The job of the stakeholder engagement and social license to operate communities is to foster trust and transparency in subaltern groups which are on the receiving end of the power grid of ‘development’ , technology and progress of transnational capital so as to ensure a decent conversation. Outcomes comes much later. History shapes culture and politics is downstream of culture as the saying goes. As far as infrastructure is concerned, the myth of technical best practices embedded in a defined set of values is a smokescreen at best. Each intervention context is deliciously varied, and the so called non democratic Gulf as active societies such as Kuwait. Nothing really is a monolith.
Stakeholder engagement has to be seen from a perspective of forging commonalities in a divisive era of Brexit, US Elections and Tech troubles.