Social Innovation (SI) has become a fashionable phrase both in academic and policy debate. References to SI in academic literature has significantly increased since 2000 (Weerakoon, McMurray et al. 2016, Ayob, Teasdale et al. 2016) and policy makers have been attracted by the potential of this idea, the vagueness and loose definition of which allows them to promote quite different types of intervention. Particularly in Europe, SI has become a key policy concept “to foster sustainable growth, secure jobs and boost competitiveness” (José Manuel Barroso in (Caulier-Grice, Kahn et al. 2010: 5).
Some scholars have noticed that SI is presented in some policy discourses as an ‘apolitical’ concept and a pragmatic solution to what are framed as given social problems, and it is regarded as neutral in relation to left or right wing political orientations (Harslof 2014; Fougère et al. 2015).
This paper addresses the following question: what political ideas and policy paradigms underpin the emergence of SI in the policy discourse?
The study adopts an ideational approach to investigate the political relevance of SI. Compared to other forms of new institutionalism (historical, rational and sociological institutionalism), the ideational approach focuses on the role of ideas in policy making and on the importance of discourses, conceived as the place where ideas are conveyed and represented (Schmidt 2008; Béland 2005; Kingdon 1984; Blyth 1997). It integrates other institutional perspectives providing dynamic explanation of change and valuing the role of policy entrepreneurs.
The paper consists of two sections. Firstly, it introduces the ideational discursive approach and explores its potential to understand the political relevance of SI. Secondly, the paper explores how different academic approaches to SI interpret its political meaning. Drawing on the four dimensions of a policy paradigm identified by Daigneault (2014), the paper investigates how different, but partially overlapping, policy paradigms underlie the use of SI. Finally, it describes further developments and new research issues.
The relevance of this study lies, firstly, in the fact that it gives insights on the various approaches to SI in the field of social and public policy, identifying two broad paradigms with different political implications. It also illustrates how the study of SI can be advanced by the use of the ideational discursive approach, which problematizes the relation between policy ideas, the problems and policy aims addressed by SI, and the assumption about the role of the state and private actors that underpinned the different theoretical perspectives.
Finally, it outlines future research issues, highlighting the importance of exploring public and policy SI discourses to understand whether SI could contribute to the development of a new policy paradigm, gleaning from two different theoretical and policy traditions.
References
AYOB, N., TEASDALE, S. and FAGAN, K., 2016. How Social Innovation ‘Came to Be’: Tracing the Evolution of a Contested Concept. Journal of social policy, 45(4), pp. 635–653.
BÉLAND, D., 2005. Ideas and social policy: An institutionalist perspective. Social Policy & Administration, 39(1), pp. 1-18.
BLYTH, M.M., 1997. "Any More Bright Ideas?" The Ideational Turn of Comparative Political Economy. Comparative politics, 9(2), pp. 229-250.
CAULIER-GRICE, J., KAHN, L., MULGAN, G., PULFORD, L. and VASCONCELOS, D., 2010. Study on Social Innovation. A paper prepared by the Social Innovation eXchange (SIX) and the Young Foundation for the Bureau of European Policy Advisers.
DAIGNEAULT, P., 2014. Reassessing the concept of policy paradigm: Aligning ontology and methodology in policy studies. Journal of European Public Policy, 21(3), pp. 453-469.
FOUGÈRE, M., SEGERCRANTZ, B. and SEECK, H., 2015. A critical reading of the European Union’s social innovation policy. Academy of Management Proceedings, 2015(1), pp. 11729-11729.
HARSLOF, I., 2014. European Policy and Social Innovation. In: BERTIN, G., CAMPOSTRINI, S., ed, Equiwelfare and social innovation. Milano: Franco Angeli, pp. 107-124.
KINGDON, J.W., 1984. Agendas, alternatives, and public policies. Boston, MA: Little, Brown.
NICHOLLS, A. and MURDOCK, A., eds, 2012. Social Innovation: Blurring Boundaries to Reconfigure Markets. Hampshire, UK & New York, USA: Palgrave Macmillan.
SCHMIDT, V.A., 2008. Discursive institutionalism: The explanatory power of ideas and discourse. Political science, 11(1), pp. 303-326.
WEERAKOON, C., MCMURRAY, A., RAMETSE, N. and DOUGLAS, H., 2016. A preliminary bibliographic analysis of the social innovation literature, SIERC 2016: Collaborating for Impact 2016, New Zealand Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship Research Centre, pp. 345-360.
2. Social innovation and social entrepreneurship
