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.

Zagreb report on innovations 676KB

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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.
Zagreb City Report 336KB

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See the full poster here:
RODA-poster-final1

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Zagreb Social Council, Croatia
July 8, 2013

Event Description

The latest Grassroots Meeting of the WILCO Croatia reserach group was attended by public stakeholders of the Zagreb Social Council, civil society respresentatives, as well as researchers and experts mainly in social policy. There was a total of 18 participants.

Prof. Gojko Bežovan, Faculty of Law in Zagreb, WILCO – FP7 project, M.A. Jelena Matanevi, Faculty of Law in Zagreb, and M.A. Daniel Baturina, Faculty of Law in Zagreb presented WILCO project and its theoretical and analytical framework. Main focus was the concept of social innovation, a new concept in Croatian social policy discussion, emphasizing the main features and obstacles for social innovation in Croatia. Some preliminary results of local WILCO research analysis were also presented.

Feedback: This event offered an opportunity to check the relevance of the WILCO approach with other researchers, who gave some specific feedback. Participants in the debate showed great interest in the project. Discussions centred on two main questions:

1. What is the Croatian potential and level of social innovation?
2. What is the Croatian framework support social innovations and to make them a recognizable part of social policy?

Few key issues were highlighted regarding social innovation in the local welfare context, e.g. the poor acknowledgement of social innovations within the welfare system, and the low level of administrative support. Stakeholders highlighted the state monopoly in social policy matters as a significant limitation for innovation. Other obstacles mentioned were lack of dialogue between different city departments and between civil society sector and city administration.

Another debate concentrated on the definition and ambiguity of the concept of social innovation. For many stakeholders present at the event it was the first time they heard about the concept. Much discussion therefore focussed on the potential of practical application of social innovation, possibilities to create space for their development and how to recognize and promote them.

WILCO researchers on the ground valued this kind of event for stakeholder input, leading to new conclusions and allowing them to deepen their arguments to put issues of social innovation on the public agenda. Organisers deemed the event useful for the promotion of social innovation in social poicy discourse.

Dissemination: Information of the event will be available on the Zagreb Social Council website. Based on the positive feedback and interest of participants WILCO Croatia reserachers also expect ‘word of mouth’ dissemination of WILCO objectives and results.

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Date: March 23, 2013
Location: National Sociological Congress “PRIVATE, PUBLIC, COMMON: Sociology and CROATIAN SOCIETY TODAY”, Zagreb, Croatia

EU FP7 WILCO was one of the panles during the congress. About 20 participants, mostly experts and researchers, listened to four presentations about WILCO before embarking on a lively discussion moderated by Prof.Dr. Siniša Zrinščak.

Prof. Gojko Bežovan gave a general presentation on the WILCO – FP7 project, taking the audience through main reseach focus, process and aims. Jelena Matančević analyzed the trends in care services for children, as well as local social services policy. Daniel Baturina’s presentation on social cohesion in Varazdin focussed on transformations in the labor market, family and child care, housing and housing policy in the context of local social politics. Prof. Gojko Bežovan introduced the concept of social innovation in general and in local social policy contexts, offering an overview of the potential benefits of the concept in practice.

The following dicussion generated specific feedback on the WILCO project and on the concepts of social cohesion and social innovation in the local environment in Croatia. Social innovation was described as an ambigious concept. It was unknown to many participants and this was the first opportunity to hear about it. Discussion focussed on the potential practical applications of social innovation, possibilities to create space for their development and how to recognize and promote innovation.

The organisers described the grassroots event as a great source of input from other researchers, helping them to draw new conclusions and deepen their arguments that arose from former analysis. They feel that the event was useful for the promotion of the project and will serve as a driver for new discussions, especially with regard to future research and practical action in the field of social policy.

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The Faculty of Law at the University of Zagreb is the leading Croatian academic institution, Institute for Social Policy- ISP, part of Department of Social Work, is the leading national institution dealing with social development issues. ISP provides interdisciplinary approach in teaching, researching and consultancy. ISP has a long experience of cooperation with relevant national and local stakeholders and also cooperation with colleagues from the region, Europe and USA. Through education, action oriented researches and publications, ISP influences public policies and provide usable knowledge for public policy making, monitoring and evaluation. From 1990 onwards, ISP has developed social policy as an academic discipline in Croatia. Around the ISP, from different field of social sciences, there is the network of prominent scientists and researchers with affinity to social policy. In education ISP organised the first postgraduate and PhD programme on social policy with the support of Ministry of Health and Social Care.

The most significant research projects in the past years are Strengthening civil society organisations as stakeholder of welfare mix (longitudinal research in partnership with the ministry of Health and Social Care and with support from Ministry of Science); Efficient and Democratic Multilevel Governance in Europe (CONNEX project, 6th Framework Programme);

Indicators of social cohesion and development of the Croatian social model (comprehensive research on trends and development of social policy at different levels); CIVICUS Index on civil society in Croatia (international comparative action oriented research on state of civil society). The Institute also worked on the Programme of social policy of the City of Zagreb (2009-2012) and on indicators of social issues in the City of Zagreb.

Gojko Bežovan

The head of the team will be Professor Gojko Bežovan, PhD, professor of social policy; director of master and PhD programme in Social policy and head of the ISP. He has published numerous articles, chapters of books, studies on social policy. He is a member of several expert groups dealing with social development.

The team will include Vlado Puljiz, founder of Croatian Journal of Social Policy and founder of social policy as academic discipline in Croatia. He issued numerous publications from this field. He is a member of more expert groups dealing with social reforms.

Contact information: Gojko Bezovan: ceraneo@zg.t-com.hr

Other members

Daniel Baturina

danijel.baturina@pravo.hr

Jelena Matan?evi?

jelena.matancevic@pravo.hr

www.unizg.hr

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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 Zagreb 576 KB

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