FROM CLIENTELISM TO DEMOCRACY: THE IMPORTANCE OF THE CULTURAL TOURISM POLICY FOR THE FORMATION OF SUSTAINABLE SOCIETIES

Abstract

The elaboration of cultural tourism public policies, which are understood here as a public document which gathers and materializes the thinking of the public authorities - the objectives and directives, goals and strategies, relating to the organization of the tourism sector in a specific territory (CRUZ, 2002; CRUZ, 2001) – over a period of two years, has provided the maintenance of a political culture which is contrary to the formation of a sustainable society and, as a result, to the valorization of the culture in its widest sense. Culture, which includes everything which characterizes the social existence of a people or nation, and also, as the result of a particular history and its relations with other cultures, consists of an amalgam of the values, habits, beliefs and expectations (FERRARA, 2002; SANTOS, 1988), which, in turn, configure the factors necessary for the gradual development of a sustainable society. This society is directly linked to the political option for a new future, focused on the guarantee of the integrity of the processes and natural environmental resources, based on plural (democratic) political systems (BORN, 2003). Therefore, based on the use of qualitative methodology, with descriptive and explicative aims and the use of bibliographic and documentary research techniques, this work discusses the importance of culture and the promotion of the public policy on cultural tourism, aiming at an alteration of the cultural policy of subjection, and a gradual transformation of society. Key words: Political Culture, Culture, Public Policy on Cultural Tourism, Sustainable Society