Individual Submission Summary
Share...

Direct link:

The third sector and social innovation – Socio-economic conditions and policy discourse

Thu, June 30, 3:30 to 5:00pm, Campus Ersta, Aulan

Abstract

In a combined theoretical and empirical effort this paper investigates the link between (1) countries’ socio-economic and political classification; (2) social innovation potential; and (3) policy discourse.
First we provide three distinct images on the state of the third sector in nine European countries and relate this to social innovation. The approaches used for classification are: (1) Welfare regimes (Esping-Andersen, 1990); (2) Social origins theory (Salamon & Anheier, 1998); and (3) Varieties of capitalism (Hall & Soskice, 2001). Guided by the specific implications of these classifications and a localization of all countries within each frame, based on current secondary empirical data we gathered, we estimate their potential for social innovation respectively. The estimations vary as to which countries can be expected to have a higher and which are likely to have a lower social innovation potential, yet with some being quite consistently located at the forefront and others at lower levels. The classifying exercise is useful not only to get an updated picture of third sector profiles, but also to develop a rationale on how countries’ socio-economic and socio-political traits affect its social innovation potential.

Second, we move from a description of the countries’ socio-economic and socio-political frames to an in-depth analysis of around five central policy documents per country to reveal peculiarities of the countries’ policy discourse as regards social innovation and the role of the third sector therein. This is a consequent development of previous attempts to pin down the nexus between social policy and social innovation (Nicholls, 2013).

The analysis of the documents has been objectified and aided by a detailed quasi-quantitative coding guide used to capture, for instance the prominence of social innovation as a general subject or its relation to other types of innovation by word count. The analysis has been complemented by a qualitative dimension, describing more broadly the vast set of hopes put into social innovation, the actors involved and the policy levels affected. All of the latter form a fuzzy set of elements and relations that could hardly be compared across countries. This points at the need for systematization and more informed policy dialogue. The quantitative analysis in turn reveals the main political actors propelling social innovation, among which we find most often the ministries of the economy, labour, and social affairs and thus national level bodies. ‘Social services’ and ‘healthcare’ are identified as the most prominent fields of social innovation as mentioned in policy documents.

In combination, the framework screening performed in this paper gives indications as to the moderating factors of a favourable national social innovation climate, particularly with regard to policy. More specifically, the paper explores in which way (1) and (2) are connected to (3). For instance one would expect that countries with high SI potential should have more elaborated SI policies. And a liberal country might have higher hopes for social innovation in the fields of health and social services, while a social democratic country would be focussed on social innovation for job creation.


References:

Esping-Andersen, G. (1990). The three worlds of welfare capitalism ([Pbk. ed.].). Cambridge: Polity Press.

Hall, P. A., & Soskice, D. W. (Eds.). (2001). Varieties of Capitalism.: The Institutional Foundations of Comparative Advantage. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press. Retrieved from http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/46969900

Nicholls, A. (2013). The Social Entrepreneurship-Social Policy Nexus in Developing Countries. In R. Surender & R. Walker (Eds.), Social Policy in a Developing World (pp. 183–216). Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.

Salamon, L. M., & Anheier, H. K. (1998). Social Origins of Civil Society: Explaining the Nonprofit Sector Cross-Nationally. VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations, 9(3), 213–248.

Authors