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Chapter 4: Modalities of governing the welfare mix
Stijn Oosterlynck and Pieter Cools
Pre-final version of chapter 4 in: Oosterlynck, S., et al. (2019). Local social innovation to
combat poverty and sociale exclusion: a critical appraisal. Bristol, Policy Press.
<1> Introduction
Social innovation in most cases implies the introduction and mobilisation of new actors,
resources and/or approaches within specific fields of social action (for example housing,
inclusive education and labour market activation) to address unmet needs and tackle complex
societal challenges (Oosterlynck et al., 2019; BEPA, 2011). Social innovation thus adds to what
Kazepov has called ‘the horizontal axis of welfare state transformation’, in which the welfare
mixes of actors and the resources they mobilise that provide social services are changing
through an increasing involvement of various for-profit and civil society actors and the
approaches they typically pursue (Kazepov, 2008; 2010; Ascoli and Ranci, 2002). These
evolutions give rise to the question why new actors, resources and/or approaches are
introduced, which forms and strategies of governance are adopted to organise and steer these
transformed welfare mixes and what the specific role of different types of public actors and
resources in these changing welfare mixes is (Seeleib-Kaiser, 2008: 217-221). Changing welfare
mixes and the governance of various actors, instruments and resources are therefore key
concerns for social innovation research. These issues can be analysed on the macro-level of
welfare regimes (both local and national) or referring to specific fields of social action within
them, but equally so on the micro-level of specific social actions and initiatives and the
networks of organisations and institutions that are behind them. In this chapter, we will focus
on the micro-level of changing welfare mixes in social innovation initiatives and actions and
their governance. (Chapter three does not address welfare mixes as directly as is the case in
this chapter, but deals with some of these issues on the macro-level of welfare regimes and
their overall social policy orientations). In doing so, we adopt a broad, institutionalist view on
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social innovation initiatives and actions and therefore explicitly include the broader
organisational networks and institutional configurations in which these initiatives and actions
are embedded and which include them in our empirical focus as an inherent part of the social
innovation dynamics.
In order to address these issues, the chapter is divided in three parts. We first provide a brief
and focused overview of the relevant literature on welfare mix and social innovation with a
view of identifying the main tendencies in changing welfare mixes and their governance. We
then move on to the empirical analysis, for which we draw on a transversal reading of the 31
ImPRovE case studies. Building on a descriptive analysis of the different welfare mixes of social
innovation initiatives and their strategies and mode of governance, we identify patterns and
typologies in the governance of local social innovations. We attribute particular attention to
the role of public actors, resources and instruments. In the conclusion, we use our empirical
findings to assess the main tendencies on changing welfare mixes as identified in the scholarly
literature.
<1> Social innovation and changing welfare mixes
Social innovation reconfigures boundaries and relations between the state, market and civil
society as three distinctive ‘sources of wellbeing’ in an attempt to better address social needs
and tackle societal challenges (Jenson, 2015; Hämäläinen & Heiskala, 2007). In this context,
Jenson uses the ‘welfare diamond’ – a variant of the often used welfare triangle of state,
market and civil society (Evers, 1995) that includes community as a separate corner (separate
from the family corner) – as a way to visualize of ‘the mixed resources of well-being we all
experience. Each corner (…) is a potential source of well-being and provides instruments for
risk sharing’ (Jenson, 2015: 4). Jenson’s welfare diamond is a helpful way of presenting the
welfare mix as an often-overlooked yet crucial dimension of contemporary welfare systems
(Powell and Barrientos, 2004). The concept goes beyond dichotomous public-private
relationships in welfare provision and is closely related to older concepts like ‘welfare
pluralism’ and ‘the mixed economy of welfare’ (Powell and Barrientos, 2011; Powell, 2007;
Evers, 1995). The ‘welfare mix’ can be generally defined as the ‘combined interdependent way
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in which welfare is produced and allocated between state, market, family and the third sector’
(Longo et al., 2015: 2; Powell and Barrientos, 2011: 76; Esping-Andersen, 1999).
As already alluded to in the introduction of this chapter, the term ‘welfare mix’ is used in
various ways in the literature on welfare systems. Based on an extensive literature review,
Longo and colleagues (2015) usefully distinguish between three approaches to the study of
welfare mixes, focussing on different aspects. The ‘welfare provision approach’, which is
closely associated with comparative welfare studies (Esping-Andersen, 1999), adopts a macro-
level perspective focussing on the supply and production of welfare using theories of different
societal institutions relying on different regulatory principles, notably reciprocity,
redistribution and exchange (Polanyi, 1957 [1944]). The ‘regulation and governance approach’
focuses more specifically on different dynamics and instruments of funding, production,
delivery, regulation and decision-making (Burchardt, 2013). The third approach, labelled as
‘norms, values and relationships’, focuses on the micro-level relations between various actors
as well as values and arguments that promote welfare participation and bringing together
different actors, logics, resources and values in the provision of welfare. It is this third
approach, firmly focused on the micro-level of social innovation initiatives, which provides our
analytical entry point here, but we also draw on the other two approaches to contextualise
micro-level dynamics. This means that our analytical focus lies on the more or less informal
and pragmatic intermeshing and hybridization of different resources, instruments,
institutional logics and normative frames in actual social innovation initiatives, but when
possible contextualized within the formal institutional arrangements between the public,
private for profit and private non-profit sector (Evers, 2005; Seibel, 2015).
It is evident that these approaches and the welfare mix dynamics on the respective levels are
highly connected. As Seibel argues: ‘what we observe at the macro level, focusing on entire
countries and their respective ‘welfare mix’ in terms of institutional arrangements and division
of labour between the private, the public and the third sector [and families], necessarily
impacts upon the actual relationship of those institutional components at the local level’
(Seibel 2015:1762) and vice versa, we may add. Although we do not focus explicitly on the
interaction between welfare dynamics on various levels in this chapter (see chapter 5 for an
analysis of the multi-scalar governance of social innovation), the evolutions in the welfare mix
identified in literature focusing on the macro- and meso-level are the background against
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which our research focus on the micro-level has to be read. Moreover, in the empirical analysis
we will pay some attention to how the intermeshing and hybridization of actors, resources
and logics varies according to the formal institutional arrangements of the welfare mix at the
national level and in specific policy fields.
As Ferrera observes, contemporary scholarly interest in changing welfare mixes stems largely
from observations that ‘welfare policies are currently undergoing changes in which familiar
state and market centred approaches are being blended with various other arrangement with
the result that allegedly contradictory patterns have emerged in terms of the social
distribution of the responsibility for welfare’ (Ferrera, 2008: 517). Surely, the historically
evolved involvement of different actors in welfare provision through formal and informal
arrangements is nothing new (Esping-Andersen, 2002, Bode, 2006). Welfare systems have
always been mixed and despite the wide use of the notion of the ‘welfare state’, welfare
provision has never been a purely public affair (Spicker, 2008; Garland, 2014). What is new is
that the roles and responsibilities of these various actors in welfare provision have changed
profoundly. These dynamics of welfare state transformation include the emergence of a host
of ‘new social risks’ (Bonoli, 2005), the rescaling of governance in social policy (see chapter 5
in this volume; Brenner, 2004; Kazepov, 2010), a context of ‘permanent austerity’ (Pierson,
2001) and the evolution towards a more ‘active’ and ‘enabling’ welfare state, driven by the
‘social investment paradigm’ (Morel et al., 2012).
When discussing innovations in the roles and responsibilities of various actors in welfare
provision, we are inevitably touching on the issue of governance. Hence, it is important to
reflect upon various modes of governance. Governance, according to Jessop, is ‘any form of
coordination of interdependent social relations’ (Jessop, 2002: 52). Three modes of
governance are generally distinguished: exchange, self-organisation and hierarchy. The first
mode is most often associated with competitive market forces, but also refers to the quasi-
markets created by states. The second mode is pre-dominantly associated with the rhizomatic
operation of networks, often (but not uniquely) located in civil society (but this should not
lead attention away from the hierarchies that are more often than not implicated in the
operation of actually existing social and inter-organisational networks). The third mode is
commonly associated with state bureaucracies, but may equally well be a feature of large-
scale private organisations. It is an open question whether one particular mode of governance
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facilitates social innovation better than others, a question which we will address empirically
later on in this chapter. According to Sorensen and Torfing’s analysis of ‘public innovation’,
each mode of governance may contribute to innovation: ‘Hierarchies might contribute to
public innovation by establishing stable routines for adapting to new conditions and mobilizing
their vast amount of resources and expertise in processes of exploration and exploitation
(March and Olsen, 1995) and the creation of quasi-markets in the public sector is likely to
enhance innovation through increased competition and user orientation (Lubienski, 2009).
However, a third source of public innovation is provided by network-based forms of
collaboration, which may even compensate some of the deficiencies of hierarchies and
markets’. (Sorensen and Torfing, 2011: 845).
Social innovation has a historical affinity with bottom-up critiques of the hierarchical and
bureaucratic nature of the welfare states and the standardized, top-down nature of the social
services they provide and of the limitations of markets in societies divided by class and other
cleavages. In these contexts, markets often cannot cater for the social needs of the poor and
socially excluded (Bode, 2006; Chambon, et al., 1982; Ewert and Evers, 2014). It is hence often
assumed that concrete practices of social innovation will be rooted in network-based forms
of collaboration (Moulaert, 2010). Social innovation shares with collaborative innovation an
awareness of the limitations of competition in fostering innovation and the importance of
establishing relationships of trust and reciprocity in multi-actor contexts. From a critical
perspective, however, it may be argued that the emancipatory critique of large central
hierarchically structured organizations has underestimated the possibility that going beyond
hierarchy might not lead to more civic networks, but to the introduction of marketisation
dynamics in social policy, for example through the creation of quasi markets via public
engineering. Therefore, we need to analyse empirically if and how different forms of
governance are entangled in actually existing social innovation initiatives.
In the literature, different observations are made as to how welfare mixes and their
governance are changing. We will now briefly discuss these observations to set the scene for
our empirical analysis. The first observation has to do with the diminishing role of the state as
the dominant actor in the welfare mix. Nowadays the state has difficulties in steering the social
services and transfers to address the social risks produced in labour markets, leading to the
increasing involvement of for profit and civil society actors (Bode, 2006). A common
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characteristic of post-war Western European welfare regimes was the ‘system-wide
coordination via negotiated public-private partnerships’ (Bode, 2006: 347), with ‘a tight
coupling of civil society and welfare state’ (Bode, 2006: 354) and ‘public actors moderating
(but not prescribing) inter-agency cooperation’ (Bode, 2006: 349). This ‘organised welfare
mix’, which was supported by an interventionist state and coordinated market economy, has
over the past four decades given way to what Bode calls a ‘disorganised welfare mix’ due to
the rise of disorganised capitalism and individualisation. In this disorganised welfare mix,
public-private partnerships have become more volatile, amongst others because public
institutions are increasingly changing their funding procedures and engagement strategies
with civil society partners towards a competitive, short term and performance-based model.
Overall then, the literature suggests that the state still remains a key player and the main
financing institution in the welfare mix, but the way in which it engages has been transformed
towards market-based service provisioning and networked governance (to be discussed later).
The second observation, often referred to in the literature (Gerometta et al., 2005; Unger,
2015), is that the civil society sphere, or non-profit private actors, is the pre-dominant
resource for innovation in welfare provisioning. Ewert and Evers explain this with reference
to the ‘centralism’ and ‘state bias’ in both the academic literature on and concrete reality of
social policies (Bode, 2006; Ewert and Evers, 2014). The social regulation of market societies
tends to foreground the role of central states in welfare provision and this results in
hierarchically governed and standardised services (Evers, 2005). Civil society organisations are
involved here, notably in collective interest representation, but the ‘big politics’ and struggles
of interest they are drawn into weakens their local action and citizen participation dynamics.
In response to the dominance of the central state in welfare provision and the perceived
limitations of the standardised and hierarchically steered social services and policies, civil
society organisations engage in social innovation to improve the interaction between social
service providers and users and invest in citizen’s capabilities and develop tailor-made (rather
than standardised) and individualised solutions to new social risks (Ewert and Evers, 2014). To
these ends, civil society organisations develop new partnerships and build networks, thus
engaging in collaborative governance innovation. Also, as a result of changes in the strategies
of state institutions mentioned earlier, the partnership of civil society organisations with the
state have become more unstable and volatile (performance and project-based), instilling a
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restless search for cost cutting and innovation in social services with civil society organisations
(Bode, 2006).
The third observation is about the increased role of market relations and/or for-profit actors
in welfare provision. Jenson claims that social innovation provides ‘a novel way to reconfigure
market relations in support of social policy initiatives, particularly those that fall under the
heading of social investments and seek to address the new social risks’ (Jenson, 2014: 6).
Indeed, one rather prominent strand in social innovation practices promotes ‘market-like
behaviour and social entrepreneurship’ (Jenson, 2014: 9), by some critical authors referred to
as ‘caring neoliberalism’ (Peck, 2013). As Ewert and Evers claim: ‘it has become fashionable to
equate social innovation with social entrepreneurship’ (Ewert and Evers, 2014: 8). On the basis
of large-scale EU-wide research on service innovations, they observe that one of its shared
features across Europe is the stimulation of entrepreneurship in how organisations are
governed. One of the implications is that for social organisations fundraising activities,
performance monitoring, economic ‘sustainability’ and communication management are
increasingly becoming a governance requirement because they compete on quasi-markets
and are confronted with stakeholders that demand value for money (Bode, 2006).
The fourth observation relates to the rise of networked forms of governance in social
innovation. Sorensen and Torfing propose, in the context of a paper on public sector
innovation, the existence of a third source of innovation next to markets and states, namely
collaborative networks (Sorensen and Torfing, 2011). They observe that it is not a single actor
but collaborative networks between a range of public and private actors that create
innovation, a phenomenon that they call ‘collaborative innovation’. Collaborative innovation
is less based on inter-organisational competition or stable and resourceful rule-based systems
than on the establishment of relationships of trust that can support ‘collaborative processes
through which problems are framed and new solutions are crafted and selected’ (Sorensen
and Torfing, 2011: 844). Evers equally notes the rise of ‘hybrid organisations’ in social service
provisioning, which is predicated on a diminished role for the state and its centrally decided
and monitored universal standards and the blurring of the boundaries between the public and
the private sector (Evers, 2005). These hybrid organisations are steered through various
mechanisms, notably networks, and crucially draw on the presence of non-state organisations
and their social capital.
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In what follows, we present an empirical analysis of changing welfare mixes and their
governance as it appears in the 31 concrete cases of local social innovation combatting
poverty that we studied in the ImPRovE project (see chapter one for the selection criteria and
methodology of case study research). We focus mainly on welfare mix as the ‘on the ground’
combination of various actors, resources and societal logics, but also pay attention to how
these evolving configurations are shaped by the formal institutional arrangements between
the public, private for profit and private non-profit sector. We investigate which actors,
resources and instruments SI initiatives draw on, why they draw on this combinations of
actors, resources and instruments, which mode of governance characterise the SI initiative,
which role there is for public institutions and whether there are conflicts and competition
between the different involved actors.
<1> The governance of the welfare mix: empirical insights
<2> Mapping the welfare mix: which actors do SI initiative draw on?
A descriptive analysis of the actors, resources and instruments that underpin social innovation
initiatives is a necessary starting point for a more interpretative analysis of the dynamics of
welfare mixes and the ways in which they are governed. Our entry point in the analysis here
is the welfare mix that is mobilised by specific SI initiatives rather than the overall welfare mix
in a social policy domain or around a certain social risk profile (although it should be pointed
out that the latter very much structures the terrain for the former). This requires a mode of
governance that works to integrate the various actors, resources and instruments that
constitute a certain socially innovative initiative, but also often seeks to embed itself in the
welfare mix and its governance arrangements in a specific social policy field or with regard to
all initiatives targeting a specific social risk profile.
A first, rather straightforward, cut into our empirical material is provided by looking at which
actors (and their resources) are mobilised by specific initiatives. We categorise these actors in
three basic categories: not-for-profit private, for profit private and public actors. Given that
we compare across eight different countries, each with their own historically evolved specific
welfare mix, it would be rather complicated to use more fine-grained categories. The exercise
is anyway useful given the stress in social innovation research on the weakened role of the
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(central) state and the increased role of civil society actors and for profit actors as privileged
initiators of social innovation. The focus here is not on all actors involved in the social
innovation initiative, but only on those that initiated and take central responsibility in the
initiative
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. This, of course, does not deny that in order to realise the innovation concept, other
actors and resources were required.
Our research confirms the leading role of civil society organisations and – although to a lesser
degree – public institutions in initiating and driving social innovation initiatives
2
. In almost half
of our cases civil society actors (private not-for-profit organisations) are initiators (see table
4.1). Public institutions are among the initiators in half of the cases, but they often do so in
combination with civil society actors, once again confirming the leading role of civil society
organisations in social innovation. Private for profit organisations play only a small role in
initiating social innovation initiatives in our sample. A first finding, therefore, consists in
stressing the civic and public character of SIs.
< Table 4.1. here >
There is some significant variation across countries. Most notably, the public sector is involved
in social innovation in all seven countries we analysed, but only dominates in Sweden. In
Flanders (Belgium), Italy, Austria, Hungary and the UK not-for-profit organisations are
dominant in initiating social innovation initiatives. This suggests that SI introduces changes in
the welfare mix in any national welfare regime
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, with a more important role for civil society
organisations in innovation in welfare provisions (with the notable exception of Sweden where
public institutions take a central role in social innovation). Civil society organisations dominate
as initiators and drivers of social innovation in all researched domains, whereas public
institutions do often take on a key role in initiating and leading social innovation in the field
of labour market activation and housing, but not in inclusive education.
<2> Why draw on wider or new variety of actors, resources and instruments?
There is a variety of reasons why socially innovative initiatives draw on a wider variety of
actors, resources and instruments. Through a transversal reading of the cases, we identified
six reasons for innovating the welfare mix. We discuss each of these reasons in turn: explain
what they entail, how often they occur and assess how this varies depending on which type
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of actor initiates or takes central responsibility in the social innovation initiative. The reasons
identified for widening or renewing the welfare mix in particular initiatives are derived from
what is mentioned in the interviews with stakeholders and/or in the relevant documents
analysed for the case studies – hence from the perceptions of one or more of the involved
stakeholders.
The first and most often mentioned reason (see table 4.2) for innovating the welfare mix is to
get access to complementary expertise. The actor initiating the social innovation initiative
does not have all the expertise that is required to address a certain social need or societal
challenge and involves other actors and their instruments and resources. The vast majority4
of all our cases mention this as a reason to justify the specific welfare mix in their initiative.
The HIPPY program, for example, is an internationally renowned program in the field of early
childhood intervention (CS11). The program aims to support parents from disadvantaged
families in their role of preparing their four to six year-old children to go to school. In Austria,
HIPPY was initiated by beratungsgruppe.at, a non-profit association that is active in the field
of self-help in adult education. As the project employees go to the homes of the target families
to provide integrated support to families, the success of the project is dependent on networks
and co-operation with schools, nurseries, the local public administration and non-profit social
service providers and immigrant associations in the neighbourhood.
There is no big variety between the types of actors initiating the initiative, with the only
exception that all public actor-initiated social innovation initiatives mention this reason. This
suggests that – in line with the shift from government to governance – public actors most
urgently perceive that at least a part of the expertise they feel they need to address social
needs and societal challenges is outside their own organisation. In Sweden, where the public
sector has a dominant role in initiating social innovation, this often implies public-public
cooperation, e.g. the Språk-stödjande insatser initiative (CS25), which provides job matching
and language support for unemployed refugees and immigrants in Stockholm. The Språk-
stödjande insatser is an organisational unit of Swedish for Immigrants, which itself is a
municipal educational institution operating under the Stockholm City Labour Market
Administration, but cooperates with Jobbtorg Stockholm, which is the public activation agency
for citizens receiving income support, and the Swedish Public Employment Service. The job
coaches and job matchers from Jobbtorg and the caseworkers from the Employment Service
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send applicants to the initiative and follow up their training trajectory together with the
initiative’s professionals, amongst others through monthly meetings to discuss and exchange
information about the user’s progress and on employment and job training opportunities.
A second, very often mentioned reason for widening and renewing the welfare mix is to
improve the organisational capacity for the implementation and coordination of social
innovation initiatives. We take implementation and coordination together since these both
concern the building of institutional capacity around social innovation initiatives. In slightly
more than half of our cases, improving the implementation and coordination capacity of the
social innovation initiative is an important reason to innovate the welfare mix. Interestingly,
for social innovation initiatives initiated and led by not-for-profit organisations,
implementation and coordination is only in a very small minority of cases (around one in ten)
mentioned, whereas for initiatives led by all other types (or combination) of actors, including
initiatives led jointly a by non-profit organisation and a public sector actor, implementation
and coordination is for the majority of the cases a reason to widen and extend the welfare
mix. This suggests that not-for-profits are not engaging in social innovation to improve the
coordination and implementation of their initiatives, which may be because they have
sufficient implementation and coordination capacity on the ground or can be more flexible in
their operations than public sector organisations. When looking at the initiatives led jointly by
a non-profit organisation and a public sector actor, we observe that both of them take on
coordination and implementation roles. In the Housing Debt Intermediation Service (SIDH) in
the province of Barcelona (CS29) for example, the Provincial Government of Barcelona takes
on the role of integrating different resources and services that are already present in its
territory (such as legal advice, negotiation with financial institutions, social support), but were
acting in a fragmented and less effective way. In the Italian co-housing project Io Cambio
Status (CS03), which is specifically directed at supporting NEETS in their transition to
adulthood, it is the non-profit association School of Social Training that integrates different
actors and their interests (such as providing co-housing, supporting NEETs and promoting
active participation) in the same project.
The third reason is an explicit concern with innovation, for example with developing new ways
of addressing social needs and societal challenges. In nearly half of the cases, innovation is
mentioned as a reason to draw on a particular welfare mix. This suggests that the source of
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social innovation is – at least in the perception and intention of the actors involved – partly
located in the mix of actors and their associated instruments and resources. This supports the
collaborative innovation model proposed by Torfing and Sorensen, showing that networked
co-operation in itself could be a source of innovation. One example of the collaborative
innovation model, one in which considerable time and energy are spent to adapt the network
to the challenges that are met, is the CaixaProInfancia initiative in Spain (CS30). This initiative,
led by the private fund La Caixa Foundation (linked to Caixa Bank), aims to address high levels
of child poverty in Spain through an integrated system of benefits, goods and services
embedded in a specific socio-education approach. La Caixa Foundation developed a specific
privately-dominated welfare mix, including knowledge institutions (initially private sector
consultants, later a university-based research institute), a network of social services
organisations and, in a later stage, local public administrations to address inefficiencies and
territorial overlaps, with the explicit aim to engineer a shift from a public assistance-oriented
social programme to a transformative public- private social educative model.
Public-sector-led initiatives score particularly well here, suggesting that public actors perceive
higher social innovation capacity within civil society organisations. An example of a public
sector-led social innovation initiative that created a new welfare mix to innovate is the
Housing First Stockholm (CS26). The housing first model, which was pioneered in the US to
provide housing stability to citizens with mental disease or substance abuse, was not yet
introduced in Sweden. Housing First Stockholm is funded and led by the municipality. In order
to tailor the model to Swedish circumstances (e.g. working with clients with a long history in
receiving social services rather than with people outside the welfare services as is mostly the
case in US-based housing first initiatives) the University of Lund is involved to monitor and
evaluate the initiative. Also, a method developer was appointed to supervise the
methodological implementation of the model through a learning-by-doing process and the
case managers from NGO’s and municipal social services monitor client experience with the
objective to maintain housing stability.
A fourth reason to transform the welfare mix is to strengthen the outreach to vulnerable
groups and establish trust with it (mentioned in roughly one third of the cases). A good
example of this is the non-profit employment project Sewing Workshops (‘Nähwerkstatt’)
directed at immigrant women in the city of Graz, Austria. This is an initiative of the non-profit
13
association ERfA (ERfAhrung für Alle), which has experience in low-threshold employment
initiatives, but not with immigrant women. For this reason, they collaborated with SOMM, a
self-organisation of migrant and Muslim women, which could in this way offer follow-up
trajectories for their basic education courses. Remarkably, none of the public actor-led social
innovation initiatives mentioned this reason, although – due to their more formalised and
bureaucratic operation – one could expect a bigger need to reach out and build trust with
marginalised groups. The three cases of initiatives that are led jointly by a public sector actor
and a not-for-profit organisation and refer to outreach and trust-building as a reason for their
welfare mix, provide examples in which not-for-profit organisations are mobilised to that end:
Roma associations in the case of Thara, an initiative to improving the labour market access for
Roma in Austria (CS12); Roma outreach workers in the case of the Migrom research and
capacity building program in cooperation with Manchester City Council (CS16) and the social
movement PAH (‘Platform of people affected by foreclosures’) in Barcelona that created
awareness of foreclosures as a collective condition, thus taking away personal stigma and
legitimising a collective solution (CS29).
A fifth reason for drawing on this new or wider set of actors, mentioned in a significant number
of cases, is to mobilise resources. For example, the Ten for Cooking project in the Belgian city
of Leuven aims to simultaneously enhance the labour market chances of participants and
meet the needs of the catering sector that is struggling with labour market shortages. The
publicly financed sector fund ‘Horeca Vorming Vlaanderen’ acts as a partner and pays for
every training trajectory that leads to a well-trained catering employee. This reason refers to
the common criticism of social innovation as an attempt to offload public responsibilities to
civil society organisations. Although we did observe examples of this trend, both in public
sector-led and non-for-profit organisation-led social innovation initiatives, as far as our cases
are concerned it clearly is not the main dynamics. A good example of how the welfare mix is
innovated in an attempt to address a shortage of financial resources in the public sector is
Tradate Solidale (CS23). This initiative is an attempt of the municipality of Tradate in Northern
Italy to generate new resources for the local welfare system by activating local community
and third sector organisations and integrating social and activation measures in one
intervention.
14
The final and sixth reason mentioned for pursuing a particular welfare mix, but only in a few
cases, is the strategic coupling of aims and instruments from different policy sectors. This is
the case for example in the ecological work integration social enterprise Kringloopwinkel in
Belgium (CS08). In this case the welfare mix results from a strategic coupling of environmental,
employment and poverty goals and the mobilisation of instruments (for example subsidised
jobs for the long term unemployed and municipal environmental agreements) from waste and
employment policy to support the development of a successful and institutionally well-
embedded social innovation. This mostly occurs in not-for-profit organisation-led social
innovation initiatives.
< Table 4.2. here >
<2> What are the modes of governance used in social innovation initiatives?
In line with most of the literature on governance, we distinguish three broad modes of
governance (Jessop, 2002): hierarchical, networked and exchange-based modes of
governance (see definitions earlier). Overall, on the basis of our 31 case studies, we observe
that in a large majority of social innovation initiatives, more or less horizontal forms of
cooperation are the dominant mode of governance, thus supporting the importance of
networked based forms of collaboration in stimulating social innovation (see table 4.3). For
example, the Overindebtedness Help Desk (Sportello contro l’Eccessivo Indebitamento) in
Venice, Italy (CS04) is based on a collaboration between the ethical finance cooperative MAG
Venezia and the municipality of Venice. This collaboration, which was prepared through
previous cooperation between MAG and municipal social services, grew when both actors
developed a shared understanding of the need of indebted citizens for social support,
awareness raising on the causes and consequences of debt and the re-negotiation of debts
with financial institutions. In another case, networked forms of governance are applied to
organize public-public cooperation to stimulate social innovation. In ‘The Right Step’ (Rӓtt
Steg) initiative in Stockholm (CS27), the national and local public actors Swedish Employment
Service, Jobbtorg Stockholm, Swedish for Immigrants and the administrations of 14 districts
of Stockholm overcame the classical divisions between them and jointly developed a coherent
strategy to support newcomers in their access to labour market. In an attempt to address the
blurred role for local and national authorities in active labour market policies, which is caused
15
by the decentralisation of the Swedish Employment Service, they set up units composed by
officials coming from the different public actors to stimulate the participation of newcomers
in education, vocational training and/or employment preparation activities. Remarkably, third
sector organisations and private employers are not considered as formal governance partners
in the Rätt Steg initiative.
< Table 4.3. here >
It is important here to warn against a naive understanding of networked forms of governance
as devoid of power asymmetries (Davies, 2011). The National Movement for Popular Housing
UNMP (União Nacional por Moradia Popular) (CS21) is a popular social movement in Brazil
that combines movement building and collective empowerment with service delivery to
individual households through housing construction and land purchase. Through sustained
political mobilisation and alliance building they succeeded in embedding the principles of self-
management in a small part of the public housing policy program (Minha Casa, Minha Vida –
Entidades or ‘My House, My Life – Entities’) and foster a public-civic-partnership, despite
hierarchical and exchange-based modes of governance dominating the biggest part of the
public housing program, which is dominated by private corporations.
In just a few number of social innovation cases, a hierarchic mode of governance is dominant.
These cases include Hungarian charity shops that are integrated in large NGOs that
redistribute profits of shops to fund social services in other parts of the organisation (CS15),
the Thara project to improve labour market access for Roma that was conceived top-down by
the Austrian Public Employment Service in a response to European anti-discrimination
initiatives (CS12) and the UngBo initiative, in which the municipality of Malmö in Sweden used
its political and regulatory power to bring private building companies in a public-private
partnership firmly led by the municipality to develop solutions to address the shortage of
affordable housing for young people (CS28).
In just a few other of cases exchange is the main mode of governance. Governance of socially
innovative initiatives is done through subcontracting, tendering, project competition and
output financing. One example is the initiative of the Education Business Partnership Inspire!
In London to provide ‘wrap-around support’, personalised learning, work experience and
professional and pastoral support to young people not in education, employment or training
16
or at risk of becoming so (NEETs) (CS31). It is funded with public resources and managed by
Inspire!, but the delivery is contracted out to a wide variety of local partners responsible for
providing the services that together constitute a personalised learning trajectory for NEETs.
Most of the cases of social innovation in our sample combine two or more modes of
governance (see table 4.4)
5
. Of those using only one mode of governance, all but one are
governed through networked forms of cooperation. The most popular form combines
networked and hierarchical forms of public-civic governance. One example is the case of the
study halls (tanoda) for Roma and vulnerable children in Hungary (CS17). Children are placed
in a ‘self-help’ local peer group that is supported by local networks of teachers, social workers,
parents and local schools, which together provide tutoring and mentoring, arts and crafts
activities and community and outdoor events in multifunctional community spaces. However,
government funding, which the financially rather fragile study halls need to survive,
introduces hierarchical elements of governance. The government imposes without dialogue
cooperation with public schools, which are not always supportive, and all matter of formal
infrastructural, material and personal requirements that are often difficult to live up to for the
volunteer-driven study halls. Another case in which networked and hierarchical elements of
governance jointly support the innovative dynamics of initiatives is the aforementioned
Tradate Solidale case (CS23), in which – due to financial constraints and the ambition to better
integrate the welfare mix – partnerships are forged with social service providers in the local
third sector. This allows the municipal government to transform its role from social service
provider to mainly coordinator of a complex network of social organisations, thus putting itself
into a more (albeit moderately) hierarchical governing position.
< Table 4.4. here >
The combination of networked and exchange-based forms of governance occurs but is not
very common. In the Camden Housing First initiative, the Camden Borough Council through
its Housing Commissioning and Partnership Team organises a tendering procedure to contract
this service for the homeless out to a non-public service provider (CS14). The latter then
mobilises a network of service providers to support individual clients.
Finally, there are also a few cases that combine all three modes of governance. One example
is the mature social innovation of the ecological work integration enterprises Kringloopwinkel
in Flanders (CS08). They combine networked forms of governance, by for example teaming up
17
with municipal governments in local waste management policies, with a certain degree of
hierarchical governance due to their dependence on the provision of subsidised employment
for the long term unemployed by the Flemish government. Exchange-based governance
occurs through competition for consumers (an important source of self-generated income)
and private for profit environmental service providers. We can conclude, firstly, that networks
are a crucial part of the governance of social innovation and the underlying welfare mixes.
Even though horizontal forms of collaboration and cooperation are not the main source of
innovation (in terms of the development of a new idea for a service or product) (see previous
section), in the day-to-day operation of social innovation initiatives networked modes of
governance prove indispensable. The second conclusion is that governing the welfare mix of
socially innovative initiatives in the majority of the cases relies on the combination of networks
with the strengths of hierarchy and/or exchange-based modes of governance. This is an
important reminder not to uncritically elevate networks as the only mode of governance
capable of stimulating and steering social innovation, a reminder that is especially important
in the context of the anti-bureaucratic criticisms that lie at the roots of the revival of social
innovation. We will now further elaborate on this by focusing specifically on the role of public
institutions in the welfare mix of social innovation initiatives in the next section.
<2> The role of public institutions in the welfare mix
Despite the fact that civil society organisations mostly take the lead in setting up socially
innovative initiatives, we observe the involvement of public institutions, resources and
instruments in almost all cases, highlighting that public institutions, resources and instruments
remain a crucial actor in the welfare mix in Europe. Of the 26 cases of social innovation
initiatives in our sample that aim for some form of government support, only three received
no public financial support at all. This nuances strong claims about social innovation being a
mere vehicle for across the board welfare state withdrawal (although as we will see, there are
examples of this trend in the cases too). There are a number of exceptions to this overall
trends towards public sector involvement in social innovation initiatives of course and these
often bear witness to the anti-bureaucratic undercurrent in the social innovation movement
(Unger, 2015). Take for example Domo (CS09), a buddy system for disadvantaged families with
young children in Flanders. Domo organises for volunteers to provide personal and informal
18
support to families (‘supportive friend’) that according to them professionals cannot offer due
to the professional and policy frameworks within which they operate. To distinguish their
model from the professional approach of the child wellbeing services of the government and
keep their autonomy, they have long steered clear of involvement with the public sector.
(Domo now pursues a more reconciliatory approach towards the public sector and acquired
official recognition and structural funding through a public scheme that recognises crucial
elements of their approach such as not using output criteria to assess families and maintaining
the privacy of their participants.)
If we concentrate on public funding for social innovation initiatives (see table 4.5), local, for
example either municipal or provincial, public funding is crucial for social innovation
initiatives. A majority of the social innovation cases in our research sample that receive some
form of public funding, are actually receiving funding from local governments. European
funding is also important, but it comes mostly in combination with local (and national)
funding. National and regional level government funding is least important for social
innovation, but it still matters
6
.
< Table 4.5. here >
There is only limited variation across countries. In Italy, public funding is mainly local, while in
Brazil the national government dominates, which probably reflects the national political
situation with an outspoken and strong decentralisation of social policy instruments and
resources in Italy and a Brazilian national government that – at least until very recently – was
rather supportive to social movements and civil society. In the other countries, all government
levels are involved in funding social innovation.
Public institutions can also take up a role which does not include direct funding (but may be
in-kind support that involves indirect public funding) (see table 4.6). The most frequent non-
financial role taken up by public actors in our social innovation cases is social service delivery.
One example is the Ánde Škola case in Lecce in Italy, in which the municipality does not want
to contribute financially but allows for one of their social workers and a pedagogical expert to
participate in the network to support the social inclusion and educational trajectory of Roma
children (CS02). In many cases public actors are taking up a coordinating role (for example
integration of the welfare mix). Stimulating social innovation and changing social policy as a
19
result of or to support social innovation also occurs frequently in our cases. An example of the
former is Swedish case Språk-stödjande insatser (CS25), a job matching and language training
initiative for newcomers. It started as a pilot project in Stockholm co-financed by European
Refugee Fund, was then monitored and evaluated and is now implemented as a stable service
within Jobbtorg, a municipal agency for labour market activation. Leveraging power to the
benefit of social innovation initiatives and providing income support for the target group only
happens in a few cases. An example of the latter is the Flemish Kringwinkel, an ecological work
integration social enterprise for which government funded special labour market statutes for
employing low skilled and long term unemployed are a crucial factor of success (CS08).
Logistical support also does not often occur.
< Table 4.6. here >
An important discussion with regard to the role of public institutions is whether their role can
be characterized as active or passive subsidiarity. Active subsidiarity refers to a situation in
which central or local government transfer or leave the provision of welfare to civil society
organizations or social entrepreneurs but provide adequate financial and logistical support
(and hence does not avoid taking up its responsibility). Passive subsidiarity is the opposite
situation in which governments transfer responsibilities without transferring or providing
adequate resources. In our case studies we find examples of both active and passive
subsidiarity, often in the same case but in relation to different tiers of government (see for
example CS02 where the municipality of Lecce is not providing adequate financial and
logistical support for an initiative to support the social inclusion and educational trajectory of
Roma children, whereas the Puglia region is supporting the initiative financially). Also, the very
different roles taken up by the public sector in social innovation initiatives (in reality as well
as potentially) make it difficult to make a clear-cut assessment of whether the public sector is
active rather than passive, because again it is often both at the same time.
This, then, suggests that the concepts of passive and active subsidiarity need to be qualified
against the multiple role public actors can have. What is probably more useful is to shift the
discussion away from a quantitative (more or less state) to a more qualitative focus (O'Neill,
1997). ‘The degree of intervention’ cannot be assessed in isolation, but needs to be seen in
connection with what public institutions actually do and how they intervene. From that
20
perspective, our analysis of the field of social innovation reveals that public institutions not
only adopt classical welfarist roles such as social service provision and providing income
support, but also ‘newer’ roles such as integrating the welfare mix, stimulating social
innovation and facilitating or mainstreaming social innovation initiatives (‘policy change’). The
adoption of the latter roles reflects a government that is less intent on guarding its public
monopoly on social service provision and social protection and is moving towards a different
type of steering capacity, one geared towards the integration of public and private actors,
instruments and resources and mobilising and harnessing the innovation capacity of civil
society organisations (and to a lesser extent private for profit actors). This implies sharing and
sometimes even transferring organisational capacities and decision-making power to non-
state actors. Thinking through the impact of social innovation on the public-private boundary
in welfare provision can hence not be done by only looking at finance (who pays?), but also
needs to take into account who manages and coordinates innovative welfare provisions, who
implements socially innovations and who regulates access to and quality of socially innovative
initiatives (for a similar argument, see Burchardt, 2013).
<1> Conclusion
In this chapter, we have discussed socially innovative initiatives from the perspective of the
welfare mix. We have argued that social innovation transforms the welfare mix by bringing in
new actors, instruments and resources, thus creating new situations to be governed. On the
basis of a brief review of the literature, we made four observations that we are now able to
assess and reformulate on the basis of the empirical analysis in the previous section. With
regard to the role of the state, our empirical data show that public institutions remain crucial
players in the welfare mix, at least as far as socially innovative initiatives are concerned. This
nuances strong claims about welfare state retrenchment through social innovation. However,
in line with Bode’s claims about the shift from an organised to a disorganised welfare mix,
public institutions seldom engage in social innovation on their own, but set up partnerships
with civil society or non-profit private actors and sometimes (although much less frequently)
private for-profit actors. Attracting complementary expertise is the most-often cited reason
for public institutions to engage in partnerships. In these partnerships, hierarchical modes of
21
steering the welfare mix, which are deemed typical for the post-war bureaucratic welfare
regimes, are far from dominant.
This suggests that what is happening to the state in social innovation processes is not
necessarily an across-the-board withdrawal from welfare provision but a transformation of its
role. Social innovation, then, can be seen as a vehicle through which public institutions explore
and experiment with a different role in welfare provision. As we observed in our cases, the
state’s involvement in socially innovative initiatives most often does not revolve around the
classical welfarist functions of direct social service provision and income support. Instead,
public institutions adopt ‘new’ roles such as integrating the welfare mix, promoting social
innovation and policy learning on basis of social innovation experiences. The state, then, is not
disappearing from the welfare mix, but adopts a different role, still involved in steering the
welfare mix , but focused on integrating public and private actors, instruments and resources
and identifying, capturing and canalising the innovation dynamics developed by private
(mostly) not-for-profit actors. Compared to the post-war focus on maintaining public
monopolies, which of course varied widely across national welfare regimes, this means sharing
the organisational capacities and decision-making power of the public sector. This does not
need to be seen from a zero-sum game perspective, in which the powers and capacities gained
by private actors automatically reduce the powers and capacities of public actors, but in case
signals welfare regime transformation.
Public institutions are important providers of financial support to social innovation initiatives.
Almost all initiatives that request public funding get some of this funding, which does not
mean that they are sufficiently funded and that we can exclude the possibility of social
innovation operating as a form of passive subsidiarity. Local funding is crucially important,
which confirms the local as ‘scale keeper’ of the access to public funding. European funding
also plays an important role, but mostly combined with local or national funding (see the
discussion on the bottom-linked nature of social innovation in chapter three). National
funding is least important, but still significant since the most radical notions of social
innovation as an anti-bureaucratic practice would suggest the central state to play no role at
all.
Our case study data offer clear support for often-heard claim that civil society is the primary
resource for innovation in welfare provision. This finding should however not detract us from
22
the observation that the public sector also plays a significant role in initiating and driving social
innovation initiatives, most notably in Sweden. Public institutions often seek co-operation
with civil society organisations to develop and set up socially innovative initiatives, suggesting
that public-civil partnership are a proven model for social innovation. Private for profit
organisations only play a small role in initiating social innovation initiatives in our sample. Our
conclusion hence is that social innovation in the field of poverty reduction has a civic and
public character.
As to the modes of governance, the main conclusion is that networked forms of horizontal
cooperation are by far the most preferred mode of governance for social innovation initiatives
in the field of poverty reduction. In the majority of the cases of socially innovative initiatives,
two or more modes of governance are combined, with the combination of networked and
hierarchical forms of steering being most popular, again highlighting the social innovation
potential of public-civic governance. Still, our case study research only provides partial support
for the collaborative innovation model, which suggests that the mix of public and private
actors, instruments and resources is in itself the source of innovation. The need for
complementary expertise and implementation and coordination capacity is ranked higher
among the reasons for the development of a particular welfare mix.
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1
This decision is taken to make the analysis across so many cases both manageable and
guarantee its
validity.
In
most social innovation initiatives studied here there is a large array of actors involved and even though we
spent on average three months on each case study, this was often not sufficient to assess the exact importance
and contribution of each and any actor, especially of those that are less central to the initiative or those involved
only at very specific moments. There is a specific section on the role of public institutions to make sure they do
not
slip from our analytical gaze as indeed they may not always play a leading or initiating role, but nevertheless
make important contributions to the initiatives.
2
Since it was very difficult to harmonise the case study selection process across countries (see chapter one), we
focus on broad tendencies rather than exact shares to interpret the data
3
It is important to stress here that private not-for-profit actors have historically been important in many national
welfare regimes, especially corporatist welfare regimes such as Austria and Belgium. Through involvement in
welfare regimes, many of these private not-for-profit actors have become quite centralized and bureaucratic in
operation though and may therefore differ significantly from the grassroots actors initiating social innovation.
4
With 31 case studies of local social innovations across three policy areas and in eigh
t countries, we only claim
a sufficient degree of theoretical representativeness. The
percentages given here are only indicative
of the trends
analysed and should not be read as precise measurements.
5
Because there is limited variety in modes of governance, with networked forms of governance clearly
dominating, we have not further analysed the cases in terms of differences across policy sectors and national
welfare regimes.
25
6
Local funding could be indirect national and regional funding. This has not been taken into account here,
because of insufficient systematic data on this across all the case studies. The financial flows of resources for
social innovation initiatives between tiers of government is important to be considered in future research.
