CfP for SPA Symposium || Social Innovation and Social Policy: Solution or Surrender to Welfare Austerity?
**Apologies for cross-posting**
Social Policy Association Annual Conference, 4th-6th July 2016
Conference Theme: Social Policy: Radical, Resistant, Resolute
Symposium: Social Innovation and Social Policy: Solution or Surrender to Welfare Austerity?
In recent years, social innovation has become an increasingly prominent concept employed by political leaders and public administrations. Particularly since the Great Recession, there has been a notable shift in how public institutions conceptualise societal challenges and the role private and public actors might play in tackling these. To some extent, the policy discourse on social innovation has elevated it to the status of putative “problem-solver”, being repeatedly cited as a means and end to meeting social needs within the context of (politically determined) resource scarcity. Whilst framed as an ‘alternative’ approach to meeting social needs, it remains unclear whether attempts to do ‘more with less’ through social innovation (TEPSIE, 2014) represent a solution or surrender to welfare austerity.
As an emerging policy field, relatively little academic attention has been paid to social innovation in social policy debates (Sinclair and Baglioni, 2014). This symposium will explore the potential value of social innovation as a policy concept and what benefits and risks it may engender in the short and longer term. The indeterminate quality of social innovation (Jenson, 2012) makes it particularly important to establish its bearing on and relationship to social policy. With this in mind, this symposium will bring together a range of papers reflecting on instances of social innovation in social policy and its impact on citizens, practitioners and welfare services. We particularly welcome empirical and/or theoretical papers drawing connections between social innovation and social policy in the following (distinct, but complementary) areas:
- Civil Society and Third Sector Policy
- Welfare Pluralism and the Mixed Economy of Welfare
- Outcome-based Commissioning and Payment-by-Results contracts
- Social Impact Investment and Social Finance
- New Public Management and Public Service Reform
- Welfare Reform
Contributions are invited from postgraduates, early career researchers and more established academics. If you are interested in contributing a paper in this proposed Symposium, please contact Stephen Sinclair ([log in to unmask]) or Daniel Edmiston ([log in to unmask]). Please send the title of your proposed presentation and abstract (200-400) by 19th February.
Research findings from two EU FP7 research projects (CRESSI and EFESEIIS) will also be disseminated during the symposium.
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