What is Consensus?

The articles selected for this volume draw on game theory, political science, psychology, sociology and anthropology to consider how the process of dispute resolution is altered, challenged and made more complex by the presence of multiple parties and/or multiple issues. The volume explores issues of coalition formation, defection, collaboration, commitments, voting practices, and joint decision making in settings of increasing human complexity. Also included are examples of concrete uses of deliberative democracy processes taken from new applications of complex dispute resolution theory and practice. The selected essays represent the latest theoretical advances and challenges in the field and demonstrate attempts to use dispute resolution theory in a wide variety of settings such as political decision making and policy formation; regulatory matters; environmental disputes; healthcare; community disputes; constitutional formation; and in many other controversial issues in the polity.