ABSTRACT
The eighth chapter discusses four blind spots common to many failed or ineffective public conflict resolution cases and proposes helpful correctives. The first blind spot refers to differences in participation and the fact that participants are not socioeconomically representative of the wider public, which leads to unequal representation. The second blind spot, structural fairness bias, leads to disproportionate disempowerment and disenfranchisement experienced during conflict resolution. The third is a lack of responsiveness between conflict resolution and politics; and the fourth is underestimating the power of recognition between the conflicted parties – the basis for achieving a sustained agreement between socially distant groups. These critical shortcomings often occur when conflict resolution strategies are applied too thoughtlessly and unprofessionally to real-world conflicts, but they can also occur for structural reasons.
