| dc.description.abstract |
The prospect of water wars and conflict over water are ideas that are frequently dramatized
in media and also studied by scholars. It is well-established that bona fide wars
are not started over water resources, but conflict over water does exist and is not
well understood. One would suppose, as scholars often do, that dyads composed of two
democratic nations would be the best at mitigating conflict and promoting cooperation
over freshwater resources. General conflict research supports that supposition, as
does the argument that democracies must be best at avoiding conflicts over resources
because they excel at distributing public goods. This study provides empirical evidence
showing how interstate dyads composed of various governance types conflict and cooperate
over general water and water quantity issues relative to each other. After evaluating
the water conflict mitigating ability of democratic-democratic, democratic-autocratic,
and autocratic-autocratic dyads, this study found that democracy-autocracy dyads are
less likely to cooperate over general water issues and water quantity issues than
the other two dyad types. Nothing certain can be said about how the three dyad types
compare to each other in terms of likelihood to conflict over water quantity issues.
However, two-autocracy dyads seem to be most likely to cooperate over water quantity
issues. These findings support the established belief that democratic-autocratic pairs
struggle to cooperate while also encouraging greater scrutiny of the belief that democracies
must be best at cooperating over water resources.
|
|
