Abstract
Multi-stakeholder processes - as a necessary part in the development of public policies - can provide diverse perspectives to inform and to improve food security policy-making. Iran's National Food Assistance Program (NFAP) is one of the major welfare programs in Iran that reduces food insecutiry to low-income households. This study aimed to identify and to categorize actual and potential stakeholders in NFAP using the stakeholder salience model. According to Mitchell's theory, stakeholders' attributes (power, legitimacy, and urgency) were assessed based on the nature of their interactions, roles, and level of engagement. Results revealed a number of significant but marginalized stakeholders, including Iranian Ministry of Health (office of community nutrition improvement), academia, center for food and nutrition research, target group, charities, and international organizations, who have not received any targeted organizational attention and priority to their claims. The unbalanced attention provided to some stakeholder groups characterized as "definitive" and "dominant" and ignoring some important ones will jeopardize long-term viability and undermine support for the program with inevitable declines in legitimacy. Understanding the change in the stakeholders' characteristics is the main variable to determine the allocation of organizational resources in response to different and rising stakeholders' demands and possibly the projects outcomes. This will facilitate and enhance the possibility of knowledge exchange and learning, and greater trust among stakeholders during the food and nutrition policy-making process.
Highlights
Multi-stakeholder processes (MSPs) – essentially as a participatory decision-making process – brings a number of stakeholders to address wicked public policy issues that are intrinsically complicated and highly complex to explain and to solve [1,2]
This study aimed to identify and to categorize actual and potential stakeholders in National Food Assistance Program (NFAP) with the stakeholder salience model focusing on their roles, level of engagement, and position
“Michelle’s theory” was used as a dynamic model and Venn diagram, overlapping circles, to depict the logical relationships between two or more sets of items. This served to demonstrate the judgement on stakeholders’ classes and subclasses based on the three key attributes: power, legitimacy, and urgency [9,17,18] (Figure 1). This model was used for studying stakeholders in the NFAP due to four reasons: (1) the existence of numerous and diverse stakeholders in this program with different levels of relevance and influence; (2) the characteristics are well suited to the food insecurity issues, where the most powerful stakeholders are able to advance their interests to the detriment of those who have legitimacy and might have an urgent claim [14,19,20,21]; (3) some actors may have been marginalized as a result of power centralization 14; and (4) decision makers may be unaware of prioritizing stakeholders’ relationships and the attention that they deserve [10,11]
Summary
Stakeholders, i.e., any group or individuals who can affect or are affected by the decisions and actions made by policymakers 3, are at risk of being marginalized by being identified and selected on an ad-hoc basis. In this way, bias will jeopardize long-term viability and undermine support for the process with inevitable declines in legitimacy 4. The information generated from stakeholder analysis can be used to empower “marginalized stakeholders” in influencing decision making processes, to develop strategies for managing relevant stakeholders, and to facilitate meaningful interaction of diverse stakeholders in the implementation of projects [4,8]. The model developed by Mitchell – stakeholder salience model – describes how three attributes of power, legitimacy, and urgency can provide a more dynamic approach for categorizing stakeholders [9,10,11]
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