The prospects for empowerment through local governance for tourism- the LEADER approach

Abstract

While empowerment and cooperation are essential to achieve these tourism governance goals, few, if any studies, investigated conditions for empowerment in tourism governance in the post-communist setting. Filling the gap, this paper critically examines the prospects for empowerment in tourism governance in Poland. The extensive desk-study was conducted in 2010 to investigate the issues of empowerment in governance for tourism development. It focused on gathering and analyzing information about LEADER, and its transfer into the Polish context. The empirical data collection included guided interviews with 18 key-informants involved in LEADER. The article concludes that in the post-communist reality, the immediate concern is the effectiveness of community-led local development initiatives. New actors in tourism governance must demonstrate their value as legitimate partners and secure funds that develop and sustain empowering mechanisms to increase community capacity in both planning and implementation of local development initiatives. Keywords: tourism governance, empowerment, LEADER, community-led development, Poland