Beyond Intractability: A Free Knowledge Base on More Constructive Approaches to Destructive Conflict

Introduction: Lawrence Susskind of MIT has some strong feelings about the necessity of conducting a conflict assessment before beginning a facilitated, multi-stakeholer negotiation on complex problems. He says that intervenors' lack of discipline in conducting conflict assessments has "dramatically held back the application of dispute resolution in the public arena."

This rough transcript provides a text alternative to audio. We apologize for occasional errors and unintelligible sections (which are marked with ???).

Conflict Assessment Pre-Negotiation
Larry Susskind
Co-Director of the Public Disputes Program, Inter-University Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School

Interviewed by
Julian Portilla
2003

The problem I think for a lot of people in the field is they think there is an option of whether they do an assessment. They confuse the mandate of the convener with the product of a conflict assessment. They think a conflict assessment is something where the assessor has a few private conversations with a few key people and if those people say go forward you go forward. I think that has dramatically held back the application of dispute resolution in the public arena. Because the decision to go forward is a big deal and the parties have to be engaged in structuring the ideas about going forward and now finally we know how to do this. It takes an investment of time and money and energy and effort to form an assessment, but if you do that, then I expect that when we go forward it will be with some very good chance of getting the parties to be there and of getting a useful result.

We could never learn to be brave and patient, if there were only joy in the world. -- Helen Keller

Featured Links
Organizations Making Noteworthy Contributions to Efforts to Promote More Constructive Conflict

Slifka Program in Intercommunal Coexistence

Other Resources from
Beyond Intractability

Interview With Morton Deutsch
One of the founders of this field talks about his research into "malignant relationships."

Nobel Peace Prize Winners

Joseph Rotblat
Prominent opponent of nuclear weaponry, and 1995 Nobel Peace Laureate

Beyond Intractability Version IV
Copyright © 2003-2010 The Beyond Intractability Project
Beyond Intractability is a Registered Trademark of the University of Colorado
Project Acknowledgements

The Beyond Intractability Knowledge Base Project
Guy Burgess and Heidi Burgess, Co-Directors and Editors
c/o Conflict Information Consortium (Formerly Conflict Research Consortium), University of Colorado
Campus Box 580, Boulder, CO 80309
Phone: (303) 492-1635; Fax: (303) 492-2154; Contact