Mediation and facilitation in public policymaking
 
Thomas Webler
 
 
Alternative dispute resolution (ADR) techniques such as mediation, med-arb, and the associated varieties are commonly applied to disputes between two private parties. However, I suggest that ADR practitioners have skills and techniques that are also applicable to helping to make controversial public policy decisions. To be effective in the area of public policymaking, mediators need a sophisticated conceptual or theoretical framework to help them characterize the complex social-political context. Toward this end, I argue that Habermas’s theory of communicative action and the United States National Research Council’s so-called “analytic-deliberative approach” provide the necessary guidance. Habermas’s theory explains that different types of knowledge claims require different procedures and standards to validate assertions. The analytic-deliberative approach explains how evidence (gathered by scientists as well as the so-called “local knowledge” of lay people) needs to be integrated with processes for the social construction of norms that happens through informed democratic deliberation. Finally, I suggest that mediators have the potential, and, quite possibly, the professional ethical responsibility to contribute to strengthening and sustaining civil society by building in citizens the dialogue and listening skills that are central to effective democratic citizenship.