COVID-19 as a ‘Policy Window’ for Promoting a Green Recovery and Transformation of the Air Transport and Tourism Sectors: Is It High Time We Sailed the Turbulent Streams While the Wind is Still Blowing?

The COVID-19 public health crisis has had an unprecedented, devastating effect on the air transport industry and the travel and tourism sector, which reflected in a dramatic decrease in international tourist arrivals, international tourism receipts, world scheduled passenger traffic and gross passenger operating revenues in the years 2020 and 2021. The aim of this paper is to produce a theoretically informed empirical case study on French politics and climate change public policy, applying Kingdon’s Multiple Streams Framework (MSF) or agenda-setting theory of policy process. The Yellow Vests Movement (YVM), which emerged in France in November 2018 as a reaction to a proposed green tax on fuel, triggered a political crisis with nationwide extended demonstrations, strikes and riots. To appease the protesters who demanded far-reaching economic, political and institutional reforms, the French government amid the pandemic introduced a flagship Bill on Climate and Resilience, which sparked a strong controversy because of political unwillingness for a radical policy change. Our findings suggest that it was the Yellow Vests Movement rather than the COVID-19 pandemic which functioned as the main focusing event which opened a window of opportunity for agenda change and policy change. The YVM policy window allowed policy entrepreneurs to advance their ideas and policymakers to pursue policies that both promote the green recovery and transformation of the air travel and tourism sector and mitigate the climate change crisis. This paper responds to calls for more systematic applications under the MSF in various policy areas and political systems, operationalizing all the MSF structural elements and testing hypotheses derived from the MSF.