Acknowledgement

This guide is the result of a collective endeavour that has brought together professionals from many different fields and from very diverse countries.

First of all, we want to thank our local partner organisations who, as policy dialogue “hosts”, played a crucial, if not the central role in all of our policy dialogue projects: Centre des Etudes Méditerranéennes et Internationales (Tunisia), Institute of Economic Affairs (Ghana), East Europe Foundation (Moldova), Institute of Constitutional Policy and Center for Policy Initiatives (both from Kyrgyzstan), OxYGen (Armenia), Human Rights and Education Monitoring Center (Georgia), Tegsh Niigem (Mongolia), ANGOC (Philippines), Associação Cabo-Verdiana de Luta Contra a Violência Baseada no Género (Cape Verde), Decidamos (Paraguay), Unitas (Bolivia) and Loka Ahlinn (Myanmar).

EPD being a community of practice of democracy support organisations specialised in working with different types of institutions and stakeholders, we borrowed ideas and techniques from many of our members, in particular the Netherlands Institute for Multiparty Democracy (Netherlands) and the World Leadership Alliance – Club de Madrid, who were involved in the pilot phase and continue to be part of INSPIRED dialogue projects to this day. Other EPD members like People in Need (Czech Republic), ARTICLE 19 and the Westminster Foundation for Democracy have been providing useful feedback on the INSPIRED method, as they were, and still are, part of EPD projects including a policy dialogue component.

EU officials in EU Delegations, who have provided guidance and precious insight on the political context of the countries in which we’ve worked, and assisted our local partner organisations in steering the dialogue process towards realistic goals. Another key contribution by EU officials has been to help us identify the right incentives for governments to open their inner workings to civil society organisations and other stakeholders.

Last but not least, we want to thank those EU officials in Brussels, both at the European External Action Service (EEAS) and the European Commission’s Directorate-General for International Development and Cooperation (DEVCO) and Directorate for Neighbourhood and Enlargement Negotiations (NEAR) who have endorsed, championed and promoted the use of the method among their colleagues.