EU-OSCE Inter-Institutional Interaction: Preventing Water-Related Conflict in Central Asia

Abstract

Inter-institutional interactions remain a largely under-theorized area in International Relations, despite their pertinence in the context of the post-Cold War restructuring of pan-European institutions. Moreover, the ongoing debates on ‘mutually reinforcing’, ‘interlocking’ or ‘interblocking’ institutions further increases the relevance of these issues for regional stability. Departing from this context, and building on field research in Central Asia, the article looks at how the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and the European Union (EU) are interacting with each other in the Central Asian context, in the field of conflict prevention in water-management. Drawing on the framework of source and target institutions, the article looks at how the two institutions interact in this regional context, with a focus on water management policies. The overall conclusion indicates that, in the absence of strategic vision on how the two organisations might reinforce each others’ work, the learning processes which have historical taken place within the OSCE have been neglected by EU member states and the EU itself, seeking instead to make an instrumental use of the OSCE, regarding the issue of water-management.