Guest editorial: Reconfiguring relations: social innovation as governed practice for inclusive development

Reconfiguring relations: social innovation as governed practice for inclusive developmentFraming the debate: social innovation at the crossroads of governance and ethics The contested nature of social innovation: three central tensions Social innovation is polysemic and contested across communities of practice and research, but also across time and fields.While past usages ranged from social reform to contested, politicised projects, contemporary syntheses typically converge on three interlinked pillars: meeting neglected human needs, transforming social relations and enabling socio-political empowerment through collective action (Galego et al., 2022).Scholarship also notes that social innovation's ambiguity stems both from its evolving analytical status and its overuse as a policy buzzword, which risks masking its emancipatory intent (Moulaert et al., 2013).A first, a foundational tension opposes output-centric and process-centric views.Policy and practice handbooks, situated at the intersection of the social economy, social entrepreneurship and social enterprise, stress methods to design, develop and grow social innovation initiatives, emphasising pipelines from idea to implementation, scaling and ultimately systemic change (Murray et al., 2010).By contrast, institutionalist traditions conceive social innovation as collective action, which densifies social relations and can enable socio-political transformation, with governance understood as new modes of governing that include participatory and co-productive decision-making (Galego et al., 2022;Moulaert et al., 2013).In this processual lens, who participates and how authority is shared are constitutive of social innovation's value, not merely instruments for delivery (Cloutier, 2003).A second tension contrasts managerial instrumentalization with democratic transformation.Scoping evidence highlights both the inclusive potential of social innovation and the risk of neoliberal appropriations that recast social innovation as a substitute for welfare obligations or as "Janus-faced" participation that leaves power relations intact (Galego et al., 2022).In response, the empowered-participatory governance tradition proposes designs that devolve authority, connect local units to higher tiers and support deliberative problem-solving, aiming to be both participatory and effective (Fung and Wright, 2001).At its more transformative edge, social innovations initiatives are most credible when territorially embedded, mobilising networks to alter decision-making arrangements and address basic needs and alienated rights (Klein et al., 2016).A third tension concerns levels and loci of change.Syntheses in the Centre for Research on Social Innovations in Montréal (CRISES) distinguish social innovation oriented to the individual, the territory and the enterprise and argue that social innovation can be identified by its novelty, its collaborative process requiring user participation and its contribution to the well-being of individuals and communities (Cloutier, 2003).This multi-level view emphasises place-based collective action and sits at the social innovation participatory governance interface: democratic coproduction can enhance relevance and legitimacy, yet it must be institutionally designed to avoid inefficiency or tokenism (Fung and Wright, 2001).Beyond these three core tensions, recent political developments in several countries introduce an additional layer of contestation for social innovation.We note the growth of