Principles and Practices of Stakeholder Engagement

Catalog description

This class will introduce you to various types of policy stakeholders, from executives to the mass public. You will identify those actors, the combination of authorities, powers, interests, and constraints each one possesses. This framework for viewing stakeholders will enable you to strategize about how to engage different actors when and where they intervene in the policy process. As a policymaker, analyst, or advocate, you will have to contend with stakeholders that possess formal authorities to shape the policy process. These stakeholders will determine whether the problems that concern you reach the agenda; whether your preferred solution is adopted; how that policy solution is implemented; whether it diffuses from one political venue to another; and whether the policy endures, or reshapes politics, succumbs to termination or reform. We will catalog those authorities and powers and observe how they apply in real policy situations.