MACTOR Actor Strategy Analysis

The Ri coefficients summarise each actor's competitive strength or power within the field. An actor's score rises with the total means of action it exerts on the other actors and falls with the influence others exert on it, and the calculation also folds in indirect leverage transmitted through third actors. The resulting ratio places every actor on a common scale from dominant to dominated. The coefficients matter because MACTOR weights actors' positions on objectives by their Ri, so the analysis reflects not merely what each actor wants but how much capacity it has to make that want prevail.

They are complementary modules of la prospective addressing different objects. MICMAC performs structural analysis on the system's variables, classifying them by influence and dependence to find the key drivers. MACTOR performs actor analysis on the players, mapping their power, positions, and alliances. The usual sequence runs MICMAC first to identify which variables govern the system, then MACTOR to analyse the stakeholders who contest those variables, and finally morphological scenario building informed by both. MICMAC tells you what factors matter; MACTOR tells you who is fighting over them and who is likely to win.

Convergence and divergence describe how actors relate across the set of objectives. Two actors converge to the degree they take the same side — both favourable or both opposed — on the same objectives, signalling a potential alliance. They diverge to the degree they take opposite sides, signalling latent conflict. MACTOR sums these agreements and disagreements across all objectives, weighted by actor power and the intensity of positions, to produce convergence and divergence matrices and network maps. Reading them shows which clusters of actors might cooperate and which pairs are antagonists, which is the core strategic insight the method delivers.