Campaigning Wiki

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Power mapping is the analytical practice of identifying who has power over your target, who influences them, and who could be moved. It is the foundational analysis for almost any campaign and the first move in the four-step campaign method.

A power map lists each actor you might influence, their relationship to your target, and the source of their power (positional, economic, relational, expert, charismatic). The Commons Library and Beautiful Trouble stress distinguishing direct targets from intermediate targets — the decision-maker vs. the people who influence them [source: commons-library], [source: beautiful-trouble]. The French Alinsky tradition adds the spectrum of allies as the operational map that grows out of the power map [source: alinsky-fr]. Alliance Citoyenne in France applies this in tenant and labour campaigns across French cities, treating each local landlord, mayor or union local as a separate actor with a discrete relationship to the campaign’s target [source: alliance-citoyenne]. Beautiful Trouble additionally emphasises the pillars of support — the constituencies that hold the target up — as a second cut of the same map [source: beautiful-trouble]. The Commons Library’s framework warns against two errors: confusing public visibility with power (a noisy opponent is often not the decision-maker), and listing organisations rather than the specific individuals who can be moved [source: commons-library]. The spectrum of allies turns the static map into a moving operational board: each campaign move is judged by how it shifts actors along the spectrum [source: alinsky-fr]. Common failure mode: analysis paralysis — producing an elaborate diagram no one uses in planning; the antidote is to keep the map simple enough to revise at every weekly meeting.

Power / Interest grid. A second cut of the same map is the power / interest grid, which sorts stakeholders by whether they can move the outcome and whether the outcome matters to them:

Low interestHigh interest
High powerKeep satisfied (don’t provoke needlessly)Manage closely — your primary targets & key allies
Low powerMonitor (low effort)Keep informed & engage — your base, volunteers

The Commons Library’s organising modules run this grid as a wall exercise so the team can see the size and disposition of each group at a glance and allocate effort accordingly [source: commons-library]. The same source adds a discipline worth copying: per stakeholder, the team must name a goal (move from X position to Y position) and a channel (the path by which the team will reach them), so the analysis produces action rather than a static map [source: commons-library].

Salience model. For complex stakeholder populations, the Commons Library recommends layering on the salience model — adapted from Mitchell, Agle and Wood’s work in business-stakeholder theory — which scores actors on three axes: power (can they move the outcome?), legitimacy (is the campaign obliged to engage them?), and urgency (does the outcome matter to them now?). The Commons Library treats legitimacy as the most distinctive addition: it separates actors the campaign is bound to engage from actors it merely could, and it explicitly stops the team from writing off constituencies with low power but high legitimacy [source: commons-library].

Stakeholder analysis and power mapping are nested. Stakeholder analysis is the outer directory — every actor that can affect or is affected by the campaign, including funders, media, internal team and other actors who never appear on the power map. Power mapping is the inner subset — only the chain of influence around the target. The Commons Library’s organising modules run stakeholder identification as a structured exercise with categories written on cards and placed on a wall, then narrow the list to the actors that will appear on the power map [source: commons-library].

Common failure mode: producing an elaborate diagram no one uses in planning; the antidote is to keep the map simple enough to revise at every weekly meeting, and to treat the power / interest and salience grids as living documents, not one-shot exercises.

Use it for

Starting any campaign from analysis rather than reaction; deciding which decision-maker to approach first; choosing between a direct confrontation and an influence campaign; sorting the base from the targets and from the “movable middle”; diagnosing a campaign that has all the activity but no movement (usually: column 1 — high power, low interest — has been ignored).

Summary

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Open Questions

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Sources & verification

  • sources/commons-library — grounding: secondary — RAW (5257 chars)
  • sources/beautiful-trouble — grounding: secondary — RAW (2589 chars)
  • sources/alinsky-fr — grounding: secondary — RAW (1304 chars)
  • sources/alliance-citoyenne — grounding: secondary — RAW (1580 chars)

Verified 2026-06-23 by llm-qc.

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