Tools for Stakeholder Analysis: 10 Building Blocks for Designing Participatory Systems of Cooperation

The way participation is seen is subject to constant change due to the very dynamic environment in development cooperation.

For a long time, participation was equated with the use of participatory methods. Despite the undisputed importance of these methods, today the concept of participation has to be seen as the constitutive value of any successful democratisation and decentralisation reform process. Thus, participation finds its way into national policy processes, and is becoming increasingly important as a political paradigm in partner countries.

This publication takes a realistic look at practical development cooperation. Selected projects implemented by various German development cooperation organisations in seven partner countries were studied in terms of the contribution to promoting participation, and lessons learned were identified.

The results of the country evaluations have been analysed and compiled in this publication series. One publication has been dedicated to each country evaluated. The whole publication ends with a summary that reviews the key hypotheses emerging from the country evaluations.