Institutional design and transboundary water treaty performance under stress in Central Asia

Abstract

This thesis examines how differences in institutional design explain variation in transboundary water treaty performance under stress in Central Asia. Three basin regimes - the Amu Darya, the Syr Darya, and the Chu-Talas - face broadly similar structural conditions: a shared Soviet institutional legacy, comparable upstream-downstream interdependencies, recurring hydrological variability, and a politically sensitive regional environment. Yet they perform differently when those conditions tighten into stress. The thesis asks why, and offers an institutionalist answer. The analysis uses a most-similar systems comparative design, with documented stress episodes as empirical windows on institutional performance. Ten episodes anchor the comparison: four on Chu-Talas (2020 COVID procedural disruption, 2021 Kirov dam safety, 2022 Aspara/Ashmara withdrawal dispute, 2023-2024 verification turn), three on Syr Darya (2000–2001 compensation failure, 2021–2022 corrective coordination, 2023–2024 partial stabilisation), and three on Amu Darya (2018 forecast shortfall, 2019-2020 lower-reach overuse, 2021-2022 severe shortfall). Institutional design is operationalised through five dimensions: monitoring and information-sharing, dispute-resolution and coordination, enforcement and compliance-supporting provisions, flexibility and adaptive capacity, and distributional or benefit-sharing arrangements, coded from treaty texts, commission statutes, and basin organisation by-laws. Performance under stress is operationalised in two components - procedural continuity and escalation containment - and assessed through ICWC bulletins, BWO reports, Water Yearbooks, and Chu–Talas Commission records. The empirical analysis supports the central argument. Stronger institutional design produces stronger procedural continuity and tighter escalation containment, with Chu–Talas (strong design) registering high performance, Syr Darya (moderate-low design) mixed performance with the 2000-2001 episode at the low end, and Amu Darya (moderate design) moderate-high performance. Once climate stress, power asymmetry, Soviet legacy, and regional political dynamics are taken into account, institutional design remains the most parsimonious explanation for the observed variation. The thesis contributes to institutional-design scholarship by applying it to transboundary water governance under conditions of stress, explains divergence within a region often discussed in uniform terms, and shows that environmental stress does not mechanically produce instability but rather that its political consequences depend on the institutional architecture through which scarcity is governed.