Definition of the Situation and Resolution of Freshwater Conflicts.

Secure access to freshwater supplies is poised to be an increasingly consequential bone of contention in interstate relations in the future, especially in the Middle East, where a host of demographic, political, social and economic factors combine to render it an increasingly water-stressed region. The last decade has seen a profusion of monographs and empirical studies dealing with the various dimensions of conflict over interstate freshwater supplies. Systematically absent from these studies, though, is any serious consideration of the impact of leaders’ perceptions on the incidence of cooperation or conflict. Shared ideas and perceptions form a crucible that shapes how states define and interpret their interests in managing common water resources and provide just as much, if not more, traction in accounting for the evolution of inter-state relations than do objective, material factors. My empirical analysis demonstrates that co-riparian states’ perceptions of each other - in the domains of threat perception, trust and responsiveness - yield greater explanatory power over the question of how relations over shared water resources evolve than prominent materialist variables, such as scarcity of the common river resource and power disparity. This paper employs content analysis and process-tracing techniques to trace how the shared ideational understandings of state elites impact prospects for conflict or cooperation over time. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]