Social Innovation and public governance: identifying underlying paradigms

In recent years, social innovation has been a central idea in many reform strategies in the public sector (Voorberg, Bekkers et al. 2015, Ayob, Teasdale et al. 2016, Osborne and Brown 2011, Sinclair, Mazzei et al. 2018). This... [ view full abstract ]

In recent years, social innovation has been a central idea in many reform strategies in the public sector (Voorberg, Bekkers et al. 2015, Ayob, Teasdale et al. 2016, Osborne and Brown 2011, Sinclair, Mazzei et al. 2018). This paper investigates the academic debate around SI and explores the different theoretical approaches and policy paradigms underpinning it.

Social innovation has become a popular concept widely used both in academic and policy debates. References to social innovation in academic literature has significantly increased since 2000 (Weerakoon et al. 2016; Ayob 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. Despite this popularity in policy discourse, scholars have observed that social innovation is often presented as an ‘apolitical’ concept and a pragmatic solution, regarded as neutral in relation to underlying policy ideas (Harslof 2014, Fougère et al. 2015).

Against this background, the paper addresses the following research question: which policy ideas and paradigms underpin the concept of social innovation?

The study explores how social innovation is conceptualised in academic debate and identifies the different but partially overlapping paradigms underlying it. It also illustrates how the study of social innovation can be advanced by the use of an ideational approach, which problematizes the relation between policy ideas, the definition of problems addressed, the policy aims pursued, and the assumptions about the role of public and private actors involved.

Firstly, the paper introduces the ideational approach to public policy and explores its potential to understand the policy relevance of the concept of social innovation. In contrast to other forms of new institutionalism (historical, rational and sociological institutionalism), the ideational approach focuses on the role of ideas and discourse in policymaking (Schmidt 2008, Béland 2005, Blyth 1997, Kingdon 2014). Drawing on this approach, and on the four dimensions of a policy paradigm as defined by Daigneault (2014), the paper investigates the paradigms that underpin the different theoretical perspectives on social innovation through a research review. The theoretical framework is applied to analyse texts retrieved from academic databases and selected based on year of publication and relevance to the research question.

The study shows that different, but partially overlapping, paradigms underpin the concept of social innovation.

Finally, we argue that while one social innovation paradigm intertwines with theories of co-creation in public services and new public governance models, another one reflects the values and assumptions of the new public management paradigm. In light of the results, we highlight the theoretical risks in considering SI as a unified paradigm and suggest further research to analyse the identified paradigms and consolidate the theoretical framework through interviews, analysis of policy documents, speeches, newspaper articles.