Facilitation is too often an underrated art. Both the practice and its practitioners are often characterized with some disdain as all process, no substance. Yet, everyone knows facilitation is necessary for tough meetings when the room is expected to bristle with tension, and a lot of skill will be needed to get a good result. […]
Peter Adler has written an article of compelling interest on the core values and direction of mediation. Provocatively entitled, The End of Mediation, this ambitious essay sets out a powerful vision for the future of the process and its practitioners. His basic point is that mediation is not a “field” or “profession” but a set […]
Martti Ahtisaari, a Finnish diplomat and international mediator, won the 2008 Nobel Peace Prize for his conflict resolution work around the world. Namibia, Northern Ireland and Kosovo are three of the crisis situations where he helped to negotiate settlements. Although the world of international conflict seems remote from the collaborative public policy work at domestic […]
As a fairly young field, public policy collaboration has acquired an interesting assortment of names, which are sometimes used loosely and interchangeably. Depending on the context, the practice might be called mediation, consensus-building, conflict management, dispute or conflict resolution, collaboration or, most recently, collaborative governance. What practitioners do hasn’t changed all that much: they are […]