Rationality and Surprise: The Drama of Mediation in Rebuilding Civil Society

Introduction In a globalizing world, we need to understand both the institutions that can sustain vibrant civil societies and the practices that can skillfully and sensitively animate those governance processes. This essay responds to both of these challenges by examining the contributions that mediators can make to resolve public disputes that involve not just bargaining over divergent economic interests but reconciling vastly differing social and cultural identities as well. Mediating public disputes, we shall see, is no panacea, no technical fix. When fundamental commitments come into conflict, mediation becomes not irrelevant but just one strategy to complement those of legal and legislative action. But we should not be too quick to rule mediation out, and we have lessons to learn about our own presumptions about ‘mere talk,’ or mere third party facilitation. Although this essay explores the work of mediators of disputes at city and state-wide scales, planners, activists, and citizens alike in varying contexts can learn a good deal from these mediators’ skills, insights, and strategies.