-
Social Innovation and Welfare Reform
Exploring the institutional, normative
and knowledge
dimensions of their relationship through
case studies of
local social innovation for social
inclusion in England and
Flanders.
Pieter Cools
Supervisor: Stijn Oosterlynck
Dissertation for the degree of
Doctor in Sociology
University of Antwerp – Faculty of
Social Sciences
Antwerp, 2017
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2
Social Innovation and Welfare Reform
Exploring their institutional, normative
and knowledge dimensions of their
relationship through case studies of
local social innovation for social
inclusion in
England and Flanders.
Sociale innovatie en welvaartstaathervorming
Een onderzoek naar de
institutionele, normatieve en kennis
dimensies van hun
relatie aan de hand van
gevalsstudies van lokale sociale
innovatie voor sociale
inclusie in Engeland en Vlaanderen
Members of the jury:
Prof. dr. Stijn Oosterlynck
University of Antwerp – Supervisor
Prof. dr. Bea Cantillon
University of Antwerp – chairwoman
Emeritus Prof. dr. Maria Bouverne-‐De
Bie Ghent University
Prof. dr. Maarten Loopmans
KULeuven
Emeritus Prof. dr. Adalbert Evers
Justus-‐Liebig-‐Universität Gießen
Prof. dr. Gert Verschraegen
University of Antwerp
Pieter Cools
Research Centre Inequality, Poverty,
Social Exclusion and The City
(OASeS)
Department of Sociology, University of
Antwerp
Sint-‐Jacobstraat 2, 2000 Antwerp –
Z. 508
[email protected]
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3
For Bompa, a friend of the
homeless.
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4
Acknowledgements
The past years at the
University of Antwerp have been
a privilege in several regards.
I am
grateful for the many interesting
interviews with practitioners, talks
with other academics,
travels, field visits and reading
that I was able to do.
These learning experiences allowed me
to grow as a thinker, a
writer and a person.
This journey was not possible
without my supervisor Stijn
Oosterlynck who offered me an
interesting and challenging job at
a time that I was still
getting by baking fries. He
supported
me throughout the years with his
critical, but always constructive
feedback. He believed in
my capabilities as an academic and
encouraged me to finish what we
started. His work ethic
and they ways in which he
combines a great interest in
theory with being sincerely
interested in and engaged with
practitioners is inspiring to me.
He gave me the freedom to
explore the theory and practice
of our research topic in
a way to that forced me to
take
initiative and learn from my
mistakes. He stimulated and allowed
me to bring in and develop
new insights, ideas and suggestions
in our research project and my
dissertation. I thank him
for that.
I also want to thank the
other members of the PhD
commission Bea Cantillon, Maria
Bouverne-‐De Bie and Maarten Loopmans.
The present text benefited a
lot from pitching my
ideas to them during commission
meetings and at other occasions.
Some of their interesting
suggestions became crucial elements of
my research. I would also
like to acknowledge the
jury members Adalbert Evers and
Gert Verschraegen for their
critical and confident
assessment.
Of course, I also owe gratitude
to the European Commission for
funding the FP7 ImPRovE
research project that employed me
for four stimulating years. I
learned a lot from the
challenging dialogues with the social
scientist of this diverse
consortium and I cherish the
personal relations I built with
our Italian and Austrian
colleagues of the Social Innovation
team. During the project I
lived in London for five months
to carry out the English
case
studies. I benefited a lot from
the hospitality of CASE and its
director Professor John Hills at
the London School of Economics
and Political Science. Living and
working abroad was not
only instrumental to the research,
it was also a valuable
and unforgettable personal
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experience. I am very grateful for
this opportunity. Closer to home
I also want to thank the
OASeS colleagues for the pleasant
times and many talks we had.
A special thank you goes out
to all the social workers,
service managers, project participants
and policy makers who shared
their experiences with me during
the interviews, focus
groups, email correspondence and study
days.
On a more personal note, my
deepest gratitude goes to my
parents, my brother, my sister
and her family, my girlfriend and
my friends for being who they
are and being there for me.
They know that my character and
aspirations did not always fit
well with the expectations,
activities and tempo of academic
life. They saw how I sometimes
struggled and provided me
with the outlets, love, comfort,
conversations and distractions I
needed. The fact that they
did not really care about what
I did exactly, but still
cared enough to appreciate the fact
I
was putting effort in this
topic was important to me. It
helped me to start again
the next
morning after days when I had
forgotten why I was writing
this thesis. Their care, creativity,
honesty and commitment to social
justice always revive and
strengthen my ambitions to
become a ‘wereldverbeteraar’ when I
grow up, despite the fact I
am more than ever aware
of my limits to do so. I
guess that if my academic life
is about reason, the life with
my family
and friends is about poetry. I
love poetry.
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Index Acknowledgements
...................................................................................................................
4 1. Introduction
..........................................................................................................................
8
1.1. Local social innovation and
the provision of welfare
................................................. 8
1.2. The rise and current
state of social innovation
scholarship ....................................
10
1.2.1. An unavoidable quasi-‐concept
.........................................................................
10 1.2.2. Many have tried:
grasping the processes and outcomes
of ‘desirable’ social change 12
1.2.3. Two agenda’s of social
innovation research and practice
................................ 16
1.3. Beyond ImPRovE: From research
experiences to problems and foci.
..................... 19 1.3.1.
Bottom-‐linked social innovation? The
institutional dimension ........................
20 1.3.2. Politics of need
interpretation and the normative
dimension ......................... 24
1.3.3. The epistemic dimension:
Knowledge for social innovation.
........................... 27
1.4. Methodology and methods
.....................................................................................
29 1.4.1. Theory driven case
studies and a meaning oriented
approach ........................ 29 1.4.2.
Data collection and feedback loops
.................................................................
33
1.5. The structure of this
dissertation
.............................................................................
35 PART I: THE INSTITUTIONAL
DIMENSION
................................................................................
38 2. Social enterprises driving
social innovation in changing welfare
regimes: comparing the re-‐use social
economy in England and Flanders
.....................................................................
39
2.1. Introduction: the diverse
trajectories of ere-‐use ECO-‐WISE
.................................... 39 2.2.
The institutionalisation of social
innovation: connecting organisational and
macro-‐level policy making perspectives
........................................................................................
41 2.2. ECO-‐WISE and (social)
policy: case selection and
methodology .............................. 45
2.3. Analysing the differential
institutionalization of re-‐use ECO-‐WISE
in Flanders and England
...............................................................................................................................
48
2.3.1. Different identities and roots
...........................................................................
49 2.3.2. Regional and local
policy embedding
...............................................................
51 2.3.3. Growth, managerialism and
competing logics
................................................. 56
2.3.4. Changing policies and future
challenges
..........................................................
60
2.4. Conclusions
..............................................................................................................
63 3. Local Social innovation
and welfare reform as social
learning: a case study of and
innovative training to work
trajectory in Belgium
..................................................................
66
3.1. Introduction
.............................................................................................................
66 3.2. Social innovation and
welfare-‐institutional change
................................................. 69
3.2.1. Beyond structuralism
.......................................................................................
69 3.2.2. Welfare recalibration and
habits in motion as social
learning ......................... 71
3.4. The case study
..........................................................................................................
77 3.4.1. The development of a
new local social policy instrument
............................... 78 3.4.2.
Changing habits and normative orientations
through deliberation and implementation
..............................................................................................................
83 3.4.3. Learning from Ten
for Cooking?
.......................................................................
86
3.5. Conclusion
................................................................................................................
88 PART II: THE NORMATIVE
DIMENSION
....................................................................................
92 4. Social innovation, ‘parity
of participation’ and the politics
of needs interpretation: Engagement
with Roma migrants in Manchester
...................................................................
93
4.1. Introduction: Migration and
innovation in social service
provision ........................ 93 4.2.
Social innovation as the politics
of needs interpretation
........................................ 95 4.3.
Roma migrants in Manchester: The
emergence of a public concern
...................... 98 4.4. Two
strands of Roma engagement
........................................................................
104
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4.5. Conclusion
..............................................................................................................
109 5. Translating needs into
social rights: urban social
innovation for homeless families in
Ghent
..............................................................................................................................................
112
5.1. Introduction
...........................................................................................................
112 5.2. From needs to rights
in the western welfare regimes
........................................... 114
5.3. SI and the politics of
need interpretation
..............................................................
116 5.4. The right to housing
of homeless families with children
in Ghent ........................ 118
5.5. The Movement Right to
Housing in Ghent
............................................................
120
5.5.1. Publicizing the unmet social
needs of homeless families
............................... 122 5.5.2.
From critique to alternative services:
‘the monastery experiment’ ...............
125 5.5.3. A need to rights
SI perspective as leverage for
recalibrating urban welfare? 129
5.6. Conclusion
..............................................................................................................
131 PART III: THE KNOWLEDGE
DIMENSION
...............................................................................
134 6. Knowledge for social
innovation
...................................................................................
135
6.1. Introduction
...........................................................................................................
135 6.2. Two ideal-‐types of
knowledge production and diffusion
for SI ............................. 138
6.2.1. The positivist mainstream:
Linear change and standardized
knowledge ........... 138
6.2.2. Context-‐sensitivity and tacit
knowledge for transformative alternatives
...... 141 6.3. Using different
types of knowledge for social
innovation .....................................
142 6.4. Findings from the
case studies
...............................................................................
144
6.4.1. Housing First in Europe:
diffusion through an international
community of practice 146 6.4.2.
Re-‐use social economy: proving
impacts for support
.................................... 151
6.5. Conclusions
............................................................................................................
157 7. Conclusions and discussion
...........................................................................................
161
7.1. Case studies on local social
innovation for social inclusion
................................... 161 7.2.
Relating social innovation to
welfare reform: overall conclusions
........................ 163
7.2.1. No ‘neutral’ experiments for
policy reform
................................................... 164
7.2.2. (Public) Institutions matter
............................................................................
165
7.3. Three ‘dimensions’ of SI and
policy change: main findings
................................... 170 7.3.1.
Local SI and welfare-‐institutional
change: bridging the gap?
......................... 170 7.3.2. The
normative dimension
..............................................................................
175 7.3.3. An exploration of
SI knowledge dynamics
.....................................................
180
7.4. How did this research
contribute to the work of
practitioners? ........................... 183
7.5. Outline of a future
research agenda
......................................................................
185
Appendix: Brief description of the
nine ImPRovE case studies I
conducted ......................... 192
References
............................................................................................................................
199
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1. Introduction
Pieter Cools
1.1. Local social innovation and
the provision of welfare
Over the last decade social
innovation (hence SI) reached the
heart of EU policy documents
and Europe’s largest public research
funding programme ‘Horizon 2020’
(Baglioni & Sinclair,
2014; Sabato, Vanhercke &
Verschraegen, 2015). Influential policy
communities at the EU
level promoted SI as a new
‘paradigm’ for social policy
interventions that could
simultaneously tackle issues of
budgetary restraint, unmet social needs
and societal
challenges “with, rather than for,
stakeholders”, holding the promise
of a new “enabling
welfare state” (Bureau of European
Policy Adivsors [BEPA], 2010:
14). In this discourse SI
refers to societies’ capacity to
develop new or alternative
solutions to unmet needs and
societal challenges ‘beyond the
state’ through an active civil
society, social entrepreneurs
and various possible partnerships
between not-‐for-‐profit, for profit
and public actors
(Swyngedouw, 2009; Jenson, 2013, 2015).
Driven by this EU policy
attention and resources,
European SI scholarship expanded vastly
over the past years (see
Brandsen et al., [2016] for
an overview of EU FP funded
research and a ‘co-‐created social
innovation research agenda
for Europe’).
Nowadays policymakers showcase remarkable
high hopes and ambitions to
learn from or
capitalize upon local SI experiences
(cf. Evers & Ewert, 2015).
Given its increasing popularity
within policy circles at the
EU and national levels it is
remarkable the idea that SI
might
provide blueprints for structural
welfare reform received little
resonance in social policy
studies. SI remains largely under
the radar of mainstream social
policy analysis (Ewert &
Evers, 2014; Ayob et al., 2016).
“Social innovation and change through
welfare reform seem
to be quite different topics”
(Ewert & Evers 2014: 424)
as the scope and territorial
scale of
‘institutional change’ and ‘innovation’
in comparative welfare studies
and SI scholarship
differ substantially. SIs are
localized, tailor-‐made and highly context
specific initiatives that
tend to operate at the margins
of institutionalised macro-‐level social
policies (Oosterlynck et
al., 2015). They are therefore
often regarded as (statistically)
insignificant in comparison to
macro level policy schemes and
reform. However, this view is
gradually changing as scholars
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in both fields are calling for
more in-‐depth analysis of how
local SI is implicated in
the on
going transformation of welfare regimes
(Ferrera & Maino, 2014; Cantillon
& Van Mechelen,
2014; Evers & Ewert, 2015;
Oosterlynck et al., 2015).
Over the past four years ‘social
innovation in social policy’ emerged
as a promising field of
scholarship and progress is being
made to think through the
relationships between local SIs
and the transformation of welfare
regimes (see for instance Martinelli
[2013]; Jenson [2013,
2015]; Oosterlynck et al. [2013,
2015, 2016]; Evers, Ewert &
Brandsen [2014]; Sinclair &
Baglioni [2014]; Evers & Ewert
[2015]). Two recent EU funded
FP7 research projects
focussed specifically on analysing
“local social innovations in their
welfare-‐institutional
contexts” (Brandsen et al., 2016:
9) to better understand their
interactive dynamics. WILCO1
(Welfare innovations at the local
level in favour of cohesion)
focussed on specific types of
welfare innovations for social cohesion
in urban contexts. A subgroup
within the ImPRovE2
(Poverty Reduction in Europe: Social
Policy and Innovation) consortium
focussed on the
mutual implication of local SI and
dynamics of macro-‐level welfare
reform.
The present thesis engages with
this on-‐going, multifaceted debate
on the relation between
local SI and social policy
reform. This dissertation presents five
articles that investigate
theoretical and actual relations between
local social innovation against
social exclusion and
social policy reform in European
welfare regimes. These articles
draw on the case study
research that was conducted in
the context of the ImPRovE
project (2012-‐2016). The five
articles focus, predominantly, on
cases from two European regions,
namely Flanders
(Belgium) and England (UK).
Following the tradition of theory
driven case study analysis
(Flyvbjerg, 2006; Eisenhardt &
Graebner, 2007) the articles present
case narratives and
middle range theories to address
more specific research question
within the larger debate
on local SI and social policy
reform. These are structured
along three broad ‘issues’ or
dimensions, namely: dynamics of
institutional change, ‘politics of need
interpretation’ and
the production and use of
knowledge in and on social
innovation. Succinctly stated, the
three parts of this thesis
respectively focus on the
institutional, political and
epistemological
dimensions of the relation between
local SI and reform in the
provision of welfare.
1 Online: http://www.wilcoproject.eu/
(last accessed 30/09/2016) 2 Online:
http://improve-‐research.eu/ (last accessed
30/09/2016)
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This introductory chapter first
discusses the history, definitions
and on going debates in SI
scholarship that will help to
better situate the research problems
and questions of the
thesis. Next it elaborates briefly
on the ImPRovE research
experiences before introducing
the three main dimension and
related research problems more in
depth. Thereafter it
presents case study methodology and
research methods. The closing
section of this
introduction provides a concise overview
of the structure and content of
this dissertation.
1.2. The rise and current state
of social innovation scholarship
1.2.1. An unavoidable quasi-‐concept
Over the past decade the notion
of SI became virtually unavoidable
in various branches of
policy making, entrepreneurship, social
activism and research. Today it
is used to designate a
plethora of creative and alternative
practices, partnerships and service
models with a social
aim that started from a
concrete idea or localized experience
but show the ambition and
potential to have a much
broader impact and become part
of our established way of
addressing social needs (cf. Chambon
et al., 1982; Murray,
Gaulier-‐Grice & Mulgan, 2010;
Moulaert et al., 2013a). Examples
range across various domains and
levels of action from
participatory budgeting or urban
gardening in local communities to
ecological social
enterprises, micro-‐finance, worldwide
solidarity schemes and many more3.
SI discourses and
strategies are being spread through
(regional) SI funds (like ‘De
Sociale Innovatiefabriek’ in
Flanders), global networks (such as
the Social Innovation Exchange
SIX and Ashoka) and
policy offices (such as the
European Commission, the ‘Social
Innovation Mayor’ in Seoul and
the US Whitehouse’s Office for
Social Innovation and Civic
Participation) (BEPA, 2010;
Moulaert, MacCallum & Hillier,
2013; Nicholls, Simon & Gabriel,
2015b). More than ever
people, groups, movements, sectors,
companies, regions, states and
societies describe
themselves as being innovative.
Sometimes it seems that ‘being
innovative’ or ‘being about
social innovation’ is regarded as
a valuable asset irrespective of
why, how and what is
actually taking place (cf. Jessop
et al., 2013).
Because of the various ways
it is used and defined by
academics, practitioners and
policymakers SI is best understood
as a ‘quasi-‐concept’ (EC, 2013).
Its use by scholars as an
3 For a wide range of
examples, case studies and discussion
on social innovation see for
instance ‘The Open Book of
Social Innovation’ (Murray, Caulier-‐Grice
& Mulgan, 2010) and ‘The
International Handbook of Social
Innovation’ (Moulaert et al., 2013a).
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analytical concept ensures it “benefits
from the legitimizing aura of
the scientific method”.
At the same time it has
an indeterminate quality that
“makes it adaptable to a variety
of
situations and flexible enough to
follow the twists and turns of
policy” (Ibid.: 14-‐15) through
everyday politics. While having
reputable intellectual basis its
indeterminate quality and
(ideological) flexibility makes it
vulnerable on analytical and
empirical grounds, which drove
some commentators to question its
added value as an analytical
concept altogether (see for
instance Borzaga & Bodini [2014];
Grisolia & Ferragina [2015]).
As a concept that aims to
grasp dynamics of social change,
SI inhibits “the unavoidable
[normative] tensions that are
always present in any kind of
social change, since all societies
argue about what counts as
social good or social value”
(Mulgan, 2015: x brackets added).
So despite that fact that it
is
so often used SI is very
much surrounded by polysemy,
ambiguity and confusion. Various
definitions are still competing to
delineate the field (see
further). This explains why even
some of its main proponents
describe the relatively young field
of SI research as ‘vague’,
‘pre-‐paradigmatic’ or ‘chaotic’ (Moulaert
et al., 2013b; Sinclair &
Baglioni, 2014; Nicholls,
Simon & Gabriel 2015a; cf.
Nicholls, 2010)
This dissertation engages with SI
as a useful ‘holding concept’
– a concept onto which all
kinds of meanings have been
projected and may thus help to
connect various, related
problems and debates, but is also
ambiguous (Benneworth et al., 2014).
Its added value is in
bringing together different societal
perspectives, academic disciplines and
questions about
change and progress ‘from below’
in late capitalist societies (cf.
Nicholls, Simon & Gabriel,
2015a).
Considered in its historical context
“the appearance of the concept
of social innovation at
the end of the 20th century
is linked to the crisis
of the synergy between the market
and
state” (Brandsen et al., 2016:
12) that reached its pinnacle
during the ‘golden age’ of the
post-‐war European welfare states
(cf. Oosterlynck et al., 2013).
In this regard the five
research articles below are the
result of joining the endeavour
of searching and scrutinizing
promising examples of new synergies
between state, market and civil
society that hold the
promise of addressing unmet social
needs and larger societal
challenges. My search
focussed on three particular
challenges for contemporary European
welfare regimes,
namely: labour market participation of
people at risk of long-‐term
unemployment, the social
inclusion of Roma migrant groups
and access to affordable housing
for people with multiple
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support needs. It is worthwhile
to first situate this search
within the longer history and
debates on SI.
1.2.2. Many have tried: grasping the
processes and outcomes of ‘desirable’
social
change
While it has only become a
buzzword over the past decade,
the concept SI has a much
longer history (Jessop et al.,
2013; Sinclair & Baglioni,
2014; Godin, 2015). Contrary to
popular belief the term is
much older than the Schumpeterian
inspired ‘technological
innovation’ and ‘business innovation’
(Schumpeter, 1942). According to
Godin (2015,
chapter 6) its chequered history
dates back to the early 19th
century where it was initially
used as a pejorative term to
discredit social reformers and
particularly utopian socialist
experiments like those of Fourier
and Saint-‐Simon. The word ‘social
innovation’ emerged in
the context of counter movements
and alternatives to the processes
and disruptive effects
of capitalist development and
industrialization (cf. Jessop et al.,
2013).
The first scholarly work to use
the term SI was in the
field of sociology and is
traced back to
Gabriel Tarde and Frances Hoggan
at the turn of the 20th
century. Back then SI was
not
considered to be ‘for the
better’ by definition. Early research
was concerned with macro
level change, focussing either on
social processes leading to technical
innovation and social
reform or the social consequences
of such innovations (Ayob et
al., 2016: 3). For several
decades the concept played little
or no significant role in
academic debates.
SI re-‐emerged in academic and
social activist circles since the
1970’s. On the one hand it
was
mobilized as a concept to counter
the hegemony of technological
innovation, arguing that
plenty of technologic innovations and
on going societal change should
not be confused with
‘progress’. As such SI was used
to promote a broader, more
socially oriented development
agenda (Moulaert & Sekia, 2003;
Moulaert et al., 2013). On the
other hand and particularly
in France ‘innovation sociale’ was
intimately connected to bottom
up, community-‐ and
solidarity based initiatives. In the
spirit of the post-‐1968
democratization and emancipation
movements it was put forward as
an antidote to the exploitative
logic of the market and the
paralyzing effects of intrusive state
bureaucracy (Chambon et al., 1982;
Oosterlynck et al.,
2015; Godin, 2015). Since the
late 1980’s it was most
prominent in the literature and
practice of regional development
strategies, urban revitalization and
social entrepreneurship
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13
(Sharra & Nyssens, 2009; Oosterlynck
et al., 2013). Over the last
two decades SI spread to a
wide variety of domains including
environmental sustainability, participatory
governance,
planning and design, human resources
management, social inclusion, arts
and creativity,
public governance, social policy and
welfare reform (Moulaert et al.,
2013a; Murray, Gaulier-‐
Grice & Mulgan, 2010).
Bibliometric and content analysis of
SI scholarship since 1989 (Ayob
et al., 2016) shows a
growing contestation over the concept
in the late 1990’s and 2000’s.
Broadly speaking there
were two competing strands. One
that focussed on SI as
processes challenging extant power
relations and another that focussed
on the creation of utilitarian
societal value. The former
focuses on the transformation of
social relations and grew largely
out of the study of social
movements and alternative models for
regional and urban development. The
latter strand
focuses on social impact and is
generally associated with the study
of technological change,
social entrepreneurship and management
science. For many years this
difference in
approach was reflected in different
definitions that focussed either
on process (social
relations) or outcomes (social impact).
While the distinction between a
‘transformative’ and ‘utilitarian’ strand
of SI research and
practice continues to be relevant
(see further), most definitions
now consider SI as both
process and outcome of transforming
social relations (Ayob et al.,
2016). This relatively
recent, ‘consensual’ way of defining
SI is best illustrated by the
definition launched by the
British Young Foundation (2006), perhaps
one of the most widely spread
and adopted by the
European Commission. These organisations
consider SIs as “innovations
that are social in
both their ends and their means”
(BEPA, 2010: 9). They often
specify that SIs are about “new
ideas (products, services and
models) that simultaneously meet social
needs (more
effectively than alternatives) and
create new social relationships or
collaborations” (Ibid.).
The majority of influential SI
definitions nowadays internalize this
double focus on process
and outcomes. However they identify
different key characteristics.
According to Klein and
colleagues (2012: 11) for instance,
SI “concerns the implementation
of new social and
institutional arrangements, new forms
of resource mobilization, new
answers to problems
for which available solutions have
proven inadequate or new social
aspirations”. For
Mumford SI is about “the
generation and implementation of new
ideas about how people
should organize interpersonal activities,
or social interactions, to meet
one or more common
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14
goals” (Mumford, 2002: 253).
Hämäläinen and Heiskala from their
part stress “changes in
the cultural, normative or regulative
structures of the society which
enhance its collective
power resources and improve its
economic and social performance”
(Hämäläinen &
Heiskala, 2007: 74). Moulaert and
colleagues (2005, 2013) also
emphasize the importance of
transforming power relations but add
the empowerment of deprived groups
as a defining
feature. They distinguish three
basic dimensions: (a) the satisfaction
of basic social needs
(content dimension); (b) the
transformation of social relations
(process dimension) and (c)
the increase of socio-‐political
capabilities and access to resources
(empowerment dimension
linking process and content).
Notwithstanding this variety in
identifying the key dynamics of
social change, there is a shared
understanding of the basic elements
of SI processes (means)
and outcomes (ends).
‘Social means’ are generally
understood as social relations. As
such SI implies a
transformation of social relations
through participatory procedures, social
learning and
pursuing a shared interest through
new partnerships and methods of
collaboration and
sharing information (BEPA, 2010;
Oosterlynck & Cools, 2012;
Moulaert et al., 2005, 2013a).
In social services this includes,
amongst others, new methods of
involving clients and various
stakeholders in service governance and
delivery, lowering participation
thresholds, collective
or shared ownership, community
solidarity schemes or support services
and so forth. This
relational perspective also implies that
models and schemes do not have
to be ‘new’ in the
sense of never being invented or
used before. In fact, many
contemporary SIs, for instance
related to collective ownership of
public goods, draw on experiences
from the past (see for
instance De Moor [2013] on the
history of cooperatives). In the
case of SI ‘innovative’ is best
understood as alternative practices
and social relations in a
particular social context (cf.
Sinclair & Baglioni, 2014).
'Social ends' are commonly understood
in their most basic form as
alleviating unmet social
needs. Many authors also propose a
broader understanding, which includes
the prevention
of social risks and tackling
societal challenges or so called
‘wicked problems’ such as poverty,
global warming and challenges
related to migration (Chambon et
al., 1982; Young
Foundation, 2006; BEPA, 2010;
Oosterlynck & Cools, 2012;
Nichols, Simon & Gabriel 2015).
The goals of SI in the field
of social policy can be very
different ranging from enhancing
client
satisfaction or access to services
to lowering the percentage of
people living under the
poverty line or ending homelessness.
It is here, in trying to
identify the ends and triggers
of
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15
SI, that its normative overtones
appear because social needs and
pressing societal
challenges cannot be defined outside
an ethical position and
normative framework
(Oosterlynck et al. 2015; Moulaert,
MacCallum & Hillier 2013).
“In this understanding, ‘social’ is
not defined by being
substantively different from
technical innovation in the
analytical sense (as related to
the relationships of the
actors and their behavioural practices).
Instead social is really used
in the normative
sense of a concept aimed at
the common good (Howaldt &
Schwartz, 2010: 26)”.
Indeed, many recent definitions embed
SI in a normative discourse of
changing societies ‘for
the better’ (Ayob et al., 2016).
However, a clear and explicit
normative argument or criteria
about what distinguishes ‘good’ from
‘bad’ SI is regularly lacking
(European Commission,
2013). This feeds into the
problematic assumption that SIs are
good by definition (Lindhult,
2008; Howaldt & Schwartz, 2010).
It inspires the often heard
phrase that ‘nobody can be
against social innovation’ and the
naïve idea that SI “is an
unproblematic and consistently
positive phenomenon without drawbacks or
unintended consequences” (Nicholls, Simon
&
Gabriel, 2015: 2). Furthermore, it
also informs the (often
implicit) misunderstanding that
socially innovative practices and
policies can be regarded as
politically and normatively
neutral experiments to improve social
systems (cf. Sabato et al.,
2015). The present research
strongly refutes the ideas that
SI is either ‘a neutral
experiment’ or ‘for the better
by
definition’. Instead it regards SI
as being decisively bound up
with politics (cf. Sinclair and
Baglioni, 2014; Mulgan, 2015).
My ImPRovE colleagues and myself
(Oosterlynck et al., 2013, 2015)
aimed to incorporate
these insights when defining local
social innovation in the context
of poverty reduction as
“locally embedded practices, actions and
policies that enable socially
excluded and
impoverished individuals and social
groups to satisfy basic needs
for which they find
no adequate solution in the
private market or institutionalized
macro-‐level welfare
policies.” (Oosterlynck et al., 2015:
4)
In our view, SI involves
processes of generating knowledge
about unmet social needs and
possible responses, social learning
and collective mobilization. Building
on the work of
Moulaert and colleagues (2005, 2013)
we also distinguish three core
dimensions of SI: (a)
the satisfaction of basic social
needs (content dimension); (b)
the transformation of social
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16
relations (process dimension) and
(c) normative claims about ‘being
for the better’ and
producing capacitating, emancipatory
effects for target group participants
(the socio-‐
political dimensions linking process and
content). While SI should not
be considered as ‘for
the better’ by definition, in
practice SI does always entail a
normative claim or utopian
vision. Our third dimension is
therefore different from Moulaert in
the sense that we do not
regard ‘emancipation’ but ‘making
claims about emancipation’ as a
defining feature of SI.
Whether concrete SI initiatives are
indeed emancipatory, empowering or
‘for the better’ is
an empirical question, based on
a particular (and inevitably
normatively grounded)
understanding of emancipation.
The above definitions go some
distance in distinguishing social from
other types of
innovation and identifying key
dimension but leave “fuzzy edges”
in terms of analytical
clarity and the issue of
normativity (cf. Mulgan et al.,
2015). Decades before the current
buzz, Chambon and colleagues (1982)
pointed out that from an
analytical point of view SI is
difficult to demarcate by nature
because it focuses on phenomena
that are emerging
alternatives to, but never entirely
independent or separate from, what
already exists. It is
therefore very difficult to clearly
delineate the phenomenon from its
surroundings and key
factors of failure or success
are often only visible with the
benefit of hindsight. In other
words uncertainty, contingency and
normative ambiguity will always
accompany SI research
and practice to a certain extent.
However, a lot of confusion can
be avoided and competing
agendas and epistemological perspectives
can be identified when the two
aforementioned
SI strands or agenda’s are
distinguished from one another.
1.2.3. Two agenda’s of social innovation
research and practice
Recent bibliometric analysis (Ayob
et al., 2016) and philosophical
reflections on SI
movements (Unger, 2015) came to
a similar distinction between a
‘strong’ or ‘maximalist’
and a ‘weak’ or ‘minimalist’
approaches. The ‘weak’ SI agenda
can be understood as the
largely output or product focused
utilitarian approach “which emphasizes
the societal
impact of any innovation as
defined by changes in aggregate
individual utility” (Ayob et al.,
2016: 14). This tradition aims
to improve the performance of
particular systems or
instruments to address immediate
social needs and problems, without
profoundly
questioning or transforming established
power relations or mainstream
assumptions. The
‘strong’ strand can be understood
as the more radical or
transformative tradition that
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17
focuses on processes of collaboration
and contestation to transform social
(power) relations
in wider society. While also about
developing practical responses to
immediate needs and
problems, in this tradition SI
always points beyond their
specific goal and situation to
suggest a path of reform for
the larger society. It has an
explicit transformative ambition.
The ‘utilitarian strand’ gained
influence throughout the 1990’s and
2000’s. As SI got picked
up in the fields of social
entrepreneurship, management science and
corporate organization
“some of the leading organizations
involved in the fields of
entrepreneurship did
their best to push politics
and argument out. They also
airbrushed out the role of
social movements, contention and
mobilisation” (Mulgan, 2015: xvii).
The more ‘utilitarian’ and functionalist
use of the term does away
with the historical focus
on societal transformation and
collective empowerment. It proposes a
more technocratic
and market-‐logic oriented perspective
that definitely fed into the
current mainstream EU
policy discourse of SI (cf.
Jenson, 2015), which critics have
associated with ‘caring
neoliberalism’4 (Jessop et al., 2013;
See Sabato et al., [2015] for
and overview of how the EU
supported social innovation in the
past decades). While the ‘issue
of normativity’ is certainly
relevant when engaging with the
‘transformative strand’5, which often
explicitly invokes
principles of democracy, justice and
equality, it is equally relevant
for this ‘utilitarian’
strand’, which often portraits
itself as a ‘neutral’ search for
efficiency, effectiveness and
social impact. The latter tends to
be underpinned by market-‐based
ontology and evaluative
standards (Moulaert & Sekia, 2003),
which offers a particularly
influential, but still normative
framework for SI.
The so-‐called ‘utilitarian’ or
‘minimalist’ strand represents an
approach of SI research and
knowledge production that is profoundly
different from the original SI
research (Ayob et al.,
2016) and is nowadays very
influential in evaluations, tendering
procedures, social return on
investment measurements etc. (Antadze
& Westley, 2012; see also
ch. 6).
4 According to Jessop et
al. (2013: 121) “this posture
of ‘minimal social consciousness’
could be summarized as follows:
‘We care about social issues
along with the modernization of
the economy and the improvement
of the economic competitiveness
through R&D and technological
innovation’”. 5 This ‘radical’
tradition (see for instance
Moulaert et al., 2005, 2013;
Novy and Leubolt, 2005) is
regularly designated as ‘the
normative tradition’ (Ayob et al.,
2016). Although these authors
are indeed oftentimes explicitly normative
in their understanding and
assessment of social innovation, I
refute this label because it
insinuates that the other
tradition would be normatively
‘neutral’ and ‘apolitical’.
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18
The present research does not
focus on evaluating or assessing
the social impact,
effectiveness or efficiency of SI
in social policy and social
service provisions. More aligned
with the ‘transformative’ or
‘maximalist’ strand this research is
interested in institutional
change. It focuses on understanding
changing social relations, governance
dynamics and
challenges of concrete practices in
relation to its broader welfare
institutional context and
related critical questions on
universal access, social rights and
the role of the state
(cf.
Unger, 2015).
To focus beyond the direct
impact of concrete initiatives is
particularly important when
studying complex social phenomena like
poverty and social exclusion in
open social systems,
where various factors and schemes
can impact people’s poverty or
social exclusion
experience. In the field of
poverty reduction it has been
argued convincingly that successful
local socially innovative practices
as such are not enough.
Substantial structural
redistribution remains indispensible
(Ravaillon, 2012; Cantillon & Van
Mechelen, 2014; Ghys
& Oosterlynck, 2014; Ghys,
2016). Others point towards a
fundamental tension between
context-‐ and group sensitive
approaches and the welfare state’s
core principle of
guaranteeing universal social rights
to all citizens. They observe
that SI against social
exclusion faces the challenge of
balancing the fulfilment of
diverse needs through
participation with equality through
effective social rights and equal
standards (Novy, Swiatek
& Moulaert, 2012; Andreotti,
Mignioni & Polizzi, 2012;
Martinelli, 2013; Evers, Ewert &
Brandsen, 2014; Oosterlynck et al.,
2015). Lastly and relatedly, the
utilitarian approach is
often associated with policies that
mobilize SI as a paradigm to
pursue efficiency in delivery
and activate civil society and
business resources as a Trojan
horse for state retrenchment
and austerity (Oosterlynck &
Cools, 2012; Grisolia & Ferragina,
2015; Oosterlynck et al.,
forthcoming). It is crucial for
critical scholarship to look
beyond the performance of
individual initiatives to unveil such
political agendas.
In reaction to the current
surge of the ‘utilitarian’ or
‘minimalist’ SI agenda, some of
the
leading scholars in the field are
renewing the idea of SI as
a movement with transformative
ambitions (Unger, 2015; Jessop et
al., 2013). Such a view
puts the political dimension of
social change through SI at
the centre and purposely connects
local responses to unmet
social needs to more systemic
and structural issues by studying
institutional (power)
relations and policies’ often implicit
assumptions about people’s needs and
desirable social
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19
change. Proponents of this perspective
have called for “more research
on the alignment and
misalignment of social innovation
and structural reform” (Mulgan, 2015:
xvii). It is in the
spirit of this ‘maximalist
understanding’ of SI that I
engaged with the study of local
SI in
social policy and questions about
the mutual implication of grassroots
innovation and top-‐
down policy making.
1.3. Beyond ImPRovE: From research
experiences to problems and foci.
The previous sections introduced the
concept of social innovation,
its history and current
uses to broadly situate the
present dissertation in relation to
on-‐going debates. The
following paragraphs provide a more
detailed description of the
research problems that
drove me to write the five
research articles below. These
research problems and my choice
to focus on the institutional,
normative and epistemological
dimensions of the interactive
relationships between SI and social
policy grew throughout the processes
of reading other
research, discussing with colleagues
and most importantly, investigating
concrete cases of
local social innovation in social
services. I conducted nine case
studies for the
aforementioned ImPRovE research project
(2012-‐2016)6. Table 1 provides an
overview and
very brief description of these
cases in alphabetical order (see
Appendix for a more
elaborate, but still brief,
description). In what follows, I
will make clear how the case
study
research decisively shaped the content
and focus of this thesis.
6 The eighteen research
reports I co-‐authored for the
ImPRovE project (including case study
reports, working papers and country
background notes) can be retrieved
online from the page of OASeS
on the ImPRovE website under
‘Papers created by Pieter Cools’
http://improve-‐research.eu/?page_id=406 (last
accessed 20-‐11-‐2016).
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20
Table 1: The nine cases I
studied for the ImPRovE project
Name of the initiative
(Country: B or E)
Brief description
Camden Housing First (E)
Supporting chronic homeless people who
have been stuck in the shelter
system to attain and
maintain their own rent contract
in London.
De Kringwinkel (B)
Flemish network of work integration
social enterprises that organize
re-‐use of used goods. The
report focuses on the network but
zooms in on one large re-‐use
centre in an urban
environment.
DOMO vzw Leuven (B) Preventive
family support for socially excluded
low-‐income families by volunteers in
the
Leuven area.
Emmaüs Monastery Housing
First Experiment (B)
A politically contentious housing first
experiment with Slovakian Roma in
a regularized squat. A
social movement that advocates the
‘right to housing’ in the city
of Ghent supported this
project.
Energy for all (B) Training for
local projects working on energy
poverty. The case study focuses
on a project from
Samenlevingsopbouw that develops funding
and support schemes to replace
inefficient
electrical appliances in the region
Kempen and Westhoek.
Furniture Reuse Network (E)
UK wide network of work
integration social enterprises that
organize re-‐use of used goods.
The
report focuses on the network but
zooms in on one large re-‐use
centre in an urban
environment.
Inspire! NEET programme A project,
co-‐funded by ESF, to get
disengaged youngsters in North London
back into
education, employment or training.
MigRom (E)
Roma engagement project in Manchester,
which is part and parcel of
a FP7 European Research
project on the migration of
Romanian Roma in Europe.
Ten for Cooking (B)
An ESF funded training project for
people on minimum subsistence income,
mainly foreign
language newcomers, to work in the
catering sector in the Leuven
area.
1.3.1. Bottom-‐linked social innovation? The
institutional dimension
The SI-‐team within the ImPRovE
consortium aimed to “analyse the
relationship between
local social innovation and the
changing welfare state […] from
an institutionalist
perspective” (Oosterlynck et al.,
2015: 5). For several years the
study of the relationship
between on going welfare reform
and (innovative) social services at
the local level has been
most central to Italian social
policy scholarship (Kazepov 2008;
Andreotti et al., 2012;
Andreotti & Mingione, 2014),
with their distinction between First
Welfare – large social
security programmes and minimum
subsistence schemes -‐ and Second
welfare – socially
innovative services and initiatives
with and beyond the state.
According to Ferrera and
Maino (2014: 7) “the specific
division of labour between the
two is highly dependent on
country-‐specific legacies and
institutional configurations”. In a
similar vein our general
research interest was driven by
the hypothesis that “different
welfare regimes/systems
produce specific governance arrangements
that create different contextual
condition able to
hinder or to facilitate the
development of SI practices” (Kazepov
et al., 2013: 34). Therefore
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21
we considered the historical, spatial
and institutional context of
different welfare regimes
(referring to the ‘worlds of
welfare’ literature pioneered by
Esping-‐Andersen [1990, 1999])
as an independent variable to
explain dynamics of how local
SIs were governed and found
partners and resources to pursue
their agenda (cf. Emmenerger et
al. 2015).
Recent surveys of the SI
literature (Ayob et al., 2016;
Brandsen et al., 2016) suggest
that
looking at how SI dynamics
and policies relate to different
welfare regimes is indeed a
promising avenue for further research.
However, throughout our case study
analysis it soon
appeared that the way we
aimed to link local SI and
welfare regime typologies failed
to
grasp the complexity of actual SI
processes.
“The collected cases study material,
despite being both rich in
empirical detail as well
as formally organized for cross-‐case
comparison, did not allow us to
test a range of a
priori formulated hypotheses on the
relationship between the
welfare-‐institutional
context and social innovation governance
dynamics […]. We learned that
we cannot
sufficiently explain the governance of
local social innovations based on
a limited set
of welfare-‐institutional variables.”
(Oosterlynck et al., 2016: 4-‐5)
This insight raised various questions
about the research design and
whether it is possible to
determine such a direct relationship.
It can also be regarded as
supporting the argument of
scholars presuming that the local,
urban context might be more
important to understand SI
dynamics than the national welfare
regime type (see for instance
Evers et al., [2014]). In any
case, this learning experience drove
me to move beyond the rather
crude initial hypothesis
of a linear relationship between
welfare regimes and types of
social innovation and the
associated comparative strategy. Starting
from the specificities of the
different case
narratives I engaged in theory
building on particular aspects and
dimensions of the complex
relationships between SI and
welfare-‐institutional change.
The first part of this
dissertation focuses on processes of
welfare-‐institutional change and
presents two articles on cases
in the field of employment
policies (see section 4 of
this
introduction on case selection). It
is the closest to ImPRovE
as it reflects my search for
theories and concepts to bridge
the gap between the perspectives
of local SI and macro-‐
level welfare reform. To investigate
both perspectives in relation to
one another it was
important to overcome the simplistic
distinction between policy reform
evolving either
‘bottom-‐up’ from the local to the
national level (associated with local
SI) or ‘top-‐down’ from
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22
the national to the local
(associated with macro level reform).
Instead I wanted to focus on
what could be described as
‘bottom-‐links’.
Within the social innovation
scholarship Garçia (2006) introduced the
concept of ‘bottom-‐
linked strategies’ to grasp the
importance for local social
innovation projects of gathering
resources and influencing regulation
at different policy levels as
well as the role of
intermediary bodies (like umbrella
organisations, networks, supra-‐local
funding schemes) for
driving social innovation. The idea
of ‘bottom-‐linked SI’ offers a
relational and ‘multi-‐scalar’
perspective that integrates the
insight that contemporary social policy
reform in Europe
develops through processes of multilevel
policymaking (Kazepov 2010, cf.
Cantillon, Popelier
& Mussche, 2011). The importance
of this bottom-‐linked and
multilevel perspective
appeared to me, amongst others,
during the ‘Inspire! NEETs
Programme’ case in North
London. Various training-‐ and outreach
services joined forces and
installed mechanisms to
bear the financial risk of
smaller partners in order to bid
for substantial ESF funding
together. Larger organisations in
the consortium recognized the added
value of smaller
outreach organisations for developing
context sensitive programmes that
reach youngsters
who generally remained under the
radar of larger education and
employment schemes.
Coordinating their efforts in the
usage of EU funding within
national and citywide
regulations these different organisations
drew on their respective local
networks to meet
their goals in the different
boroughs.
Starting from the concrete experiences
and the perspectives of social
innovators operating
‘on the ground’, I drew from
different theoretical perspectives to
relate their ambitions and
challenges to the broader (policy)
context. As such, the historical
welfare regime and recent
policy evolutions still feature as
relevant variables to explain how
SI took shape in my cases,
but the focus is no longer
on unveiling a linear relationship
with a specific type of SI.
Instead
I put much more focus on
the agency of reflexive actors
and how they draw on
various
possible (policy) instruments, logics
and resources to alleviate unmet
needs and drive
institutional change. In my
relational approach to SI and
institutional change I follow
Hollingsworth (2000: 619-‐20) who argues
that for institutional analysis of
innovations “it is
less useful to separate independent
from dependent variables, and
more useful to
understand the interacting and
co-‐evolutionary processes”. The choice
to focus on
interactions rather than considering
SI as the dependent and policy
(regimes) as the
independent variable emerged, for
instance, from the re-‐use social
economy cases. EU level
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23
waste policy after 2002 was
an important enabling factor for
these networks of social
enterprises to expand their
activities. These advantageous policy
developments were at
least partly the result of
intensive lobbying by sector
representatives and their efforts in
co-‐
creating national implementation strategies
and quality standards. In this
instance it would
be problematic to take macro-‐level
policy developments as ‘independent’
variables.
The first of the two articles
in the first part presents
a comparison between two large
networks of re-‐use social economy
firms in Flanders and the UK.
Arguably the closest to the
original ImPRovE approach, it
compares how these social enterprises
and their umbrella
organisation institutionalized themselves
in their respective welfare regime
and how the
institutional context in which they
were trying to embed themselves
shaped their respective
strategies and trajectories. Special
attention goes to the role of
public institutions in
enabling or hampering SI developments.
On a theoretical level, this
paper uses the concept
of ‘welfare mix’, (Seibel, 2015)
which has well developed
research traditions in both the
study of hybrid organizations (Evers,
2005; Bode, 2014) and the
study of different welfare
regimes (Esping-‐Andersen, 1999; Powell
& Barrientos, 2004: 2011).
Focussing on how these
organizational and societal perspectives
are related and drawing on
recent applications of
the Institutional Logic Approach (ILA)
in the study of hybrid
non-‐profits (Skelcher & Smith,
2015), this paper present a
conceptual frame to study the
strategies of innovative social
enterprises in relation to their
institutional context.
The second article presents a
single case study of an
innovative training trajectory for
clients
of a Public Centre for Social
Welfare in a medium sized
city in Flanders. Trying to
better
understand the interactive dynamics
between local social policy innovations
and the
broader policy frameworks this
article zooms in on the micro
dynamics of this innovative
practice and the agency of some
of its key actors who
creatively use the available
resources,
rules and discourse for SI. This
article focuses on ‘social
learning’, a key characteristic of SI
processes (cf. Moulaert et al.,
2013a). The theory of
institutional change as ‘habits in
motion’ (Berk & Galvan, 2009),
which addresses on the micro
dynamics of institutional
change, and the heuristic of
‘welfare recalibration’ (Hemerijck, 2013),
which focuses on on-‐
going macro level welfare reform,
both put social learning at
the centre of their analysis.
Using both perspectives to analyse
the defining features of the
project and the experiences
of those who implement this
innovative policy, this paper aims
to add another layer to
understanding the institutional dimension
of SI in relation to welfare
reform.
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24
1.3.2. Politics of need interpretation
and the normative dimension
Earlier in this introduction
(section 2) I stressed that SI
is not normatively neutral or
inherently ‘for the better’ (cf.
Howaldt & Schwarz, 2010).
The substantial attention I
attributed to this ‘issue of
normativity’ reflects the fact that
it occupied me throughout the
past four years. Some of my
cases, like the occupation of
the Emmaüs monastery to house
Roma migrants in Ghent, were
particularly controversial and ambiguous:
squatting
temporarily realised these families’
social right to housing but what
about the quality of
support and access to housing on
the long term? These experiences
raised questions of how
to appreciate cases of local SI.
It was often not easy to
determine which cases were ‘good’
and which were ‘bad’. The Domo
case of volunteers supporting poor
families, for instance,
only received financial support of
the Flemish government after 20
years of local practice.
Before it was regarded as an
undesirable replacement of professional
care, but when the
Flemish government launched their
‘re-‐socialization of care’ policy the
initiative gained
recognition as an innovative example
that overcomes the presumed
hierarchical relations
and stigmatizing effects of
professional family support. Here the
appreciation of the
initiative changed due to changes
in how policymakers framed
societal challenges and
possible solutions. However, I also
discussed with scholars and
professionals who were quite
critical of this case and
policy evolution, which they critiqued
as offloading public
responsibilities to volunteers in
times of budgetary restraint. These
conflicting views
illustrate that SI initiatives are
not normatively neutral, but
ambiguous and that different
actors could use the label of
SI on the one hand
“as a basis for providing
responsive and user-‐led services
which offer a participatory
and empowering response to social
problems; such an interpretation
could cultivate
community capacity and enhance
resilience. On the other hand,
the SI discourse
could be used to promote a
Smilesean7 idea of self-‐ help
and a justification for
reducing or withdrawing public
services.” (Sinclair & Baglioni,
2014: 474)
Because of this normative ambiguity
and the fact that SI research
is often critiqued for being
too normative (which was also
the case during the ImPRovE
consortium discussions), I
decided to zoom in on the
normative dimension. It appeared
to me that the ‘issue of
7 Referring to the Scottish
author and politician Samuel Smiles
(1812-‐1904) who claimed that poverty
was largely caused by irresponsibly
habits and authored the then
popular book ‘Self-‐help’ (1859) that
opens with the sentence “Heaven
helps those who help themselves”.
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25
normativity’ was mainly situated in
two important elements of SI
research: (a) in the ‘social
ends’ of SI initiatives as
well as the behaviour and often
implicit convictions of social
innovators; (b) in the ambitions
and attempts of researchers and
stakeholders to make
statements about the value of the
initiative and the direction of
social change in relation to
unmet needs and the evolution of
contemporary welfare regimes.
In order to address these issues
I thus first needed a frame
of analysis that would help me
to
unveil the often-‐implicit normative
assumptions at play in concrete
SI processes. This is
important to interpret the meaning
of SI initiatives and
welfare-‐institutional change in
relation to one another. Second, I
needed to explore possible normative
criteria that could
serve to distinguish ‘better’ from
‘worse’ SI in social policy.
This search materialized in two
articles on Roma migrant inclusion
policies that make up the
second part of my dissertation.
To analyse the normative-‐political
dimension of SI I drew on
the work feminist philosopher
and social theorist Nancy Fraser
on ‘politics of need interpretation’
(1989 chapter 7 and 8).
As mentioned above, the normative
character of SI initiatives resides
to a great extent in the
specification of its ends because
social needs and pressing
societal challenges cannot be
defined outside an ethical position
and normative framework (cf. Moulaert
et al., 2013b). SI
is not simply about finding new
ways to better alleviate ‘natural’
or pre-‐determined social