Building a Stakeholder Map for a Regulatory Campaign
A step-by-step playbook for identifying, prioritising, and planning engagement with the stakeholders who can make or break a regulatory campaign.
Aïda Kouyaté advises multinational organisations, NGOs, and coalitions on EU public affairs strategy from Brussels. She has over a decade of experience navigating EU legislative processes, building stakeholder coalitions, and designing measurement frameworks for public affairs programmes. She previously held roles at the European Commission and in the Brussels offices of two international think tanks.
Disclosure
Aïda Kouyaté operates Kouyaté Conseil as an independent public affairs advisory. She is registered on the EU Transparency Register. She has no current position in any political party and maintains editorial independence in all published contributions. Client confidentiality is maintained unless clients have given permission to be named.
What it covers
How to build a stakeholder map from scratch for a regulatory campaign, including identifying all relevant actors, assessing their position and influence, prioritising engagement, and maintaining the map over time.
Who it is for
Public affairs managers, government relations leads, and advocacy campaign managers working on EU or national regulatory processes.
When to use it
At the start of a regulatory or legislative campaign, before engagement begins. Also useful for mid-campaign reviews and when a legislative process enters a new phase.
Key takeaway
A stakeholder map is only as useful as the intelligence that fills it. Blank cells are hypotheses. Completed cells are decisions. The map should drive engagement strategy, not document it after the fact.
In brief
- Stakeholder mapping should begin with a process map: who has formal power at each stage of the regulatory or legislative procedure.
- Beyond formal power, map informal influence: who can move the formal decision-makers.
- Position assessment requires direct intelligence, not assumption — stakeholders' stated positions often differ from their actual positions.
- Prioritise engagement resources by multiplying influence by movability: high-influence, unmovable stakeholders require management, not persuasion.
- Update the map at every significant process milestone — stakeholder positions shift as legislation moves through committees, trilogues, and implementation.
Framework
The four-quadrant stakeholder grid
A grid that plots stakeholders by their level of influence over the outcome and their current position (supportive to opposed), enabling prioritised engagement planning.
| Layer | Label | Description |
|---|---|---|
| High influence, supportive | Champions | Activate and resource — these are your coalition anchors |
| High influence, opposed | Blockers | Understand and manage — direct persuasion is rarely effective |
| Low influence, supportive | Amplifiers | Mobilise and equip — they extend your coalition's reach |
| Low influence, opposed | Watch | Monitor — they may become blockers if their influence grows |
Starting from the process: who has power and when
The most common error in stakeholder mapping is beginning with names rather than with process. A stakeholder map populated from a contacts list or a database of LinkedIn profiles is a contacts list, not a strategic tool. A stakeholder map built from a thorough analysis of the regulatory process — who has formal power at each stage, in what form, and on what timeline — is a decision-making instrument.
For an EU regulatory campaign, the process map must cover: the European Commission (which DG holds the file, at what level the decision is made, what external inputs the DG typically consults during development); the European Parliament (which committee or committees have the lead, who the rapporteur and shadow rapporteurs are, which political group coordinators are most engaged); the Council of the EU (which member state currently holds the presidency, which working party has the file, which member states have particular interests); and the trilogue process (the timeline, the likely political flashpoints, who the institutional negotiators are).
Alongside this formal process map, the stakeholder map must capture the informal influence architecture: the advisers who brief the relevant MEPs, the think tanks whose papers reach the Commission's desk, the industry associations whose views are treated as credible by the Council working party, the civil society organisations whose endorsement moves swing committee members. This informal layer is often more actionable than the formal one, because it is more accessible and more responsive to engagement.
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