Social Sciences and Governance

When communities develop new ways of organizing work, ownership, and public services—through cooperatives, participatory budgeting, or solidarity-based enterprises—they are engaging in what researchers call social innovation. Scholars studying this phenomenon at the intersection of urban studies and governance ask how such initiatives take root in specific places, how they interact with formal institutions, and under what conditions they scale or survive beyond their founding moment. A central tension in current research concerns institutionalization: whether the incorporation of grassroots economic experiments into policy and law strengthens or gradually hollows out their transformative potential. Open questions remain about how territorial context shapes outcomes, and how local governments can support solidarity economies without absorbing or displacing the community agency that makes them work.

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305,032

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298,010

Keywords

Social InnovationEconomic DevelopmentTerritorial GovernanceSolidarity EconomyCommunity EngagementInstitutionalization