Evaluating stakeholder participation in the transition to sustainable development

Stakeholder participation is supposedly a good thing. But does stakeholder participation live up to the high expectations raised about it in the literature? How can we measure success? What are suitable criteria and indicators? How do the involved stakeholders themselves judge the outcomes of their involvement? What can be done to improve the performance of stakeholder participation? And which structural factors impede stakeholder participation?

Angela Oels is Assistant Professor at the Institute of Political Science, University of Hamburg/Germany.