Where and when

All forums are held at Globis, which is located in the historic Franklin House on the corner of South Thomas St. and East Broad St. at the Northern edge of campus. Please email Jon Polk or call 706-542-6633 for directions. All talks will begin at 2:00pm (unless otherwise noted) and conclude by 3:00pm.

This Week's Topic

May 2: "The Design of River Cooperation Agreements"
Dr. Douglas Stinnett
Assistant Professor in the Department of International Affairs

**This co-authored paper with Dr. Jaroslav Tir seeks to expand our understanding of why states use international institutions to manage transboundary rivers. Agreements governing the use and management of international rivers can contain a variety of different institutional features. We address the question of why riparian states choose to include or exclude these features from river treaties. Our explanation focuses on the problem of securing post-agreement compliance. Institutions perform a variety of functions that help states maintain cooperation over time. We analyze this explanation using a data set of river treaties formed between 1950 and 2002. We find that the institutionalization of river treaties is associated with water scarcity, the flow pattern of shared rivers, trade interdependence, and the level of economic development. These findings have important implications for the possibility that rivers will be a source of future conflicts.

Upcoming Forum

Our next series of Friday Forum will start back in the 2008 Fall Semester. Please stay tuned for our next installment.