Consider this situation: a government wants a connection between a major city and a major international airport. It wants to build a high-speed rail connection. In such a large project, a lot of different people, and groups of people, have an interest in the project in whatever way. It can be that they want things to change, since they are unsatisfied right now. Or, they prefer a specific solution that probably someone else dislikes.
Someone might see himself as an expert on a certain related topic and wants to share this knowledge with other stakeholders. The behaviour of these so-called stakeholders in such a project determines the success of that project. Without proper collaboration between stakeholders, a good implementation of a solution will be impossible. Who could be involved in this problem field? By identifying these actors and making the problem as they see it explicit, you help the different stakeholders in knowing and understanding the goals and interests of each other.
Actor analysis is of key importance when you have to deal with complex problems. In the next 6 videos you will learn how to conduct an actor analysis.
All these steps are also described in our reading for this section: chapter 4 of his book (co-author) titled 'Policy Analysis of Multi-Actor Systems': http://ocw.tudelft.nl/fileadmin/ocw/courses/PolicyAnalysisofMultiActorSystems/res00027/embedded/hoofdstuk_4_Policy_Analysis.pd