Entwicklungen der Tourismus Governance in Marokko mit Fokus auf die Region Souss-Massa

In the Global South traditional hierarchical steering modes are still quite widespread. The significantly changing conditions of competition in recent decades have boosted the need for innovation in tourism. This article is an attempt to analyse the factors that might facilitate the diffusion of an innovationbased orientation. As a basic hypothesis, the article adopts the “counter-flow principle”, with exchange between different spheres as stimuli for innovation. Taking the Souss-Massa region in Southern Morocco as a case study, the paper describes an analysis of the positions of public and private stakeholders as well as civil society organisations. The main question is what kind of relationship between the stakeholders would foster effective governance processes among local, regional and (inter-)national stakeholders. One of the major constraints seems to be that existing public governance conditions concerning the fostering of private activities limit the implementation of an innovation-oriented range of rural tourism options. The paper then examines such limitations and constraints of existing governance structures, which lead to the suboptimal performance and effectiveness of (mainly) top-down approaches.