Political Turbulence and Aviation Safety: A Cross-National Analysis of Political Stability's Effects on Aviation Accidents

To what extent does political stability affect aviation safety? This research aims to link domestic political conditions and public safety through the consideration of aviation accident frequency. Political instability can indeed have profound effects on reducing overall public safety in a variety of domains through its influence on public policies. Reduced regulations and governance efforts can appear in contentious contexts for less-prioritized fields. This could influence the reemergence of technical aviation risk factors like crew training and performance, maintenance issues, infrastructure problems, human errors, etc. This would highlight a correlation between such political instability and weaker aviation safety regulations, investments and operational efficiency. A country-year level dataset was originally aggregated and created by integrating the political instability indicators from V-Dem and the World Bank as well as the Aviation Safety Network data. A multivariate negative binomial regression analysis on aviation accidents worldwide between 1996 and 2022 is then conducted. Results show that political instability is indeed negatively correlated to greater aviation safety when accounting for various alternative variables. This suggests that policy interventions enhancing political stability could benefit both public safety and a growing economic and social sector that is aviation. This also suggests that focus on aviation safety is only efficient when coupled with political stabilization processes.