The Ethics of Intervention in Community Disputes

This article by Laue and Cormick help define what the different types of intervention roles there are. The main ones are activist, advocate, mediator, researcher, and enforcer. An activist can help the party they are sided with organize, devise a strategy, rally a following, and communicate with the public. An advocate is an advisor or consultant to one of the parties; an advocate can usually envision what it would take to terminate the conflict with a positive outcome for their party. A mediator must be acceptable to both parties, so they cannot have a clear side; they help the parties reach a win-win solution. A researcher is independent of the conflict, but they report their findings to the public, and often they do not stay uninvolved. The enforcer has the power to implement solutions.

There were several interesting points that Laue and Cormick made in this article. The one that I found most interesting was that in order to be an ethical intervener, one should not remain neutral. It is important to try and help minimize the power imbalance between the parties. Important values to consider while intervening are freedom, justice, and empowerment. They all seem to revolve around making sure the disadvantaged party is able to entirely make their own decisions, and to feel the consequences of their decisions. Power should be diffused among many individuals/parties.

The idea of decisions is also important to interveners. Several important decisions include: deciding to intervene, deciding when to intervene, how to intervene, and deciding what a good settlement is. Laue and Cormick argue that ethics and the above values should help an intervener with all of these decisions. The article uses several examples that helped explain the ideas of this article.