First of all mediation can be understood as a form of negotiation between conflicting parties with the assistance of a third party (the mediator) who has the role of limiting the unpleasant consequences of the conflict. Though necessarily superficial, this definition allows a first approach to the several mediation strategies that are nowadays applied to a large number of social contexts on a wide range of conflicts and with inhomogeneous operational purposes and techniques.
It is well known that mediation strategies and techniques resorting to the action of a third party (the mediator) have always existed and been applied both to positive conflict management and to encourage, in a wider field, the creation and/or strengthening of social bonds (the first activity merges into the second as strengthening social bonds also implies preventing hidden conflicts from degenerating or exploding). In this context, mediation has been an essentially or mainly informal practice, at least in the history of the Western world. Contemporary social changes and the proliferation of mediation practices in the last decades of the 20th century call for an urgent and more precise definition of the main features of mediation (the triadic structure of the mediation setting and its peculiarity in relation to other methods of conflict resolution and social action) and the formalization of mediation strategies and techniques.
This legitimate and unavoidable urgency raises the question of the extent of the possible formalization of mediation practices, given their "popular" origin and their "spontaneous" nature.
The "spontaneous" nature of mediation corresponds to its tradition as a voluntary social practice that works at best because of this feature. We shall therefore analyse the reasons or the origins of the "current" need for mediation, as it is clearly emerging today in all contexts of contemporary society.
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