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Social Innovation, Welfare Regimes and National/Urban Agendas: Going Outside “the Local Trap” in Social Innovation Studies

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Identifying Models of National Urban Agendas

Part of the book series: Comparative Studies of Political Agendas ((CSPA))

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Abstract

The debate on social innovation focuses on the local and is widely based on case studies, producing a proliferation of interpretations that make it difficult to conceptualise the phenomenon itself. In this chapter, we analyse social innovation policies in a comparative perspective and we explore the existence of a relationship between the ways of implementing social innovation policies and the welfare regimes of nine European countries. What emerges is a strong relationship between the welfare regime and national and local social innovation agendas that depends on the solidity of national and local welfare infrastructures. This characteristic is, therefore, at risk of turning social innovation into a reinforcing factor of pre-existing historical trends, and the gap between welfare systems would be destined to increase rather than decrease as a consequence of the spread of social innovation as a key policy strategy.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The CO-Cities Report contains the result of a work carried out by the research unit of the “Università degli Studi Guglielmo Marconi”, coordinated by Professor Christian Iaione, within the research project PRIN 2015—code 2015XYKZPP—“Democratic innovations among collaborative design, active citizenship and Internet governance” coordinated by Prof. Michele Sorice from LUISS Guido Carli.

  2. 2.

    SIC is a community for social innovators across Europe and is a Horizon 2020 Programme funded project, run by a consortium of 12 leading organisations across Europe between February 2016 and 2019.

  3. 3.

    The Social Innovation Index, sponsored by Nippon Foundation, was devised and constructed by an Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) research team (Intelligence Unit of The Economist) led by Trisha Suresh.

  4. 4.

    The project “Social Innovation: Driving Force for Social Change” (SI-Drive) has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement no 612870.

  5. 5.

    https://www.siceurope.eu/.

  6. 6.

    https://archive.nordregio.se/Publications/Publications-2016/Territorial-Social-Innovation/Social-Innovation-in-the-Nordic-and-Scottish-context/Denmark/index.html.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, Venice, Italy

    Maurizio Busacca

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  1. Maurizio Busacca
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Correspondence to Maurizio Busacca .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Architecture and Arts, University Iuav of Venice, Venice, Italy

    Francesca Gelli

  2. Department of Architecture and Arts, University Iuav of Venice, Venice, Italy

    Matteo Basso

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Busacca, M. (2022). Social Innovation, Welfare Regimes and National/Urban Agendas: Going Outside “the Local Trap” in Social Innovation Studies. In: Gelli, F., Basso, M. (eds) Identifying Models of National Urban Agendas . Comparative Studies of Political Agendas. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-08388-4_13

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-08388-4_13

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