Depoliticisation, Technologies of Government and Post-Aviation Futures
Steven Griggs and David Howarth
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Introduction: Problematising the dilemmas of UK airport expansion – puzzles and research strategies 1
- 1Depoliticisation, discourse and policy hegemony 21
- 2Governing by numbers: fantasies of forecasting, ‘predict and provide’ and the technologies of government 43
- 3The anatomy of an expert Commission: Howard Davies, rhetorical reframing and the performance of leadership 73
- 4Repoliticising aviation policy: law, planning and persistent activism 103
- 5Extreme turbulence: problematisations, multiple crises and new demands 130
- 6‘What if…?’ A manifesto for the green transformation of aviation 152
Figure
- 3.1Proposed third runway at Heathrow 79
Tables
- 0.1Problematising the politics of ‘predict and provide’ in UK aviation policy 13
- 0.2The anti-airport expansion campaigning community: local groups 14
- 1.1Rationalities, technologies and techniques of government 39
- 2.1The Department for Transport forecasting model 46
- 2.2Roskill Commission and cost-benefit analysis: differences from lowest-cost site 59
- 3.1The Commissioners 76
- 3.2The Airports Commission: a brief chronology 77
- 3.3Airports Commission: UK passenger forecasts 86
- 3.4Airports Commission: passenger forecasts for Heathrow and Gatwick 87
- 5.1A genealogy of the politics of ‘predict and provide’ in UK aviation policy 133
| AC | Airports Commission |
| ACC | Airport Consultative Committee |
| ACI | Airports Council International |
| AEF | Aviation Environment Federation |
| ANPS | Airports National Policy Statement |
| APD | Air Passenger Duty |
| ASA | Air Service Agreement |
| ATAG | Air Transport Action Group |
| ATWP | Air Transport White Paper |
| AXO | Airport eXpansion Opposition, anti-Southampton airport expansion group |
| BA | British Airways |
| BAA | British Airports Authority |
| CAA | Civil Aviation Authority |
| CBA | Cost-benefit analysis |
| CCA | Climate Change Act (2008) |
| CCC | Climate Change Committee (formerly Committee on Climate Change) |
| COP | Conference of the Parties |
| CORSIA | Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation |
| DCO | Development Consent Order |
| DETR | Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions |
| DfT | Department for Transport |
| EAC | House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee |
| ETS | Emissions trading scheme |
| EU | European Union |
| FoE | Friends of the Earth |
| GACC | Gatwick Area Conservation Committee |
| GALBA | Group for Action on Leeds Bradford Airport |
| GFC | Global financial crisis |
| GIC | Government of Singapore Investment Corporation |
| HACAN | Heathrow Association for the Control of Aircraft Noise |
| HAL | Heathrow Airport Limited |
| HCEB | Heathrow Community Engagement Board |
| HS2 | Proposed high-speed rail link from London to the North West |
| IAG | International Airlines Group |
| IATA | International Air Transport Association |
| ICAO | International Civil Aviation Organisation |
| ICCAN | Independent Commission on Civil Aviation Noise |
| ICCT | International Council on Clean Transportation |
| IPC | |
| IPCC | Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change |
| MAG | Manchester Airports Group |
| MP | Member of Parliament |
| NNI | Noise and Number Index |
| NPS | National Policy Statement |
| OECD | Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development |
| PA | Planning Act (2008) |
| PDT | Poststructuralist Discourse Theory |
| RAB | Regulated Asset Base |
| SBAEx | Stop Bristol Airport Expansion |
| S-CGE | Spatial Computable General Equilibrium model |
| SERAS | South East and East of England Regional Air Services Study |
| SHE | Stop Heathrow Expansion |
| SNP | Scottish National Party |
| SSE | Stop Stansted Expansion |
| TC | Transport Committee |
| UK | United Kingdom |
| US | United States |
| USS | Universities Superannuation Scheme |
| VAT | Value-added Tax |
| ZAD | Zone to be Defended |
The writing of this book has been shaped by the thoughts and reflections of a community of scholars, campaigners, practitioners and stakeholders, who have challenged our emerging arguments, exposed new lines of inquiry and helped us to refine our eventual claims and conclusions. Although we accept full responsibility for the statements and recommendations that we advance in this book, we would like to thank all those who invited us to speak at conferences and workshops, and who generously discussed and contributed to our research.
We presented initial ideas and draft chapters of the book at the following workshops: the European Consortium of Political Research (ECPR) General Conference in Bordeaux in September 2013; the Policy & Politics Conference in Bristol in September 2014; the Journal of Environmental Policy & Planning workshop at the University of Freiburg in October 2014; the Critical Geographies of Urban Infrastructure Conference at the Bartlett School, University College London in November 2014; the Depoliticisation and Anti-Politics workshop at York University in December 2014; the Research Seminar Series of the Department of People and Organisations at the Open University in February 2015; the Political Studies Association Conference at the University of Sheffield at the end of March 2015; the Groupe de Sociologie Pragmatique et Réflexive at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) in Paris in May 2015; the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) Advanced Training Initiative of the Social Studies of Environment & Sustainability at the University of East Anglia in June 2015; the Comparative Depoliticisation workshop at Sheffield University in June 2015; the workshop on Noise, Planning, and Democratic Governance: the Comparative Politics of Airports and Aviation Expansion at De Montfort University in September 2015, which was sponsored by Political Quarterly; the International Conference on Public Controversies and the Environment at the University of Marseilles in June 2016; the workshop on Activist Dilemmas, Environmental Politics and Airport Protests at Nottingham Trent University in June 2016, sponsored by the ESRC; the Comparative Peri-urban Infrastructures workshop at De Montfort University in May 2017; the Politics of Numbers within Technologies of Governance at the University of Essex in April 2019; the DESIRE Conference: New Directions in Discourse Theory, at the Free University of Brussels, Belgium in May 2019; the ECPR workshops in Toulouse in April 2021 (convened online); the Second Politics of Numbers workshop at the University of Essex in May 2021; the Public Administration & Policy Group’s Food for Thought seminar series at Wageningen University in February 2022; the workshop Seeing Democracy Like A City: Practices, Movements, State, at
We would also like to thank Jonathan Saks, then Deputy Director of Aviation and Maritime Analysis at the Department for Transport, for inviting us to present our research on the power and influence of local campaigns and campaigning in aviation policymaking in April 2018. We have enjoyed many conversations with local campaigners and environmental activists from across the UK and Europe, who have generously given their time to exchange ideas and support our work, notably those campaigning against expansion at Bristol, Gatwick, Heathrow, Manchester and Stansted, and Frankfurt, Munich, Nantes, Paris and Schiphol.
We have thus benefitted immensely from the comments, criticisms and thoughts of many people in a wide range of contexts. In particular, we would like to thank Heidrun Åm, Neil Barnett, Jane Bennett, Jelle Behagel, Peter Bloom, Lucy Budd, Jim Buller, David Carter, Francis Chateauraynaud, William Connolly, Josquin Debaz, Pinar Dönmez, Geoff Dudley, Dan Durrant, Peter Feindt, Alan Finlayson, Frank Fischer, Richard Freeman, Jeff Gazzard, Jason Glynos, Henri Gracineau, Jaap de Groot, Valeria Guarneros-Meza, Stephen Hall, Charlotte Halpern, Graeme Hayes, Steve Ison, Stephen Jeffares, Tim Johnson, Reiner Keller, Geneviève Lebouteux, Tim Marshall, Aysem Mert, Tamara Metze, Aletta Norval, Konstantinos Roussos, Mark Smalley, Florian Sperk, Adam Standring, Jan Starke, John Stewart, Helen Sullivan, Imrat Verhoeven, Hendrik Wagenaar, Rebecca Warren, John Wincott, Matt Wood and Dvora Yanow for either inviting us to present our ideas or to participate in discussions, or often both. We are especially thankful to our graduate students, early career researchers and colleagues in the Department of Government and the Centre for Ideology and Discourse Analysis (CiDA) at the University of Essex, the Department of Politics, People and Place at De Montfort University and the School of Justice, Security and Sustainability at Staffordshire University, for their ongoing support and critical engagement during the course of this study.
We would like to thank the anonymous reviewers of our manuscript for their helpful comments and Emily Watt, Anna Richardson and Freya Trand, our editor and editorial assistants at Bristol University Press, for their continued support and enthusiasm throughout this lengthy project. Our thanks also go to Helen Flitton, our project manager at Newgen Publishing, for her invaluable advice and forbearance in preparing the final manuscript.
Finally, we would like to thank Aletta, James, Madeline, Martha and Ruth for enduring the lows – and occasional highs – in the researching and writing of this book. Their constant support, patience, understanding and intellectual contributions are greatly received and appreciated, making it all worthwhile.