ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an overview of institutional arrangements, river basin organisations (RBO), for governing shared watercourses. It focuses on why institutionalized cooperation emerges and, second, on how RBOs are designed and how their design differs across institutions and regions, before, third, turning to the question whether and how RBOs matter for governing shared water resources in an effective manner. The chapter provides an outlook towards the newly emerging challenges riparian states to most transboundary basins face and how they have started addressing them through their RBOs. The first wave of RBO establishment in the 1960s and 1970s was characterized by riparian states' aim to fast-track economic development by developing water resources in a cooperative manner and hence a common perception that cooperation would produce joint benefits. Data on the regional distribution of RBOs shows that states have established RBOs in only a subset of the world's 276 transboundary basins.
