertson emphasizes (2005, 5) that: “the main strategic orientations of Lisbon 2000 were to combine supply side economics with macro-economic and social concerns; to develop information technologies, R&D policy for institutions, enterprise policy, economic reforms that targeted job creation, macro-economic policies that focused on employment and structural change along with education and training, a renewed social model, new priorities for school-based education, active employment policies focused on lifelong learning, new social protection politics, national plans to reduce social exclusion, and improved social dialogue between European civil society, the economy and structures of government.”

These discourses created a favorable milieu for the adaption toward new trends, thus creating new economic imaginaries within the EU. Following this line of new discourses, in order to address the challenges risen from the appearance of a new knowledge society, the EU Strategy for the Danube Region (EUSDR) encompasses four major pillars in order to address the challenges (EUSDR 2019);

Thus, these four pillars compress 12 priority areas, among which is focused on the Knowledge Society (research, education and ICT). After the revision of the proposed targets (Danube Knowledge Society 2016), the priority area focuses on:

We can consider the proposed targets as one of the variations of the main discourse (the Danube Strategy). Thus, each of this priority area is part of the selection process. Among the big number of priority areas certain have to be retained, consequently integrated into institutional rules and articulated into widely accepted accumulation strategies

It was proven that positive development of success economies is achieved through redefining what will change and how it will be changed. As a result, the systemic discourse is perceived as an effective strategic process in most newly developed economies (Rončević and Fric 2017). As the authors point, in the case of success economies the systemic discourse is developed from the centre of government towards the periphery. As example, it can be highlighted as an example the amount applications that were submitted during the first call of the project. Thus, as the registration opened, EUSDR received 576 submissions from which 547 have been considered for assessment (Interreg Danube Region Programme 2019a). The considered application embraced 5223 institutions from all the Danube region. During the second call, there were submitted 119 proposals from which 22 were approved (Interreg Danube Region Programme 2019b).

Figure 1

The complex discourses that appeared at the EU level during and after the economic crisis, generated a number of processes that the society had to embrace and understand. As Jessop pointed (2004), the new discourses had the aim to switch toward the creation of a knowledge-based economy which is a distinctive semiotic order. One of this process is the creation of new economic imaginaries that lead to the creation of a knowledge society. For the economic imaginary it is not compulsory to have only one discourse. These imaginaries can adapt, but are vulnerable in case of contradictory experiences in the real world. The complexity of the real world determines these realities to have a variation of discourses which compete between them. As a result, there are selected some of them, which are responsible for later actions. Once the discourses are selected, stakeholders and other actors retain these discourses through the articulation into widely accepted accumulation strategies or state projects (for example Europe 2020 and later Danube Region Strategy for the EU). Once these strategies have been retained, the goal is to filter out contrary discourses and practices that are rivaling the created new imaginary.

This article had the aim to show how Cultural Political Economy can be adopted toward the explanation of various imaginaries, in particular with a focus on the Danube Region and its path toward knowledge society. With the help of its mechanisms (variation, selection, retention) the process of economic imaginary creation can be traced and the complex changes can be explained. As emphasized earlier, the new imaginary of the Danube Region was created in the framework of Europe 2020 strategy. Within the analysis with the help of two specific ramifications of the main discourse (Digital Transformation and High-Performance Computing) it was exemplified how the co-evolution of semiotic and extra-semiotic processes impact the constitution and dynamic of reshaping a new economic imaginary. It was highlighted how the initial discourse of the Danube Region Strategy pinpointed the path of reshaping the economic imaginary in the Danube Region. Thus, on one hand the Digital Transformation background created the necessary semiotic conditions for implementation of the Strategy. On the other hand, the framework of High-Performance Computing is a new economic initiative through which the region changes its economic imaginary. Following these trends, it is to upmost importance to understand that imaginaries will be in constant change, because of the appearance of new discourses in response to new challenges. Additionally, it is more than expected that after the end of Europe 2020 strategy, we will encounter new discourses that will reshape the created economic imaginary in the Danube Region and in Europe.