"Constructing the World We Want"

Plenary Address by Joseph Folger and Baruch Bush at the Interaction/Network for Conflict Resolution (Canada) Conference, May 1996.

[As summarized by Rosemarie Schmidt (Guest Editor), in Interaction, Special Issue, Summer 1996.]

Joe Folger and Baruch Bush spoke passionately and eloquently about how they came to view third party intervention in conflict as a matter of transformative potential.

Through an extended dialogue format, they demonstrated how they had reached the conclusion that our perspective on the goals and the possibilities inherent in mediation arise from the way that we view ourselves and others, our understanding of human nature. According to Folger and Bush, we have reached a point where it is both appropriate and necessary for us to examine our deepest convictions -- and to act on them if we want to create a true alternative to the adversarial, power-based processes that have dominated the ways that conflict are dealt with, both inter-personally and internationally.

Beginning with our understanding of human nature, Bush described the predominant, individualistic frame that has governed our ways of interacting. This is the Hobbesian view of humans as "essentially self-centred and constantly frightened, and the universe as a nasty, brutish business." This is contrasted to what they believe about human nature, namely that people are capable simultaneously of great strength and great compassion towards one another. "That is our heritage as human beings," Bush said, "the only problem is that it's difficult to discover, tap into and live in touch with."

The goal of mediation, according to Folger and Bush should be to foster and encourage the compassionate strength inherent in each of us. In so doing, they are not claiming that we will change people forever, though the effects of a mediation experience may ripple far beyond the conflict itself. Indeed, the goal is not to transform others. It is to provide opportunities and encouragement for people to tap into their own strength, capacity for clarity and ability to make decisions about what they want to do, while at the same time offering opportunities for them to recognize the unique humanity and experience of the other party to the dispute.

The need for this kind of encouragement and support in mediation stems from the emotional and psychological impact of conflict on those who are in its midst. Conflict, by its nature, is a destabilizing force, evoking certain qualities in the individuals who are experiencing it. The experience of conflict, according to Bush, tends to generate in us "the experience of weakness, vulnerability, confusion, uncertainty." It also tends to lead us to become "suspicious, defensive, hostile and assuming the worst about whoever is on the other side." When we see people behaving in this way, we can interpret their attitudes and behaviour as revealing their nature (the individualistic view) or we can see it as an artifact of conflict itself and not a true reflection of the person at all (the transformational view).

As a neutral third party, a mediator is in a unique position to hold and retain an outside perspective on what is happening. From the transformational vantage point, the mediator is therefore able to perceive opportunities to help the parties move from a state of weakness and self-absorption to strength and responsiveness toward the person on the other side. This is the opportunity offered by conflict to affect the way that we deal with one another in our human relationships. Through the distressing experience of conflict, mediators can help people find new ways to act and interact, to capture their own capacity, should they choose to do so, to be simultaneously strong and compassionate in the ways they manage or experience their disputes.

Folger and Bush have coined the terms "empowerment" and "recognition" to describe the kinds of support a third party can offer to foster disputing parties' re-connection with these capacities. When parties to a conflict are acting out of their own capacity for compassionate strength, they can find ways to deal with their conflict that work for them in a holistic and truly satisfying way.

Although there is a growing body of research support for the efficacy of mediation practiced from this perspective, Folger and Bush declined to base their discussion on research results, choosing instead to base their remarks on fundamental personal principles of values, beliefs and experience.

There is an element of self-fulfilling prophecy inherent in this discussion. Mediators who subscribe to the individualist conception of conflict and human interaction will tend to practice third party intervention with a view to protecting the individual parties' rights within a framework of fairness and equity. Indeed, this conception forms the basis of our current legal system. The individualist perspective also corresponds with an orientation toward settlement, with clear preferences for some solutions over others (i.e. those the mediator considers to be fair and equitable). Third party intervention based on an individualist conception raises the question: to what extent does mediation provide a real alternative to the adversarial system?

Taking a relational view leads to a different set of priorities for third party intervention. Where the individualist view means that we need to be protected from one another, the relational view says that we need to understand one another. The goals, in Carol Gilligan's terms, are to be "centred in oneself," as opposed to self-centred, and "responsive to the other," as opposed to self-sacrificing. Mediators acting from this premise will support rather than lead the parties. They will enter the process with a belief that the only resolution that counts is one the parties arrived at themselves, without guidance as to its terms, but with support for the parties' process of relating. This has been described as the transformational approach, in that it encourages parties to see and respond to the situation in a new way, drawing on their inner reserves of strength and ability to extend themselves.

Folger and Bush maintain that, since the two approaches are based on an opposing set of assumptions about human nature, they do not work well together. A mediator must choose his or her point of departure and orientation toward the parties. This has generated considerable controversy among mediators who insist that they do both, that is, work for settlement and foster empowerment and recognition in mediation.

To illustrate the difficulty of maintaining a transformational approach, Folger told the story of a mediation he was involved in, where the disputants were two high school girls. After a look was exchanged at a basketball game, these girls began to fight. The conflict escalated to the point where others were involved and each side felt that they could not allow the conflict to end without retaliation for the last attack. Both of the young women were mothers and one attack had occurred while one of them was holding her three-month old child.
During the mediation, there was little movement on either party's part. Neither was prepared to be the first one to stop fighting. Folger admitted that he found himself very challenged. He was painfully aware of the dangers of continued violence, but with a short time (only two hours) to conduct the mediation, he found himself tempted to take a top-down approach. He found it difficult to maintain the conception that "the parties have it within them someplace. Let them begin to find it."

"I really felt I was going to lose my ability to say 'let these people make their own choices, look for opportunities for empowerment and recognition,'" he said, "I wanted to fix it, I wanted to stop it, I wanted to prevent the next round of violence."

In the end, the two girls did begin to move toward some recognition of civility between them. They agreed not to attack one another when either one was holding her child. This small concession seems pathetic in a way, but on the other hand, it was an agreement they were prepared to make and maintain.

"And the sad fact is," explained Folger, "that even if I had gotten very impositional and had asked them not to go to the same high schools or pushed solutions on them, we all know that if they wanted to attack each other, they would have been able to do it." Although he felt a powerful tug to be directive at the time, thinking about it afterwards, he realized that such an approach would ultimately have been futile.

Is it too lofty a goal for mediation to strive for transformation in parties' ways of relating to one another? Perhaps it is, if we expect that every mediation will also transform the disputants into self-actualized beings who will go out and live in compassionate strength from that time forth. On the other hand, what is gained if we see mediation as simply a technique through which we can provide a service? According to Folger, we need to wonder if we're aiming high enough. Are we hoping to transform the future or continue the past? If we pull back from considering questions about our deepest convictions and hopes for the future, and how our practice relates to them, then we cannot expect transformation to simply happen. It is more likely that we will have, by omission, created a self-fulfilling prophecy of mediation as an adjunct to the techniques that perpetuate the present order.

As Baruch Bush said, "we only get the world we want if we have the courage to behave in a way that constructs it."

"Expectations for International Mediation"

[excerpt from the Plenary Address summarized above]

In recent months we've seen a highly visible intervention occur in a very serious conflict in Eastern Europe.

The Dayton Agreements, and the current implementation of those accords, has been widely celebrated as a tremendous success in terms of intervention and mediation. There is no more killing going on, at least on the scale that it was, at least not for now. But, if we look at what else is going on, or what else is not going on, I guess one could say, how much is there to celebrate, besides the termination of the violence itself?

Just last week I heard one of the UN officials say, on public radio, "We have to admit at this point and realize that Bosnia will never again be a unified country. Bosnia is rapidly turning into a permanently divided society in which there is peace between people, across guarded borders, with no interaction whatsoever."

It reminded me of quote that I heard from one of the officers of the UN NATO force in Bosnia just a few weeks after the original agreement. I jotted it down when I heard it on the radio. The fellow said, "It's going well by our definition. That is, we've succeeded in separating the three groups in their defined areas. That's the most important thing, because if they don't talk to each other, they don't argue and insult each other. If they don't do that, they don't fight. If they don't fight, there won't be any bullets flying. So the peace is safe as long as we keep them in their own places, apart from one another".

So the question is, when we look at that level of intervention, is this all that is possible? In Bosnia and in other places like Bosnia, is it enough? Should we be satisfied with this?

The other thing, it seems to us, is that the intervention that occurred in Bosnia, which produced this "permanently divided peace" in some ways seems to have been almost geared to result in this kind of outcome. If we go back and look at what has been reported of the actual actions of the diplomats who intervened here, they themselves give us a picture of the discussions, which is what we would call an entirely top-down process. You force parties to the table, you give them pre-drafted agreements to sign, you lock them in the room, you keep them in there until they're exhausted, you exert a lot of pressure, you exclude dissidents, you don't allow them to consult with anyone outside the room and then you produce an agreement. So what does that agreement signify? And what does it involve? What attitude is involved on the part of intervenors who relate to disputants in that fashion?

Here's a quote from public radio about one of the major mediators in the Dayton discussions: "In negotiations near Dayton, he seemed at times to bully the Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian leaders, scolding them, cursing them, always leaning on them hard, demanding that they compromise. In an interview this week, he defended his hard-hitting style, saying that the Balkan leaders wanted someone there to keep them in line. 'The people of the former Yugoslavia have lived for centuries under externally imposed leadership, the Austro-Hungarians, Ottomans, Tito, and they expect a certain amount of external pressure."'

Now with that attitude, and with interventions that stem from that attitude, about who these people are, what can we really expect? The assumption is, these people can't and won't work things out for themselves. They can't and won't make decisions here. They can't and won't extend themselves and be responsive to one another. Even if they are given the greatest possible amount of support to do it, it just isn't going to happen. Therefore, this has to be done for them and, I guess we could say, to them.

Now one could say, but something had to be done to stop the killing, and that may certainly be true. But even if it's true, is it all that could or should have been done in this intervention and others like it? What about supplemental interventions to allow for something else to occur in the way of empowerment and recognition from the bottom up, at other levels within the society of the former Yugoslavia? Instead, what we saw was a tremendous effort to hammer out this Dayton agreement, and at the very same time the reduction of funding for Track II diplomacy efforts, people to people, both in Eastern Europe and in other parts of the world. More increase of top down intervention, less interest and less resources for bottom up intervention.

To us, this is -- when we see it at the most highly visible levels -- symptomatic of a wrong direction in the field. And one of the things that we worry about is that, if these are the interventions and the intervenors that we celebrate as the peacemakers, then what does that say to all the rest of us, here in the field? If these are the models and the people who are reinforced and praised by our larger society, what does that say about the possibility for those of us who, as it were, labour in the trenches, and our commitment to bottom up intervention based upon the opposite assumptions: that human beings can make decisions for themselves and can extend themselves to one another?