The Governance of Social Innovation in Italy: The Public-Private Relations in Two Practices of Citizens' Empowerment

The shift from “government” to “governance” has led to an active engagement of private actors and civil society within the institutional frame of urban governance (Moulaert et. al. 2005), especially in the field of social policy. This paper examines the emergence and the functioning of two governance arrangements which are supposed to combat fragmentation in society and to foster social innovation by empowering civil society.

Both case studies are examples of mainly top-down innovations, i.e there is a strong government involvement as well as regarding the framework definition and the funding. Nevertheless, these practices significantly attempt to engage civil society in key roles and also to let civil society design and implement their projects.

The first case is Etam, a Social Inclusion Service placed in the deprived neighbourhood of Marghera (Venice). It supports citizens in their requests to local administration and is aimed at empowering them for a greater social cohesion. The second case is a method named Community Lab, launched in 2012 by the region Emilia-Romagna in order to regenerate the policy process of the local welfare agenda, since it strongly missed the designed participative nature. The main objective of Community Lab is to bring society back in the deliberative process, providing a facilitating environment and setting.

Membership, leadership, networking capacity, capability dynamics and funding issues will be analysed in order to disclose how social innovation practices actually develop, to what extent politics and public policies matter and which governance arrangements display more effectiveness in fostering SI.