This study examines mediation as an exercise in which the mediator has interests and operates in a context of power politics and cost‐benefit calculation. It is based on eight cases of international mediation‐the U.S.S.R. between India and Pakistan (1966), Algeria between Iran and Iraq (1975), the United States and Great Britain in Rhodesia (1975–1979), the five Western States in Namibia (1977–1983), Algeria between the United States and Iran (1980–1981), and the ongoing activities of the Organization of African Unity, The Organization of American States, and the International Committee of the Red Cross. It was found that a mediator intervenes because of its interest in the conflict or in obtaining an outcome, and it can play three roles‐communicator, formulator, manipulator‐ in accomplishing its objectives. The mediator is accepted by the parties, not because of its neutrality but because of its ability to produce an attractive outcome. The mediator's power, or leverage, comes from the parties' need for a solution, from its ability to shift weight among parties, and from side payments.
Like the proverbial blind men who confronted the elephant and brought back conflicting accounts of its salient characteristics, contemporary analysts of negotiation appear to be talking about different things under the name of the same phenomenon. Some have even called for a search for a common understanding of the subject so that analysis can proceed on the same epistemological track.This article, however, suggests that a common understanding of the negotiation process has already developed and analysts are using it. The diversity that can be found in a number of approaches--five of which are identified--merely displays different ways of talking about the same phenomenon, and in fact even involves the same questions and parameters presented from different angles and under different names. There is more unity than some have suspected, and more complementarity too, as different approaches reinforce and build on each other's analysis. However, many aspects of the process still elude this cormr~on but multffaceted analysis. The common notion of the process has led analysts to confront these continuing problems, but there is of course no certainty that further answers to obdurate problems will not produce new terms of analysis and even new notions of the whole process.It is paradoxical and perhaps confusing that there is no single dominant analytical approach to negotiation. The confusion arises from the presence of many different attempts at analysis, sometimes inventing their own wheels to carry forward their insights and sometimes crossreferencing from a number of different analytical approaches (e.g., see cases in Zartman, 1987a andand Davidow, 1984). The fact that all of these are studies of great value only confirms the analytical confusion. The paradox arises because behind this analytical diversity there lies a single phenomenon to be analyzed.
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