Beyond Intractability: A Free Knowledge Base on More Constructive Approaches to Destructive Conflict
Introduction:
Lawrence Susskind of MIT has some strong feelings about the necessity of
conducting a conflict assessment before beginning a facilitated, multi-stakeholer
negotiation on complex problems. He says that intervenors' lack of discipline in
conducting conflict assessments has "dramatically held back the application
of dispute resolution in the public arena."
This rough transcript provides a text alternative to audio. We apologize for occasional errors and unintelligible sections (which are marked with ???).
Conflict Assessment Pre-Negotiation
Larry Susskind
Co-Director of the Public Disputes Program, Inter-University Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School
The problem I think for a lot of people in
the field is they think there is an option of whether they do an assessment.
They confuse the mandate of the convener with the product of a conflict
assessment. They think a conflict assessment is something where the assessor has
a few private conversations with a few key people and if those people say go
forward you go forward. I think that has dramatically held back the application
of dispute resolution in the public arena. Because the decision to go
forward is a big deal and the parties have to be engaged in structuring the
ideas about going forward and now finally we know how to do this. It takes an
investment of time and money and energy and effort to form an assessment, but if
you do that, then I expect that when we go forward it will be with some very good
chance of getting the parties to be there and of getting a useful result.
The maxim that people should not have a right till they are ready to exercise it properly, is worthy of the fool in the old story who resolved not to go into the water till he had learned to swim. -- Macaulay
Featured Links Organizations Making Noteworthy Contributions to Efforts to Promote More Constructive Conflict International Crisis Group "The International Crisis Group (ICG) is an independent, non-profit, multinational organisation, with over 100 staff members on five continents, working through field-based analysis and high-level advocacy to prevent and resolve deadly conflict." (Quote from Website)
Other Resources from Beyond Intractability Taming Intractable Conflicts The trick for the mediator is identifying what conflicts it pays to become involved in, how to go about it, and when. Crocker et al. explore some limitations and pitfalls for mediators and go on to suggest how they may most effectively contribute at different stages of the conflict.
The Beyond Intractability Knowledge Base Project Guy Burgess and Heidi Burgess, Co-Directors and Editors c/o Conflict Information Consortium(Formerly Conflict Research Consortium), University of Colorado Campus Box 580, Boulder, CO 80309 Phone: (303) 492-1635; Fax: (303) 492-2154; Contact
