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Does Mediation Make Us Better? Exploring the Capacity‐Building Potential of Community Mediation
Author(s) -
Pincock Heather
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
conflict resolution quarterly
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.323
H-Index - 21
eISSN - 1541-1508
pISSN - 1536-5581
DOI - 10.1002/crq.21077
Subject(s) - mediation , settlement (finance) , party directed mediation , empirical research , transformative mediation , social psychology , scale (ratio) , psychology , political science , business , alternative dispute resolution , geography , law , mathematics , cartography , finance , payment , statistics
The prevailing measures of the success of mediation have largely focused on rates of settlement and satisfaction while overlooking the capacity‐building goals expressed by many mediation advocates. I address this through empirical study of the effects of mediation on participant capacity at two community mediation organizations in Toronto. I find that mediation has the potential to build participant capacity, but in the majority of cases, it does not have these lasting effects on participants. Based on these findings I conclude that mediation advocates should scale back and reconceptualize, though not entirely abandon, their claims about the capacity‐building potential of mediation.