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Urban infrastructure is typically invisible to the public eye although it is resource- and labor-intensive, rendering services indispensable to daily life. Some facilities appear to provide individually consumable benefits at little individual cost. Therefore, it is usually difficult to rally public support behind changes in the level and nature of infrastructure investments. Consequently, infrastructure decisions tend to be reactive to crises and political pressures, not proactive and strategic. After proposing reasons why the reactive decisions have undesirable long-range consequences, we describe a participatory process that was used in 1994 and 1995 to elicit northeast Ohio's environmental priorities. Surprisingly, urban out-migration emerged as the region's top priority. The key underlying dimension of this choice was concern with the efficient provision, wise management, and quality of the infrastructure. We analyze the participatory mechanisms that rendered infrastructure visible to the lay public, and some strategies for sustaining public interest and enabling it to guide political decisions affecting the environment.

The U.S. Census Bureau, health data providers, and credit bureaus are information organizations (IOs). They collect, store, and process large sets of sensitive data on individuals, households, and organizations. Storage, processing, and dissemination technologies that IOs employ have grown in capability, sophistication, and cost‐effectiveness. These technologies have outpaced the design and implementation of procedures for protecting data in transfer from primary data provider to IO and from IO to data user. On the one hand, it is necessary to protect the confidentiality of such data; on the other hand, it is necessary to protect the accessibility to the data by users, including researchers and analysts. Conflicts ensue in the two corresponding arenas: between the IO and data providers concerned with inadequate privacy and confidentiality protection; and between the IO and data users who find their access to data restricted. In this article third‐party mechanisms for managing disputes in the privacy and information area are both theoretically justified and their empirical manifestations examined The institutional mechanisms considered include privacy and information clearinghouses, a "Better Data Bureau," a privacy information advocate, a data ombuds, a privacy mediator, an internal privacy review board, and a data and access protection commission. Under appropriate circumstances, these arrangements promise a more flexible and responsive resolution of the conflict between privacy/confidentiality and legitimate information access than is possible through legislative action and administrative rulings alone.

Analyzes the problems facing information organizers (IOs) due to the recent growth in storage, processing, & dissemination technologies. IOs such as the US Census Bureau, health data providers, & credit bureaus employ collecting technologies that have outspaced data protection procedures in transfer from primary provider to IO & from IO to primary user, creating confidentiality & accessibility conflicts. Institutional mechanisms for dispute management are shown to be effective in the information & privacy domain, & intermediators, eg, European data protection boards, are offered as potential solutions. 2 Tables, 25 References. Adapted from the source document.

A mediator aids disputants in resolving their differences. A theoretical framework for mediator mechanisms extends the subjective expected utility perspective and permits formal examination of mediator attitudes toward the equity and efficiency of agreements. Two forms of impartiality in promoting gains to disputants are examined: active (jointly motivated to help both disputants) and responsive (more motivated to help one disputant at higher payoff levels for the other). It is shown that (1) observed mediator activity to help only one disputant at some point in a dispute is not necessarily a sign of bias, and (2) active mediators seek efficient outcomes.

Recognizing fertile ground and preparing ground not yet ready is an essential skill of an effective intervenor. This sequence of diagnosis and action is studied in a theoretical framework in which mediators examine and alter four classes of disputants' perceptions. These classes are (1) the available set of actions, (2) the class of possible consequences, (3) the likelihoods of uncertain events and consequences of actions, and (4) preferences over consequences. Denver's increasing demand for water led to the Foothills environmental dispute in 1977. This dispute featured various forms of third party intervention. U.S. Representative Patricia Schroeder's failure to mediate the Foothills conflict, and U.S. Representative Timothy Wirth's success, are compared in terms of the disputants' key beliefs affected by the two self‐appointed intervenors' actions. Using the technique of counterfactual case analysis, an exploration is made of a range of possible timing and ground preparation decisions. Although the particular circumstances of any dispute play a key role in its resolution, the proposed perspective extracts features that are general and therefore transferable to other contexts, thereby enabling mediators to belter develop, transmit, and apply intervention skills.

AbstractThrough this essay and its accompanying commentaries, we offer a focal point for a wide‐ranging dialogue about how those with conflict‐related expertise might do more to contribute to efforts to slow, and ultimately reverse, the hyper‐polarization spiral now threatening so many developed democracies. In addition to exploring ways for promoting the more widespread utilization of the conflict field's existing insights and practices, we consider strategies for better dealing with the enormous scale and complexity of contemporary society‐wide conflict, and for countering powerful, bad‐faith actors who, for personal profit, are deliberately amplifying our deep divisions. We propose a "massively parallel" approach that seeks to cultivate large numbers of independent but mutually reinforcing projects each addressing particular aspects of hyper‐polarization in specific contexts.