Transboundary River Cooperation and the Regional Public Good: The Case of the Mekong River

The article compares three cooperation projects in the Mekong River basin: the Greater Mekong Subregion, the Quadripartite Economic Cooperation initiative and the Mekong River Commission. It analyses the three projects by asking if and how they produce a regional public good. Part of the public good discussion is participatory governance, which, in natural resource management, has become a prominent proposal for enhancing the efficiency of resource management by involving all relevant stakeholders. The central question is whether participatory governance leads to the avoidance of conflict, better resource management, and thus the creation or maintenance of a regional public good. The article will address the relevance of these concepts for watershed management of the Mekong River.