Signing River Treaties—Does It Improve River Cooperation?

Abstract

International water management has lately received increased attention in both scholarly and political circles. Whereas the traditional focus when investigating water issues was on water conflicts, the attention has shifted toward examining more cooperative aspects of shared water relationships. River cooperation is frequently equated with river treaties but cooperation in river basins is much more than that. This article investigates the effect a signed water treaty has on later water-specific cooperation in a dyad. An analysis is conducted for all international river basins in the world for the period 1948–1999. Using data on international rivers, river treaties, and cooperative water events, the results show that river treaties indeed are successful in promoting water cooperation.