ABSTRACT
For many years, hierarchical governance of aviation has, via incremental refinement of (trans)national rules and regulations, contributed to extraordinary safety and security performance. With the emergence of drone systems, embodying very different technologies, applications, and accessibility, these governance arrangements have faced specific adaptation pressures. Indeed, in this chapter, we argue that drones have created the conditions for airspace to be considered as a form of common-pool resource, with correspondingly different governance challenges and possibilities. Making novel use of Ostrom's design principles as a heuristic for reflecting on the UK experience, the chapter identifies critical themes for better understanding the current tentative state of drone governance. The chapter then addresses wider themes, including the importance of understanding the relational characteristics of drone systems, the emergence of more collective governance approaches, and the challenge for hierarchical actors in overcoming potential epistemic ‘lock-in’ when reconciling their traditional approach to this new landscape. The chapter concludes with some important questions for future work.
