Arbitration & Mediation

The Democratic National Convention Kicks Off

By Victoria Pynchon

In honor of which, I'm excerpting and directing you to mediator Ken Cloke's article Thoughts on Mediation, Barack Obama and Our Political Future.

[T]ere are four fundamental issues underlying this Presidential campaign, though they are somewhat broader in scope than what the candidates and pundits have been discussing:

1. What will the future relationship be between the United States and the rest of the world in addressing global problems, from global warming and environmental devastation to war, hunger, and disease?

2. Will it be possible for us to significantly reduce the worst forms of prejudice, based on race, gender, sexual orientation, and national origin?

3. Will it be possible to shift our economic priorities from maximizing corporate profitability to universal health care, debt relief, and taking care of people?

4. Can we shift the political process away from character assassination, domination of campaign financing by the wealthy, dirty tricks, and the posturing, greed, ambition, and dishonesty that undermine its democratic purposes?

What do these issues have to do with conflict resolution? My view, [elaborated in my new book, Conflict Revolution: Mediating Evil, War, Injustice and Terrorism – How Mediators Can Help Save the Planet (Janis Publications, 2008)], is that these issues reveal an underlying source of chronic conflict that not only impacts each of us as individuals, but is perpetuated by social, economic and political systems that form the invisible backdrop, context, and environment within which all of our conflicts take place.

The Meta-Sources of Chronic Conflict

Over the broad sweep of history, we can identify three over-arching “meta-sources” of chronic conflict. These, in my view, are social inequality, economic inequity, and political autocracy. To these we can add a fourth, which is the environment within which they occur, be it natural selection, organizational systems, or the political institutions that reinforce these chronic meta-sources of conflict and constrict our ability to resolve them.

These meta-sources of chronic conflict, in combination, generate a “culture” of conflict, which consists of the ways we think about, address, and resolve our conflicts. This allows us to combine the four issues outlined above, naturally giving rise to a fifth:

5. Will we be able to transform our culture of conflict from one that is destructive and adversarial to one that is creative and collaborative?

These are obviously questions of enormous importance. Why should we think that mediators could have an impact on how they are decided? As an illustration, consider a key element in the Obama campaign and one of the key questions for many voters – should the US negotiate with its enemies?

To read on, click here.

Full post as published by Settle It Now Negotiation Blog on August 25, 2008 (boomark / email).