Stability Analysis of the Proposed Caspian Sea Governance Methods

The Caspian Sea, which is bordered Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Russia, and Turkmenistan, has been the source of a long-standing conflict over the past two decades. The conflict has arisen primarily from unclear legal governance over the sea. To date, five major division methods have been proposed in Caspian Sea negotiations among the littoral states. Nevertheless, parties have not been able to agree over any of the suggested method for governing the sea and sharing its valuable natural and energy resources. In this paper, the Caspian Sea group decision-making problem is modeled and analyzed as a game using a non-cooperative game theoretic approach. The findings match with the current state of the conflict, suggesting that the current deadlock is a strong equilibrium and may last long if there are no major changes to the game structure and parties´ behavior.