The author compares experience of involvement of the Russian Federation and the United States in international cooperation institutions dealing with transboundary water management by using as a case-study the Russian-Estonian Transboundary Water Commission and the US-Canada International Joint Commission. The fundamental difference between these two institutions of international cooperation is that the Russian-Estonian Commission is guided by the inter-governmental cooperation principle, while the US-Canada Commission follows the model advanced by advocates of the theory of transnationalism. Moreover, performance of the Russian-Estonian Commission in terms of improvement of water management in the region of its authority is better than that of the Joint Commission. This does not allow saying that the inter-governmental cooperation is more effective than transnational one; however, this gives ground to doubts about explicitly higher efficiency of the latter. The practical relevance of the study is that its findings help to formulate recommendations regarding further enhancement of international transboundary water cooperation. 

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