Water Nationalism and Developmental Regionalism: Northeastern Thailand and Transboundary Water Governance in the Mekong River Basin

Developmental regionalism in the Mekong River Basin, which originated as a confrontation to communist expansion during the Cold War, and thereafter revitalized for regional economic integration, has been both encouraging and contradictory to water nationalism in the riparian countries, i.e., China, Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, and Thailand. This article explores how state-led regionalism in the Mekong River Basin is nested at the international and subnational levels of development in Northeastern Thailand, also known as Isan, the largest part of the country in the Mekong River Basin. While regional development projects have encouraged international cooperation and maximization of transboundary water use, nationalism and centralized governance seek to control water resources as part of the projects. Development policies at the national level, which link Isan to the Mekong regionalism, tend to create inconsistency in coping with transboundary and local impacts expanded by developmental regionalism at the international level.