Tourism and Politics

Peter M. Burns, Marina Novelli, Peter M. Burns, Marina Novelli

• Editorial: Routledge
• Año: 2007
• ISBN:
  9781136353833
• Edición: 1
• Categoría: Economics
• Categoría: Microeconomics

Tourism and Politics aims to disseminate ideas on the critical discourse of tourism and tourists as they relate to politics, through a series of case studies from around the world written by specialists with an emphasis on linking theory to practice. That tourism is a profoundly important economic sector for most countries and regions of the world is widely accepted, even if some of the detail remains controversial. However, as tourism matures as a subject, the theories underpinning it necessarily need to be more sophisticated; tourism cannot be simply 'read' as a business proposition with a series of impacts. Wider questions of politics, power and identity need to be articulated, investigated and answered. While the making and consuming of tourism takes place within complex political milieux with multiple stakeholders competing for benefit, the implications are not fully understood. Literature on tourism and politics is surprisingly limited. This book will make a substantial contribution to the theoretical framework of tourism.

Chapter 1

Democracy and Tourism: Exploring the
Nature of an Inconsistent Relationship

Linda K. Richter

Introduction

There has been an implicit if not explicit assumption in much of the national rhetoric of developed nations and their tourism industries that there is a basic relationship between the freedom to travel, the welcome of visitors from abroad and democracy. The now defunct US Travel and Tourism Administration used to have as its slogan: “Travel: The Perfect Freedom.” It was designed to highlight the mobility of Americans and the openness of American society in contrast with dictatorships, especially those of the USSR and its satellite nations.

The Helsinki Accords carried this assumption further by declaring travel to be a basic human right and monitoring freedom of movement was essential to assuring compliance. Again, the USSR and Eastern bloc nations were pressured to open up their societies to outsiders and to allow their own nationals freedom to travel. Democratization was to some extent being measured by the right to travel abroad. Internal support for the leisure of workers and provision for their holidays was not on the international agenda, though by that standard the then socialist nations would have ranked much higher than many capitalist governments.

What is the relationship if any between tourism and democracy and is there a way to investigate it? The answer this chapter suggests is that there are many relationships but they are not neatly a function of political arrangements or level of analysis. Tourism may nudge democratic institutions sometimes as an independent variable, but equally often elite decision-making shapes tourism.

The literature, case studies, and aggregate statistics seem to draw conclusions about this topic, but not in a consistent direction (Burns, 1999; Jurowski & Gursoy, 2004; Murphy, 1985). Tourism research tends to fall into two broad camps: those writers that see tourism as a positive good, a symbol of freedom, culture and well-being, a force for peace and understanding, and an economic force for development and heritage preservation (Richter, 2000; Richter & Richter, 2001). Tourism can promote the desirability of leisure, of education through travel, and break down artificial barriers that ignorance and isolation have established.

The other perspective tends to offer a critique that contains all or some of the following: tourism is an elite activity, enjoyed primarily by elites, controlled almost exclusively by elites, and one increasingly divorced from the control of those most affected. It exacerbates cultural tensions, bastardizes some heritage, and ignores other claimants for preservation of culture. It despoils the environment and disrupts local life. It creates unhealthy dependency on outsiders’ demands for sex, increases gender and racial disparities, and creates shortages of scarce resources like water and energy (CONTOURS, 1985–present; Richter, 1995; World, 1978). It spreads disease from tourists to local populations and from destinations to tourist-generating countries (Garrett, 2000; 1996; Richter, 2003).

Tourism can be easily sabotaged by terrorism (Neumayer, 2004; Richter, 1991; Richter & Waugh, 1991). It creates a demonstration effect that brings home the inequalities of the leisure tourist compared to the employees of the tourist industry (Fisher, 2004). Familiarity breeds contempt and envy, not understanding. It breaks down family cohesion and encourages bad habits among the residents whether in the form of gambling, immodesty, prostitution, pedophilia, begging, truancy, or crime (Richter, 1989).

Given these disparate perspectives, it is rather daunting to investigate how tourism and democracy might be related. To say it all depends is probably accurate but not very helpful. Even when there is a strong positive relationship, it is not necessarily good for the majority. For example, there are some places so dependent on tourism that a majority might willingly develop tourism in ways that will create future water and energy shortages or result in increased school dropouts, addiction, etc. Las Vegas comes to mind.

Unfortunately, there are also some places like Pagsanjan Falls in the Philippines where the selling or renting of children to pedophile tourists is very common (Richter, 1989). The situation got so bad that the Philippine Department of Tourism left the falls off the tourism maps to thwart pedophiles and punish the locals for selling their children (Personal Interview, 1987).

To say that elite decisions and behaviors have often been better than the majority in protecting democratic values is to go against the basic premise of majority rule and to beg for clarification. The political writings of Thomas Dye and Harmon Zeigler have often noted that it is the elites in many societies that are the protector of liberties and civil rights that the majority might willingly sacrifice (Dye & Zeigler, 2000).

From a touristic standpoint, a majority of Americans would probably rather remember a tourist site like Pearl Harbor than Hiroshima. The former details the Japanese attack on the US that brought the US into World War II in 1941. More controversial in the US is the Enola Gay, one of the two planes that dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, ending World War II. The plane, was highly controversial for years. Funding for the Smithsonian Museum that wanted to display the Enola Gay, was threatened by Congress until it was taken off display, only to return years later with more innocuous labeling.

Given that the relationship between democracy and tourism is ambiguous at best, this writer has opted simply to call it untidy or inconsistent.

Democracy Defined and Evolved

In recent years, democracy has come to be defended by the US in ways that have added much ideological baggage to the key term. Webster defines “democracy” as “a form of government for the people, by the will of the majority of the people; a state having this form of government” (Allee, 1977, p. 89). By this standard there are few pure democracies; certainly not in the US where the Electoral College prevents a popular vote from necessarily determining the outcome of Presidential races, for example the election of 2000 where Al Gore won over 500,000 more popular votes, but lost the electoral vote, by means fair or foul (Moore, 2001).

Even without an arcane gimmick like the Electoral College attached to the counting of ballots, the number not voting in many countries means that there can be no assurance of majority will prevailing. Nor would most of us be content with such a brief definition for it allows no recognition of any rights at all for the minority or minorities be they on the basis of race, gender, ethnicity, economic condition, religion, or geography. Nor does it contain the notion of representative democracy which most developed nations have. The fact that those actually making policy are rarely a mirror of the society at large further illustrates the difficulty of assuming that money, education, media access, and other factors do not trump representativeness. This was brought home during the current invasion of Iraq, when it was noted that only four members of the US Congress had a child in the military, and that some of the most enthusiastic proponents of the Iraqi invasion had never served in the military – the so-called “chicken hawks,” like then Assistant Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz and Vice-President Dick Cheney.

Democracy has clearly evolved in the popular media to include so much more than government by the majority. Minority rights, civil liberties, and policy-making ostensibly by elected representatives of the people have come to be part of the equation.

International organizations attempting to measure how people fare in various nations include certain criteria to come at a definition of “Freedom in the World.” Freedom House (2004; 2001), for example, assigns a rating for each country “based on a checklist of questions on political rights and civil liberties. ... Each country is assigned a rating ... based on a scale of 1 to 7, with 1 representing the highest degree of freedom present. ... The combined average of each country's political rights and civil liberties ratings determines an overall status of Free, Partly Free, or Not Free” (Freedom House Country Ratings, http://www.freedomhouse.org/ratings/index.htm).

By their definition one finds substantial tourism in a variety of nations they classify ranging from free to non-free. More salient for the volume of tourism seems to be the stability of the government rather than its form of government (Neumayer, 2004). As one talks of democratization, it is easy to forget that some of the earliest popular destinations for mass tourism were Franco's Spain, Salazar's Portugal, and Batista's Cuba. Nice beaches may be more relevant to tourists than human rights!

Other bodies regularly measure the fairness of elections, level of corruption, and incidents of domestic violence and civil strife (Neumayer, 2004). One might expect tourism to be positively related to low levels of corruption and domestic violence, but this hypothesis deserves more research. Corruption and violence kept away from the tourist belt or at a level of bureaucratic accounting and police control that is not obvious may not deter arrivals as much as the threat of disease. The latter usually warrants a warning from many tourist-generating countries (Richter, 2003).

National elections may impact tourism policy as in Costa Rica's decisions to commit 25% of its land to national parks or in its decisions as to how to develop sustainable tourism, but for larger and more complex nations, tourism issues are seldom important electoral issues (Richter, 1998). Ironically, in some countries the tensions surrounding national elections may in fact depress rather than encourage tourism, because tourists fear violence, terrorism, or simply the absence of normality.

In recent years democratization has also taken on economic as well as political elements not fully appreciated by the makers of dictionaries. Though the process started much earlier in post-World War II societies and accelerated in the administrations of US President Ronald Reagan and UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher it would be encapsulated in the book Reinventing Government. It argued for government to allow the individual and the private sector to flourish by setting them free of “oppressive” regulation and Big Government (Osborne & Gaebler, 1992).

Thus, deregulation, privatization, and free trade were seen as hallmarks of progressive (read democratic) societies. In societies, not already considered democratic, democratization in terms of free elections, competitive media and civil liberties were made a part of the recipe (Richter & Richter, 1995). Societies that had popular state-run airlines, trains, hotels and inns, and medical, educational, and poverty programs were seen as perhaps well-meaning but on the wrong side of history.

This newer elaboration supported by conservative administrations around the world has resulted in increased opportunities for businesses including the tourist industry to operate with fewer regulations and more opportunities for mergers, lower taxation, and reduced environmental requirements. Government-owned airlines have been broken up and privatized in most instances. Aeroflot, once the world's largest airline, is now in more than 400 pieces.

Depending on the sector tourism has become more competitive, freer, and there has been even some equalization of large and small operations given the Internet. Incomes of those in the tourism sector, however, have been stagnant and guaranteed vacation and health care benefits more illusory than ever. Generalizations about democracies and tourism a few decades ago would have emphasized the rights of workers to paid vacations and the recognition of leisure in the constitutions of European nations.

The importance of school children taking “field trips” or even longer trips to major educational venues would have been seen as part of their political socialization to their nation and supportive of their sense of citizenship. Today cutbacks and fears about health and safety in many democratic societies have meant fewer “frills” like school trips and have made sport and recreation as well as basic education dependent on corporate scholarships. Today, the Gini Index of Inequality would show a widening gulf between the rich and the poor, and the International Labor Organization would show a decline in the power of organized labor.

Surprisingly the decrease in leisure would be most marked in those nations like the US that promoted the linkages of economic changes to democracy. The average American receives a little over 2 weeks paid vacation – far less than is true of most developed countries. Moreover, some 37% of those took none of their vacation and in 2003 the average American vacation totaled 8.1 days (Smith, 2004, Schor, 1991).

Ironically, the breakup of the USSR and the emergence of capitalism in Eastern Europe have increased freedom of travel while reducing the right to leisure, economic security, and health care. Eastern Europe and Russia are increasing destinations for Western travelers but the intra Eastern Bloc travel that prevailed in the era of Soviet hegemony has been in some places reduced by the increased cost of travel and the lack of workplace retreats, and guaranteed leisure once widespread in socialist countries.

The trends in tourism policy development and control have been in terms of devolution of control and planning. While never as centralized in its tourism policy as most democracies, the US did have over 40 federal agencies that dealt with tourism (Richter, 1985). In recent years the federal government has abolished the US Travel and Tourism Administration and its advisory bodies, reduced support for national parks and recreation sites, and has instead made the hurdles for in-bound travel increasingly convoluted and cumbersome. These measures preceded terrorism concerns and were intended to assure that “visitors” to the US not remain as illegal aliens (Personal observation while member of the USTTA, 1990–1994).

Complicating the discussion of democracy still further is the increasing marginalization of the nation-state. Terrorism, tourism, and trade flow over borders in ways that until recently have been hindered by national boundaries. At the international level, one may hear talk of democracy and the right to leisure and freedom to travel but no enforcement mechanism exists to make that a reality.

Moreover, political definitions of democracy have given way to definitions that associate democracy with free trade, globalization, deregulation, decentralization, and increasingly privatization. These policies do not flow from a definition of democracy, but they do flow from the economic and political clout of the largest so-called democracies. They ironically allow increased control by the few over the many whether measured in terms of individual clout, corporate strength, or media access.

Thus, one finds a contrary economic trend prevailing which promotes economic concentration through deregulation of barriers against mergers existing alongside rhetoric urging decentralization. It also means that as private economic interests grow vis-à-vis the nations, t...