Resolving Public Conflict: Transforming Community and Governance

This work aims to move beyond the orthodox remedies of right and left to explain how the field of public conflict resolution offers a way to cut through the impasse in public policy-making. Drawing on conflict resolution experience and recent democratic theory, the author traces the philosophical roots and development of the public conflict resolution field. He examines how it has worked in practice, in the US and other western democracies. Finally, he argues that a more systematic application of public conflict resolution by policy-makers would confront three key problems of contemporary democratic society: the disintegration of community, alienation from government, and the inability to solve public disputes.