A Europe of the Air? : The Airline Industry and European Integration

This definitive book offers the first full study of the development of the European Union's air-transport policy. Crucial to both globalization and regional integration, commercial aviation, along with other transport industries, provides the logistics for business activities, political life, and contact between cultures. Paradoxically, however, the airline industry was one of the last to be liberalized in the process of European integration, and the creation of a single market in air transport was attended by sharp political disputes, unreconstructed nationalism, and persistent foot-dragging. Exploring the long struggle to create a "Europe of the air" through both regulatory change and airline strategizing, Martin Staniland examines the political bargains that have shaped a highly fragmented industry and its regulation. He argues that, rather than focusing on directives and regulations issuing from Brussels, students of integration should examine the ways in which the contentious interaction between leaders of an industry and relevant politicians and officials creates distinctive "market orders." Such market orders enable firms to minimize the risks inherent in business, while allowing regulators to pursue the mandates of their organizations and to realize their notions of public interest. Economic integration is therefore an often-painful struggle to create a market order defined both by regulatory jurisdiction and by competition among firms. An invaluable case-study in industrial policy, this book will be essential reading for students of aviation, as well as for scholars interested in regulatory change and European integration.