The ‘Ungovernability’ of Tourism: Rethinking Tourism Governance for Turbulent Times

Despite mounting grievances associated with tourism’s inability to promote equitable and just forms of development, tourism governance and policy making regimes continue to advance technocratic solutions to tourism injustices and crises. By connecting recent debates on governance, turbulence and crisis with historical materialist perspectives on the state and the political economy of tourism, this paper analyses the relationship between tourism and governance in the light of the processes and structures of tourism capital accumulation and its imbrication with states. Drawing on historical materialist political economy, the authors contend that tourism governance cannot be understood in isolation from the political and economic forces and relations of power making for the chronic ‘ungovernability’ of tourism. In conclusion, we consider the implications and challenges for building a pathway towards democratic structures and processes of tourism governance.