The Importance of Context in Comparing the Worldwide Institutionalization of Court-Connected Mediation

This chapter will provide a brief comparison of the development of court-connected mediation in the United States and the Netherlands, with the goal of demonstrating that though the two countries share a process named ‘mediation’, the characteristics of each context inevitably influence the dominant nature of the process, the needs it addresses, the extent of its use, its basis for claims of legitimacy and its likely future. The chapter also will consider some of the structural differences that have arisen as mediation has been institutionalized in other countries and begin to hypothesize regarding these implications