Distributive Outcomes in Contested Maritime Areas

Abstract

Outside options can induce bargaining asymmetries that influence the outcome of international negotiations. This article focuses, however, on the impact of a regime-provided inside option on the willingness to cooperate and the distributive outcomes reached. Using a new data set covering 417 maritime boundaries, that fall under the Law of the Sea framework, this article shows that the ability to find agreement is closely linked to the distributional outcomes that states are able to realize. Different potential gains from cooperation result in bargaining asymmetries that influence both the ability to settle a maritime boundary and the distributive outcome reached when cooperation succeeds. Our evidence shows that the opportunity to invest in long-term projects that require legal certainty, such as offshore oil, facilitates cooperation and is associated with smaller distributional adjustments.

The parting of the seas: norms, material power and state control over the ocean

“…As argued by Ásgeirsdóttir and Steinwand (2015), this type of cooperation occurs because states prefer institutionalized forms of dispute settlement. In another work, Ásgeirsdóttir and Steinwand (2018) demonstrated how regimes shape state behaviour, arguing that the law of the sea created a default mode in disputes over boundaries, making them converge to the median line. The literature also looked at other regimes, regarding for example regulation in the Baltic and Mediterranean seas (Jouanneau and Raakjaer 2014; Linke et al 2014), the European Union (Bigagli 2015; Schaefer and Barale 2011), and the Arctic (Koivurova 2010;Young 2009).…”