Facilitating Settlement at the Arbitration Table: An Empirical Examination of Views on Settlement Practice Among Arbitration Practitioners in East Asia and the West

Abstract

This paper presents an empirical examination of how international arbitrators in East Asian and Western countries view the goal of settlement in international arbitration. The result of a 115 person survey and 64 follow-up interviews shed light on the underlying cultural attitudes and approaches to settlement in international arbitration as practiced in diverse regions. To date, most research on international arbitration has focused exclusively on Western models of arbitration as practiced in Europe and North America. While such studies accurately reflected the geographic foci of international arbitration practice in the mid-20th century, in recent years, the number of international arbitrations conducted in East Asia has grown steadily and on par with growth in Western regions. The findings indicate that arbitration practitioner’s perceptions of the importance of information sharing in encouraging settlement as well as the simultaneous attention of both parties to the dispute demonstrate a high degree of convergence across regions. At the same time, regional and socio-economic distinctions are reflected in varying arbitrator perceptions regarding the arbitrators’ role in settlement, whether settlement is regarded as a goal in arbitration and the types of efforts made pre-arbitration to settle disputes. In particular, arbitrators working in the East Asian region regard the goal of facilitating voluntary settlement in the context of arbitration with greater importance and generally make greater efforts pre-arbitration to settle disputes as compared with counterparts in the West.