The ideologies of national security and tourist visa restrictions

Abstract

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, there has been a global shift in the adoption of policies that reduce the impact of governments controlling the flow of the factors of production across borders. However, there remains an ideological and pragmatic element in many countries’ policies, the need to regulate the flow of populations into the host countries. In this piece, the authors delve into the ideologies behind the logic of the regulation of tourism flows with visas. The authors use data from the World Economic Forum’s Travel and Tourism Competitiveness Index and correlate these data with various ideological measures as well as pragmatic constructs that should, theoretically, be linked with visa regimes. The findings show that visa regimes are most influenced by the wealth of a country, the size of its economy, and its openness to global markets, although the direction of the relationship may be different than one would anticipate.