Finding the best legal governance regime for the Caspian Sea through Multi-Criteria Decision-Making methods

The objective of this study is to identify the best legal regime for governing the Caspian Sea, considering the interests of the involved parties. Since 1993, negotiations have been going on among five littoral states of the Caspian Sea: Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Russia, and Turkmenistan over how to share the resources of the Caspian Sea. Six different Multi-Criteria Decision-Making (MCDM) methods are applied here to identify the best legal regime to govern the sea out of the proposed options by the negotiating parties. Results suggest the Condominium regime, applied to both the sea surface and the seabed as the best option for governing the Caspian Sea. Due to limitations of the study in considering the economic, military, and political powers of the negotiation parties in determining the best option, further studies are required to verify the results obtained in this paper.