Funding and administrating airport screening in Canada: A transportation policy like the others?

Abstract

Political science has studied airport security and screening in reference to notions such as governmentality and surveillance or power and technology. This article uses the tools of policy analysis in order to demonstrate that understanding airport screening policy in link with other air transportation policies (such as airport economics policy, international air policy or air carrier ownership and control policy) highlights the core elements, rationales and logic behind the provision of screening services. It is argued that the core elements of transportation policies at large are identical to the core elements of airport screening policy, and that both have been reframed, reshaped and reoriented in the past decades in order to accompany the liberalization of air transport. If airport screening policy has been reformulated in the aftermath of the 9/11 Attacks, the core elements of a market-oriented airport screening policy has not been challenged.