Power plus: Tony Allan’s contributions to understanding transboundary water arrangements

ABSTRACT

We trace the development of a theory and analytical frames within international political economy that originated from Tony Allan’s mainstreaming of power as a determining factor in the control of transboundary flows. These include the Framework of Hydro-Hegemony, coexisting conflict and cooperation and Transboundary Water Interaction Analysis, counter-hegemony and virtual water rivers. These contributions are exemplified briefly through cases from around the globe and in particular the Nile. To ensure that this aspect of Tony’s legacy lives on, we propose a research agenda that includes the analysis of power interactions at substate levels between central governments and non-state actors.

KEYWORDS:

• Water conflict
• water cooperation
• transboundary water
• water security
• hydro-hegemony
• Nile
• hydropolitics

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. The influence of ideational power is the only way to explain how the Palestinian negotiators consented to continue the so-called cooperation through the Israeli-Palestinian Joint Water Committee, which was strongly resisted by much of the Palestinian population and the negotiations’ advisors (Selby, 2003a, 2003b), and which led to their own colonization (Selby, 2013).

2. See From the Delta looking up.

3. And quite distinct from atmospheric rivers of which we are now becoming aware (Waliser & Guan, 2017).