The INSPIRED method aims at opening new spaces for policy dialogue by engaging those actors whose voices are rarely heard or taken on board in government-led consultations. In doing so, it contributes to reconfiguring the relationships between stakeholders, who are required to recognise each other as valid interlocutors and understand each other’s interests and incentives for change – or stasis.
The basic assumption of the method is that those groups that are affected by a given policy reform should have a say in it and therefore be considered as ‘key’ stakeholders, even if they lack leverage or direct influence on actual decision-making. In other words, for policy dialogue to be meaningful, legitimate and effective, it needs to be inclusive and allow for real participation of the main parties concerned.
The two core values of inclusiveness and participation are streamlined throughout the method, which was designed to ensure that multi-stakeholder dialogue can be successful at three different levels or ‘dimensions’.
This in turn enhances the chances that the participating stakeholders adopt a more pluralistic outlook on their society. By working together, they are compelled to recognise the existence of a diversity of interests and beliefs regarding a given problem, which naturally leads to different positions towards political choices meant to solve this problem. This acceptance of ‘pluralism’ by the key social and political stakeholders can in turn function as a safeguard against an excessive accumulation of power by any single actor in the political system, as well as a means to overcome winner-takes-all attitudes that still prevail in many electoral democracies and that lie at the heart of the phenomenon known as populism.
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