Tackling concentrated worklessness: integrating governance and policy across and within spatial scales

Spatial concentrations of worklessness remained a key characteristic of labour markets in advanced industrial economies, even during the period of decline in aggregate levels of unemployment and economic inactivity evident from the late 1990s to the economic downturn in 2008. The failure of certain localities to benefit from wider improvements in regional and national labour markets points to a lack of effectiveness in adopted policy approaches, not least in relation to the governance arrangements and policy delivery mechanisms that seek to integrate residents of deprived areas into wider local labour markets. Through analysis of practice in the British context, we explore the difficulties of integrating economic and social policy agendas within and across spatial scales to tackle problems of concentrated worklessness. We present analysis of a number of selected case studies aimed at reducing localised worklessness and identify the possibilities and constraints for effective action given existing governance arrangements and policy priorities to promote economic competitiveness and inclusion

The political institutionalization of the social economy in Ecuador: Indigeneity and institutional logics

How differing social economy traditions within the global South can combine with state and market sectors to provide alternative development paths has increasingly become a focus of political and policy debate. This paper uses an institutional logics perspective to analyse the interaction between indigenous collective traditions and other institutional logics in Ecuador’s social economy. Results demonstrate how indigenous practice has interacted with other social economy elements to produce novel organizational and institutional forms. Findings from original primary research identify processes of co-existence, accommodation and conflict in the interaction of differing institutional civil society, state and market logics and the institutionalization of the social economy. Critically, processes of conflict generated by contradictory logics have over time helped close down many of the new political spaces, limiting the ongoing inclusion of indigenous institutions and the ability to construct an alternative, pluralistic path to development

Cities, the social economy and inclusive growth: a practice review

The social economy constitutes a range of organisations that have a core social mission, different levels of participative and democratic control by members, and use financial surpluses or profits primarily to achieve their social missions. This research examined the actual and potential roles of the social economy in bringing about inclusive growth that generates more and better jobs in UK cities, particularly for people who are either in or at risk of poverty