Pandemic in Paradise: A Critical Political Economy Analysis of Crisis Management in Bali’s Tourism Sector

Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, international tourism had expanded significantly. This was largely attributable to the prevalence of neoliberal development policies, particularly in the Global South, as weakening economic sovereignty revealed novel prospects to take advantage of the extended mobility of individuals and global capital. Such strategies have favoured large-scale tourism enterprises, bolstered uneven power relations, and exacerbated social and environmental issues in the sector. This has increased destinations’ vulnerability to crises given contemporary tourism processes comprise highly fragmented global interactions between diverse interdependent networks in both destination and source countries. The COVID-19 pandemic has widely exposed the fragility of international tourism, especially destinations in developing economies heavily reliant on the sector, such as the famous tourist island of Bali, Indonesia. This thesis seeks to critically examine the ways neoliberalism has influenced Bali’s political economy and intensified the island’s susceptibility to crisis, particularly COVID-19. In doing so, it employs a Coxian-inspired critical international political economy (IPE) framework to holistically investigate how recurrent crises have affected Bali’s tourism sector and the ways relevant stakeholders (government, private sector actors, and civil society organisations) have responded. Of primary importance is how the island’s economic overreliance on international tourism has interacted with the pandemic to engender disproportionate impacts on certain groups, especially Bali’s tourism-dependent workers and communities. The thesis finds that crisis response undertakings on Bali during the pandemic have unduly favoured large-scale, foreign-owned enterprise, with little concern for the most vulnerable.