ABSTRACT
Policy conflict analysis and conflict resolution have a longstanding presence in policy science. This chapter posits that ‘clinical action research’ can help policy disputes that are essentially messy or even controversial. The workings of a newly designed intervention – the reconstruction clinic – are explored in two settings where stakeholders got stuck in dispute. As illustrated by two cases, the reconstruction clinic aims to facilitate a collaborative process of finding critical breakthroughs in relational dynamics, in order to get the dispute ‘unstuck’ rather than focusing on finding agreement between stakeholders. Via the use of narratives, the construction of a shared timeline, the division of roles between multiple facilitators and organized backtalk by external reflectants, stakeholders learn about the underlying patterns of interaction that got them stuck, and can ultimately reach a stage of congruency in action.
