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14 The Mediation Process Mediation is the intervention into a dispute or negotia- tion by an acceptable, impartial, and neutral third party who has no authoritative decision-making power to assist disputing parties in voluntarily reaching their own mutually acceptable settlement of issues in dispute. I will examine several compo- nents of the definition. For mediation to occur, the parties must begin negotiat- ing. Labor and management must be willing to hold a bargain- ing session, governments and public interest groups must create forums for dialogue, and families must be willing to come to- gether for mediation to begin. Mediation is essentially negotia- tion that includes a third party who is knowledgeable in effec- tive negotiation procedures, and can help people in conflict to coordinate their activities and to be more effective in their bar- gaining. Mediation is an extension of the negotiation process in that it involves extending the bargaining into a new format and using a mediator who contributes new variables and dynamics to the interaction of the disputants. Without negotiation, how- ever, there can be no mediation. Intervention means "to enter into an ongoing system of relationships, to come between or among persons, groups, or objects for the purpose of helping them. There is an important implicit assumption in the definition that should be made ex- plicit: the system exists independently of the intervenor" (Argyris, 1970, p. 15). The assumption behind an outsider's intervention is that a third party will be able to alter the power and social dynamics of the conflict relationship by influencing the beliefs or behaviors of individual parties, by providing knowledge or information, or by using a more effective negotia- tion process and thereby helping the participants to settle con- tested issues. Rubin and Brown (1975) have argued that the mere presence of a party who is independent of the disputants may be a highly significant factor in the resolution of a dispute. The third aspect of this definition is acceptability, the. willingness of disputants to allow a third party to enter a dis- pute and assist them in reaching a resolution. Acceptability does not mean that disputants necessarily welcome a mediator and are willing to do exactly as he or she says. It does mean that the