Aviation is one of the defining technological achievements of the modern world and one of the most politically consequential industries of the twenty-first century. Yet the political dimensions of aviation — the conflicts over sovereignty, security, regulation, labour, and environmental sustainability that shape every flight — are often fragmented across disciplines or overshadowed by the technical and commercial aspects of the sector. Aircraft may be engineering achievements, but the global aviation system is fundamentally a political construction, created through decades of negotiation, competition, regulation, and geopolitical conflict between states, corporations, international organisations, and societies.
The Politics of Aviation is the most comprehensive synthesis of aviation politics bringing together for the first time in a single accessible volume the full range of the sector's political dimensions — from sovereignty and security to environmental sustainability and social inequality. Drawing on political science, international relations, economic history, law, sociology, and policy analysis, the book examines fifty probing questions that move from foundational issues of governance to contemporary debates about climate change, deregulation, and the future of flight. It builds on the rich scholarly literature on aviation politics — from Dobson's histories of international aviation diplomacy to Havel and Sanchez's legal analysis of the Chicago system, from Dempsey and Gesell's work on regulatory politics to Bowen's economic geography of air transportation — while integrating contemporary developments that have not yet received sustained political analysis, including the closure of Russian airspace following the invasion of Ukraine, the transformation of the Gulf carriers, the post-COVID restructuring of business travel, and the intensifying environmental contestation of aviation expansion.
Several themes run throughout the volume. One is the tension between the globalising logic of aviation and the territorial logic of state sovereignty, visible in disputes over airspace, international regulation, and market access. Another is the unresolved conflict over ownership and control within the airline industry, where crises repeatedly challenge the assumptions of deregulated markets. The environmental crisis positions aviation as a central test of whether political systems can impose short-term economic costs in pursuit of long-term collective goals. At the same time, the unequal distribution of aviation’s benefits raises profound questions about social justice and global inequality, particularly in a world where the majority of humanity has never flown.
Written for students, researchers, policymakers, and general readers, The Politics of Aviation provides an integrated framework for understanding one of the most globalised yet politically contested sectors of the modern world. No specialist knowledge of aviation is required. What the book assumes instead is that the politics of flight reveals broader truths about power, inequality, governance, and the organisation of contemporary society itself.
