The stakeholders approach assumes that active citizen involvement in reform will increase its political sustainability. Governments may attempt to sustain reforms by building coalitions between various citizen groups. Equity may be increased by widening services to the poor who use government services proportionally more than the wealthy. One danger in the stakeholder approach is the notion of citizen as consumer, so that only citizens with the resources to participate can influence government and institutional structure. An individuals stake in new market reforms can occur through exit and voice.
Exit involves removing one s stake in a particular institution and placing it in another.
The exit option, although theoretically open to all citizens, is realistically open only to those who can afford alternatives. Exit can discourage the development of voice, because those who would have the strongest voices are usually the ones who can afford to exit. Voice is the more activist option and calls for the improvement of an existing institutional structure. Governments may enhance voice by establishing user fees for certain public goods. Voice also may be used by workers who feel loyalty to a bureaucracy and are willing to work within it to change the system internally.