Ecosystems of Proximity: Social Innovation, Collaborative Governance and Territorial Resilience

Dear Colleagues,

This Special Issue examines social innovation as an ecosystem phenomenon rather than as the achievement of individual initiatives. A growing body of evidence suggests that its transformative potential rarely rests on the vision or capabilities of a single actor. It depends, rather, on the density of relations among actors, on the quality of governance arrangements, and on the institutional conditions that allow an experiment to endure, to spread, or to fail.

The guiding question is therefore the following: under what conditions do local ecosystems generate, absorb, and sustain social innovation over time? Proximity emerges as a central and yet under-theorised variable in answering it. Proximity is spatial, but it is also relational, cognitive, and institutional, and in each of these forms it shapes trust between producers and consumers, coordination between health and social services, cooperation among neighbouring municipalities, and the redistribution of value across territories. At the same time, proximity is not an unambiguous asset. It may equally reproduce closure, dependence on key individuals, and resistance to scaling.

We are particularly interested in contributions that take seriously the tensions inherent in this field. These include the tension between grassroots autonomy and institutional embedding, between growth and the preservation of relational quality, and between the measurement of impact and those dimensions of value that resist measurement. Equally welcome are studies that examine the role of digital and AI-enabled tools in either reinforcing or eroding proximity-based arrangements, as well as analyses of how public funding instruments, including recovery and cohesion programmes, reshape the incentives facing social innovators.

Topics may include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Conceptual and theoretical work on social innovation ecosystems, proximity, and place-based development;
• Collaborative and multi-level governance arrangements, including inter-municipal cooperation and partnerships between public institutions and the third sector;
• Care ecosystems, welfare mixes, and the local governance of ageing, disability, and health;
• Social and solidarity economy, cooperatives, and community enterprises in agri-food, energy, housing, and culture;
• Financing mechanisms for social innovation, including outcome-based instruments, impact investing, and hybrid funding models, with attention to their institutional effects;
• Digital technologies and artificial intelligence as enablers or disruptors of proximity-based social innovation;
• Measurement, evaluation, and accountability, with particular attention to methods, limits, and unintended consequences;
• Comparative and longitudinal studies on the durability, decline, or institutionalisation of local initiatives;
• Contributions from practitioners reflecting critically on implementation experience.

Both empirical and conceptual papers are welcome, as are qualitative case studies, quantitative analyses, and systematic or narrative reviews, including studies of initiatives that did not scale.

Dr. Rocco Frondizi
Guest Editor

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• social innovation ecosystems
• proximity economy
• collaborative governance
• social and solidarity economy
• territorial resilience
• social entrepreneurship
• impact measurement