An exogenous shock to the system? The London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games and British tourism policy

摘要

This paper explores the impact of the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games on British tourism policy development and delivery using an archival documentary review of 54 documents (dated 1999-2010) relating to strategy for tourism, identified from searches of the archives of 23 public sector organisations and government departments in Britain. The paper draws on the literature on policy communities and networks to categorise the British tourism policy community as a loosely formed issue network. The extent to which this loosely formed issue network has experienced an ‘exogenous shock’ as a result of the award of the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games to London is then explored through an interpretive analysis of British tourism policy between 1999 and June 2010, drawing on an inductive content analysis of policy documents which identified four prominent tourism policy themes for analysis: quality, marketing, niche markets and sustainability. The interpretive analysis suggests, first, that the tourism policy community may be strengthened as a result of the award of the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games to London. In particular, the political imperative to demonstrate a tourism legacy as a partial justification for the £9.3bn public investment in the 2012 Games has drawn the key government actor, the Department for Culture Media and Sport, into the community to provide a more comprehensive strategic leadership, while the British non-departmental public body, Visit Britain, is showing signs of achieving the legitimacy to deliver implementational leadership. Together, these two actors now appear to have the potential to form an emergent primary core at the same time as more meaningful interdependencies between members of the policy community appear to be developing, resulting in a more stable membership. The result is a tourism policy community that has strengthened from its relatively long-standing structure as a loosely constituted issue zone. The conclusion, therefore, is that it appears that the award of the 2012 Games to London does appear to have acted as an ‘exogenous shock’ to the tourism policy-making system, in that it appears to have resulted in an adjustment in the structure of the tourism policy community. However, what is not clear is whether this is a permanent adjustment that will be sustained once the need to demonstrate a tourism legacy to justify the 9.3bn investment in the 2012 Games has passed. If the adjustment can be sustained, then a strengthened British tourism policy community will be a valuable, if invisible, legacy of the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games.View full textDownload full textKeywordsOlympic Games, Legacy, Policy CommunityRelated var addthis_config = { ui_cobrand: "Taylor & Francis Online", services_compact: "citeulike,netvibes,twitter,technorati,delicious,linkedin,facebook,stumbleupon,digg,google,more", pubid: "ra-4dff56cd6bb1830b" }; Add to shortlist Link Permalink http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14775085.2011.635025