Social Innovation, Experimentalism, and Public Governance: An Ethnographical Approach to Study Public Arenas in the City

ABSTRACT

This study offers a new perspective on the relationship between social innovation and public governance. It drew inspiration from pragmatism, emphasizing the importance of public inquiry and democratic experimentalism. The perspective was applied and validated through a series of studies conducted within the framework of the Observatory of Social Innovation in Florianópolis, Brazil, since 2017. The study presented and discussed the findings and insights gained from observing the emergence and spread (or lack thereof) of social innovations in the city’s public arenas. It revisited the debate on public governance to establish a framework for the study of public action. It then identified gaps and improvements in the literature linking public governance and social innovation. Based on these previous discussions, the article proposes an approach to pragmatist ethnography of public arenas validated by empirical studies in Florianópolis. The results provide insights into how societal-state relations and modes of governance can facilitate or impede social innovation and the promotion of more democratic and sustainable cities. The study contributes to a better understanding of the interplay between social innovation and public governance, and its implications for the development of more inclusive and sustainable cities.

Keywords:
public action; civil society; social innovation; experimentalism; public governance

INTRODUCTION

The function of locally coping with global, turbulent, and unpredictable problems demands adaptation, commitment, invention, and experimentation capacities from governments, enterprises, and communities. This has become even more critical now with the urgency imposed by climate change and after the COVID-19 pandemic (Andion et al., 2020), requiring negotiation, co-creation, and the practice of new patterns of connection among the state, the market, and civil society.

In this light, the debate about new forms of governance in public administration is gaining force, placing emphasis on more experimentalist standards of societal-state relations that foster a recursive process of provisional goal-setting and constant redefinition based on collaborative learning (Sabel & Zeitlin, 2012). More than just considering participation and co-production as strategies to increase the efficiency and efficacy of governments, it presupposes a wide understanding of democracy as a practice and exercise capable of transforming public administration and its relations with societies (Ansell, 2011; Frega, 2019; Shields, 2003).

At the same time, we observe a deep crisis in liberal democracy in various countries, including Brazil (the site of this study), which puts into question the traditional models of promoting participation and engagement with public issues and common interest co-construction (Castells, 2018; Levitsky & Zibllat, 2018). Despite presenting different interpretations of the phenomenon, many authors denounce the process of democratic decline or regression and invite us to reflect on new possibilities to (re)signify and strengthen democracies in the face of this scenario.

As discussed by Ansell and Torfing (2016), the field of governance studies has largely expanded since its emergence in the 1980s and is permeated by multiple theoretical strands, paradigms, and lenses of analysis. However, the emergence and reinforcement of the notion of governance and its use in place of the concept of government does not mean per se a democratic reinvention and reinforcement of public policies, nor the mere elimination of the idea of the state. More than a buzzword that can solve democratic failure, governance is seen here as a ‘problem’, a phenomenon that requires further investigation. In this sense, a central issue in advancing the research agenda is understanding the new forms of governance and their real effects on democracy and public policies through empirical studies.

In light of this, the following question arises: ‘What new forms of governance and state-civil society interactions to promote social innovation, reinforcing public policies and democracy?’ This question is particularly relevant in the poorest countries, where multiple crises - environmental, economic, sanitary, and democratic - overlap and where the effects of those crises are even more prominent and urgent. This study aims to discuss this broad question by generating a dialogue with the literature that addresses social innovations promoted by civil society actors and their influence on public governance and policy. In particular, we explore the reality of Florianópolis, a city recognized for its innovation capability in Brazil, a country permeated by inequalities and robust public problems that has faced a clear democratic regression since 2013 (Tenório & Teixeira, 2021).

The international debate on the role of civil society in promoting social innovation in public policy and governance includes different and contradictory theoretical positions. On the one hand, enthusiasts express a wide range of positive effects of civil society’s collective actions, such as improving accountability and transparency, reinforcing participation and social control, and enhancing public policies (Arko-Cobbah, 2008; Burlandy, 2011; Pereira & Nichiata, 2011). On the other hand, skeptics criticize civil society organizations (CSOs) for entering the vacuum of social provision (Massey & Johnston-Miller, 2016). Instead of starting from extremes and a priori notions, we propose understanding the changes in society-state interaction patterns and their consequences; that is, how they influence the conception of more (or less) democratic public policies and governance systems that foster or discourage social innovation (Frega, 2019; Gurza Lavalle & Szwako, 2015).

To do so, we put forward an analytical approach based on theoretical streams that are all anchored in a pragmatic tradition based in the work of John Dewey, with a focus on discussions about: (a) democratic experimentalism (Ansell, 2011; 2012; Frega, 2019); (b) sociology of public action, focusing on experiences and trajectories of public problems (Cefaï, 2017; Cefaï & Terzi, 2012; Chateauraynaud, 2011; 2021; Chateauraynaud & Debaz, 2017); and (c) social innovation, centering on the recent debate about social innovation and governance, as well as social innovation ecosystems and cities (Andion et al., 2019; 2020; 2022; Howaldt et al., 2018; 2019; Kaletka et al., 2016; Schiavo et al., 2013).

As a contribution, we present and discuss learnings in the application of a ‘pragmatist ethnography of public arenas’ (Cefaï, 2002; 2007) both as a posture and as a research method. The methodological pathway was based on the distinct moments, questions, data collection, and analysis techniques explored in the text. The empirical application of this framework synthesized and exemplified in this text allows us to retrace the configuration of public arenas in the city, their fields of practice, actors, devices, interactions, transactions, forms of engagement, problematic situations and controversies, and the ways in which they face them. Beyond this, the discussion highlights the complexity and diversity of ‘public governances’ and how they are performed at the interface between the creativity of action produced by emerging collective actions and the regularity of institutions, which is manifested in norms, rules, and other devices in these arenas. At this crossing point, we seek to show how social innovations emerge and spread - or are prevented or aborted - in these public arenas, and what effects and lessons can be observed in public actions in cities.

This study provides an overview, identifies gaps in recent literature that discusses public governance, relates it to social innovation in public administration, and proposes an analytical and methodological approach applied and validated to analyze the dynamics of social innovation and its effects in the public arenas and on policies. The findings and conclusions provide valuable clues for researchers, professionals, and public managers to promote social innovation experimentations linked to public actions and public policy dynamics, providing places for society-state interactions that reinforce democracy and sustainability.

(RE)DISCUSSING PUBLIC GOVERNANCE TO UNDERSTAND PUBLIC ACTION

The idea of governance is related to various forms of interaction and joint coordination between civil society and government, based on the multipolarity of instituted powers, their fluidity, and decentralization in contemporary public administration (Gaudin, 2002; Levi-Faur, 2012). Despite the different conceptions and the plurality of the qualifying prefix applied to the term ‘governance,’ it is commonly defined as ‘process of coordination’ or as a ‘collective action’ promoted to achieve common goals (Torfing et al., 2012). Even though there is a consensus regarding this (re)interpretation, ‘governance’ in public administration has become an umbrella term that provides space for distinct readings and perspectives about what should be the interaction between the state and civil society and what the effects of this process will be in public actions and public policies (Ansell & Torfing, 2016).

A more traditional perspective adopted and diffused by the World Bank (2007) is prescriptive claiming for a ‘good governance’, focusing on the role of the government in promoting effective public policies and reinforcing institutions. In public administration, the debate about this notion is observed in the New Public Management (NPM) discourse, which defends a managerial and market-oriented framework for public service delivery. From this perspective, civil society is conceived as a complementary sphere dependent on governmental action. The notion of interdependence (Salamon, 1995) is offered as an alternative to increase the efficiency of the state and diminish its costs. Governance occurs through the control of the principal (government) in relation to the agent, which consists of civil society organizations (CSOs) that assume the role of providing public services and/or goods.

A second conception that has emerged in response to NPM fragilities and is also quite influential in the field of public administration is the notion of New Public Governance (NPG) (Osborne, 2010). In this case, the focus is on public service delivery, highlighting the role of users in the co-production of public goods (Radnor et al., 2016). Governance is a way to improve the quality, effectiveness, and equity of public services, including users, as protagonists of public service delivery.

A third relevant concept is linked to discussions in democratic theories, especially the debate on participative and deliberative democracy (Klinke, 2016). Here, we discuss democratic or participative governance, referring to the influence of civil society on pressure, social control, and political and social fights in various fields of rights (Cohen & Arato, 1992). These studies broaden the debate on the importance of participation by considering the multiple forms of political representation, social control, and legitimacy within democracies.

Without ignoring the importance of each of these concepts, they are all based on the fundamental idea that civil society and the state are separate entities or enclaves. The concepts of politics, governance, and democracy are formal and institutional. Governments and their dimensions are promoted apart from civil society, which has a complementary and functional role from a managerial perspective, or the purpose of opposing/demanding/pressuring or even participating in the state, and thus controlling it.

More recently, many studies have emphasized the importance of examining the relationships between the state and civil society, further discussing the naturalization of this foundational duality (Ansell, 2011; Frega, 2019; Gurza Lavalle & Szwako, 2015; Sabel & Zeitlin, 2012). These studies offer clues to reinterpret governance and the role of civil society as an intrinsic and constitutive space for the democratic state and the public actions promoted by it. In this way, public actions are not limited to governmental actions that the state determines/ascribes to/controls; they have relative autonomy, which is promoted in loco and at the intersection between what is instituted and social autonomy through society-state associations, interfaces, and responses co-constructed for public problems.

In this larger debate, we want to explore the interface between social innovation and public governance as a new analytical avenue for thinking and acting to address today’s complex and urgent public problems as well as to promote more democratic and sustainable practices at the local level. But this approximation should not be treated as a miracle formula or a ‘magic concept’ (Bragaglia, 2021), but as a new way of understanding and strengthening ‘public action’ (Lascoumes & Le Galès, 2007), understood as the product of the interface, conflict, mobilization, and engagement of various actors and sectors in response to public problems. In this sense, public policy is no longer understood as the monopoly of a single state or the object of formal programs planned a priori and rationally.

Public policies, recovering the founding ideas of Dewey (1927), are here interpreted as ‘working hypotheses,’ as experiments, given the uncertainty of the ends to be achieved and the complexity of public problems we face today at the local level (Lascoumes & Le Galès, 2007). In this sense, it becomes necessary to promote ‘inquiry’ to undertake new forms of public governance or interaction between state and civil society able to strengthen democracy and reinforce civic life and community development. However, this relationship between the micro- and macro-scales of reality, linking experimentation and creativity with institutional dynamics, is not a simple analytical task, as we approach in the next section, relating the debates on social innovation and public governance.

THE DEBATE RELATING PUBLIC GOVERNANCE AND SOCIAL INNOVATION

The discussion linking social innovation and public governance has gained traction in the scientific field and political discourses in the last two decades (Galego et al., 2022). In their seminal article Social Innovation and Governance in the European Cities, Moulaert et al. (2007) launched a debate that has substantially expanded nowadays, focusing on the interaction among social innovation experiences and coordinated responses to public problems faced in urban and rural contexts and considering sustainability challenges.

Since then, the debate has expanded considerably, giving rise to hundreds of academic and technical studies on the subject, as discussed by Galego et al. (2022) in a scoping review conducted on the subject. This increase in academic interest was confirmed in a systematic literature review conducted in August 2022 using Web of Science and Scopus databases. As search criteria were used in both databases, the keywords ‘Social Innovation’ and ‘Governance’ were used in the titles of the articles without a defined time interval. After eliminating repeated articles and those outside the theme, 34 articles were read and analyzed in depth. The results are summarized in Table 1 and discussed below.

Table 1
Summary of the perspectives and focus of analysis in the debate linking social innovation (SI) and public governance (PG).

Meta-theoretical perspectives	Focus of analysis	Themes and authors
Normative/Prescriptive	Scoping review of the debate on SI and governance	Interdisciplinary debate on social innovation and public governance (Galego et al., 2022).
	Changes in social relations (interactions) Interface between SI and new forms of interaction across actors, sectors, and scales prompting creativity and coproduction of learning	Public-private governance (Klievink & Janssen, 2014). Indicators, governance index on SI (Unceta et al., 2017). Multi-level governance of SI (Sabato & Verschraegen, 2019). Innovation in the public sector and open innovation labs (Bevilacqua et al., 2020). Multisectorial collaboration and partnerships (Sauer & Hiete, 2020). Network for knowledge coproduction and creativity promotion in urban life (Eizaguirre et al., 2012; Sorge et al., 2022)
	Social and environmental transformations (sustainability) Social innovation as a vector of sustainability promotion and responses to social challenges	CSOs, SI, and governance against poverty (De Muro et al., 2007). Place-based sustainable development (Baker & Mehmood, 2015). SI and adaptive governance (Castro-Arce et al., 2019). Localized Agri-food Systems (LAFS) (Martinez & Rivera, 2018). SI and disaster, SI and risk governance (Rana et al., 2021. IS, public policies, and sustainability (Meyer, 2022).
	Promotion of collaboration, participation, bottom/up dynamics Relation between SI and collaborative governance described as a formal and institutionalized process of consensus-oriented decisions to respond to local challenges	Citizen participation, local and territorial governance (Biljohn & Lues, 2020; Calvo & Fernandez, 2021; Constantini et al., 2022; Kim, 2022). Multiscale democratic governance, collaborative governance (Barandiaran, 2021; Gerometta et al., 2005). Socially innovative governance (Georgios & Barrí, 2023). Collaborative platform for SI (Temmerman et al., 2021). Cooperative relations between civil society organizations and the state (Campomori & Casula, 2022).
Critique	Social innovation as a continuum of neoliberal reforms and a magic concept Critical reflections about the notions of SI, governance, and their relation	Critical reflection about the concept of SI, PG, and social investment (Bifulco, 2020; Bragaglia, 2021). Regressive aspects of digital social innovations (DSI) (Certomà, 2022). Relation between SI, good governance (Massey & Johnston-Miller, 2016), and austerity governance (Arampatzi, 2022).
Relational	Transformation of the relational webs that constitute local spaces Theoretical analysis emphasizing the relational dimension of governance and IS	Changes in human-environment interactions (Baker & Mehmood, 2015). Social innovation and local systems of governance (Anglada, 2016). Relational approach to understand transformative trajectory of learning and change in urban governance (Bartels, 2020).

• Note. Source: Developed by the author based on the systematic review

Our systematic review confirmed some of the findings of the bibliographic analysis of Galego et al. (2022), who performed an in-depth analysis of 41 articles published between 1973 and 2019 in the same databases. First, most publications (61%) were published after 2020, indicating that this debate is recent. Only two articles were published before 2010 (Gerometta et al., 2005; De Muro et al., 2007). The field is clearly interdisciplinary, with a majority of environmental, regional, planning, and urban studies, followed by smaller groups of studies in the fields of management, public administration, sustainability, technology, geography, sociology, and agronomy. There are a plurality of authors and themes of research, as shown in Table 1, revealing that the field of study is fragmented and still underdeveloped, especially in the domain of public administration explored here. Finally, most studies are theoretical and produced in developed countries, especially in Europe, and many of them are financed by European institutions, such as Horizon 2030 and the European Commission.

To put forward the analysis, we went further than Galego et al. (2022) by conducting a meta-theoretical analysis of the debate and its implications. Thereby, we address the main advances and gaps in the theoretical discussion to better highlight the contributions of the analytical approach proposed in this article, which is inspired by critical pragmatism, for the scientific debate on social innovation and public governance.

Prescriptive and normative studies that link social innovation and public governance

As shown in Table 1, a significant number of articles adopted a normative and prescriptive perspective to study the relationship between public governance and social innovation. This perspective, which dominates the debate, appears in distinct sets of studies that focus on common themes.

The first set of articles highlights the interference of social innovations in governance through ‘changes in social relations and patterns of interactions’ among the different actors, sectors, and scales involved in governance. They discuss themes as public-private governance (Klievink & Janssen, 2014); indicators, governance index on social innovation (Unceta et al., 2017); multi-level governance of social innovation (Sabato & Verschraegen, 2019); innovation in the public sector and open innovation labs (Bevilacqua et al., 2020); multisectoral collaboration and partnerships (Sauer & Hiete, 2020); and network for knowledge coproduction and creativity promotion in urban life (Eizaguirre et al., 2012; Sorge et al., 2022).

The second set focuses on ‘social innovations as a vector of sustainability promotion and responses to grand challenges’, exploring environmental issues in the face of climate crises. The authors explore themes such as SI and governance against poverty (De Muro et al., 2007); place-based sustainable development (Baker & Mehmood, 2015); SI and adaptive governance (Castro-Arce et al., 2019); Localized Agri-food Systems (LAFS) (Martinez & Rivera, 2018); SI and disaster and risk governance Rana et al., 2021); and SI, public policies, and sustainability (Meyer, 2022).

The third group emphasizes the ‘role of social innovations to stimulate participation and collaborative governance’. In most cases, public governance is qualified as a formal and institutionalized process of consensus-oriented decisions to respond to local challenges. The virtues of social innovation dynamics are highlighted; however, the obstacles confronted in practice are almost absent from the debate. Here we can cite themes as: citizen participation, local and territorial governance (Biljohn & Lues, 2020; Calvo & Fernandez, 2021; Constantini et al., 2022; Kim, 2022); multiscale democratic governance and collaborative governance (Barandiaran, 2021; Gerometta et al., 2005); socially innovative governance (Georgios & Barrí, 2023); collaborative platforms for SI (Temmerman et al., 2021); and cooperative relations between civil society organizations and the state (Campomori & Casula, 2022).

Despite their contributions, these studies have a prescriptive approach in common, which takes for granted the idea that social innovation promotes democracy and sustainability. The majority present an uncritical, theory-driven perspective, which does not problematize the real challenges of social innovation and governance experiences and their interfaces.

Critical studies that discuss social innovation and governance

Although the vast majority of the 34 articles analyzed had a normative character, some studies adopted a critical perspective (Arampatzi, 2022; Bifulco, 2020; Bragaglia, 2021; Certomà, 2022; Massey & Johnston-Miller, 2016). Such studies denounce the ‘positive and pervasive’ character that predominates in academia, practice and policies that relate social innovation and governance, and promote a reflection on the multiplicity of meanings that these terms can have as well as their “normative charge, its ability to so quickly generate consensus and its global marketability” (Bragaglia, 2021, p. 102).

Such a critical perspective seems scarcely explored in studies. It can contribute significantly to understanding the advances, limits, and difficulties faced in promoting processes of social change in a scenario marked by austerity, deregulation, democratic crisis, and the advance of neoliberal policies in several countries worldwide, especially in the Global South.

Beyond normative and critical perspectives: A look at practices, experiences, and relations

A smaller group of studies does not fit into the two perspectives discussed above or is part of the interactionist lens to understand the interface between social innovation and governance. In this group, studies discuss changes in human-environment interactions (Baker & Mehmood, 2015), relations in social innovation dynamics and local systems of governance (Anglada, 2016), and a relational approach to understanding the transformative trajectory of learning and change in urban governance (Bartels, 2020). In these studies, public governance and social innovation are not take for granted as having an intrinsic value nor are they positive and normatively determined a priori. These studies assume the importance of considering the dynamics of investigating social innovation through empirical studies of the ‘day-to-day politics’ of different collectives mobilized around public problems (Cefaï & Terzi, 2012). In this perspective and considering the challenges and social reality of the cities of the Global South, we develop the analytical and methodological approach discussed next.

A CRITICAL PRAGMATIST APPROACH FOR THE STUDY OF CIVIL SOCIETY, SOCIAL INNOVATION, AND ITS INCIDENCE IN PUBLIC GOVERNANCE

The meta-theoretical analysis conducted in this study shows the predominance of a prescriptive perspective in the debate on social innovation and its connection with public governance. This dominance often conduces studies to take for granted a casual relation between these phenomena, considering that social innovation automatically produces ‘good governance’ and vice versa and this ‘good governance’ will generate more democracy and sustainability. This pattern of thinking can limit empirical and theoretical advances in the field.

On the other hand, these normative ‘grammars of public life’ also permeate the studies that discuss the interface between civil society, governance, and public policies. Some authors defend the virtues of the ‘partnership’ between civil society initiatives and the state, in a perspective of complementarity and cooperation, while others take a critical stance toward this phenomenon. Studies have highlighted the role of civil society in promoting participatory governance and improving accountability, transparency, effectiveness, and coherence in public policy (Arko-Cobbah, 2008; Pereira & Nichiata, 2011). However, some authors have showed that few CSOs have a consistent level of engagement in the policy process or make a significant difference in policy outcomes. Some criticize the permeable boundaries that have been established between the state, the market, and civil society under neoliberalism (Massey & Johnston-Miller, 2016), causing certain CSOs to step into the vacuum of public service provision. Moreover, the Big Society agenda, followed by cuts in the public budget, has also been criticized for its effect on the independence and capability of CSOs to engage in public policymaking (Ishkanian, 2014). In this sense, neoliberal policies are criticized for instrumentalizing CSOs as alternative agents for service delivery, despite the discourse being that of strengthening the capacity of civil society.

In this text, we begin with a pragmatist analytical prism that joins a critical and interactionist perspective on the study of social innovations and their inscription in the public sphere. This prism aims to transcend these polarizations, affirming the importance of empirical research in studying collective actions and social innovation promoted in different fields of public policy to understand and reinforce public action in practice. As proposed by Zittoun et al. (2021), this means studying and supporting the capacity of policy actors to identify public issues, argue, deliberate, define their interests, and act.

These perspectives transcend the fundamental idea that civil society and the state are separate entities and enclaves. Thus, the adopted concepts of politics, governance, and democracy are formal and institutional (Frega, 2019). Instead of taking this opposition for granted - assuming that CSOs are partners or adversaries of the government -, we emphasize here the relationship between the state and civil society in public policymaking. In this way, public actions are not limited to governmental actions that the state determines/ascribes to/controls; they have relative autonomy, which is promoted in loco and at the intersection between what is instituted and social autonomy through society-state interfaces and responses co-constructed for public problems.

In terms of research, this allows us to reconcile and consider the individual scale and everyday experience of civil society actors in promoting broader institutional changes; in other words, this concerns the process of the social being constructed (Latour, 2012). This implies another interpretation of social innovation and public governance processes that has been expressed in recent debates about ‘democratic experimentalism and public inquiry’. As Ansell and Boin (2019) have discussed, an experimentalist approach to governance is central to global, turbulent, and unpredictable public problems. This requirement for constant adaptation has become increasingly urgent worldwide owing to the COVID-19 pandemic and climate crisis.

However, this does not mean considering social innovation only as an alternative to solving problems in public administration under a functionalist logic, but as a route to better understand and reinforce the interface between the dynamics of collective actions promoted by civil society actors facing issues and problems and the institutionalization processes in public administration. As proposed by Ansell (2011), this means valuing the process of ‘evolutionary learning,’ which emphasizes the consequences and effects of public problems, reflexivity, and critical capacities, and the deliberation and construction of ‘communities of inquiry.’ To play this role, however, rethinking how administrative organizations function in democratic societies is necessary.

Reconstructing this relationship requires a particular understanding of how institutions and organizations currently function and how they relate to the society around them. This process also requires the intellectual resources to overcome the recurrent tensions between apparently incompatible alternatives and values. To do this reimagining …, pragmatism provides intellectual resources and insights for managing the tensions between democracy and governance (Ansell, 2011, p. 2).

From a critical pragmatist perspective, as expressed in the pioneering work of Dewey (1927; 1950; 1974), this experimentalist form of governance is linked to the ways in which social actors face, learn from, and act in response to public problems. In these processes that constitute ‘public inquiries,’ they could form ‘publics’ that perform as ‘public arenas.’ The latter are interpreted by Cefaï (2002) at the same time as spaces of conflict and agreement in which public actions are performed. From this perspective, what is public is no longer a monopoly of the government or technocrats, and the processes that enable the democratic construction that occurs in the interaction between the state and society become the central point to be investigated, followed, and reinforced by researchers. They are not only experts who observe these arenas neutrally but also actors who have agency over them. Therefore, a systematic observation of public arenas and applied and implicated research co-constructed with social actors could allow a better understanding of how these actors and devices report to each other and commit themselves (or not) to a collective effort to define and control problematic situations and their effects.

Ansell (2011) and Frega (2019) explored this process as ‘democratic experimentalism’. This approach is understood as an opportunity to transform what is instituted, which is essential for reinventing democracy, reconnecting local actions, and broader processes of social change, making it a critical issue for advancing the agenda of social innovation studies. Democratic experimentalism can provide theoretical and analytical insights into how democracy is related to social innovation, and the role of civil society in reinforcing (or not) democracy. In addition to identifying the extent and limits of participative processes, it means recognizing the way in which the design of institutions occurs through these processes to face the undesirable consequences of life.

However, how can we put this approach into practice, and assess and reinforce processes of public inquiry and democratic experimentalism that result from social innovation initiatives promoted in real life? Motivated by this broad question and inspired by the critical-pragmatic lens discussed above, we have been developing a research agenda for Brazil since 2010. From 2013 to 2016, with the research project Civil Society and Social Innovation in the Public Sphere, we tried to understand the extent to which social innovation initiatives promoted by civil society actors respond to public problems and influence the public arenas and policies in which they operate. This makes it possible to conceive a theoretical and methodological approach and study several social innovation initiatives in some public arenas at the federal and local levels in Brazil (Andion; Moraes, et al., 2017; Andion; Ronconi, et al., 2017; Moraes & Andion, 2018; Gonsalves & Andion, 2019).

This first stage of the research and the analysis of the results permit us to conclude that in order to more closely follow the effects of civil society in the fields of public policy and public governance, as well as to emphasize social innovation, it is necessary to continuously follow these experiences, considering their inscription in time and space (territory) and using a multiscale and multisectoral approach. We observe that social innovation dynamics are configured as a process of co-definition and coping with problematic situations that occur in everyday politics. Our study demonstrates that social innovation does not result from a single actor; instead, it emerges through network associations. Contrary to what is traditionally stated in classical studies on social innovation, it does not occur in a vacuum, is not a linear process, and does not have predictable outcomes.

To follow these dynamics, we started a longitudinal and systematic research of ‘public arenas’ in the city as the second stage of our research agenda. To accomplish this goal, we established the Observatory of Social Innovation in Florianópolis (Observatório de Inovação Social de Florianópolis [OBISF]) in 2017. This study articulates teaching and community engagement and is implemented through a collaborative digital platform built in partnership with almost 15 institutions to promote the cartography of the Social Innovation Ecosystem (SIE) of the city formed by a constellation of support actors and social innovation initiatives acting in the municipality. In addition to a structural analysis of the SIE, its network, and the forms of interactions between actors, the ultimate goal of the project was to strengthen and disseminate ‘public inquiry’ practices in the context of the city, thereby reinforcing the dynamics of democratic experimentalism and systems of governance that reinforce public action and interrelate with social innovation dynamics and public policies (Andion et al., 2019; 2020; 2022).

Thereby, we designed and implemented a research method of ‘ethnography of public arenas’ based on the concept of ‘design experimentalism’ (Ansell, 2012), which (1) focuses on real and lived experiences and not on those produced in the intramural university laboratories; (2) considers the mutual structure between the subjects and the research phenomena and the interaction among researchers and social actors by valuing and taking seriously their justifications, knowledge, and practices; (3) considers multiple forms of cause-action links, measurements, and tests, specifically the metrics and forms of explanation developed by the different publics and audiences affected by public problems, considered also as experimenters; (4) allows space for making errors, learning, formulation and reformulation of hypotheses, discussion, debate, and validation of research results in collaboration with the people studied; (5) promotes theoretical excavation and methodological craftsmanship, dialogue, and triangulation of different qualitative and quantitative research approaches and methodologies from an abductive standpoint; and (6) favors the idea of a political ecology and a plurality of relations and interactions in the SIE rather than an ideal of universality, or an SIE ‘model of analysis’ (Magalhães et al., 2020).

Subsequently, to penetrate and promote these processes of co-construction of knowledge, we sought to identify and strengthen the Social Innovation Living Labs (SILLs) already existing in the public arenas by carrying out actions with the ‘communities of practices’ being studied. SILLs are interpreted as real spaces of interaction experienced outside the university that function as ‘public action laboratories’ and, consequently, places in which social innovations can flourish (Schiavo et al., 2013). Thus, in these spaces, we can observe policies and public actions as ‘uncontrolled experiments’ under development, which are interpreted during their implementation (Lascoumes & Le Galès, 2007).

In the next section, we describe the methods, moments, and research strategies used to do ethnography in public arenas of the city in more detail.

ANALYTICAL AND METHODOLOGICAL APPROACH: FROM THE CARTOGRAPHY TO THE ETHNOGRAPHY OF PUBLIC ARENAS

This section discusses how to access and comprehend social innovation through the ‘ethnography of public arenas’. Each research project developed within the scope of the observatory had its own design and research path based on long-term and systematic fieldwork. However, there are certain ‘moments’ that are common and which, validated by several empirical studies (as summarized in Figure 4), consolidate the theoretical-analytical framework of the ethnography of public arenas presented below.

Inspired by Cefaï (2002), we perceive public arenas as formed in multiple places and moments, with a great dispersion of scenes, fields, exchanges of arguments, and logics of action among the different publics and ‘milieux’ mobilized. To capture this complexity, the research design uses a multiscale and multisectoral perspective (Revel, 1998) to capture different scenarios in which the network unfolds. Table 2 summarizes the different stages of the research that were not developed in a linear manner, respecting the research indeterminacy, pragmatist postures, and abductive approach (Timmermans & Tavory, 2012). Each moment had objectives, research strategies, spaces in which these strategies were implemented, and questions that guided the research, as detailed in Table 2.

Table 2
Analytical focus and methodological path to conduct the ethnography of the public arenas.

Moments	Focus	Research strategy	Locus of the study
Cartography and analysis of public arena’s network	Understanding the outlines of the public arena, the main public problems, social actors and interactions (structural analysis)	Mapping, cartography	Social innovation ecosystem, networks that form the public arena
Guiding questions: Who are the support actors that uphold social innovation in the city? What are their roles? Which initiatives aim to respond to the city’s public problems? What are the problematic situations that they aim to address? What are the interactions established? Who are the people affected? What are the proposed solutions? What are the methodologies and technologies presented? What is the incidence in public arenas?
Identification and observation of the scenes of reciprocal adjustment	Identification and observation of scenes of commitment and/or conflict among different publics engaged in the public arena	Direct, continued, and systematic observation	Spaces of connection and dialogue, such as the forums or councils of public policies; Public scenes and situations
Guiding questions: How are the actors organized to request their demands? What are the legal and institutional mechanisms, objects, and rules that publics used to respond to public problems? How can representation and legitimacy be built in the public arena? What is the scale of publicity used in the arena? Who are the protagonists, the spectators, the narrators, and the audience? Who is responsible?
Follow-up with different publics and their life experiences	How does the action occur (if it does), and what are the consequences? Recovery time sequences while they are produced	Direct and systematic observation	Government agencies and civil society organizations that act with the public problem, public action, and public policies
Guiding questions: How do affected people understand the public problem? Do they mobilize and act around this problem? How? How does the attribution of responsibility, the elaboration of a complaint, the unfolding of a violation of right occur? What are the consequences for the affected people? Do they publicize their problems? How?
Reconstitution and analysis of the public arena’s trajectory	Reconstitution of trajectory of the public arena (and the public problems ballistics) and the problematic situations experienced	Document analysis; Systematic observation; Interviews with actors	Agenda of the media; Governmental agenda; Mechanisms of public action; Public scenes and situations
Guiding questions: Who are the spokespersons? What are the events? What are the themes discussed? What problematic situations have people lived? How are these situations faced? What are the consequences? What is the narrative when facing the problem? What are the arguments? What are the controversies?
Collaboration, sharing, and validating research results with affected publics	How the surveyed subjects perceive and (re)signify the research results?	Community service (extension); Workshop; Focus-group; Interviews	Projects and workshops with different publics surveyed (government, civil society, universities, ordinary citizens)
Guiding questions: How do the researched people perceive, (re)signify, and coproduce the research results? What are their impressions, questions, dilemmas, difficulties? What are the feedbacks?

• Note. Source: Adapted and expanded from Magalhães, T., Andion, C., & Alperstedt, G. D. (2020). Laboratórios vivos de inovação social e ação pública: Um enfoque analítico e um caminho metodológico baseados no pragmatismo. Cadernos EBAPE.BR, 18(Spe), 680-696. https://doi.org/10.1590/1679-395120190159

First, the methodological path allowed us to co-produce ‘the cartography and analysis of public arenas’ networks’, composed of civil society, government, universities, communities, market initiatives, collectives, and devices that mobilize around the city’s public problems, such as the vulnerability of children and adolescents, food insecurity, waste and environmental issues, and others. It made it possible to see the real situation more closely, publicize, and systematize the public problems of the city as they were lived by ordinary citizens, communities, groups, and collectives, many of them not publicized in the debate or by the public authorities.

This was possible because of the collaborative platform developed in the OBISF (as mentioned above) and the compromise made by the team to map and visit social innovation initiatives in situ. In the various research projects developed, this cartography starts with key spaces of articulation in public arenas such as forums, public policy councils, and other spaces for deliberation. Starting from some ‘gateway’ into the public arena, the researchers begin to follow the actors and reconstitute the network mobilized around public problems through their interactions with other actors, forming an ecosystem of social innovation in the city.

However, in addition to this structural analysis of the network, this study permits the identification and follow-up of ‘scenes of reciprocal adjustment and to access the publics and their lived experiences’. This makes it possible to understand how they act and the consequences of the action. To achieve this, penetrating the associations, regimes of coordination, and movement is essential. This is possible through different research strategies: (1) document analysis (of minutes, reports, discussion on social networks, etc.); and (2) participation of researchers in the spaces of articulation, debate, and identified social control, such as the Municipal Council of Defense of Children’s and Adolescents’ Rights (Conselho Municipal dos Direitos da Criança e do Adolescente [CMDCA]), the Forum of Public Policies of Florianópolis (Fórum de Políticas Públicas de Florianópolis [FPPF]), and the forum called Rede Semear in the field of urban agriculture. Such strategies made it possible to access situations of coordination/commitment and also of conflict between the different actors in the studied arenas and the processes of problematizing and publicizing situations, while these were being experienced (Cefaï, 2007).

Another crucial moment in the research involved ‘collaboration, sharing, and validating research results with affected publics’. The preliminary results of the research are shared with the public, submitted for their perception, understanding, and co-construction. This is consistent with the epistemological posture of pragmatism (Corrêa, 2019): academic production needs to make sense of actors and be grounded in their daily operations of problematization and publicization. Strategies such as extension projects and workshops with different partners and social actors were promoted.

This work made it possible to recover, as pointed out by Terzi (2015), the narrative component of public actions through the ‘reconstitution and analysis of the public arenas’ trajectories’. This effort to recover this component is important not only for researchers, but also for actors who engage in public arenas, as it makes it possible to better understand how democracy is learned and exercised in these fields of political practice and its effects on public governance and public actions, producing or not producing social innovations. However, the capacity of democratic experimentalism is not taken for granted. It must be examined through multiscale and longitudinal studies. Therefore, it is important to observe and systematize how these dynamics emerge and spread in territories, considering the forms of interaction and agencies between people and objects, experiences, and nature; the routines, habits, patterns, recursion; arguments, actions, courses, and consequences (Chateauraynaud, 2011).

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION: WHAT WE LEARNED FROM THE MAPPING AND OBSERVATION OF PUBLIC ARENAS OF THE CITY

This article and this section, in its scope and focus, do not intend to explore in depth the results of the research carried out within the observatory framework. Rather, we present a synthesis of these common results, highlighting the contributions, limits, and lessons learned with the application of the proposed analytical approach, to study the interface between social innovations and public governance. However, Figure 4 presents some examples of the ethnographic works of public arenas developed within the observatory framework and its methodological path, along with the main results.

Until August 2022, the observatory team mapped 488 support actors that encourage social innovation in the city, exerting 14 functions, as shown in Figure 1. Most promoted financing (33%), technical support (25%), and articulation (12%). These institutions supported the 565 active social innovation initiatives that were mapped in this period. The vast majority of these initiatives originated in civil society and were promoted by associations (35%), universities (23%), and informal collectives (11%) (Figure 2). We also mapped 67 initiatives that have closed, since 2017, when we began the study, showing a mortality rate of 10% in these five years.

Figure 1
Functions of the support institutions

Figure 2
Types of social innovation initiatives.

These 565 social innovation initiatives promote responses to public problems in 26 fields of practice (Figure 3), with the prevalence of social protection fields linked to children’s and adolescents’ rights (12%), education (11%), and health (11%). There is great dispersion of causes, but when we observe the interactions between these actions more closely, we can see the contours of some fields of practice shared by them (Figure 3).

Figure 3
Social innovation initiatives by causes.

The cartography of these initiatives and their interactions with their supporters and other social innovation initiatives partners make it possible to trace the network, which contains 16 fields of practices and experiences, graphically represented in the digital platform. This study examines the political ecology of these spaces, which is characterized by a plurality of public problems and mobilization. In addition to showing these networks and the interactions among these initiatives and between them and their support actors, this study permits the demonstration and characterization of the public ecology and culture of these fields of experiences.

The cartography of the interactions among social innovation initiatives in the city and between them and their supporters has facilitated the creation of a network that conforms the social innovation ecosystem of the city (Howaldt et al., 2019) and its ecology. This work, which is continuous and always provisional, makes it possible to see the plurality of sectors and the diversity of actors that perform public governance or social innovation in the local reality. In terms of civil society, it enables a better characterization of this diversity, which is formed only by formal and invited spaces of participation but also by invented and informal initiatives (Miraftab, 2004). It was possible to observe that civil society in the city is mostly composed by traditional associations (linked with the religion or community philanthropy) but also by networks, social movements, social enterprises, and informal collectives. This permits the demystification of the idea of a univocal civil society, giving space to a plural civil society.

This plural civil society attempts to put social innovation into practice in multiple ways, immersed in different public arenas with distinct regimes of governance manifested in an intricate network of actors, devices, norms, routines, habits, experiences, proof situations, and controversies. These findings allow us to consider that the ecologies of public arenas influence and determine governance regimes and can foster or hinder social innovation. Therefore, to comprehend these ecologies in each field of practice, structural and institutional analyses are insufficient, and it is necessary to look closely at penetrating public experiences through the ethnography of these public arenas.

In this sense, some of the public arenas retraced are followed through fieldwork by the researchers of the observatory, applying the pragmatic ethnography of public arenas in specific fields such as child, adolescent, and female rights, solid waste management, urban agriculture, and homeless people (as illustrated in Figure 4). Our close observation of these public arenas in the city permitted the empirical observation that each public policy system was permeated by multiple public arenas.

Figure 4
Some fieldworks conduced in the public arenas of the city.

The diverse studies conducted by the observatory in these arenas reveal that each has its own configuration. The conformation of public arenas and their forms of governance are singular and shaped by specific actors, positions, resources, devices, events, norms, controversies, and conflicts, giving place to specific modes of interaction, engagement, and power relations and producing different effects in time and space. Identifying and considering the relationship between these aspects is important to comprehend the various forms of governance and their influence on social innovation dynamics. (Magalhães, et al., 2022).

In other words, each public arena has its own political ecology and trajectory, along with its ballistics, which could help us better understand how social innovation emerges. We observed what Chateauraynaud (2011) names a singular ballistics in each trajectory, showing that the course of public action is indeterminate and not predictable a priori, as affirmed in the classical rational theories of policy analysis. The reconstitution of the trajectory in these arenas shows the processual nature of governance as perceived in the diverse forms of engagement, mobilization, collective actions, coordination, and conflicts around the public problems of the city, despite talking in terms of public administration in ‘a government’ and ‘a governance.’

In this sense, our research attempts to retrace the trajectories of public problems in the city and the mobilizations around them in order to comprehend governance. But also, and mainly, to retrace, make visible, systematize, and produce public inquiry on collective mobilizations and actions around public problems in the city, strengthening processes of democratic experimentation. Our findings denature the idea that ‘good governance’ promotes social innovation and vice versa. Instead, social innovation, public governance, and their relationships are taken as starting points for the investigation. This means recuperating and retracing these trajectories with the actors that co-construct the history and the ballistics of these public arenas, to understand the democratic experimentalism and public inquiry in practice, its advances, challenges, and obstacles. This shows that these processes are not evolutive or linear, as democracy is, and must be reinforced, learned, and (re)built, as they are permeated by advances and setbacks.

Following Follet (2013; 2016), this approach means learning about public governance from the reconstitution of the trajectories of ‘power with,’ understanding that in these trajectories the regimes of governance are forged: devices are created, institutional changes are put forward, some arenas become more plural and produce more creativity, and others became more segmented and centralized. As the network of relationships becomes denser or more scattered, answers are offered and learning is generated. Understanding the dynamics of exercising democracy is, therefore, an important analytical vector for understanding and reinforcing both governance and its ability to promote social innovation in a specific territory.

This learning can contribute to putting forward the research agenda on new regimes of governance to deepen democracy, promote sustainability, and reinforce social innovation (Ansell & Torfing, 2016) considering the Brazilian reality. It focuses on the daily practice of public governance and analysis of local realities. In Brazil, although the 1988 Constitution established the need to exercise shared and democratic governance of public policies in municipalities in several areas of public policy, the legal apparatus alone does not guarantee this practice, and it demands exercise and poses challenges and dilemmas that must be understood in greater depth.

This implies the promotion of public inquiries to better understand modes of governance, social innovation dynamics, and their consequences. This analytical approach: (1) values freedom from the pre-established models of optimal governance in international literature produced mainly from the reality of northern countries; (2) considers governance as a noun, not an adjective, or a ‘miracle concept’ as defined by most traditional and normative discourses in the public administration field: (3) takes into account, in the same way, what drives, reinforces, promotes, and also what prevents and hinders public governance and social innovations, promoting a critical and reflexive way of thinking these phenomena; (3) comprehends public policy, democracy, and public governance itself beyond their formal aspects, focusing on the challenges and dilemmas of their practices (5) problematizes the ideal conceptions of opposition or partnership between the state and civil society and also the naturalization of the founding separation between these two enclaves.

Finally, inspired by Ansell and Torfing (2016), this research agenda can promote empirical and theoretical advances in key aspects of the current scientific debate on this topic.

1. To better understand how processes of multi-stakeholder collaboration and/or conflict are managed in public arenas.

2. To explore the scope and limitations of governance and understand its effects and consequences on public policies and responses to public problems.

3. To examine different governance modes and engagement regimes in public arenas and how they interact and combine in practice.

4. To consider the historical and territorial inscriptions of public governance processes.

5. To explore in more detail how governance is crossed by multiple inequalities and asymmetries in power relations producing inclusion and/or exclusion.

6. To investigate the potential and limitations of different forms of governance in public arenas to foster social innovation and deepen and strengthen democracy and sustainability at the local level.

FINAL CONSIDERATIONS: THE PROCESSUAL NATURE OF GOVERNANCE AND ITS INFLUENCE ON THE DYNAMICS OF SOCIAL INNOVATION

This study departs from a critical-pragmatist prism to observe and analyze the public arenas of the city by means of political ethnography to understand the contributions and limits of the collective actions of civil society in promoting social innovations to reinforce democracy and promote sustainability while facing the effects of multiple crises confronted today in local realities.

First, it highlights the relevance of civil society actors in public governance in a city. However, their collective actions and consequences are as diverse as those of civil society. Both cartography and ethnography of the public arenas, studied by a longitudinal analysis, allowed us to visualize the diversification of the actors, the forms and logics of action, and the constant change in interactions and transactions in these fields. This revealed the processual dimension of governance and public policies that are far from the ideal of ‘magic concepts’ (Bragaglia, 2021) or homogeneous and rational systems (Zittoun et al., 2021). This study shows that public action takes place in plural spaces made up of multiple public arenas in which different actors, practices, devices, norms, and ‘milieux’ interact and associate, producing changes or maintaining the status quo. Public governance can stimulate or hinder social innovation.

The ballistics of public governance is not the same across the public arenas studied, which is reflected in the social innovation dynamics and consequences produced. The complexity of these interactions and transactions, the plurality of ways of commitment, and the differences in the political ecology across these public arenas indicate that, even in local reality, there is no single form of relationship between the state and civil society and only one way to co-produce ‘good governance.’ In addition, public governance is not a panacea that solves all the problems of democracy. It does not automatically derive from official mechanisms (norms, rules, etc.) or result from a natural process of partnership marked by mutual trust and the absence of conflicts, as advocated by many theorists studying collaborative governance. Moreover, governance also does not innately emerge from the opening of ‘windows of opportunities’ by the state for society to co-produce public policies, or even by the interface and connectivity inherent of networks, in counterpoint to hierarchies.

In this sense, this study corroborates other studies that problematize public governance and indicates that state-civil society relations are plural, permeated by challenges, and have virtues and vices that need to be further understood by empirical research at the local level and by comparative studies (Ansell & Torfing, 2016; Bode & Brandsen, 2014). An accurate appreciation of the contributions and limitations of civil society to public governance requires moving away from preconceptions and going beyond classical opposition to deepen our understanding of the complexity of society-state relations and their impacts. The analysis of the exercise of governance here showed that it is constituted as a historical, nonlinear co-construction, marked by comings and goings and by recurrences and controversies.

No optimal governance system exists. What we saw in local public arenas was an experimental process of formulation of public policies permeated by conflicts, built by struggles and clashes ‘penetrating through the gaps,’ based on ‘resistance’ and persistence - words often found in the speeches and scenes of the research. Governance is experimented at the interface between the invention and the instituted, in the daily life of the city’s public scenes, through the practices of ordinary actors (who have a name, color, age, gender, etc.) and produce accusations, accountability, publicization, diagnoses, plans, negotiations, and bargaining.

However, we considered a city in a country facing multiple crises in a democratic regression scenario. This type of daily practice of politics is still little or not officially recognized by either the government or society in general. The cleavage between the state and civil society still prevails, which is reinforced by the collaboration/conflict duality. It is hoped that this work will reduce this gap, highlighting the theoretical and practical possibilities of experimentalist research and policy agendas that value this encounter between inventiveness and what is instituted in public governance.

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• Funding:

  Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico; Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa e Inovação do Estado de Santa Catarina; Universidade do Estado de Santa Catarina.

• JEL Code:

  O35, R58, L38, H7

NOTE

• 1
  To know the public arenas retraced by our research, see https://observafloripa.com.br/problems#toppage.

Edited by

Editor-in-Chief:

Ivan Lapuente Garrido https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3741-7961 (Universidade do Vale do Rio dos Sinos, Brazil).

Associate Editor:

Dênis Renato de Oliveira https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9723-7650 (Universidade Federal de Lavras, Brazil).

Edited by

Editorial assistants:

Eduarda Anastacio, Kler Godoy and Simone Rafael (ANPAD, Maringá, Brazil).

Data availability

BAR - Brazilian Administration Review encourages data sharing but, in compliance with ethical principles, it does not demand the disclosure of any means of identifying research subjects.

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  07 Aug 2023
• Date of issue
  2023

History

• Received
  23 Aug 2022
• Accepted
  12 June 2023
• Published
  07 July 2023