Theory and Practice of International Mediation

Selected Essays

Jacob Bercovitch

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2011
• eBook ISBN: 9781136827129
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: History

This volume brings together some of the most significant papers on international conflict mediation by Professor Jacob Bercovitch, one of the leading scholars in the field.

It has become common practice to note that mediation has been, and remains, one of the most important structures of dealing with and resolving social conflicts. Irrespective of the level of political or social organization, of their location in time and space, and of the political sophistication of a society, mediation has always been there to help deal with conflicts. As a method of conflict management, the practice of settling disputes through intermediaries has had a rich history in all cultures, both Western and non-Western. In some non-Western countries (especially in the Middle East and China) mediation has been the most important and enduring structure of conflict resolution. Jacob Bercovitch has been at the forefront of developments in international conflict mediation for more than 25 years, and is generally recognized as one of the most important scholars in the field. His theoretical and empirical analyses have come to define the parameters in the study of mediation.

This volume will help scholars and practitioners trace the history of the field, its position today and its future and will be of much interest to all students of mediation, negotiation, conflict management, international security and international relations in general.

1
Introduction

Or how to study and do research on mediation

Introduction

For many years now, it has been common practice to note that mediation has been, and remains, one of the most important structures of dealing with and resolving social conflicts. Irrespective of the level of political or social organization, irrespective of their location in time and space, and irrespective of the political sophistication of a society, mediation has always been there to help deal with conflicts. As a method of conflict management, the practice of settling disputes through intermediaries has had a rich history in all cultures, both Western and non-Western. In some non-Western countries (especially in the Middle East and China), mediation has been the most important and enduring structure of conflict resolution.

Whichever way we look at it, mediation is an important part of societal responses to conflict, and it is a process that merits serious investigation. In the international arena, with the perennial challenges of escalating conflicts, religious and ideological divides, shrinking resources, an anarchical society and the absence of generally accepted ‘rules of the game’, mediation is about as common as conflict itself. Generally speaking, mediation is likely to take place in any context when: (1) disputes are long-drawn-out and complex; (2) the disputants’ own conflict management efforts have reached an impasse; (3) neither side is prepared to countenance further costs or escalation of the dispute; and (4) the disputants are prepared to break their stalemate by cooperating with each other and engaging in some contact and communication (see Bercovitch, 1984). Each of these conditions can and should be studied to provide us with a better understanding of how mediation is initiated, how it works and when it is successful.

In the immediate post-Cold War years there was a widespread feeling that a new era of peace was heralded. Many felt that a ‘long peace’ would prevail once the ideological and physical barriers that separated East from West were brought down. History itself was declared to be dead (in the sense that there would be no more conflict, as all nations would be quick to adopt a liberal democracy model), and with its demise there would be no more conflict. This may have been a comforting vision that brought some cheer to the policy makers in the West, but it was as myopic as it was erroneous. History did not come to an end, nor, for that matter, did conflict. If anything, we have seen more conflict since 1991, but it has been conflict of a different kind. Internal, intense and deep-seated conflicts characterized the post-Cold War era. These conflicts are usually very difficult to resolve, and it may well be that mediation is the closest thing we have to an effective technique for dealing with conflicts in the twenty-first century. For this reason alone, it behoves us to study mediation seriously and systematically. In an interdependent and increasingly fractious world, conflicts affect us all; their proper management, likewise, belongs, to all of us. This belief underlines the approach that is at the heart of this book.

Perspectives on the study of mediation

For many years the study of mediation has suffered from conceptual imprecision and a startling lack of information. Practitioners of mediation, whether in the domestic or the international arena, have been keen to sustain its image as a mysterious practice, akin to some art form, taking place behind closed doors and totally inaccessible to any observer. Scholars of mediation, on the other hand, have not been too averse to thinking of their field of research as comprising idiosyncratic elements of ‘art’ and have not believed that the study of mediation was susceptible to a systematic analysis. In short, neither group believed that it could discern any patterns of behaviour in mediation’s various forms, or that any generalizations could be made about the practice in general.

The prevalent agnosticism towards analysis and the desire to maintain the intuitive mystique of mediation are best exemplified in the comments of two noted American practitioners. Arthur Meyer, commenting on the role of mediators, notes that

the task of the mediator is not an easy one. The sea that he sails is only roughly charted, and its changing contours are not clearly discernible. He has no science of navigation, no fund inherited from the experience of others. He is a solitary artist recognizing at most a few guiding stars, and depending on his personal powers of divination.

(1960: 160)

William Simkin, an equally respected practitioner of mediation, comments in a slightly less prosaic but no less emphatic fashion that ‘the variables are so many that it would be an exercise in futility to describe typical mediator behavior with respect to sequence, timing or the use or non-use of the various functions theoretically available’ (1971: 118).

Such sentiments dominated thinking and research in the field of mediation for many years. Of necessity, such a constricted view produced studies that were mostly descriptive accounts of single cases. Broad generalizations or policy guidelines for similar conflicts were simply impossible to develop, so mediation remained very much in a ‘pre-theoretical’ stage. This approach, which we can label the unique, non-theoretical ‘case study’ approach, dominated thinking and research on mediation for many years.

In the later 1960s a profound intellectual shift in mediation studies took place. Scholars of the process were much influenced by developments in organizational psychology and the promise of change. They approached mediation from a normative perspective and put forward the idea that conflicts at all levels have general similarities and are essentially the products of unmet human needs and misperceptions. Mediation was seen as a process that could address both issues and lead to a resolution of conflict. This is an approach to mediation I have labelled normative or prescriptive, and it is characterized not so much by field research, interviews or observations as by positing a desired goal (i.e. conflict resolution) and stipulating paths towards that desired goal (enhanced communication, rectifying misperceptions, meeting human needs, etc.), without in any serious fashion examining whether the goal desired and the paths recommended can actually work in the real world, where actions and behaviours can have so many unintended effects. The single case and the normative-prescriptive approaches constituted the discourse on mediation when I first became acquainted with the subject in the mid-1970s in London. Little wonder that the late Professor Northedge could claim in our first graduate class, and with some justification, that everything that had ever been known about mediation could be written on the back of a postage stamp.

The study of mediation underwent a shift in focus and moved from the descriptive approach to a more prescriptive one. The practice opened up somewhat and the literature emphasized mediation behaviour as the key to resolving social conflicts. In many ways this approach focused on offering advice on the best practice in conflict management. Many who employ this approach use a variety of interaction and problem-solving techniques to combine political action with scientific experimentation and contribute to the development of a set of rules that can be applied to all conflicts. The late John Burton, an Australian senior policy maker turned academic, teaching at University College London, was at the very forefront of this approach. He summarized many of the essential assumptions, ideas and steps towards conflict resolution in his important 1969 book Conflict and Communication. With this book and the move away from the descriptive single case, studies on mediation, with the usual template of rules and norms they offered all parties in conflict, became more popular, but not necessarily more relevant.

The mystery and uniqueness of mediation, or its presumed potential to unblock all human conflicts, acted like something of a ghost that haunted many students and practitioners for too long. There may be little consensus on how best to study or practise mediation, but, mercifully, there is very broad agreement that this particular ghost should be exorcized. Mediation can, should and must be studied properly, and the lessons derived from such a study should serve as signposts in the quest for a better understanding of the process and more effective conflict management.

For many reasons, I felt then, and still feel very strongly now, that a theoretical approach that builds upon empirical analysis and has the potential to compare a number of mediation cases across time, regions and domains can yield useful insights and greater understanding, and be policy-relevant as well as intellectually rigorous.

In the late 1970s the focus shifted once more and there was a change to what I can only describe as a systematic approach to the study of mediation. Scholars who toiled in this academic vineyard examined more than one case of mediation, and usually did so with the purpose of formulating and testing propositions about different aspects of mediation performance or effectiveness. The focus of these studies was on independent factors such as mediation timing, who should mediate, how a mediator should behave in a conflict, what strategies to undertake, and how far a mediator should commit resources to an outcome or an agreement.

The shift towards a more systematic, empirical and interdisciplinary approach to mediation came about as a result of three important books on negotiations published in this period. Each of them showed just how plausible and desirable it was to adopt a serious systematic methodology when studying negotiation in international relations. These books, and indeed the people who wrote them, had a profound personal influence on me, and a tremendous impact on the way we view, think of and study the phenomenon of negotiation, and by extension that of mediation. I am referring here to Daniel Druckman’s Negotiations: Social-Psychological Perspectives, Jeff Rubin and Bert Brown’s The Social Psychology of Bargaining and Negotiation, and William Zartman’s The Negotiation Process. These books emphasized negotiations but showed quite emphatically that it was possible to develop proper theories, examine prior conditions, assess relationships between different phenomena, and generally look at factors and conditions that might make negotiations a better and more successful conflict management exercise. And if we can do that for negotiations, why not try to do the same for mediation? This is precisely what I was hoping to do. If my work has helped to open up an empirical approach to mediation, then it is very much because of the debt I owe these fine people. That all of them became close colleagues and good personal friends over the subsequent years has truly been one of the highlights of my academic career.

By the late 1980s the new winds of empirical work on mediation were howling everywhere. Many of the changes in the approach and study of mediation were captured in Mediation Research by Dean Pruitt and Kenneth Kressel (1989). This collection of essays offered an intellectual inventory of what was then known about mediation, showcasing the best features of a systematic approach to conflict and showing just how viable such an approach could be at all levels of social life, from the individual to the international. The book signalled a new phase in the study of mediation, a new set of methods, and new foci in the study of mediation. No one undertaking empirical analysis of mediation would henceforth feel marginalized.

Mediation, like other complex social processes, must be susceptible to theorizing and systematic analysis. We need not rely on the insights of ‘artful mediators’, or on the whim of those who think that one generic set of simple rules can help resolve all human conflicts. We can make headway and build up an inventory of useful findings only if we pursue a proper course of research when studying mediation. And by a proper course I mean concept definition, theory development, case selection, data collection and analysis, and an examination of any findings we generate in light of the real efforts of real mediators working in the real world of international and intrastate conflicts. This is the approach I have adopted and tried to follow for many years and is best exemplified in the chapters of this book.

Whether we wish to study a single case of mediation or a large number of such cases, we need to develop a framework of sorts that identifies concepts and their relationships in a coherent manner. The framework we develop can act as a model or just a simple taxonomy, but in either case it helps us to understand how ideas and findings relate to one another, how to build up knowledge cumulatively, how to examine evolution and causation in conflict and their effects on mediation, and how to allow scholars and practitioners to learn from each other. Mediation is a complex and difficult study. It is easy to agonize about its complexity, unpredictability and uncertainty. Only frameworks, theories and a systematic analysis can take us beyond agony to a happier state of clarity and relevance.

Towards a framework of mediation

Characteristics of mediation

What, then, are the main features or characteristics of mediatio...

Table of contents

• Series: Security and Conflict Management
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgements of permission
• 1 Introduction
• Part I The nature and theory of mediation
• Part II Case studies in mediation
• Part III Quantitative studies in mediation
• Part IV Current issues in mediation research
• Index