Towards New Social Contracts: Using Dialogue Processes to Promote Social Change

This toolkit provides practical tools and resources to facilitate the use of multi-stakeholder, citizen-led dialogue processes to promote socio-political change. The proposed methodology is based on observations at several local dialogue processes initiated by civil society around crucial challenges experienced in their communities. The input from these dialogues have been synthesised to take stock of the useful and sometimes unusual perspectives of local stakeholders around challenges, trends, and innovations on how citizens collectively engage in the decisions that affect their lives.
The guide highlights the potential value of collaboration between development partners, private sector, government, and the scientific community in addressing social challenges – which has sometimes been met with scepticism from civil society. "We think that at the heart of this resistance lies a rigid sector-based view of how development challenges can be solved and by whom. In order to achieve real change, societies need to try new terms of engagement using a more flexible framework, one that emphasises the central role of citizen power in driving transformative processes."
The toolkit is primarily intended for civil society, particularly small organisations operating at local level, and seeks to add a civil society perspective to the already existing literature around multi- stakeholder initiatives. However the guidance provided could be equally useful to other actors wishing to work with civil society through multi-sector dialogue processes.
The toolkit is divided into four parts:

• "Part 1: On your marks! - Motivates for the need to find new ways of working to affect sociopolitical change, and highlights both the opportunities and challenges of doing so.
• Part 2: Get set! - Provides methodological guidance on how to set up a multi-stakeholder dialogue process. It is not meant to be a step-by-step guide but rather a presentation of reflections, tips, tools and lessons learnt that will need to be adapted to each particular context.
• Part 3: Go! - Provides methodological and practical guidance on how to run the dialogue in a participatory and inclusive manner.
• Part 4: Resources and tools - Compiles a useful list of resources for further reflection as well as essential tools for action."

This toolkit marks the final stage of Civicus’s New Social Contract project, initiated as an attempt "to promote and analyse new forms of cross-sector collaboration around crucial economic, social and environmental challenges."