17Strategies for Responding to Special Situations

previous chapters have for the most part focused on many noncontingent mediator interventions, preventions, activities, and moves that are commonly initiated to help parties move through the stages of mediation. They entail both broad and fairly specific activities that assist disputants to engage in productive talks and ideally reach common understandings and agreements.

We now turn to an examination of contingent strategies and activities—interventions and preventions by mediators to respond to unique or unusual situations, conflict dynamics, or parties, which are not present in every negotiation or dispute (Smart, 1987). Though it is impossible to identify and describe all the situations that ...

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