Collaborative Stakeholder Dialogue: A Catalyst for Better Transport Policy Choices

Abstract

Policies that promote sustainable transport development are often contested among the different stakeholder groups in the policy process. The resulting conflict creates barriers to the implementation of innovative policies. This article investigates how, and under what conditions, closer communication and the resulting relationships between different stakeholders in the policy process can contribute to overcoming these challenges. By building on the findings of a case study in collaborative stakeholder dialogue in Munich, it proposes collaborative stakeholder dialogue as a pragmatic strategy to counterbalance the difference in influence competing stakeholder groups have in the policy process, and to so facilitate better choices.

Keywords:

• asymmetry of influcence
• collaborative stakeholder dialogue
• learning
• Munich case study
• policy change
• stakeholder conflict
• sustainable urban mobility

Acknowledgments

The authors acknowledge Dr. Betsi Beem, Jessica Minshall, and three anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on earlier versions of this article. Appreciation is extended as well to John Revington for editorial advice, and to the Munich interview participants for their generous support of this research project.

Notes

¹See http://www.inzell-initiative.de/_engl.Version/index_eng.htm.

²See http://www.inzell-initiative.de/_engl.Version/index_eng.htm for a full overview of working groups and projects.

³This connection has also been established by other researchers, most notably by Innes and Booher (2010) who have documented and analyzed a large number empirical case studies in collaborative stakeholder procedures.

^a Forester (1999).

^b Innes and Booher (2010, 89–117).

^c Sabatier and Weible (2007, 206–207).

^d Baumann (2012).