Social innovation and policy change

Social innovation and local welfare are two intertwined concepts. Social innovation refers to initiatives that promote new solutions grounded in social relationships in order to answer welfare demands made by civil society. Applying a “socially innovative” analytical framework to local welfare (Moulaert et al. Reference Moulaert, MacCallaum, Mehmood, Hamdouch, Frank, MacCallaum, Mehmood and Hamdouch2013) implies endorsing diverse and localized welfare initiatives that systematically engage communities in their functioning, integrating social logics that go beyond public and private provision (Brandsen and Evers Reference Brandsen, Evers, Howaldt, Kaletka, Schröder and Zirngiebl2019), and involving actors such as social entrepreneurs, third-sector organizations, and community and family networks (Häikiö et al. Reference Häikiö, Fraisse, Adam, Jolanki, Knutagård, Martinelli, Anttonen and Mätzke2017). This approach disrupts the traditional state-led top-down provision model, and public actors go from being providers to taking on enabling roles.

The association between social innovation and local welfare is explicitly promoted by European Union policy (2010). When stances on social innovation are not particularly disruptive, the provision of capacitating services may be externalized to nonprofit organizations (O’Donnell and Thomas Reference O’Donnell, Thomas and Hemerijck2017); while more disruptive stances (Ayob et al. Reference Ayob, Teasdale and Fagan2016; Kazepov et al. Reference Kazepov, Saruis, Colombo, Oosterlynck, Novy and Kazepov2019; Moulaert et al. Reference Moulaert, Martinelli, González and Swyngedouw2007; Moulaert Reference Moulaert2013) may involve the direct participation of citizens in the decision-making process, contributing to the co-production of welfare services. Here, the relational and community dimension of social innovation triggers an empowerment process that is capable of restructuring prevailing social relations, going beyond the mere privatization of social services (Häikiö et al. Reference Häikiö, Fraisse, Adam, Jolanki, Knutagård, Martinelli, Anttonen and Mätzke2017; Kazepov et al. Reference Kazepov, Saruis, Colombo, Oosterlynck, Novy and Kazepov2019; Gallego and Maestripieri Reference Gallego and Maestripieri2022a, Maestripieri and Gallego Reference Maestripieri, Gallego, Sinclair and Bagioni2024)

Scholarly research indicates that public actors can learn from socially innovative practices to enhance the policy development process (Moyson et al. Reference Moyson, Scholten and Weible2017; van Buuren and Loorbach Reference van Buuren and Loorbach2009). The localized nature of most social innovation initiatives (Ewert and Evers Reference Ewert and Evers2014; Kazepov et al. Reference Kazepov, Saruis, Colombo, Oosterlynck, Novy and Kazepov2019) makes each local welfare system contingent upon the context within which it is embedded: these projects align with and complement institutions by performing tasks that they are permitted to undertake or that are not fulfilled otherwise (Baglioni and Sinclair Reference Baglioni and Sinclair2018). Consequently, socially innovative initiatives constitute a valuable source of information for policy learning, offering potential solutions for addressing diverse and heterogeneous needs, as well as dynamic channels for facilitating citizen participation and strengthening governance networks.

Through policy learning, social innovation becomes institutionalized (Gallego et al. Reference Gallego, González and Maestripieri2024); in other words, it is integrated into the local public body’s standard practices, thereby completing a cycle of policy innovation. Institutionalization refers to the capacity of local social innovation schemes to influence public discourse and shape policy development. The literature on social innovation observes that successful projects have the potential to be scaled up and become integrated into the conventional local welfare provision, thereby consolidating policy change (Kazepov et al. Reference Kazepov, Saruis, Colombo, Oosterlynck, Novy and Kazepov2019). Existing studies point out two ways in which this might happen: on the one hand, by transforming public discourse and legitimizing broader and more diverse practices and solutions; on the other, by officially consolidating these welfare provision initiatives beyond the local level as legitimate alternatives (Häikiö et al. Reference Häikiö, Fraisse, Adam, Jolanki, Knutagård, Martinelli, Anttonen and Mätzke2017).

However, empirical studies are increasingly challenging the rhetoric of social innovation. The support given to innovative welfare provision projects by municipalities over the last years has often been accompanied by public investment cuts in traditional welfare solutions. The state’s reduced role, triggered both by the economic crisis and by a neoliberal understanding of collection and (re-)distribution of resources, is supposedly partially compensated for by civil society and the private sector; but having more welfare actors does not necessarily mean more support becoming available to the whole population. Cuts have often encouraged a pro-profit turn in a sector that deals with people’s fundamental needs (Maier et al. Reference Maier, Meyer and Steinbereithner2014; Oosterlynck et al. Reference Oosterlynck, Kazepov, Novy, Cools, Barberis, Wukovitsch, Saruis and Leubolt2013; Pol and Ville Reference Pol and Ville2009). When funding for welfare is cut, the requirements for accessing services become extremely rigid, and only people with multiple problems are covered, while many others in need are left out. Social innovation has so far not been able to solve this dilemma (Martinelli Reference Martinelli, Hans-Werner, Hochgerner and Howaldt2012).

In addition, research has shown a clear middle-class socioeconomic bias in socially innovative projects and in citizens’ demands to participate in local welfare policy (Avelino et al. Reference Avelino, Wittmayer, Pel, Weaver, Dumitru, Haxeltine, Kemp, Jørgensen, Bauler, Ruijsink and O’Riordan2019; Arampazi Reference Arampatzi2022; Cruz et al. Reference Cruz, Martínez and Blanco2017; Eizaguirre and Parés Reference Eizaguirre and Parés2019, Novy and Weinzerl Reference Novy, Weinzierl, Oosterlynck, Novy and Kazepov2019). This bias not only introduces competition for scarce resources but also poses a challenge to policymakers. If policy innovation models itself exclusively on social innovation schemes, there is a significant risk of developing services that will primarily serve certain segments of the population (the most participative and active), thereby neglecting the most vulnerable, socially excluded and least able strata of the population.

Social innovation holds great potential, but it can only provide a transformation in terms of redistributive welfare if the proposed solutions are scaled up and include populations outside the limited audience of innovators (Häikiö et al. Reference Häikiö, Fraisse, Adam, Jolanki, Knutagård, Martinelli, Anttonen and Mätzke2017: 281). This is why an assessment of the impact of social innovation on socioeconomic inequalities should include its capacity to be institutionalized and become part of public policy (Martinelli Reference Martinelli, Hans-Werner, Hochgerner and Howaldt2012; Baglioni and Sinclair Reference Baglioni and Sinclair2018; Gallego et al. Reference Gallego, González and Maestripieri2024, Maestripieri and Gallego Reference Maestripieri, Gallego, Sinclair and Bagioni2024). The capacity of the public sector to learn from social innovation could generate positive spillover effects for traditional services, enabling them to intercept and address the current needs of the general public or the needs of specific target groups. To be socially sustainable, social innovation can only be promoted within and with the state (Martinelli Reference Martinelli, Hans-Werner, Hochgerner and Howaldt2012) by policy change.

When policy change does occur, such as in the case of ECEC policy in Barcelona, the direction of the policy shift necessarily affects its impact. Following Baumgartner and Jones’ punctuated equilibrium model (2009), when decisions concerning a particular policy domain – or range of issues – are always made by a stable policy subsystem, the potential for policy change is low. “A subsystem is a definable institutional structure responsible for policy-making, together with formal arrangements and informal relations that influence participation in the venues where decisions are made (Barzelay Reference Barzelay2001:59)”. Thus, policy change stems from an agenda-setting process through which policy subsystems are undermined. In this model, agenda-setting is a process of conflict expansion (Schattschneider Reference Schattschneider1960) that begins with policy entrepreneurs – actors of change – mobilizing other actors outside the policy subsystem. Mobilization involves challenging the image of the issue, i.e. promoting ways of defining the problem differently (Loseke Reference Loseke2003). It also involves reorganizing beliefs about how issues are interrelated, i.e. changing the policy domain structure by defining more areas encompassed by it. These processes lead to discrediting the existing institutional arrangements through which policy is routinely developed (Baumgartner and Jones Reference Baumgartner and Jones2009, Barzelay Reference Barzelay2001:60). As a result, elected officials may advocate for developing a new image for an issue, reordering the policy domain affected, and restructuring the policy subsystem. In this way, a disequilibrium is put in place, leading to a higher potential for change. This may be followed by a situation of partial equilibrium, characterized by a flow of decisions that are consistent with the new policy direction and leading to new practices becoming institutionalized.

Following this framework, we analyze a case of policy change: although changing the policy agenda of the local government was not the primary aim of the socially innovative ECEC projects that we analyzed in Barcelona, it was indeed the outcome they obtained, through a policy process led by the local council and which included them as participants. Their struggle for recognition and legitimation encountered a favorable political environment in the shape of the political movement known as new municipalism, of which Barcelona en ComúFootnote ¹ is a leading member (Blanco and Gomà Reference Blanco, Gomà and Kobayashi2020, Russell Reference Russell2019), and which bases its success on the capacity to mobilize community-based cooperative ventures in a city. Within new municipalism, emerging political alternatives offer a “politics of proximity”, attempting to transform institutions and distribute power, to promote forms of social and solidarity economy (including the commons and community), manifesting a “becoming common of the public” (Russell Reference Russell2019). As recognized by Brandsen and Evers (Reference Brandsen, Evers, Howaldt, Kaletka, Schröder and Zirngiebl2019), the governance style of local authorities is a fundamental element in offering recognition and stability to socially innovative practices. In addition, institutional factors such as the level of decentralization within the state structure and a historical tradition of working with the third sector imply easier transferability towards different models of public service provision (Busemeyer and Seitzl Reference Busemeyer and Seitzl2018). This case analysis will show that the presence of both institutional and social actors can span boundaries and help make this transfer a successful one (Brandsen and Evers Reference Brandsen, Evers, Howaldt, Kaletka, Schröder and Zirngiebl2019).

Methodology

The aim of this article is to understand how policy change occurred in the case of ECEC in Barcelona. To this end, we reconstruct the policy trajectory behind the inclusion of social innovation in ECEC policies in the municipal agenda of Barcelona City Council, basing ourselves on Baumgartner and Jones’ (Reference Baumgartner and Jones2009) punctuated equilibrium model. This will help us understand: (i) to what extent government ideology and/or public support for social innovation can trigger the renewal of public services, and in what way; (ii) how institutions’ and citizens’ discourses on social innovation differ; and (iii) what challenges socially innovative policies face when simultaneously addressing equal rights and diverse demands.

The rationale for the case is well explained by the peculiarity presented by the ECEC system in Barcelona: it is one of the few big European cities whose school-based nursery system is completely under municipal public provision, both in how the services are directly managed and how the workers are employed. This model was the result of investment by socialist (1979–2011) and by left-wing new municipalist (2015–2019) local governments. Public ECEC provision resisted neoliberal pressure for externalization, especially strong during the austerity crisis (2011–2015) when the center-right Convergència i Unió was in power. In the following sections, we analyze how, although the new municipalist governments preserved the hegemony of public provision, they also led a policy change to renew ECEC: they established innovative and participatory public services inspired by citizen-led social innovation and developed a differentiated discourse on institution-led social innovation.

The empirical evidence presented in this paper has been collected under a project named “Models of education for the under-threes and participation in the labor market: a study of social innovation in the city of Barcelona” (Gallego et al. Reference Gallego, González and Maestripieri2024). This study analyzed social innovation in ECEC in Barcelona (free-education nurseries, care groups, and childminders), and contrasted it with what it eventually inspired: municipal public playgroups (Espais Familiars – EFCM). EFCMs are run by two or three educators (paid with public money), and parents meet in them, usually twice a week, to discuss issues related to parenting while their children play and are looked after together by the whole group. Unlike the social innovation ECEC initiatives in Barcelona (Gallego and Maestripieri Reference Gallego and Maestripieri2022a, Reference Gallego and Maestripieri2022b, Maestripieri and Gallego Reference Maestripieri, Gallego, Sinclair and Bagioni2024), EFCMs are particularly addressed to socioeconomically vulnerable families, but in the last few years, they have become more diverse, with the increasing participation of middle-class families who opt to not school their children at such a young age.

Currently, around 650 children use EFCMs, and over 16 initiatives are distributed in an uneven way throughout the city. By 2024, Barcelona City Council plans to open 16 more of them, aiming to reach at least 1,500 children, with a more even distribution across neighborhoods. The public nursery network in the city (102) looks after around 8,500 children every year (21% of the under-threes in the city), and a similar number of places are offered by the network of registered private nurseries (195). Some EFCMs are housed in public nurseries outside normal opening hours. The number of children taken care of in socially innovative projects – such as childminders, care groups, and free-education nurseries – is rather more difficult to determine, given that the current regional regulations do not officially acknowledge their existence. In the 2021–2022 school year, there were 29 childminders and 19 other projects, including care groups and free-education nurseries, registered with the main associations that represent socially innovative programs in Barcelona. However, there may well be others that operate that do not belong to the associations; it is impossible to determine how many there are since there is currently no register of them in the city.

Although the fieldwork for the above-mentioned project is far more wide-reaching, and includes interviews with educators and mothers, as well as a survey fielded to women in Barcelona who have children under three (Gallego et al. Reference Gallego, González and Maestripieri2024), in the current article, we analyze 14 interviews with key informants held between 2019 and 2021. These were semi-structured interviews that lasted between 30 and 50 minutes. The guide for each interview was tailored to the specific key informant, but all interviews covered the relationship between social innovation schemes and the school-based system (public and private nurseries), as well as public playgroups and their role in tackling families’ diverse needs. The key informants include the following: representatives from the main association of socially innovative projects in Barcelona (interviewed in 2019 and 2021), representatives of educators in public family playgroups (2019), council officials responsible for ECEC (2021), decisionmakers and policymakers for childcare policy in the last two council mandates under Barcelona en Comú (2021), and representatives from private and public childcare associations (2021). The aim of the interview was to reconstruct the political process behind the change that occurred with the introduction of the Espais Familiars. We thus interviewed all the actors that played a part in the process: policymakers, public employees, and representatives of the main civil society stakeholders.

We conducted a thematic analysis (Xu and Zammit Reference Xu and Zammit2020) to highlight the most important issues emerging from the political process behind the adoption of the Espais Familiars in Barcelona during the two mandates of the Barcelona en Comú mayor, Ada Colau. This approach to the analysis of qualitative data is fully inscribed in an inductive methodological approach.

The policy trajectory of early childhood education and care in Barcelona: what might be the role of social innovation?Footnote ²

Interpreting the policy shift in education and care for the under-threes in Barcelona: social innovation and policy learning

The approval of the ECEC Plan in April 2021 placed social innovation in local welfare at the epicenter of a potential shift in ECEC policy in Barcelona. Following Baumgartner and Jones (Reference Baumgartner and Jones2009), a situation of imbalance can lead to policy change, with the consequent institutionalization of a partial equilibrium situation in which a flow of decisions marks a new policy direction.

As shown by the trajectory of the ECEC issue, the policy subsystem underwent a deep restructuring process throughout the mandates of Barcelona en Comú, which headed the City Council from 2015 to 2023.Footnote ⁷ This restructuring has not resulted in the formal reorganization of the institutional structure responsible for policy making, but instead in a reconfiguration of the informal relations that influence participation in decision-making bodies. In the previous PSC mandates, when the direct provision escoles bressol model was the principal policy that drove ECEC, the Council’s Education Department had been the formal policy maker, and the IMEB had been its main policy development unit within the administrative structure of Barcelona City Council. This policy subsystem included the informal participation of education professionals, mainly from the escoles bressol.

The change in governing party after the 2015 local elections from PSC to Barcelona en Comú, and particularly Barcelona en Comú’s second mandate beginning in 2019, led to a reorganization of the institutional arrangements through which ECEC policy was established. The Education Commissioner opened up the policy subsystem to include other political and administrative units of the City Council, such as the Social Rights Area, the Department of Health, Aging and Care, the Department of Culture, Education, Science and Community (to which the Education Commission belongs), the Childhood and Adolescence Institute (IIAB), the City Council Districts, and Barcelona Activa. Moreover, in addition to escola bressol professionals, external social actors were consulted: associations representing non-institutionalized socially innovative ECEC projects, academic experts, etc.

In Baumgartner and Jones’s model (2009), the restructuring of a policy subsystem that eventually changes the content of decisions is the result of an agenda-setting process that begins with actors for change mobilizing other actors who are outside the existing policy subsystem. Citizens who had been participating since 2000 in socially innovative ECEC projects in Barcelona did not start to organize and fight for their alternative visions of ECEC until almost a decade later. Their projects continued to grow in number as a result of more families demanding ECEC models that were different from institutionalized ones, but they remained outside the policy subsystem. When Barcelona en Comú took power in Barcelona City Council, the city became a more favorable environment for grassroots initiatives and citizen participation. The new municipalist political program of the council was explicitly committed to reinforcing and diversifying ECEC, aiming to address increasingly complex and diverse needs from an equity perspective. This led to a creative tension that favored the public administration listening to the public’s needs, and a space opened up for collectives who wanted to engage in active participation to exercise their agency at the local level.

In the case analyzed here, the main actor of change was a pivotal part of the extant policy subsystem itself: the Education Commissioner. In the first legislature, this figure decided to open a debate on ECEC with internal and external actors after receiving a report on ECEC written by academics that endorsed existing alternative projects, including ones in the city of Barcelona itself.Footnote ⁸ The issue aroused intense debate and political interest within the political organization of the party in power; some believed fervently in the public escola bressol model, and others defended a vision that was open to redefining this public service from a diversity and community perspective. At this point, the Commissioner directed ECEC policy efforts towards the Impulsem 0–3 (A Push for 0–3) program, and the debate continued.

However, an important point on which the City Council officials and professionals from both public and private nursery schools agreed was the legal limbo in which the innovative non-institutionalized ECEC initiatives found themselves. This proved to be the main stumbling block that prevented collaboration between the City Council and the social groups; thus, efforts were redirected to the more clearly defined Impulsem 0–3 plan. In the second legislature, the new Commissioner built on the negotiations of the previous period (in which she had also participated as an expert with close links to Barcelona en Comú) and followed the government’s mandate to open the policy subsystem up to effectively include new actors within the City Council itself. Contacts with external actors were soon intensified, including both institutionalized ECEC services (public and private) as well as non-institutionalized or alternative services.

According to Baumgartner and Jones’s (Reference Baumgartner and Jones2009) model, in this agenda-setting process, mobilization efforts involve challenging the very image of an issue, that is, promoting a definition of the problem that is different from the prevailing one (Loseke Reference Loseke2003). In the case of Barcelona, the image of 0–3 pre-school services had traditionally revolved around two elements: on the one hand, the work-life balance dimension, and on the other, the educational dimension, both combined with the care element. The solution that was proposed to help solve this definition of the issue was the expansion of the escoles bressol model.

This image of the issue was challenged by two different factors. Firstly, the emergence and gradual growth of alternative ECEC models in Barcelona went hand in hand with a new discourse about the 0–3 stage, sometimes explicitly associated with the term “social innovation”. Care groups, free-education nurseries, and childminders, despite in some cases recalling ideas from past decades, offered novel responses to new demands: the involvement of families in their children’s care outside the home, flexibility regarding children’s and parents’ diverse needs, community support, etc. These were demands that the bressol model did not meet. In turn, the families that made these demands had high socioeconomic status. Specific responses to these new demands had been provided by the Districts of the City Council itself, the IMEB and, to a lesser extent, the IMSS, in the form of family playgroup spaces. Until 2003, there were only three municipal family playgroup spaces (IMEB); the IMSS created a fourth one in 2009, and then a fifth in 2011. However, during Barcelona en Comú’s 2015–2019 mandate, seven more were created (three by the IMEB and four by various Districts), and from 2019 to early 2021, four more were created by the council, making a total of 16 (Institut Infància i Adolescència, 2017, Ajuntament de Barcelona 2021).

In addition, with Barcelona en Comú in the local government, not only was there a redefinition of the philosophy behind the 0–3 ECEC stage, but also a reorganization of beliefs about the interrelatedness of the issues involved, i.e. the policy domain structure was transformed by defining more areas that it encompassed. The Education Commissioner opted for framing the challenges regarding 0–3 ECEC as not about education or work-life balance; instead, the challenge was seen as one of making access to 0–3 care a universal right, with the service being understood as a comprehensive, multidimensional service for young children and families. The escola bressol model clearly cannot cover this alone, and although it is still promoted, complementary models have been put forward. As well as coordinating health, educational, and social services within local networks for early childhood care, all the projects in this area that have been started by civil society should be recognized and incorporated. The objective is both to reach people who do not use ECEC services, especially underprivileged families, and also to be able to adapt to the diverse needs and demands of the community. Therefore, what is sought is equity within diversity: a redefinition of the 0–3 stage as not only an educational service but also as a socio-educational, nurturing, and care service. With this in mind, family playgroup spaces have become a flagship instrument.

Based on all this, the term “socially innovative” has been the one that best frames the new ECEC policy. Using this framework, the discourse has reflected a will to integrate socially innovative projects started by civil society groups into municipal ECEC policy, as long as these initiatives have a community-based vocation and not one that merely meets the needs of the people involved in each project. The goal is to allow the benefits they offer to reach the whole community. The credibility of this message is reinforced by the wish expressed by the City Council to work to fill the legal void in which these projects find themselves. Regulating the services is the competence of the Catalan Government and, to date, no new laws have been passed in this sphere: a decree on childminders was drawn up, but processing it was halted by the events related to the independence referendum that took place on 1 October 2017 in Catalonia.

However, constructed in this way, this discourse is in tension with citizen-led socially innovative projects. For the professionals and families that participate in them, having their projects officially recognized would make them visible ECEC options for everyone, expanding families’ choices. And integrating them into the network of ECEC options would include them in mechanisms such as offering subsidized places so that underprivileged families could also choose to participate in them. According to representatives of the citizen-led projects, the City Council’s initiatives, which are primarily aimed at families at risk of social exclusion, such as babysitting services or family spaces, are missing out on an excellent opportunity to take advantage of the know-how and social capital of citizen-led social innovation projects. Not being recognized also condemns many of these projects to suffering a precarious and sometimes all too brief existence.