Michelle Bovee

Michelle Bovée studied at James Madison University in Virginia, where she graduated with a BA in Political Science with a focus on international and comparative politics. She is currently attending the London School of Economics to get her Masters in International Relations. Michelle has been a Program and Research Intern with the SISGI Group since summer 2011, and is now a featured writer. She will post every fourth Monday on international economic development, the political and economic ramifications of the Arab Spring, and sustainable tourism.

Most commented posts

  1. Myanmar and the Politics of Tourism — 5 comments
  2. Voluntourism: the Good and the Bad — 4 comments
  3. Voluntourism Certification — 4 comments
  4. Responsible Tourism Reaches Egypt — 4 comments
  5. Abortion-Included Tours — 4 comments

Author's posts

Dec 01

Myanmar: The Final Frontier

The Republic of Myanmar (commonly known as Burma) is not the most tourist-friendly place.  That may change soon, however, as the government seeks to capitalize on the benefits of 50 years of heavy tourist restrictions and isolation: beautiful, unspoiled landscapes and culture.  For decades the country has faced heavy sanctions because of the oppressive regime …

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Nov 18

Arab League Threatens Syria with Sanctions

Two weeks ago the Syrian government agreed to ends its crackdown on anti-government demonstrators, a development I was skeptical of.  I hoped that the Syrian government was legitimately ready to end the violence, but worried that President al-Assad’s history of broken peace agreements was a sign that he was not going to commit to a …

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Nov 10

Is Happiness a Good Measure of Development?

A few weeks ago I wrote a post about the possibility of including factors besides GDP as measures of development, so I thought today it might be interesting to do a sort of case study on a country that has done just that.  I’m sure many of you have heard that Bhutan, that small kingdom …

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Nov 03

New Hope for Peace in Syria

A few weeks ago I wrote a post about Syria and whether or not the international community should intervene and impose a no fly zone like they did in Egypt.  Well, today, some heartening news came from Syria:  Syria has agreed to end its crackdown on anti-government demonstrations, pull troops from the streets, and release …

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Oct 28

Voluntourism and the Job Market

Over the summer I gave a webinar presentation about the positive and negative aspects of voluntourism (you can watch the video here or read the summary here, in case you missed it!), and today I would like to discuss the other side of voluntourism.  Namely, what to do after you’ve gone on a voluntourism trip …

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Oct 20

Culture and Economic Development

Last week I wrote a post about some of the aspects of development besides economic growth that policy makers should take into account when dealing with the developing world, and today I would like to continue in a similar vein.  This time, however, I am going to discuss a different variable: culture. Over the summer …

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Oct 13

Do We Need A New Measure of Development?

When it comes to development, is GDP the only thing that matters?  The Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) says no.  The OECD released a new report that looks at a variety of statistics with the hope of finding new measures for assessing well-being that go beyond Gross Domestic Product.  The authors of the …

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Oct 06

No-Fly Zone for Syria?

As you may recall, I wrote a post over the summer about Responsibility to Protect and the Arab Spring.  In this post I discussed the intervention in Libya and how the creation of a “no-fly zone” was a manifestation of this RtoP.   I also discussed the reasons why RtoP was not going to be invoked …

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Sep 30

Using the Tourism Industry to Benefit Youth

Today I thought I would talk to you about an interesting twist on responsible tourism that I stumbled upon: the Youth Career Initiative (YCI).  The YCI was launched in 1995 in Bangkok as part of a community initiative by the Pan Pacific Hotels Group, and was intended to “give back” to society by teaching disadvantaged …

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Sep 22

Arab Spring Economics

It’s officially fall now, which means the Arab Spring has now entered its third season, and, unfortunately, the economic situation that partially contributed to the uprisings in many of the countries has not improved at all.  In many cases it is even getting worse.  Institutions like the International Monetary Fund and the European Investment Bank, …

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