Mediation consists of a process of Alternative dispute resolution in which a (generally) neutral Third party, the mediator, using proper techniques, assists two or more parties to help them negotiate an agreement, with concrete effects, on a matter of common interest. Generally speaking, the term "mediation" covers any activity in which an impartial third party (often a professional) facilitates an agreement on any matter in the common interest of the parties involved.
Mediation applies to different fields, with some common peculiar elements and some differences for each of its specialties. The main fields of mediation include Commerce, legal disputes and Diplomacy, but forms of mediation appear in other fields as well. Mediation in Marriage technically belongs in the category, although it has followed its own peculiar history since the times of ancient Greeks: compare marriage counselling.
People employ mediation at all levels and in all contexts, from minor disputes to global peace talks. It is thus difficult to provide a general description without referring to practices in specific jurisdictions - where 'Mediation' may in fact be formally defined and in some venues require specific licenses. This article attempts only a broad introduction, with more specific processes (such as peace process, binding arbitration, or mindful mediation) referred to directly in the text.
While some people loosely use the term 'mediation' to mean any instance in which a third party helps people find agreement, professional mediators generally believe it essential that mediators have thorough training, competency, and continuing education.
Types of disputes or decision-making that often go to mediation include the following (though use is not limited to these areas):
Family:
Workplace:
Public disputes:
Disputes involving the following issues:
Other:
Mediation commonly includes the following aspects or stages:
In the United States, mediator codes of conduct emphasize that any solutions be 'client-directed' rather than imposed by a mediator in any way, and this is a common, definitive feature of mediation in the US and UK.
Mediation differs from most other adversarial resolution processes by virtue of its simplicity, informality, flexibility, and economy.
The typical mediation has no formal compulsory elements, although some common elements are usually found:
Due to the particular character of this activity, each mediator uses a method of his or her own (a mediator's methods are not ordinarily governed by law), that might eventually be very different from the above scheme. Also, many matters do not legally require a particular form for the final agreement, while others expressly require a precisely determined form.
Most countries respect a mediator's confidentiality.
The mediator in business or in commerce helps the parties to achieve the final goal of respectively buying/selling (a generical contreposition that includes all the possible varieties of the exchange of goods or rights) something at satisfactory conditions (typically in the aim of producing a synallagmatic contract), harmonically bringing the separate elements of the Treaty to a respectively balanced equilibrium. The mediator, in the ordinary practice, usually cares of finding a positive agreement between (or among) the parties looking at the main Pact as well as at the accessory pacts too, thus finding a composition of all the related aspects that might combine. in the best possible way, all the Desiderata of his clients.
This activity is sometimes scholastically included among those of the auxiliary activities of commerce and business, but it has to be recalled that it differs from the generality of the others, because of its character of independence from the parties: in an ordinary activity of Agency, or in the unilateral mandate this character is obviously missing, this kind of agent merely resulting as a longa manus of the party that gave him his (wider or narrower) power of representation. The mediator does not obey to any of the parties, and is a third party, looking at the contraposition from an external point of view.
Subfields of commercial mediation include work in well-known specialized branches: in Finance, in Insurance, in ship-brokering, in Real estate and in some other individual markets, mediators have specialised designations and usually obey special laws. Generally, mediators cannot practice commerce in the genre of goods in which they work as specialized mediators.
Some would argue, however, that an individual who gives an opinion about the merits or value of a case does not practise true mediation, and that to do so fatally compromises the alleged mediator's neutrality.
Where mediators are expected to be process experts only (i.e., having been employed to use their skills to work through the mediation process without offering evaluations as to the parties' claims) competence is usually demonstrated by the ability to remain neutral and to move parties though various impasse points in a dispute. International professional organizations continue to debate what 'competency' means. Current information can be obtained from professional associations such as the Association for Conflict Resolution.
Mediation differs from most other conflict resolution processes by virtue of its simplicity, and the clarity of its rules. It is employed at all scales from petty civil disputes to global peace talks. It is thus difficult to characterize it independently of these scales or specific jurisdictions - where 'Mediation' may in fact be formally defined and may in fact require specific licenses. There are more specific processes (such as peace process or binding arbitration or mindful mediation) referred to directly in the text.
Mediation can be reasonably seen as the simplest of many such processes, where there is no great dispute about political context, Jurisdiction has been agreed, whatever process selected the mediator is not in doubt, and there is no great fear that safety, fairness and closure guarantees will be violated by future bad-faith actions.
If some warranty of safety, fairness, and closure can be assumed, then the process can reasonably be called 'mediation proper', and be described thus:
People have used mediation extensively in virtually every type of conflict situation, ranging from commercial and family cases, to criminal matters involving juvenile and adult offenders meeting with victims to negotiate restitution. Mediation is increasingly ordered by judges in court cases where a collaborative approach to resolving a conflict is viewed as advantageous to the traditional adversarial process. In family cases, setting parties on a path of collaborative problem-solving is viewed as superior to traditional approaches where children, in particular, are harmed by the effects of protracted litigation.
This process is more appropriate in civil matters where Rules of evidence or Jurisdiction are not in dispute. It resembles, in some respects, criminal plea-bargaining and Confucian judicial procedure, wherein the Judge also plays the role of Prosecutor - rendering what, in Western European court procedures, would be considered an arbitral (even 'arbitrary') decision.
Mediation/arbitration hybrids can pose significant ethical and process problems for mediators. Many of the options and successes of mediation relate to the mediator's unique role as someone who wields coercive power over neither the parties nor the outcome. If parties in a mediation are aware the mediator might later need to act in the role of judge, the process could be dramatically distorted. Thankfully, mediation-arbitration often involves using different individuals in the role of mediator and (if needed later) arbitrator, but this is not always the case.
The assumed moral or legal responsibility, or even Liability, of the mediator differs drastically in different methods - for instance, in global political negotiations, it is often difficult to find anyone who is sufficiently trusted by both sides to even get a peace process to begin. Accordingly, liability is not assigned to the mediator no matter how badly things go wrong - doing so would discourage future efforts to help.
Even within the United States, the laws governing mediation varies greatly on a state-by-state basis. Some states have fairly sophisticated laws concerning mediation, incluidng clear expectations for certification, ethical standards, and protections that ensure a mediator not be called to testify in a case they've worked on (preserving the confidential nature of mediation). However, even in states that have such developed laws around mediation, that law only relates to mediators working within the court system. Community and commercial mediators practicing outside the court system may very well not have these same sorts of legal protections.
Liability insurance is often an option professional mediators consider. It has traditionally been marketed through professional dispute resolution organizations.
These activities are usually performed in order to get, on the subjective point of view of this mediator, a recompense that might be in the form of a direct economical advantage, a political advantage, an increased international prestige or influence.
Some theorists, notably Rushworth Kidder, have claimed that mediation is the foundation of a new (some say 'postmodern') Ethics - and that it sidesteps traditional ethical issues with pre-defined limits of Morality.
Others claim that mediation is a form of harms reduction or De-escalation, especially in its large-scale application in peace process and similar Negotiation, or the bottom-up way it is performed in the Peace movement where it is often called mindful mediation. In this form, it would be derived from methods of Quakers in particular.
Accordingly, mediation may come into more widespread use, replacing formal legal and judicial processes sanctified by nation-states. Some, like the anti-globalization movement, believe such formal processes have quite thoroughly failed to provide real safety and closure guarantees that are pre-requisite to uniform Rule of law.
Following an increasing awareness of the process, and a wider notion of its main aspects and eventual effects, mediation is in recent times frequently proposed as a form of resolution of international disputes, with attention to belligerent situations too.
However, as mediation ordinarily needs to be required by the interested parties and it would be very difficult to impose it, in case one of the parts refuses this process it cannot be a solution.
In such circumstances, with many parties afraid to be identified or to make formal complaints, terminology or rules of standing or evidence slanted against some groups, and without power to enforce even "legally binding" contracts, some conclude that the process of mediation would not reasonably be said to be 'fair'.
Accordingly, even when it is offered and attempts are made to make it fair, mediation itself might not be a fair process, and other means might be pursued.
On a more technical point of view, however, one must recall that the mediation must be required by the parties, and very seldom can it be imposed by "non-parties" upon the parties. Therefore, in presence of entities that cannot be clearly identified, and that practically don't claim for their recognition as "parties", the professional experience of a mediator could only apply to a proposal of definition, that besides would always miss the constitutional elements of a mediation. Moreover, in such circumstances, the counter-party of these eventual entities would very likely deny any prestige of 'party' to the opponent, this not consenting any kind of treaty (in a correct mediation).
On a more general point, given that mediation ordinarily produces agreements containing elements to enforce the pacts with facts that can grant its effectiveness, one should note that the legal system is not the only means that will ensure protection of the pacts: modern mediation frequently tends to define economical compensations and warranties too, generally considered to be quicker and more effective. The concrete 'power' of an agreement is classically found in the equilibre of the pact, in the sincere conciliation of respective interests and in the inclusion of measures that would make the rupture of the pact very little convenient for the unfaithful party. Pacts that don't have such sufficient warranties are only academically effects of a mediation, but would never respect the deontology of the mediator.
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