This series of WILCO Project local studies of policy orientations and values contributes to the understanding of the role of policy ideas, orientations and values in the interplay with innovations for social cohesion. Innovative approaches are usually not mainstream but can be linked to mainstream politics as part of a reform approach in the political administrative system (PAS), be co-funded by it or simply link to it as criticism, suggestions and messages that come from the innovators.

Certain concerns shape inquiry and analysis of welfare innovation in its political context:

• Plurality of discourses: for understanding the interplay of politics and innovations it is important to see them in a tension field structured by the juxtaposition and rivalry of different discourses;
• The impact of history: practices and values that guide action and politics are very much coined by historical developments and experiences;
• Differences between policy fields: While there may be often a kind of overarching narrative, shaped by national politics and dominating local coalitions, due to a number of factors, situations in different policy field may vary;
• Political administrative system and welfare system: understanding a welfare system as large and mixed, comprising of the fields family and community, business sector and third sector of associations we look at welfare developments and their role as part of a mixed and encompassing welfare system.

The English of this report series has not been edited yet.

Nantes City Report

696KB

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This series of reports describes innovative projects in the areas of housing, employment, family care and immigrant integration in 20 cities across Europe. Each report describes and assesses local innovations in relation to process, partners and stakeholders, and level of embededdness in the local welfare system.

Local contexts are important in order to understand innovations and change on the local level:

• Innovations are embedded in local welfare discourses that can be about classical welfare issues, managerial or encourage participation and pluralism. Such discourses will influence the political opportunity structures for social innovation.
• In addition to that, there is a level of historical path-dependency that determines innovation success to some extent.
• Welfare is a complex system that encompasses different administrative welfare units as much as the general political system. Innovations should be understood in relation to this complex environment.
• Finally, innovative ideas might be restricted by the locally prevailing general discourse but may get much endorsement by a community of experts in a special policy field and thus reduce limits for innovative concepts.

Among the many context factors that have an impact on innovations and their further development, the strategies and value orientations of the local political administrative system are still of central importance. Local politics and governance include increasingly interactions with partners reaching from casual arrangements and agreements in networks over to cross-sector partnerships and corporatist frameworks.

Even though welfare innovations are in many ways nationally and locally specific, there are traits of innovations that are international in character:

• Innovations entail approaches and instruments that enrich and change the classical tool kits of social welfare and service policies, e.g. developing services that give personalized bundles of support or creating new forms of social investments into people’s capabilities.
• They entail innovations in public governance to various degrees, i.e. when networks and coalition are built across departments and sectors are part of many innovative projects and sometimes even “meta-governance” takes new forms of deliberation and consent finding in search for the public good.
• Shared features point to the links between these innovations and post-traditional welfare concepts: services that address the strengths and not merely the weaknesses of their target groups are examples for enabling welfare concepts and the ways new services are more family minded, personalized, but tie in people’s support networks contributes to an upgrading of the role of communities in mixed welfare systems

What role can innovative organisations play within these forms of governance and policy-making? Pointing at the innovative quality of organisations and projects can give additional support for developing policies that give social innovation a place in the overall changing architecture of welfare governance. This series of city reports offers an insight in many inspiring social and public innovations that offer plenty food for thought and further analysis.

Nantes report on innovations 729KB

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Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers,
Paris, France
15 November, 2013

Event Description

WILCO researcher Laurent Fraisse presented some of the outputs of the WILCO research on social innovation in the local governance of welfare services during a special meeting in Paris attended by academic and grassroots participants. Organized at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers (Cnam) in partnership with the Sciences, Innovation and Technical in Society Research Programme (IFRIS), a national network of excellence on innovation, the Interdisciplinary Laboratory of Economic Sociology (LISE) and the popular university of the Cnam, around forty participants joined the debate.

As first speaker, Jean-Louis Laville, Professor of Sociology at Cnam, looked at the conceptual contribution of research sciences and technologies in the analysis of innovation processes with a social innovation perspective. He underlined the progressive integration of the organizational, cognitive and social networking dimensions within the conceptualization of technological innovations. Despite inspiring analogies, social innovation initiatives have their own autonomous dynamics, such as explicit societal goals, the emergence of new innovators beyond the business milieu, diffusion mechanisms not reduced to market selection, general and specific aspects related to social changes, human needs and even social movements. He concluded by distinguishing solidarity-based initiatives that contribute to making modern society more democratic and participative and social entrepreneurship innovations as a component of the transformation of post-crisis capitalism.

On the basis of case studies in Nantes and Lille, Laurent Fraisse discussed to what extent local public policies are able to integrate the social innovation referential. He stressed the fact that social innovation discourse and action are no longer the monopoly of civil society networks and grassroots practices. Some local authorities have partly integrated social innovation in certain local public action frameworks. Several initiatives presented in WILCO reports were launched by the Lille and Nantes municipalities. This new context creates an ambivalence in the ability of social innovation to transform local social policies. On the one hand, a number of new policies, such as social and solidarity-based policies, and certain local housing and childcare programmes in Nantes and Lille create an enabling environment for experimental strategies and innovative practices. But these institutional niches may coexist with strong processes for rationalizing welfare policies dominated by quantitative and cost efficiency objectives. Between the local political will to support grassroots initiatives and social innovation as a way to restructure local social policies, the meaning of social innovations in a context of economic austerity and social spending cutbacks may be interpreted very differently at the local level.

Pierre-Benoit Joly, Director of IFRIS introduced the discussion, emphasizing that the discourse on and interest in social innovation at the European level is a new opportunity for changing the dominant representations on innovation despite the residual aspect of many initiatives. Debate with grassroots practitioners focused on the diffusion of social innovation beyond a specific niche of activities, organizations or processes. Recognizing emblematic practices is necessary but not sufficient for ensuring dissemination in other local contexts. Testimonies from social entrepreneurs confirmed the importance of local and sectorial contingencies and institutional resistance. Which codified processes of diffusion are relevant while avoiding undermining the major innovative aspects? This led to an examination of the process of institutionalization of social innovation. Some participants wondered to what extent recognition in law as discussed by the national parliament in the context of the Social and Solidarity Act would facilitate various innovative social dynamics or, on the contrary, limit the kinds of practices that underpin this notion.

The evaluation of the outputs and impacts of social innovations were also at the heart of the discussion. Researchers could not be satisfied with an assessment of the process of social innovation disconnected from the outputs. Bringing a credible answer to this method is a common challenge shared with all kinds of innovation processes characterized by a certain degree of risk and uncertainty on outputs, which is not always well appreciated by public investors.

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The Centre de recherche et d’information sur la démocratie et l’autonomie (CRIDA, Research and Information Center on Democracy and Autonomy), based in Paris, was founded in 1984. The CRIDA gathers sociologists and economists who develop a contemporary socio-economic approach in four main fields of research: third sector, social enterprises and solidarity economy; personal services and grassroots’ initiatives; integration, labour market and social policies; and socio-economic systems and democracy. CRIDA is one of the founding members of the EMES European Research Network EMES.

CRIDA’s researchers have been involved in several European research projects in the fields of social policies, third sector, local initiatives and employment, etc. They coordinated the EMES child care comparative research project (TSFEPS) and participated in the EMES project on socio- economic performance of social enterprises in the field of work integration (PERSE). They also took part in the Third sector and European Policy(TSEP) and the Social Polis network on cities and social cohesion.

Laurent Fraisse

The researcher in charge, Laurent Fraisse, holds a post-graduate degree in economics (Paris I – Panthéon Sorbonne). He has worked as a researcher at the CRIDA since 1997 and has been a member of the Laboratoire Interdisciplinaire pour la Sociologie Economique (LISE / CNAM CNRS) since 2004. He is a member of the reading committee of the Revue Economie et Solidarité for Europe and was also one of the organisers of the first European conference jointly organised by the ISTR and EMES in 2005. He took part in several European research programmes on the socio-economic evaluation of services to persons and of social enterprises, on public policies and the third sector (TSEP), on the governance and coordination of social policies and policies fighting exclusion. He has actively participated to several European research projects in connected fields with the FP7.

He coordinated (2001-2004) the EMES European research on child care services and social cohesion (TSFEPS) in which, among others things, a the role and the involvement of municipal, non for profit and for profit organisation in the local governance of social services have been compared with regard to the participation quality and participation criteria. His publications include: Fraisse, L., Eme, B., “La gouvernance locale de la diversification des modes d’accueil : un enjeu de cohésion sociale”, Recherches et Prévisions, CNAF, n°80, june 2005.; Fraisse, L., “Les enjeux de l’action publique en faveur de l’économie sociale et solidaire”, in Carvalho de Franca, G., Laville, J-L, Action publique et économie solidaire, éditions Eres, May 2005; Fraisse, L., “Changement social”, in Laville J-L, Dictionnaire de l’Autre économie, Desclée de Brouwer, January 2005; Fraisse L. (2003), “Espaces publics de proximité, économie solidaire et démocratisation de l’économie”, in Revue Hermès, n°36, “Economie solidaire et Démocratie”, pp.137-147. · Fraisse L., Enjolras B., Laville J-L. (2000), “Between subsidiarity and social assistance: the French way towards activation”, in Loedemel I., Trickey H. (dir.), An Offer you can’t refuse, Policy Press, pp. 41-71.

Contact information: Laurent Fraisse fraisse@iresco.fr

Other members

Jean-Louis Laville

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This city report maps the problems of social inequality and cohesion at the local level, as the background for the research on local social innovations in the subsequent part of the project. The report includes

• (1) an analysis of the main characteristics and trends of the local labour market (main sectors, employment and unemployment levels, groups of population mainly affected by long-term unemployment);
• (2) an analysis of demographic structure of the population and of the trends taking place in the preceding ten years (proportion of the elderly, fertility and natality rates, proportion of immigrants and their distribution in the urban territory, etc.);
• (3) an analysis of the housing market, with special attention to critical situations such as overcrowding, difficult affordability, evictions, homelessness;
• (4) an analysis of migration trends, of migrants’ flows into the city, of the composition of migrant population, its features, changes and possible risks of exclusion and segregation.

Social Welfare in Nantes 563 KB

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