A Strategic Functionalist Approach to International Commercial Mediation
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Mediation in the international context is a relatively recent phenomenon. As an Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) mechanism, third-party neutral mediation is firmly entrenched in the legal ethos and procedural rules of most common law jurisdictions; such as the United Kingdom, the United States and Canada. However, in the rest of the world, including many European, Latin American and Asian nations with civil law traditions, mediation remains an elusive concept. Some commentators suggest this may be due in part to differences in systemic (i.e. adversarial vs. inquisitorial) and cultural (i.e. mediation vs. conciliation) orientations. This paper considers whether International Mediation is a viable Dispute Resolution Mechanism ('DRM') alternative to litigation or arbitration based upon a new theory of 'strategic functionalism' defined as follows:The Form is a function of the Content and Process where:1) The Form = the advocacy/negotiation tactics; 2) The Content = the advocacy/negotiation strategy; and3) The Process = the dispute resolution system.In particular, the advocacy/negotiation tactics (based upon rules of engagement, including mediator orientations, procedural and evidentiary rules) to be employed will be determined not only by the overall mediation strategy (informed by substantive legal principles, domestic, international and/or transnational public policy and client-focused interests) but also the applicable process (litigation, arbitration or mediation systems) to achieve objective resolution of the dispute. The effect of decision-making and behavioural biases, including System Justification Theory, will also be considered.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.005 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.019 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.005 | 0.007 |
| Open science | 0.003 | 0.004 |
| Research integrity | 0.003 | 0.004 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.008 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".