Collaborative meetings: soft political power

This chapter describes a different form of doing the collaboration. The case study regards a case when politicians try to create an arena - an ‘industry dialogue’, in the terminology of this book a case of a meeting chain - for problem solving with formally non-political actors. The chapter shows that the formal power-holders - the government - actually may be quite powerlessness when the objects of their ‘soft’ political power - the industry - show a limited interest in becoming politically active. Different forms of tactics in this process are described, such as ambitions for making the industry committed, efforts at hostage-taking, exit threats, exclusion of unwanted actors, and reference to actors not present at the meetings. The collaborative meetings described in this chapter are something very different from meetings as a central forging mechanism for organisations. This is because there are many different organisations (and from different sectors) involved in the meeting chain. The role of meetings here is rather to protect the organisation from being influenced as far as these influences are not seen as being in the interest of the organisation.