Coauthor Christopher Honeyman was struck by the flagging “marketability” of mainstream professionally trained mediators in the U.S. More and more parties were choosing retired judges and other practitioners who were not classically trained mediators to help them resolve their disputes. Searching for an explanation of this phenomenon, Honeyman found a possible answer in Melbourne, Australia, where he listened with a Western ear to the presentations of coauthors Loretta Kelly and Bee Chen Goh about the importance of connectedness and individual perceptions of authority to the parties in the mediation of indigenous disputes. In this article, the authors present case histories from Australia and Malaysia to illustrate these concepts. They contend the same concepts are behind the shifting of the market for mediation in the United States.

Negotiation participants usually think of “settlement” as the official end of a coflict; the author points out that this mental image is inaccurate in many situations, where a settlement is followed by additional eruptions of conflict. He uses the recent Good Friday peace accord in Northern Ireland as an example of the continuing nature of many conflicts; theorizes as to why we have this incorrect mental image in general; and suggests ways we can present a more accurate representatin of a conflict's life cycle.