Negotiating international aviation: Analyzing the contribution of politics to the United States' open skies agreements through democratic peace theory

Operation of the civilian global aviation industry is a complex process that relies on intergovernmental collaboration while balancing issues of sovereignty. As such, the factors that drive the development of international air operations are more complicated than simply economics: international regimes must consider a variety of concerns when establishing diplomatic relationships. Bilateral and multilateral international Air Service Agreements (ASAs) have become more liberalized to reduce the extent of government interaction for establishing and maintaining international commercial operations with and between ASA partners, allowing a greater influence of basic market forces over government required mandates and limitations for airline operations. Utilizing Democratic Peace Theory (DPT) as a theoretical basis for driving Open Skies Agreement (OSA) development practices, a logistic regression was used to determine the likelihood of the US reaching an OSA with a partner State based on the democracy strength of the partner State, the ability to access the US through diplomatic international governmental organization (IGO) participation, and the frequency of aviation operations with the US. This study found that the United States was very likely to hold OSAs with more democratic governments compared to less democratic governments. In addition, mutual participation in IGOs moderated the relationship as less democratic governments sharing membership in fewer IGOs with the United States were more likely to sign an OSA than non-democratic governments sharing membership in many IGOs. Finally, total operations between the United States and its international aviation partners were also found to have moderating effects on the likelihood of an OSA. Implications of these effects are discussed.