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.     

Roadmaps to Representation: An Experimental Study of How Voter Education Tools Affect Citizen Decision Making

Efforts to educate citizens about the candidates and issues at stake in elections are widespread. These include distributing voter guides describing candidates’ policy views and interactive tools conveying similar information. Do these voter education tools help voters identify candidates who share their policy views? We address this question by conducting survey experiments that randomly assign a nonpartisan voter guide, political party endorsements, a spatial map showing voters their own and the candidates’ ideological positions, or both a spatial map and party endorsements. We find that each type of information strengthens the relationship between voters’ policy views and those of the candidates they choose. These effects are largest for uninformed voters. When spatial maps and party endorsements send conflicting signals, many voters choose candidates with more similar policy views, against their party’s recommendation. These results contribute to debates about citizen competence and demonstrate the efficacy of practical efforts to inform electorates.

     

Video Game Violence Use Among “Vulnerable” Populations: The Impact of Violent Games on Delinquency and Bullying Among Children with Clinically Elevated Depression or Attention Deficit Symptoms

The issue of children’s exposure to violent video games has been a source of considerable debate for several decades. Questions persist whether children with pre-existing mental health problems may be influenced adversely by exposure to violent games, even if other children are not. We explored this issue with 377 children (62 % female, mixed ethnicity, mean age = 12.93) displaying clinically elevated attention deficit or depressive symptoms on the Pediatric Symptom Checklist. Results from our study found no evidence for increased bullying or delinquent behaviors among youth with clinically elevated mental health symptoms who also played violent video games. Our results did not support the hypothesis that children with elevated mental health symptoms constitute a “vulnerable” population for video game violence effects. Implications and suggestions for further research are provided.     

Colleen Jollie,State Tribal Liaison: A Story of Transformational Change

Colleen Jollie, the state tribal liaison at the Washington State Department of Transportation, practices a form of transformational public administration that, at its heart, reflects a Coyote or “trickster” style of management. In indigenous stories across the world, the trickster uses his or her wiles to disrupt, refuse, and dismantle ways that are not working in order to creatively, and sometimes chaotically, build new ways. Jollie’s work as lead tribal liaison has transformed the agency, the tribes, and the relationships between tribes and the agency, creating a culture of cooperation across significant differences and honoring the transformational energy required to cooperate across difference. Like the Coyote, who does what needs to be done through many means, but mostly through thoughtful effort, Jollie works to create change that serves both the state and the tribes. As this profile indicates, the work isn’t always easy and the outcomes don’t always spell success, but the work is necessary for tribes and state governments to forge the kinds of relationships imagined in treaties and in other agreements between sovereign governments.     

Collaborative Federalism

Famously, federalism combines self-rule with shared rule or unity with diversity. Typically, the mix is achieved by creating or preserving two levels of government, each with a direct relationship with the people, and by dividing power between them. Traditionally, unity is achieved through the exercise of power by the central government, in relation to the polity as a whole. Diversity is the consequence of the exercise of power by sub-national governments over a portion of the population, generally territorially identified. The boundaries of power between the two spheres are secured by entrenching them in a written Constitution established as fundamental law, which is interpreted and applied by a court or courts.