Towards a New Political Economy of Global Tourism Revisited - Tourism and Development: Concepts and Issues - page 320

redistributions of income for the populace as a whole. However, while a sus-
tained agenda of structural adjustment and neoliberal reforms further weak-
ened the state and led to the ruination of small producers and widespread
poverty throughout much of the region (see Davis, 2004), it has paradoxically
reinforced the rise of a new, wealthy upper-middle class, with substantial
investment capital both at home and abroad as well as tied closely to the
regional hubs of transnational firms, whose lives barely resemble those of the
vast majority of their fellow citizens (Hoogvelt, 1997: 83-84; Mark, 2012).
In a sign of the growing prosperity of Africa's 'new middle classes', the
founder of EasyJet has recently announced plans to launch a low-cost airline
in Africa that will operate out of Kenya, Tanzania, Ghana and Angola, thus
covering much of the continent (Milmo, 2012).
Dominant factions within the state apparatuses are able to negotiate aid,
loans and direct investment within a network of transnational capital flows
which may strengthen their own position whilst inhibiting the flourishing of
viable indigenous tourism enterprises (see Dahles & Bras, 1997: 65; Dieke,
1995: 87-91). Policy instruments, such as the Land Acquisition Act in the
Indian state of Tamil Nadu, rather than promoting balanced development are
often deployed in order to appropriate land from the poor in anticipation of
large-scale tourism development programmes (Seifert-Granzin & Jesupatham,
1999: 18). Examples of the restriction of informal working practices in tour-
ism abound (Kamsma & Bras, 2000; Kermath & Thomas, 1992; Wahnschafft,
1982); however, the key distinction here is that local elites are complicit in the
under-development of their state, not as instruments of capital but as a result
of the prevailing neoliberal market logic in which the range of developmental
options available to them has become even more constrained. In Zanzibar, for
example, this pattern has become evident as a result of the move by the
Zanzibari government to encourage greater involvement of private capital in
the tourism sector since 1985. The historical absence of a robust democracy
in Zanzibar has enabled the state to implement a strategy of economic liber-
alisation with little opposition and at the expense of the indigenous hotel
sector and small-scale entrepreneurs (Honey, 1999: 265-269).
Whilst there is little doubt that structural adjustment programmes in the
1980s and the coercive logic of increasingly competitive capitalist markets in
the 1990s and 2000s severely undermined and constrained the ability of states
to build viable national economies, this should not blind us to the continued
ability of states to direct the accumulation process, as indicated above. More-
over, one should not assume that 'Third World' states are merely parasitic
institutions, riddled with endemic corruption, constraining the latent poten-
tial within their economies. Given the high proportion of informal economic
activity 12 and the precariousness of small-scale entrepreneurship, both of
which are prevalent where tourism is concerned, the imposition of tariffs on
international trade is often one of the few sources of revenue for governing
elites (Carter, 1995: 608). Given highly competitive external market