Peace from the Inside: Exploring the Role of the Insider-Partial Mediator

Previous quantitative research on mediation in intrastate and interstate conflicts has highlighted the role of external mediators. This study represents the first effort to systematically explore the role of internal—insider-partial—mediators. We suggest that the insider-partial mediators bring important indigenous resources to a peace process and that they can complement external mediators by mitigating the bargaining problem of information failure. Exploring new data on the occurrence and effect of mediation in unarmed insurrections from 1970–2006, we find that the insider-partial mediators significantly increase the likelihood of negotiated agreements. This applies even after controlling for so-called selection effects, where external mediators are selected, or self-selected, into the most difficult conflict situations, whereas insider-partial mediators are utilized in conflict situations that are less severe; and where insider-partial mediators have a substantially higher frequency of activity in unarmed as compared to armed insurrections. We therefore conclude that the insider-partial mediators play an important and positive role in peacemaking that merits further exploration.     

Rethinking Conflict: Perspectives from the Insight Approach

In this article, the authors present the “insight approach” to conflict as an analytical and methodological framework that addresses the dynamic interactions between conflicting parties. According to the insight approach, conflict is relational, dynamic, and adaptive, generated from the responsive interpretive frameworks that parties use to construct meaning. Conflict arises as a result of parties' experience of what insight theorists call “threat‐to‐cares,” which generates defend–attack patterns of interaction between them. The authors suggest that rethinking the nature of conflict so that it is seen as an interaction embedded in meaning making enables conflict interveners to help parties gain insight into, and articulate, the values that are being generated, advanced, threatened, and realigned within the complex interactions that define us as social beings. In doing so, parties develop abilities to generate new patterns and solutions that can limit and even eliminate the experiences of threat that generate conflict between them.     

Using Blogs in Teaching Negotiation: A Technical and Intercultural Postscript

This article reexamines an earlier experiment in the use of blogs in teaching negotiation when undertaken in a different cultural environment. I briefly examine two core factors — technical competence and cultural preferences in communication — as well as a student preference to reserve the use of social media for purely social and informal communications. Parallels are also drawn with the technical and cultural contexts of developments in online dispute resolution.     

Chronicling the Complexification of Negotiation Theory and Practice

The essay reviews the content of twenty-five years of Negotiation Journal , identifying themes and issues explored on its pages in the past, the current issues challenging the field's scholars and practitioners, and the issues likely to confront us in the future. It argues that while we in the field hoped for simple, elegant, and universal theories of negotiation and conflict resolution, the last twenty-five years have demonstrated the increasing complexification of negotiation theory and practice, from increased numbers of parties and issues, and dilemmas of intertemporal commitments, ethics, accountability, and relationships of private action to public responsibility.     

Negotiated Exits from Organized Crime? Building Peace in Conflict and Crime‐affected Contexts

This article contributes to a growing discussion in peace mediation and peacebuilding circles about the issue of dialogue and negotiation with organized crime groups. The article seeks to demystify this issue by exploring the range of practice from confrontation to accommodation and transformation. The article argues that there is nothing unusual about engaging in dialogue and negotiation with organized crime groups and that those strategies have been used for decades in crime and violence reduction efforts in urban and civil war settings. In their quest to resolve conflict in violent and fragile contexts, mediators and negotiators can adapt existing peacebuilding practice to help structure dialogue processes with organized crime groups.     

The Walk in the Woods: A Step‐by‐Step Method for Facilitating Interest‐Based Negotiation and Conflict Resolution

In this article, we describe a method we have used successfully in both academic and professional settings to rapidly introduce novice negotiators to the principles and practice of interest‐based negotiation: “the walk in the woods.” The walk incorporates much of the principles of interest‐based negotiation: fostering self‐awareness, cultivating curiosity, and understanding the importance of world view. The walk's effectiveness is illustrated in this article using the case of the merger of two large, complex health‐care organizations.     

Bringing Soul to International Negotiation

In this article, the author calls for a shift in training for international commercial negotiation, away from the standard Western linear, rational, fact-oriented style toward training that makes room for "soul." As used here, the term "soul" combines several concepts that integrate learning on human cognition, cultural intelligence, and effectiveness in international management. The article discusses soul in terms of three components: emotion and subjectivity, deep narratives rooted in faith and ethnic traditions, and cultural intelligence. The article presents three negotiation scenarios from around the globe, contrasting first-generation training approaches to next-generation training approaches that would value the unconscious processes of decision making.     

The Influence of Emotional Intelligence on Negotiation Outcomes and the Mediating Effect of Rapport: A Structural Equation Modeling Approach

Although early research on negotiation focused on cognition and decision‐making processes, recently, negotiation scholars have started to pay attention to the importance of emotion in negotiation and have suggested that emotional intelligence is likely to improve negotiation performance. Few studies, however, have tested the relationship between emotional intelligence and negotiation outcomes. This study contributes by empirically testing the influence of emotional intelligence on specific negotiation outcomes (joint gain, trust between parties, and the desire of parties to work together again) and also examines the mediating effects of rapport. We used a laboratory experimental design with 202 participants to test the hypotheses. We found that a negotiator's emotional intelligence was correlated with his or her counterpart's trust level and desire to work again but had no effect on joint gain. In addition, rapport fully mediated the relationship between emotional intelligence and desire to work again, and between emotional intelligence and trust.     

Conflict Intelligence and Systemic Wisdom: Meta‐Competencies for Engaging Conflict in a Complex,Dynamic World

Over the last one hundred years, conflict researchers have developed a host of theories about which competencies and skills are most conducive to the constructive management of conflict. Our standard models and methods for conflict resolution, however, are particularly challenged in the face of the world's increasing complexity, dynamism, and unpredictability. In this article, I describe a new framework for addressing these challenges. Based on insights from research in complexity science, psychology, and peace and conflict studies, this framework comprises two meta‐competencies that help individuals resolve conflict and promote more constructive and peaceful relations in our rapidly changing world.     

Outbursts: An Evolutionary Approach to Emotions in the Mediation Context

Evolutionary psychology offers a powerful framework for understanding the ultimate function of emotions, and that understanding can be applied usefully in the mediation context. In this article, we first introduce the relevant theoretical foundational assumptions of the evolutionary approach to emotions and then use anger and gratitude to illustrate the evolved functions and effects of emotions on cognition and behavior before exploring specific implications for mediation. We also discuss mediator strategies for leveraging anger and gratitude, as well as the potential for future research applying an evolutionary approach to understanding emotions in mediation.     

No Sheriff in Town: Governance for Online Dispute Resolution

Online dispute resolution (ODR), the practice of resolving disputes via the Internet or digital applications, has been developing since the mid‐1990s. As the field has grown and gained traction, it has increasingly received attention from professional associations and industry leaders in the world of alternative dispute resolution (ADR). More recently, it has begun to receive recognition from sources outside of this field — in both the public and private sectors. As the field develops and individual initiatives become widely adopted, the attention it receives from external sources will undoubtedly focus on questions of quality, ethics, practitioner training, service provider qualifications, and monitoring. These questions — already beginning to be heard from within the field — derive, in essence, from one shared overall question, that of appropriate governance for the ODR field. In this article, we will explain what we mean when we discuss a field's governance and suggest that the field itself should investigate issues of its own governance. We explore and explain the current “low‐to‐no” state of governance in ODR — and the developments that are likely, should the field fail to actively address this issue. We discuss the costs of no governance, and the potential costs and disadvantages of employing a higher‐governance model. We ask whether ODR can, indeed, be governed at all, and illustrate why addressing ODR governance is a very complex venture, in terms of the web of factors to be addressed, no matter how beneficial internal governance may be. We do not, in this article, intend to decide any of these questions — but, rather, to pose them to the ODR field and to the wider fields of ADR and conflict management. We point out why the ODR field is at a developmental point that is highly suitable for discussing and deciding these questions — and why these decisions might have far‐reaching implications for a wide range of conflict‐related fields.     

The Deceptive Simplicity of Teaching Negotiation: Reflections on Thirty Years of the Negotiation Workshop

What is required for effective teaching depends on the goal of the effort, and our criteria for success should be much more demanding than positive ratings from participants. If the goal is to improve participants' effectiveness as negotiators, we need a proven theory and associated skills. In the absence of robust confirming empirical data, which is still mostly lacking, we can take some confidence from qualitative evaluations. But whether or not we have a proven theory, the pedagogical task is complex and challenging, calling for a variety of sophisticated techniques deployed by a skilled instructor committed to joint learning. This article tells the story of some of the instructors' pedagogical learnings in thirty years of teaching the pioneering Negotiation Workshop at Harvard Law School, many of which now have empirical support. It also suggests some areas and tools for more experimentation in future advanced courses.     

Civil Society and Peace Negotiations: Beyond the Inclusion–Exclusion Dichotomy

Civil society is generally seen as an important actor in peace processes. But when it comes to reaching an agreement during peace negotiations, much of the current debate is centered on the question of including or excluding civil society. Although most researchers argue that civil society participation makes the process more sustainable and democratic, most practitioners emphasize that enhanced civil society participation makes it more difficult to reach a peace agreement. I argue that practitioners and theorists must both move beyond this dichotomy and, instead, focus on the variety of ways in which civil society actors can be included in a given negotiation process. To this end, I present in this article a comprehensive overview of nine models of inclusion, from most to least direct involvement of civil society, supported by illustrative case studies. Analysis of these models suggests that it will be possible to broaden the participation of civil society in peace negotiations without decreasing the negotiations' effectiveness.     

Transcending the Classroom: A Practical Guide to Remote Role Plays in Teaching International Negotiation

This article discusses the pedagogical value of using remote role plays in cross‐cultural negotiations between two classes taught simultaneously at different and geographically distant institutions. We argue that remote role‐play simulations provide valuable teaching and learning experiences, and are particularly helpful for managing issues associated with outside‐group negotiation and cultural differences, the prenegotiation stage, electronic negotiations and distorted communication, and one‐shot settings in which the negotiator lacks previous knowledge of the partner. The article begins with a discussion of some critical limitations of “traditional” in‐class role plays, followed by a practical guide to remote role plays and a report of our experiences with them. Finally, we discuss the advantages and disadvantages of remote role plays as a teaching tool for international negotiation classes and the key lessons for the participating students.     

Civic Fusion: Moving from Certainty through Not Knowing to Curiosity

Civic fusion occurs when people bond across passionate difference to solve a shared public problem. It requires bringing people close together under conditions that enable them to bond, even as their polarizing beliefs remain intact. In managing multiparty multi‐issue negotiations, public policy mediators help disparate, passionate parties negotiate actionable agreements. To achieve and sustain civic fusion, interested parties recognize and acknowledge confining assumptions and move through a continuum in which their certainty about each other and their presumed solutions is challenged and transforms to uncertainty and then to curiosity. They connect across common public goals and find mutual understanding and respect for the interests of others as they come to understand and accept the opportunities and limitations that are inherent to their complex situations. A steady stream of new understandings moves people beyond their long‐held perspectives to foster productive negotiations and build innovative solutions. Ultimately, the parties generate sustainable consensus agreements even as they retain their deeply held and often opposing values and beliefs.     

The Past,Present, and Future of Mediation as Seen through the Eyes of Some of Its Founders

This article is drawn from interviews with thirty‐one of mediation's “founders,” those pioneers who began mediating in the 1970s and 1980s, when the field was young. They describe what first attracted them to mediation and why they have remained active in the field. Some told us that they have found it to be both intellectually challenging and interpersonally satisfying to assist disputing parties in their search for a mutually acceptable resolution they could not find on their own. Others see mediation's collaborative approach to decision making as a means of bringing about social and political change that might be otherwise unattainable. The mediators also described the changes they have observed since they entered the field: mediation's dramatic growth, institutionalization in the judicial system, and market domination by lawyers and retired judges. Among the concerns they expressed were the prevalence of a mediation model that focuses primarily on the legal strengths and weaknesses of each party's position, and the dollar amount that should resolve the dispute, with little interest in creative outcomes. Other concerns are a lack of quality control of mediators and trainers, and unproductive debate about whether the “correct” approach to mediation is evaluative, facilitative, or transformative. The mediators who work on public policy matters, including environmental disputes, were the most positive about the opportunity for creativity in their work, considerably more so than those mediators whose practice is primarily business/commercial. The mediators' views of the future of mediation are remarkably similar — their general sense is that the type of mediation that takes place in the shadow of the courts is likely to increase and to become even more routinized than it is at present. Several respondents told us that they also expect to see substantial growth in the use of mediation to resolve public policy issues. Many of these mediators predicted that this type of mediation is likely to be carried out by organizational insiders, rather than outside interveners. As one mediator said, “Maybe there's a new set of mediation roles for people within traditional institutions, not just for free‐standing neutrals.”     

Insight Mediation: A Learning-Centered Mediation Model

Insight mediation is the name we have given to the model of mediation that is taught and practiced at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada. The name has evolved from our efforts to situate the model in relation to the transformative and narrative styles of mediation. Drawing upon the work of Canadian philosopher Bernard Lonergan and his theory of insight, mediators practicing this model seek direct and inverse insights into what the conflict means to each party by discovering what each party cares about and how that threatens the other party. Insights shift attitudes and create space for collective action. The authors argue that coming to recognize the theoretical underpinnings of our practice helps us become better practitioners.     

中俄跨文化商务交际中的语用失误及对策

跨文化商务交际是跨文化交际学范畴的一个新的研究领域。在跨文化商务交际中,因语用失误导致的交际不适、交际中断和交际冲突会直接或间接地影响商务谈判的效果。从跨文化交际和交际—语用的角度探讨中俄商务活动中的语用失误,可以最大限度地减少误解,增进合作。     

Conflict Resolution: Lessons from the Dayton Peace Process

The Bosnian War (1992–1995) was one of the most brutal conflicts in Europe since the end of World War II. Thirty‐four cease‐fires failed to produce peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina until the late American diplomat, Richard Holbrooke, brokered one that set the stage for a series of negotiations—starting in the Balkans and ending in Dayton, Ohio. The Dayton peace process finally terminated the Bosnian War. The interplay of military intervention by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and diplomacy by the United States was remarkable. This article highlights thirteen conflict resolution lessons or “Holbrookeisms” that can be learned from the Dayton peace process. Some aspects of Holbrooke's approach toward the peace process helped him to successfully mediate an end to the Bosnian War, while others contributed toward some of the existing cleavages in today's Bosnian society.     

Escape from the Laboratory: Ethnographic Methods in the Study of Elder and Family Court Mediation

The randomized control trial and pre/post research designs are commonly used in applied research and provide common standards for mediation evaluation research. These approaches have many benefits, particularly for evaluating whether mediation as an experimental intervention works or not. Scholars and practitioners, however, want to know not only whether mediation can work as expected but also how it works in a range of real‐world contexts over time. In these contexts, ideal experimental conditions are less likely to occur. Challenges include such circumstances as the following: the number of cases suitable for statistical comparison is insufficient; researchers lack control over how mediation is implemented; researchers lack clear, objective variables to measure; and the variability of mediation outcomes when studied over time makes it difficult to draw conclusions about them. My research has involved each of these challenges, and I have used ethnographic research as a way to evaluate mediation in these contexts. In this article, I explain ethnographic methods and present two studies as examples of mediation evaluation research that began with a standard program evaluation design, and then incorporated ethnography to allow more complete data collection and analysis. My purpose here is not to argue that experimental methods in mediation evaluation research should be displaced but rather to demonstrate how ethnographic methods can be used when the conditions necessary for standard evaluation cannot be met. The two studies used as examples are from an elder mediation study in Ghana and a family court mediation study in the United States.