Chester Fritz Distinguished Professor Jim Antes

Editor’s Note:

Editor's Note: Today's headlines remind us that lots of people choose not to get along. Routine reportage of seemingly senseless acts of destructive violence-both by individuals and groups-clearly tell a compelling part of that story. Could it get any worse? A lot worse, says University of North Dakota Chester Fritz Distinguished Professor of psychology and nationally recognized mediator Jim Antes.

Without behind-the-scenes conflict resolution strategies that include mediation, considerably more groups might resort to violence to "solve" their problem, says Antes, who also researches and publishes about mediation strategies and methodologies.

Among the methods used to nonviolently solve problems between individuals or groups, a process dubbed "transformative mediation" is changing non-judicial conflict resolution in the United States and elsewhere. Antes and his colleagues at the UND-based Conflict Resolution Center are among the country's best-known proponents of this philosophy of mediation.

In this edition of the Faculty Q&A, Antes talks with Office of University Relations writer Juan Miguel Pedraza about mediation: what it is, what it isn't, and what role it plays in today's globalized-but insistently diverse-society.

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OUR: Let's start with the basics: what is mediation?

Antes: Broadly speaking, mediation is an opportunity for people who are in conflict to discuss issues of concern to them with the support of a third party-the mediator-who helps in that communication. The mediator supports a conversation about the conflict.

The people involved in that conflict can become clear about what their own concerns are, and the can become aware of the concerns of the other person. In that context, people can make decisions. Sometimes, you get a "Cumbaya" effect-people in conflict have resolved all of their differences and will work well in the future. Sometimes, it doesn't quite work out that way, but at least people can get better sense of where the other person is coming from.

Historically, we see mediation as a conflict resolution strategy evolve from the labor movement. For a long time, mediation was a key option in labor-management disputes. In fact, President Martin Van Buren in 1838 facilitated the settlement of a strike by shipyard workers-it was the first government-mediated labor settlement in the country's history. In 1947, Congress enacted the Taft-Hartley Act and shortly thereafter authorized the independent Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, which is still active today. But it wasn't until the 1960s that mediation moved into wider use, beyond labor disputes.

OUR: What is transformative mediation?

Antes: The term we apply to the model is the transformative approach, but there's certainly a lot more to it than the label. It's basically about understanding what happens to people in conflict. The frame for this is that we're not at our best when we're in conflict. We become relatively weak, we feel disempowered, we can't think clearly; you hear people in such situations saying "man, my mind was racing, I couldn't think of what to say." Second, as a self protective measure, in a conflict situation, we become self-absorbed, we're less able to look at perspectives other than our own as normally we can; in conflict, we have a limited view of things.

So in the transformative mediation model, we have this fundamental understanding of conflict: there's disempowerment, and there's self absorption. It boils down to this: "I feel bad, you stink." The transformative mediator supports interaction between the parties to move from that state, to move to a sense of greater clarity and more openness to other perspectives. So in transformative mediation, the parties go from disempowerment to greater strength, from self absorption to greater empathy or recognition of the other side.

And unlike what happens in court, the mediator doesn't push any decisions for the parties; they make those decisions for themselves.

OUR: It sounds like this could be an ideal way to solve problems between people-maybe even between groups as large as countries-before going to court or war.

Antes: Well, mediation isn't appropriate in every case and it's not for every person. But it has been seen as a process that is an alternative to traditional legal means. It's one of several processes other than the traditional court process that are sometimes called alternative dispute resolution processes. A lot of mediators also are attorneys, and some of them refer to themselves as "recovering attorneys" because these alternative processes are typically less adversarial. Sometimes, mediation is recommended by judicial system as a means to streamline the caseload or to clear the dockets for more complex cases. Certainly, the legal community is well aware about mediation.

OUR: So what is the major difference between a trial or other legal process and mediation?

Antes: Mediation is a way to address the issues differently; in a trial setting, you-usually through your attorney-give your best shot at presenting your side of the story. Your opponent in court does the same thing. However, someone else-a neutral party, usually the judge or the jury-decides the outcome for you. So, you have a strong advocate but you can't directly affect the outcome.

Mediation is a whole other way of looking at conflict. It's not other people who decide, it's the participants, parties themselves who decide. Therefore it's probably not in your best interest to be such an outspokenly strong advocate for "your side" because you're trying to work something out with someone else who has a difference of opinion over whatever the issue is. You have the opportunity to engage in a productive conversation with the other person and to make decisions with a more complete understanding of everyone's perspective.

OUR: Clearly the headlines tell us that lots of people and groups-especially countries, it seems-bypass mediation and go straight to armed conflict. Is it true, then, that certain types of people or groups, or certain types of conflicts, don't lend themselves to mediation?

Antes: I'd say it not so much certain types of people or certain groups who cannot handle mediation; I'd say it's certain types of circumstances. A lot depends on the way people have been socialized-the way they've been taught to handle difference-that might make mediation difficult. They may have learned certain ways to deal with things through socialization and certain life experiences.

And I don't just mean when they're children. Maybe they've learned in institutional settings-such as a big corporation or government agency with a top-down, hierarchical organization-where there's a culture with a particular way of dealing with things, you know, "my way or the highway." They've learned a winner-take-all way of dealing with disagreement or conflict.

OUR: Some folks have suggested that the United States change its policy in Iraq from armed conflict to mediation. What do you see as the prospects for mediation between large organizations, such as governments, instead of war.

Antes: Well, at the organizational level, we know that mediation can be very effective. For example, the U.S. Postal Service formally adopted transformative mediation as a way of settling disputes under its EEO office. After their mediations, every party to the process is given a survey-at the USPS, participants have shown a very high satisfaction rate with mediation. The other measure of success is the closure rate-that is, the extent to which, after mediation, the case is not pursued further. At USPS, the closure rate is very high. The USPS always contracts a third, neutral party to conduct mediation.

The Transportation Safety Administration and others likewise have adopted transformative mediation as a way of settling office disputes. Sometimes, this is mediation between groups of people or offices.

Will that translate into the international government-to-government level? I think that's an entirely different arena. International mediations of this kind occur-they're actually going on all the time behind the scenes. But they're not in the public eye, and that's helpful for discussions in private.

When things are very public, that adds a whole new dimension to the conflict and to the conflict-resolution process. The participants then must be able to say something for the public that's watching them as well as the person across the table.

Moreover, there's lots of different conceptions of what mediation is at that level. When the United States is involved as mediator, we're not talking about a neutral third party. It's a concept-the Henry Kissinger model-where the mediator has a lot of clout, enough to force one or both parties to the talks to make major concessions. It's mediator as dealmaker.

To make a long story short, I believe that on the grand scale of countries, mediation certainly is attempted and there have been successes, but international conflicts add lots of complexities to the process. But I think we'd have even more destructive conflicts without mediation. The process, when it's appropriate, is effective. We can always learn more about how to do it better.

In fact, the Institute for the Study of Conflict Transformation, for which UND's Conflict Resolution Center is the administrative home, is currently developing approaches for interveners in ethnopolitical conflicts (e.g., Bosnia, the Middle East) to work more effectively with the different sides.