Reframing is an important part of the mediator’s toolkit. It can help parties look at things from a different perspective to broaden their understanding and it can help put offers and options in a different light to aid resolution. The importance of reframing was highlighted at a recent workshop led by academics from the Universities…

In their recent book ‘Power and Progress’ Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson analyse technological progress over the course of human history. They conclude that technological advances tend to initially benefit a fairly narrow elite before countervailing societal pressures and political developments result in a fairer distribution of the benefits of this progress. Their survey of…

Metaphorically speaking mediators will often invite parties to a conflict to get into each other’s shoes to try to help broaden perspectives and deepen understanding of concerns, issues and needs to help generate options for resolving the dispute. Philosopher John Rawls used a thought experiment which in some respects builds on this idea but takes…

The idea of using insights from behavioural science to achieve desirable policy goals burst into popular consciousness with the publication of Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness (R Thaler and C Sunstein, Yale University Press, 2008.) It describes the appealing notion that people can be encouraged to make good choices by the way…

“Neither politics or the economy will function without a substantial degree of honesty, trustworthiness, self-restraint, truthfulness and loyalty to shared political, legal and other institutions. In the absence of these virtues, a cycle of mistrust will corrode social political and economic relations.” In his new book ‘The Crisis of Democratic Capitalism’, Martin Wolf argues that…

Mediators work hard to help parties to a dispute to explore and understand their underlying needs and interests, which might have been forgotten or overlooked in the defence of a position that was once adopted to promote their interests. A recent book by political scientist Krzysztof Pelc ‘Beyond Self-interest – why the market rewards those…

‘Entangled Life’ by Merlin Sheldrake is a fascinating look into the role that fungi play in making the natural world what it is. From the impact on humans to the symbiotic relationship between mycorrhizal fungi and trees. The relationship between humans, plants and fungi is also the focus of the Welcome Collection’s current exhibition ‘Rooted…

Back in 2020, just before the world changed, I wrote a blog post on this site suggesting the establishment of the World Mediators’ Alliance on Climate Change. My argument was that mediation offers a much more sustainable way to resolve disputes than many other processes. We could also do a lot to reduce our carbon…

Effective inter-governmental relations among the constituent parts of the United Kingdom are essential in an era of increased devolution of powers, post-Brexit allocation of responsibility and contested narratives about the future of the (uncodified) UK constitution. Background One of the rather depressing aspects of the constitutional impasse in the UK is that inter-governmental relations (IGR)…

As mentioned in my last blog , the UK Civil Justice Council, in its June 2021 Report on  Compulsory ADR , endorsed the idea, contrary to the ruling in the notorious Halsey case, that unwilling parties in dispute may lawfully and appropriately be compelled to participate in a DR process such as mediation. (As an…