Questioning dispute resolution

Dispute resolution (DR) is growing at an astounding rate. Over the past ten years, applications of dispute resolution have moved from tentative experiments to institutional staples. Industrialized countries have taken an idea that had previously been confined to their labor‐management sectors and expanded it into the realms of education, community justice, environment, policy development, and families. Programs and practitioners have doubled and then tripled, with conferences like the National Conference on Peacemaking and Conflict Resolution steadily growing in attendance from hundreds to thousands. And amazingly, the growth is just beginning. The language of dispute resolution is proliferating through media and business, with terms like “win‐win” becoming commonplace. Public awareness of the tools of dispute resolution is maturing also, largely in response to the growing numbers of people who train and are being trained in the mechanisms of DR. Legislation that makes use of DR tools is being introduced at an ever quickening pace all over the United States, and international bodies such as the United Nations are exploring new training programs in dispute resolution focusing on a wide variety of international issues. Dispute resolution is quickly becoming the primary tool of peacemakers attempting to “wage peace” around the world. The new model sprouting up in the United States is also being transported wholesale to other countries. In their newfound excitement, U.S. dispute resolution advocates are flying into the former Soviet Union, South Africa, Israel, Cyprus, and Northern Ireland, as well as to many other conflict‐intensive spots around the globe, enthusiastically offering their new lessons to the rest of the world. Many of the people who have grown up inside these intransigent conflicts are very interested in these new ways of dealing with conflict and have begun to put some of the mechanisms in place, as evidenced by the recent community justice center movement in South Africa

Alternative dispute resolution · Conflict resolution · Dispute resolution · Political science · Public relations · Conflict Management and Negotiation · European and International Law Studies · Law