THE NATURE OF THE DISPUTE AND THE EFFECTIVENESS OF INTERNATIONAL MEDIATION

The literature on mediation focuses largely on experimental laboratory studies or descriptions of single cases. This article goes beyond suc h approaches by analyzing systematically how dispute characteristics a ffect mediation outcomes. A theoretical framework for studying mediati on behavior is developed and its central variables are evaluated again st the mediation patterns of 97 international disputes in the postwar period. Using multivariate analysis and loglinear methods, the results indicate that dispute features such as fatalities, complexity, nature of the issue, and duration of dispute are most predictive of mediatio n outcomes. The authors use those results to specify a causal model th at explains the data and to consider how best to evaluate the fit of a lternative models of mediation to their data.