Mediating the Mediation Debate

Abstract

China's elaborate system of local mediation committees has piqued researchers' curiosity for decades and sparked an argument in these pages. Crucial questions—concerning how much mediation actually takes place, what kinds of disputes are mediated, who seeks mediation, and how successful it is—have gone unanswered for lack of data. This article addresses these issues using original surveys from Beijing and villages in six provinces, supplemented by participant-observation research on actual instances of mediation. We find that mediation is fairly common in the country-side while occurring in a narrow set of contexts in the city. Those who are actively involved in institutions of grassroots governance are much more likely than others to seek such remedies, and in rural China, women pursue it more than men do. Modernization may diminish the salience of this form of dispute resolution, yet it is far from extinct, even in contemporary society.