Social innovation in rural governance: A comparative case study across the marginalised rural EU

The phenomenon of rural marginalisation has intensified across the European Union after the 2008 global economic crisis, since the traditional state forms have been proved unable to promote an all-inclusive governing. Beyond-the-state governance systems are socially innovative, horizontal, networked, and collaborative institutional arrangements that are committed to breaking through this rural marginalisation. Marginalised rural areas provide a favourable context for socially innovative governance, since they contain small cohesive communities, while at the same time poor governing penetrates them. Nevertheless, social innovation in rural governance remains largely unexplored. The novel contribution of this article consists in underlying this research gap and exploring the question of how socially innovative governance is fostered or impeded within marginalised rural regions. Comparative research was conducted in between the marginalised rural regions of Muhlviertel in Austria, Baixo Alentejo in Portugal, and Phthiotis in Greece. The comparative results revealed some of the parameters that foster socially innovative governance; a decentralized government structure, advanced interregional networking, a discourse dissemination among the stakeholders and the civil society, as well as an organizational stability of the involved institutions for social innovation to become embedded. This article points to socially innovative governance that has a more codified and systematized hypostasis by recommendation of unique governance qualities.