Mekong Multi-Cooperation Frameworks: States, Regional Institutions, Private Sectors and Elites

Abstract

Conflict and cooperation are key governance challenges in transboundary river basin governance. Hydropower has been at the center of conflict and cooperation in the transboundary river basin governance. Over time, hydropower produces a sort of material geopolitics within regions. Technological changes and the changing regional geopolitics create different power relations over hydropower. One of the gaps in current research seems to be about how technological and material transformations of hydropower have affected the transboundary river cooperation in the post-Cold War era.The paper uses a literature review and a case study of the Lower Sasan 2 (LS2) Dam to to study the changing political dimensions of the Mekong region from a confronting platform to multi-regional cooperation frameworks; and how powerful actors such as states, regional institutions, private sectors, and elites shape regional cooperations and produce competing programs and projects in the Mekong region.. It concludes that hydropower has been politicized and technologically manipulated by powerful actors in the last five decades of the Mekong River Cooperation. Cambodia has positioned itself strategically in its relationships with these hydro-hegemons to compete for hydropower dam projects and protect its interests but runs a significant risk of increased social and environmental impacts along with local resistances.