Mediación

Ana MARTINEZ PARROQUIN International Management of Armed Conflicts Prof. Maria GABRIELSEN Final Paper - April 2011

MULTIPARTY MEDIATION: A LITERATURE COMPARISON ESSAY
INTRODUCTION Mediation is a topic that throughout the years has suffered imprecision regarding its definition as well as some theoretical conflicts. According to Oran Young mediation is “any action taken by an actor that is nota direct party to the crisis, that is designed to reduce or remove one or more of the problems of the bargaining relationship, and therefore to facilitate the termination of the crisis itself” (Bercovitch, p. 341) but Ann Douglas states that mediation is rather “a form of peacemaking in which an outsider to a dispute intervenes on his own or accepts the invitation of disputing parties to assistthem in reaching agreement” (Bercovitch, p.342); both are two of the most common definitions. In the present paper three articles of some of the experts on Mediation are going to be analyzed in a comparative perspective in order to expose the common points’ differences and similarities of their work on the topic, as well as some additional information proposed by the authors. The articles are thefollowing: -­‐ “Multiparty Mediation And The Conflict Cycle” written by Chester Crocker, Fen O. Hampson and Pamela Aall (as the central article). -­‐ “International Mediation in the Post-Cold War Era” by William Zartman and Saadia Touval (second article or the authors’ name), and -­‐ “The Study of International Mediation: Theoretical Issues and Empirical Evidence” by Jacob Bercovitch and AllisonHouston (referred as third article or by the authors’ name in the text). The principal themes to analyze in each reading would be: the theoretical frameworks and objectives, the requisites for mediation, acceptation of mediation, the timing and conflict seen as a cycle. It is important to indicate that these themes would be examined having for axis the central reading, but some other factorsincluded in the second and third readings would be treated in the final part on the present paper. COMPARISON 1. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORKS AND OBJECTIVES The central article Multiparty Mediation And The Conflict Cycle aims to elaborate a synthesis between the structuralist and social-psychological paradigms of mediation, looking at mediation from the point of view of timing and studying it at each phase ofthe conflict cycle. It also analyzes the different strengths of the different mediators and the challenges they may undergo in the multiparty mediation process. The two paradigms tend to answer what third parties can do in a conflict, under what circumstances and to what effect? By offering different evaluations about strategies of negotiation, comparative advantage, coordination, entry pointsand leadership of the different kids of mediators. The authors, look at conflicts as a cycle with different stages, this point of view increases the possibilities of the mediation by a more inclusive set of actors and institutions than proposed by each paradigm. The second article’s objective is to analyze mediation on international and civil conflicts as well as describe why mediators decide tointervene, why and when involved parties accept their intervention and what are the principal factors creating a successful mediation. The third article analyzes as the second article when mediation is successful

and also the context variables, in contrast with the central article, the authors do not try to make a synthesis of the paradigms or approach but to create a new one to answer to thequestion of how disputes are managed or terminated, the “Contingency Approach” although they agree with the authors of Multiparty Mediation And The Conflict Cycle in the impossibility of generating any useful conclusions about mediation outcomes across a wide array of cases and surprisingly they mention that approaches don’t offer reliable evidence to support the affirmations about what constitutes...