Stakeholder Perspective and Multilevel Governance

In the field of public policy analysis, the concept of “stakeholders” has been widely applied to a variety of policy-making efforts. In particular, the stakeholder concept has been adopted in the shift of focus from the government to the governance. In this context, traditional bureaucratic government structure endowed with the power of “command and control” is regarded inefficient anymore in the democratic and internationalized environment. Networked actors that undertake the functions previously performed by the government would replace the traditional structure. In this new “governance”-focused system, stakeholders, instead of the government, undertake the public sector functions. In other words, stakeholders are the individuals and organizations that actively participate in policy-making processes and take appropriate responsibilities of implementing the policies that they have agreed to.