Collecting data on conflict resolution trends began in the 1960s with the early empirical research by the Correlates of War Project. However, little international follow up on the study was done until the surprisingly optimistic findings of the Human Security Report appeared in 2005. The study reported a decline in armed conflict and war fatalities, and its findings increased interest in conflict resolution research. The Peace Process Yearbook 2007 (PPY) is one result of this renewed interest in conflict resolution research. The promising news is that negotiation has been attempted in more conflicts worldwide in recent years, and has been more successful. There is some reason for caution. Evidence indicates that wars ended through negotiation flare up again more often than those concluded by military victory. Mediation is on the rise globally. Unfortunately, so is the rate of recurring war. There is a real need for sufficient post-war stabilization capacity.
In recent years, much of the public discourse regarding conflict in the Middle East has pondered the possibility of military intervention, but far less attention has been paid to the optimal mechanisms for conflict mediation. There remains considerable confusion in the study of conflict resolution about how to locate the right time, or 'ripe moment' for this type of third-party involvement. This is a crucial area of policy relevant research. When attempting to model ripeness, most of the literature has relied on expected utility models of decision-making and found that crucial but nebulous factors that are important in the MENA region, such as conflicting parties' psychology, religious and political beliefs, as well as grievances compounded over time, cannot easily be incorporated into the framework. This paper offers a plausibility probe to highlight the potential of an augmented approach. Using Poliheuristic (PH) Theory that reflects the non-compensatory nature of political risk, it creates a litmus test for third-party mediation based not on what conflicting parties aim to achieve, but what outcomes and processes they must avoid. The result is a relatively simple identification of 'bad' timing, as well as theory-informed mechanisms designed to help practitioners generate better conditions for mediation. This probe contributes to our understanding of the relationship between political fragility and conflict in the MENA region by indicating how political fragility might be conceptualized as a process that can be mapped and perhaps interrupted.
Contradictions and contestations with regard to the implementation of religion policies have become a worldwide phenomenon. Research suggest an increasing number of costly and protracted court and legislative battles between schools and parents over religion in schools. In this article, I aim to highlight some of the conflicting issues that need to transformation while implementing the National Policy on Religion and Education of 2003 in some selected South African schools. Based on mediation theory, the study used individual interviews to gather data from twelve purposively selected school principals to investigate how they implemented the religion policy in their respective schools. The findings show that despite the implementation challenges of this policy, the majority of the school principals displayed the qualities of a transformative mediator by transforming conflicting religious interests of stakeholder groupings in their schools. I therefore recommend that universities should consider training school principals in the use of transformative mediation as a strategy to transform conflicts in schools as it holds potential benefits for fields such as education.
Contradictions and contestations regarding the implementation of religion policies have become a worldwide phenomenon. Research suggests an increasing number of costly and protracted court and legislative battles between schools and parents over religion in schools. In this article, I aim to highlight some of the conflicting issues that need to transform while implementing the National Policy on Religion and Education of 2003 in selected South African schools. Based on mediation theory, the study used individual interviews to gather data from twelve purposively selected school principals to investigate how they implemented the religion policy in their respective schools. The findings show that despite the implementation challenges of this policy, most of the school principals displayed the qualities of a transformative mediator by transforming conflicting religious interests of stakeholder groupings in their schools from destructive to constructive. I therefore recommend that universities should consider training school principals in the use of transformative mediation as a strategy to transform conflicts in schools as it holds potential benefits for fields such as education. ; http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie ; am2021 ; Education Management and Policy Studies
In this introduction, I argue that in spite of recent discussions of global and neoliberal time, the anthropology of modern time remains under-explored. Modern time here is understood to be a complex historical product. At its centre is the abstract time-reckoning of capitalism, which acts as a universal measure of value, but which always comes into conflict with concrete experiences of time. Its social disciplines emerge from Christian practice, but the ethics of these routines are marked as secular and universal. Its politics is founded on representations of the natural connections of communities through a homogeneous historical time. Its science and technology tightly link social, human time to external non-human rhythms. It is important for anthropologists to reflect on modern time because our discipline has been profoundly influenced by the discoveries of its depth, secularity, and relativity. The controversies that emerged in relation to Darwin's and Einstein's insights still provide the framework for many of our theories, especially when we draw on phenomenological philosophy. In this introduction, I suggest that the key resources for overcoming this significant absence in anthropology lie in a rapprochement between Alfred Gell's epistemology of time and the approaches of Marxist political philosophers. This combination, along with an emphasis on the labour in/of time, gives rise to new questions and reveals new aspects of modern time in the present.
This study aims to explain how to reconstruct the form of mediation through a framing analysis. The concept of framing in mediation is a form of communication that is constructively framed. The dynamics of conflict, the mediation process becomes the most decisive part of the problem-solving process. How a mediator is able to reframe this mediation concept by empowering the conflicting parties to get out of the problem without having to worsen the situation. The research method used qualitative with a framing analysis approach that explains of a mediator is not a decision-maker in the negotiation process. A mediator is able to find solutions to constructive and cooperative problems in accordance with the mediator's abilities.
This paper is a video-ethnographic language socialization study that examines the discursive, linguistic and embodied features of the teachers and childrens ways of conflict mediation and resolution. The study describes the ways in which young children (three to five-year olds) in several preschools in Sweden are being socialized into the interactional competences and perspective taking necessary for managing conflict situations. It is shown that teacher-guided conflict resolution was accomplished through triadic interactions involving the teacher as a mediator. Teachers used questions to encourage and direct children to convey their volition, wants, and wishes to their peers, and requested the other children to listen. It is argued that such discursive practices socialize children to perspective taking, and that this socialization is linked to wider societal norms of Swedish preschools and Swedish society, namely democratic values of equality, agency, individualism, and solidarity. (C) 2019 The Author. Published by Elsevier Inc.
Mediation is a widely used form of third-party conflict management for which research has primarily focused on the role of mediators. But how are the relations between disputing parties constituted in communication involving written texts, such as official letters or medical reports, during mediation sessions? To gain deeper insight into the communicative dynamics through which third-party disputes are created, sustained, and resolved, this article proposes a new theoretical perspective on mediation that illuminates how human beings and written texts can act as vectors for each other, i.e., how they can make important differences in mediation sessions because they carry or convey what someone or something else is saying, doing, thinking, or feeling and, thus, contribute to composing the nature of disputants' relations. The value of this vectorial perspective on mediation is subsequently demonstrated through an inductive analysis of video-recorded sessions that took place at an administrative tribunal in Canada. By showing how texts (or their absence) can act as (1) conjunctive vectors that contribute to highlighting disputants' compatibilities and help them find common ground, or (2) disjunctive vectors that contribute to highlighting their incompatibilities and obstruct their dispute resolution, this article advances the academic and professional literature on the role of communication in conflict mediation work, and reveals significant implications for the study and practice of conflict management in organizations as well as scholarship on relational ontologies.
Cities are increasingly adopting CeaseFire, an evidence-based public health program that uses specialized outreach workers, called violence interrupters (VIs), to mediate potentially violent conflicts before they lead to a shooting. Prior research has linked conflict mediation with program-related reductions in homicides, but the specific conflict mediation practices used by effective programs to prevent imminent gun violence have not been identified. We conducted case studies of CeaseFire programs in two inner cities using qualitative data from focus groups with 24 VIs and interviews with eight program managers. Study sites were purposively sampled to represent programs with more than 1 year of implementation and evidence of program effectiveness. Staff with more than 6 months of job experience were recruited for participation. Successful mediation efforts were built on trust and respect between VIs and the community, especially high-risk individuals. In conflict mediation, immediate priorities included separating the potential shooter from the intended victim and from peers who may encourage violence, followed by persuading the parties to resolve the conflict peacefully. Tactics for brokering peace included arranging the return of stolen property and emphasizing negative consequences of violence such as jail, death, or increased police attention. Utilizing these approaches, VIs are capable of preventing gun violence and interrupting cycles of retaliation.
Ever since becoming a member state of the European Union, Romania had to adapt its internal laws so that the citizens of other EU member states, or those of other entities for which this right is acknowledged by Law 17/2014, stateless persons residing in these states and legal persons established in accordance with the internal laws of these states can benefit from a regulatory framework in virtue of which they can acquire the right of private property over Romanian agricultural fields, under the same conditions as Romanian citizens, stateless persons based in Romania or Romanian legal persons. Outsourcing the civil circuit over the Romanian agricultural fields raises a serious question over the reaction of the society, which is still vibrant to anything that concerns the preservation of property over the ancestral land.
While the extractive industries and related infrastructures are highlighted as key to economic development, they often come at a cost. Most projects involve a network of stakeholder parties; even though developers are allocating more resources to stakeholder engagement, conflict surrounding infrastructure development continues to rise. Whilst the causes of this paradox are numerous, ranging from the increasing demand for natural resources to the limited regulatory capacity of governments in the global south to oversee developers, they also highlight the lack of engagement with effective conflict resolution mechanisms. This paper undertakes a comparative review of 21 existing frameworks or "toolkits" presented by international organizations for avoiding and resolving mining-related conflicts in emerging markets. This review and analysis has four aims: i) to identify the dominant trends in frameworks that address conflict arising from the extractive industry and related infrastructural systems; ii) to identify the weaknesses and limitations of existing frameworks; iii) to assess opportunities for innovation that might increase the adoption of more effective conflict resolution strategies; iv) to forecast how existing frameworks may need to adapt and respond to emerging global shifts in development investments. Addressing these aims will contribute to a better understanding of how conflict resolution discourses, procedures, and strategies function in a sector that is critical to sustainable and equitable development.
This Discussion Paper critically examines Zangbeto, a highly revered society, among the Egun people in the town of Badagry, near the city of Lagos, in south west Nigeria, that have creatively re-invented tradition to serve multiple purposes. It shows how Zangbeto has in the context of economic crisis and challenges linked to urban growth, adapted its roles to include communal policing, conflict mediation, oral art and entertainment, and the maintenance of communal order. In more ways than one, it captures the essence and multiple identities of Zangbeto within Badagry society. The involvement of Zangbeto in local policing or 'night watching' provides an alternative or an exception to the dominant representation of vigilantism in Nigeria as disorderly violence, sometimes for political or criminal ends. This paper also demonstrates how Zangbeto, drawing upon local Egun culture and traditional practices is able to maintain security and local order at the community level. It is argued that rather than act in an arbitrary and violent manner, Zangbeto operates through the combination of traditional symbolic actions and oral art in mediating local conflicts and preserving social harmony and local order. An interesting point relates to how Zangbeto co-exists peacefully with formal political and security institutions, and operates without causing tensions within Badagry town, where some inhabitants share different ethnic identities and religious faiths. The study also opens up a humanist perspective to how the aesthetics of Zangbeto's cultural tropes of oral presentation, rhetoric and representation act as a powerful force for preserving cherished communal norms and values, and facilitating communication in ways that strengthen social cohesion. In this regard this paper demonstrates the wealth of possibilities that exist within Africa's traditional cultures and oral arts for alternative grassroots based conflict mediation and security.
Today's conflicts are becoming increasingly complex, fluid and fragmented, often involving a host of national and international actors with multiple and often divergent interests. This development poses significant challenges for conflict mediation, as mediators struggle to make sense of conflict dynamics, such as the range of conflict parties and the evolution of their political positions, the distinction between relevant and less relevant actors in peace making, or the identification of key conflict issues and their interdependence. International peace efforts appear increasingly ill-equipped to successfully address these challenges. While technology is being increasingly used in a range of conflict related fields, such as conflict predicting or information gathering, less attention has been given to how technology can contribute to conflict mediation. This case study is the first to apply state-of-the-art machine learning technologies to data from an ongoing mediation process. Using dialogue transcripts from peace negotiations in Yemen, this study shows how machine-learning tools can effectively support international mediators by managing knowledge and offering additional conflict analysis tools to assess complex information. Apart from illustrating the potential of machine learning tools in conflict mediation, the paper also emphasises the importance of interdisciplinary and participatory research design for the development of context-sensitive and targeted tools and to ensure meaningful and responsible implementation.
This dissertation focuses on the effects of a third-party mediator in protracted conflict settings. I primarily use formal models based on game theory and mechanism design, employing case studies and empirical work to further my analysis. The question of mediation effectiveness in the literature is still an open one, addressed empirically but with little theoretical support. While some work has emphasized the important role of enforcement, there is no consensus as to whether, how and why these tactics work. I use formal modeling to examine the mediator's enforcement ability and show the ways in which manipulative mediation can in fact improve upon bilateral results. The first chapter examines the use of different types of enforcement in conflict mediation. This paper compares potential outcomes of bilateral negotiations with the outcomes achievable with the help of a mediator capable of various levels of enforcement, seeking to gain insight into how to end ongoing war using a signaling framework. I find that a mediator with sufficient enforcement capabilities can improve on the bilateral outcome, perhaps creating peace that would not have been possible bilaterally. However, while exhibiting enforcement capabilities can help a mediator to mandate peace in the short term, there can sometimes be a lower likelihood of lasting results, consistent with stylized facts about mediation. The second chapter models conditions for efficiency gains from third- party conflict mediation when concessions are risky. Each party engaged in a conflict can indicate its interest in peace through costly signaling, or concessions. Through a formal model, I explore ways in which a mediator can act as a guarantor that promised concessions will be delivered, thereby reducing inefficiencies and increasing the potential for peace. In this process, I open up a rationale for mediation: to remove the inefficiencies of signaling in the pre-play round of negotiations. The third chapter uses a game-theoretic framework to explain the persistence of de facto independent states that are not internationally recognized. This paper uses a four-player, game-theoretic framework to model the stalemates that often arise between the secessionist elite and home state central government and leverages this model to explore paths to settlement. We emphasize the pivotal role of an outside patron in sustaining unrecognized statehood as a stable equilibrium, but we also argue that the international community is capable of inducing peaceful settlement in these conflicts if it is sufficiently motivated to do so
Este artículo es el resultado de una tesis de Doctorado en curso por la Universidad de Ciencias Empresariales y Sociales (UCES) de Buenos Aires que se propone analizar los procesos intersubjetivos en Mediaciones de conflictos familiares. En este trabajo se presenta el Estado del Arte de Mediar, investigado principalmente sobre la temática en los casos de guarda de hijos. El énfasis que se presenta aquí relaciona la Mediación con los conflictos familiares a partir de la visión del Derecho en Brasil y las lecturas psicosocial y psicoanalítica. Como resultado percibimos que, al mismo tiempo en que se hizo evidente la importancia de la Mediación y concepción acerca del fenómeno de los conflictos, aún se hace necesario una sistematización más clara de aspectos teóricos y técnicos sobre el acto de mediar conflictos de familia. ; This article is the result of a PhD on-going thesis at the Universidad de Ciencias Empresariales y Sociales (UCES) of Buenos Aires whose goal is to analyze the intersubjective processes in family conflict mediation. This paper presents the state of the art researched mainly on the subject of the custody of children. The emphasis here is on the family conflict mediation from the standpoint of the Brazilian legislation and psychosocial and psychoanalytic theory. As a result, as the importance of mediation became apparent and a conception of the phenomenon of conflicts was exposed, it became apparent that a further systematization of theoretical and technical aspects of family conflict mediation is required.
