The trap most plans fall into
Many project plans list "informing stakeholders" as an engagement activity. That sounds diligent, but sociologist Sherry Arnstein warned about exactly this back in 1969. In her ladder of participation, she placed informing, consultation and placation (appeasement) on the lower and middle rungs: forms of involvement where power does not shift. Only higher up, at partnership, delegated power and citizen control, does the power relationship actually change.
Arnstein's argument is blunt: participation without a redistribution of power is "an empty and frustrating process for the powerless." That is not a criticism of project managers who inform; it is a warning that informing easily disguises itself as participation without being one.
Why this matters now
Since the Dutch Environment and Planning Act (Omgevingswet, 2024), participation is legally required in many cases, with a notification and justification duty: you must announce in advance how you organise participation, and justify afterwards what you did with the input received. That justification duty touches exactly the distinction Arnstein made. Organising an information evening and writing up minutes satisfies the letter of "doing something," but says nothing about whether the input actually influenced the decision. The law asks for accountability for what happened after the input was collected. That is exactly where tokenism hides.
The link to success factors
Research into critical success factors (CSF ranking, 2023, single-country study, N=89) places stakeholder identification, a shared mission, and communication with feedback in the top three. Note the word "with": not one-way communication, but communication where input demonstrably does something. That is precisely Arnstein's distinction between consultation (you ask something and then do nothing further with it) and the rungs where power actually shifts.
This ranking is not causal proof (one study, one country, a limited sample), but it is a consistent signal that isolated information moments without a feedback loop deliver little. Additional research into the effect of stakeholder engagement on project success (an SEM study from 2023, N=365) finds a significant positive direct effect. That, too, is a demonstrable signal, not a guarantee, but it points the same direction: involvement that goes beyond informing is associated with better outcomes.
How to recognise tokenism in your own approach
Three questions that quickly reveal where you stand on the ladder:
- Can you name a decision that changed because of stakeholder input? If not, you are probably at consultation or placation, not higher.
- Do the stakeholders themselves know what happened with their input? Feedback is the hinge between informing and participating. Without feedback, no one can check whether anything actually changed.
- Is there a moment where stakeholders co-decide, not just co-discuss? That does not have to apply everywhere (some topics do not lend themselves to delegated power), but know which rung you are deliberately choosing to stand on, instead of letting chance decide.
Being honest about where you stand
The value of Arnstein's ladder is not that you must always climb to the top rung. For many projects, consultation is a deliberate and defensible choice. The problem arises when an organisation rebrands "informing" as "we participated" without anything actually shifting. That honesty, naming which rung you are on and why, is exactly what the justification duty asks for, and exactly what lifts an approach from ad hoc to mature.