Conflict Mediation and Public Policy

Tania Almeida
Postgraduate in Neuropsychiatry, Psychoanalysis, Sociology and Business Management. Master's student, consultant and teacher in Conflict Mediation and Dialogue Facilitation. Chairs MEDIARE – Dialogues and Decision-Making Processes

The multiple definitions related to public policies sometimes lead us to understand them as governmental and partisan policies, which would then be subject to cyclical changes of power change, or even to understand them as actions that involve multiple actors (governmental and non-governmental), possible exhibitors of their needs and interests and co-responsible for the identification and implementation of appropriate solutions. However, its object of action is unequivocal: any and all social areas.

Any social area, which naturally implies public policies, can produce conflicts or disputes of varying magnitude and degree. These disputes invariably occur between multiple actors: the community and those who represent its interests and decisions, different governmental bodies, private organizations and non-governmental entities. In some situations there is a rapid escalation of conflict and in others there is an exacerbation of chronic disagreements. Some are predictable and some are surprising.


An effective conflict management program in public policies must address some principles and take care of certain aspects:

  • as these conflicts are a mixture of procedures, relationships and substance, it is necessary to take care of these three aspects in their resolution. The aspects usually privileged in the resolution of these disputes are the procedures and the substance, with little or no care with the relationships. Ideal would be dispute resolution methods that could deal, in a balanced way, with procedures, substance and, also, with the relationships between all those involved;

 

  • as these conflicts involve multiple actors – individuals and legal entities, governmental and non-governmental bodies – they also include a complex network of interests among these actors that, in general, do not have an ongoing relationship, have different levels of knowledge about the theme and handle different levels of power and responsibility related to the issue. Therefore, the resolution of these conflicts tends to be unbalanced in the fulfillment of these different interests and in the assignment of responsibilities related to their provocation and their resolution. The ideal resources for resolving conflicts in these situations would be those that balance technical knowledge, power and responsibility for provoking and resolving them and, in particular, meeting the multiple interests of the network of actors involved;

 

  • how these conflicts, in addition to involving a range of issues - financial, health, social, values, techniques and others - invariably identify and add, in the course of their development, new themes, sometimes fomenters of nuclear conflict and always lacking solutions, the most effective resolution processes would be those that could not only address the different issues involved, but also have the necessary flexibility to include new issues.

 

Starting from the notorious pluralism of actors and themes and the undeniable and necessary interdependence between them, the management of public policies must consider negotiation as a fundamental instrument in generating consensus and in the feasibility of joint action proposals, unique enablers of their sustainability. Only actions and solutions that involve its multiple actors, in co-authorship, can resist the cyclical changes of power change. Only they can better utilize available resources to satisfy various community interests.

Conflict Mediation is a negotiation instrument assisted by a third party, the mediator, which includes in its fundamental principles and procedures aspects that are absolutely compatible with the demands, objectives and benefits concerning the resolution of conflicts arising from the field of public policies.

Conflicts, in general, and, in particular, those arising from public policies occur when the actors involved perceive their objectives, ideas, needs, interests, proposals or projects as incompatible. This perception transforms disagreements into conflicts and provides conditions for antagonistic defensive positions to dominate the dialogue. All adversarial instruments of resolution tend to intensify these positions since they are the protective shields of the most beloved interests and needs.

Conflict Mediation makes it possible to identify interests and needs that lie under adversarial positions, allowing them to be articulated and negotiated. It makes it possible to preserve the positive relationship between the people involved, as the Mediation will not result in a winner and a loser, but a set of winners with their needs and interests met, with mutual benefits contemplated and with the responsibilities for the authorship of the solutions and for their execution. shared.

The dialogue processes arising from alternative methods of conflict resolution, such as Mediation, are useful not only in conflict management but also in the construction of projects and regulations negotiated in public policies.

Mediation has inspired the construction of dialogue processes that seek to contemplate procedures that meet the different situations generated by conflicts or demands in public policies, in order to produce the aforementioned benefits. Three of these procedures arising from Mediation are listed below:

  • Dialogue facilitation: processes based on cooperative dialogue and consensus building, generally coordinated by a team of facilitators/mediators. Can these processes include different methods of conflict resolution in their course – mediation, negotiation, arbitration, review boards? and others - in order to better manage the different phases and the different needs generated by a conflicting issue.

 

  • Collaborative processes: processes based on cooperative dialogue and consensus building, generally coordinated by a team of mediators who, elected by the parties involved, establish individual and joint contacts with them - private meetings and plenary meetings - helping them from the election of their representatives to the learning necessary to participate in negotiation forums of this nature. This team designs the dialogue process, coordinates it and remains available both to accompany its implementation and to monitor it.

 

  • Consensus construction: an example of a collaborative process, as described above, with a particular ritual that guides its operation and establishes guidelines for the participatory posture of its actors.

 

Some procedures are common to these processes, seek similar objectives and occur in a sequence that aims to build agreements, their implementation and monitoring:

  • Conflict mapping and analysis: at this stage we identify, through individual interviews with each group of stakeholders, who are the actors involved – the primary ones and those who will suffer the costs and benefits of the elected decisions; from them we request the description of the disagreement / problem and its evolution over time; with them we also obtain information about the resolution processes already tried so far. 
    Still at this stage, we identify the alliances (unions between some) and coalitions (unions between some against others) that exist between the different actors and their relational map - it helps us to bring together certain actors around certain interests and to dismember them in front of them. to other themes. 
    During the analysis and mapping of the conflict, we identified the needs and interests of each actor, as well as the need to standardize technical information and enable them to participate in a process of dialogue aimed at collaboration and consensus. It can also be part of this work to help its actors to elect their representatives and to establish guidelines for action in the negotiations with them.

 

  • Dialogue process design: this stage involves planning and building strategies that delimit the step-by-step process of the negotiation process and is constantly reviewed and redesigned according to the progress of the process, its progress and impasses. 

    Two procedures are essential at this stage: a positive definition of the problem and an appropriate call for each actor in order to motivate him to participate in the process. The positive definition of the problem needs to contemplate the needs and interests of all actors, it must show the interaction between them and identify their needs, as well as delineate benefits common to all in order to motivate them to participate in the dialogue process.

 

  • Implementation of the dialogue process: during this stage plenary meetings and private meetings involving all actors take place. Private meetings are used for actors to internally negotiate the flexibility of their positions based on the technical information that has emerged and on that arising from the dialogue between all. The contribution of technical information and the conversation with the press, considered in these processes as another actor, are vital occurrences at this stage. 
    These processes are based on inclusion and transparency, which motivates them to be designed in such a way as not to leave out any of the actors and to keep all of them in possession of all the information produced or required to support solutions or decisions. 
    The end result of this step is consensus building. Consensus means a set of decisions that address everyone's greatest needs and with which everyone can live (Consensus Building Handbook). 
    The elaboration of a formal document that discriminates an agreement built within the margins of ethics and law, and its presentation to the competent authorities, makes it possible to give it legal and normative value.

 

  • Implementation and monitoring of the agreement: this is a delicate step that deserves monitoring by the team of mediators. It requires micro-negotiations that aim at the operationalization of the agreement during its implementation phase. Monitoring aims to accompany the results and actions in the short, medium and long terms and allows the assessment of their impact, as well as the identification of the need for new negotiations.

 

The main benefits arising from the use of these processes based on dialogue are especially based on rescuing the “protagonism” of its actors:

  • those involved in the conflict participate in the construction of the solution, in contrast to the paternalistic paradigm in which they would submit to the solutions established by third parties;

 

  • they also participate in the optimization of available resources in meeting the interests and needs of all actors, including those who are not directly involved in the negotiation process but are affected by it;

 

  • they participate in the transformation of a resentful coexistence into a cooperative coexistence and in the consequent halting of the escalation of the conflict;

 

  • they are committed to complying with agreements in which all those involved are satisfactorily covered and are co-responsible for their construction and execution, which gives sustainability to these agreements and the aforementioned transformed coexistence. 

 

In processes of this nature, the benefits and the commitments assumed are well distributed, the political, social and financial risks gain equivalence, the incentives to fulfill the commitments are implicit in their co-authorship and their non-fulfillment implies conscious risks for all.


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