Creativity in Court‐Connected Mediation: Myth or Reality?

In this study, we examined creativity in court‐connected mediation. We analyzed 129 mediated agreements from civil cases in Norway and Denmark and compared the outcomes with the parties' original claims to determine whether the agreement addressed only the disputants' demands or contained other elements. If the mediated agreements contained elements in addition to the original claims, we considered them to be “creative.” We devised a creativity scale and found that approximately two thirds of the cases contained creative elements and one quarter of them contained more than five creative elements. We then sought to determine which aspects of the mediation promoted creativity by looking at a variety of mediation characteristics (length of mediation, characteristics of the parties, etc.). We found that lengthier mediations tended to feature more creativity as did cases that involved two private individuals rather than businesses. Cases whose issues involved inheritance as well as the division of property following divorce seemed to foster the highest levels of creativity. Finally, we found that the amount of money at issue also seemed to be relevant: the highest levels of creativity were found in cases in which more money was at stake. In this article, we also discuss the implications of our findings for future research, practice, and training.     

论国际舆论对国际法的影响——兼析对解决东海南海岛屿争端的启示

国际舆论作为国际社会一股重要的力量,不仅有其区别于一般舆论的特性,而且通过与人类核心价值观念、国际法渊源和国际争端解决的联系,对国际法产生了全面而深刻的影响。国际舆论与国际法相互影响,并对国际争端的解决产生巨大作用。随着东海南海岛屿争端的加剧,诉诸国际法成为解决争议的最好办法。但单纯依靠法律方法解决争端仍然具有一定的局限性,而在国际法框架内充分调动国际舆论的积极因素,不失为解决此类岛屿争端的明智选择。在中菲南海仲裁案中,中方应重视对于国际舆论主导权的争夺。     

Psychological Barriers to Resolving Intergroup Conflict: An Extensive Review and Consolidation of the Literature

This article reviews over sixty years of research on psychological barriers to intergroup conflict resolution and finds that scholars have identified eighty nominally different barriers that create or exacerbate intergroup conflict. In order to create a tractable list that would be more helpful to future scholars and practitioners, we consolidate this vast literature (e.g., by eliminating substantive and conceptual redundancies) to produce a list of twenty‐six “unique” psychological barriers. We further organize this inventory of barriers with a framework that distinguishes between “cognitive,” “affective,” and “motivated” psychological barriers. To better understand the literature ecosystem of research on psychological barriers, we employ a data visualization tool to illustrate the extent to which each of the twenty‐six unique barriers has been studied conjointly with every other barrier in the articles we reviewed. We then shift our attention to the work of scholars who have attempted, experimentally, to attenuate psychological barriers in negotiation and conflict settings, and identify five primary methods for doing so. Finally, we discuss the implications of our review for future work in this field.     

Creating Stable Agreements in Marine Policy: Learning from the California South Coast Marine Life Protection Act Initiative

In this article, we examine the California South Coast Marine Life Protection Act Initiative stakeholder process, evaluate its shortcomings, and consider what could have been done differently. Our objective is to make recommendations to improve future multi‐stakeholder marine policy processes. In our view, while the South Coast stakeholder process had many positive outcomes, it failed to reach what we call here a “stable agreement.” Our analysis is based on two of the authors’ involvement (one as a facilitator and the other as a stakeholder representative) in the process and a post‐hoc survey of participants. We find that several ill‐advised process design and management choices significantly destabilized the negotiations, leading to an ultimately unstable agreement. We highlight four major problematic process design and management decisions, including the following: representation on the multi‐stakeholder group was imbalanced, the pre‐meeting caucuses were not paired with training in interest‐based negotiation, adequate incentives to negotiate toward a consensus agreement were not provided, and the use of straw voting at one point in the process was unclear and inconsistent. As a result of these and other process design and management flaws, many stakeholders believed that the process was biased and that their ends would be better achieved by anchoring negotiations and engaging in positional bargaining. Ultimately, this meant that near‐consensus on a single cross‐interest marine protected area proposal was not reached, the scientific guidelines put forth were not fully met, the process was not and is not viewed as fair by the stakeholders directly or indirectly involved, and the marine protected area regulations lack broad‐scale support. These pitfalls of the South Coast stakeholder process could have been avoided had the management and facilitation team consistently followed best practices in dispute resolution. We recommend that future marine planning processes learn from this example, particularly those occurring in highly complex, urban ocean environments.