Tourism and development - Evidence from Mexico

Few recent studies of tourism in the third world have explicitly adopted approaches drawing from contemporary theories of the political economy of development. Instead they have either turned away from political economy to alternative approaches or are mainly empirical in nature. This paper contends that some recent strands of development theory hold particular promise in this field and illustrates their use by examining tourism in Mexico over the past 30 years. Specifically, findings suggest that a statist approach, augmented by considerations of the structure of the international tourism industry, help explain both growth and distributional effects in Mexico over that period.