The use of mediation techniques in conflict resolution during election campaigns

Abstract

The article is devoted to the prospects of using mediation techniques in the settlement of electoral conflicts. It is well known that electoral conflicts are among the most intense and rapidly developing due to the fact that election campaigns are a time-limited process. With that said, mediation, as a relatively new technology for the Russian socio-political reality, seems to be one of the most promising techniques for resolving such conflicts, since it combines mobility, focus on positive results, constructiveness and maximum flexibility, allows you to formulate and take into account the current and rapidly changing interests of the parties in the political process. The article has a pronounced practical orientation and takes into account, among other things, the existing practical experience of using mediation in the settlement of designated conflicts. The scientific novelty of the article consists in an attempt to assess the prospects of using mediation techniques directly in the settlement of electoral conflicts. Electoral conflicts in themselves are a promising topic for research, since their occurrence is inevitable in any political system that provides at least only partially competitive elections. At the same time, due to the specifics of such conflicts, it is not possible to achieve even partial settlement by existing (predominantly legal) mechanisms, since such mechanisms are aimed only at assessing the formal circumstances of what is happening, are rather cumbersome and cannot always be applied due, for example, to the limited time of the election campaign (and even more so – voting). In this paper, an attempt is made to analyze the potential of mediation in this direction.