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Power mapping

Stakeholder analysis
3 min read
Last update: Mar 29, 2023
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In this article, we talk about how you can analyse the stakeholders in your activist campaign using power mapping.

๐Ÿ“š This guide is part of a series on campaign strategy.

When you map out the stakeholders in your campaign, allies are the stakeholders you can work with, build alliances with, and share resources with. Constituents are โ€œthe communityโ€: the people you want to side with your position and help apply pressure to your target. Your target is often a decision maker: someone who can give you the change you want. In representative democracies these are often politicians, ministers, or members of parliament. Sometimes we have limited capacity to influence our primary targets, so it can useful to identify secondary targets: stakeholders who have more direct influence with the primary target. If your primary target is the CEO of a corporation, then your secondary targets might include shareholders.

A power map can be a useful reference and shared analysis during a campaign. This is a simple tool to identify where key stakeholders (allies, targets, opponents and constituents) stand in relation to your campaign objective, and their relative levels of influence.

Targets

These are, in the context of strategy, always people. Whether the politicians whose decisions weโ€™re trying to influence, or managers of companies who leave us no choice but to organize a strike. Bear this in mind when thinking about targets. You want to know the culture, goals and purpose of institutions youโ€™re aiming to put pressure on. Targets can be broadly categorized as primary and secondary, primary being the decision-makers you want to influence and secondary being all potential allies and people who would benefit from the changes youโ€™re trying to install as well as people with influence over the issue who are not decision-makers (institutions).

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Spectrum of allies

Power mapping

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