Social Innovation to Sustain Rural Communities: Overcoming Institutional Challenges in Serbia

Ivana Živojinović, Alice Ludvig and Karl Hogl
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Ivana Živojinović: Institute of Forest, Environment and Natural Resource Policy, University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna (BOKU) and European Forest Institute, Forest Policy Research Network, Feistmantelstrasse 4, 1180 Vienna, Austria
Alice Ludvig: Institute of Forest, Environment and Natural Resource Policy, University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna (BOKU) and European Forest Institute, Forest Policy Research Network, Feistmantelstrasse 4, 1180 Vienna, Austria
Karl Hogl: Institute of Forest, Environment and Natural Resource Policy, University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna (BOKU), Feistmantelstrasse 4, 1180 Vienna, Austria

Sustainability, 2019, vol. 11, issue 24, 1-27

Abstract: Responding to a number of longstanding challenges such as poverty, wide-ranging inequalities, environmental problems, and migration, requires new and creative responses that are often not provided by traditional governments. Social innovations can offer socio-ecological and economic solutions by introducing new practices that reduce social inequalities, disproportionate resource use and foster sustainable development. Understanding the role of social innovations is especially complicated in unstable institutional environments, e.g. in developing countries and countries in transition. This paper analyses nine social innovations in rural areas in Serbia, based on in-depth interviews and document analysis. This analysis reveals factors that facilitate or constrain social innovations whilst simultaneously identifying related formal and informal institutional voids, for example, poor law enforcement, a lack of adequate infrastructure, lack of trust, as well as norms and values that bolster patriarchal systems. The results that emerged from this research show that social innovations are operating in spite of these challenges and are facilitating improvements in a number of the aforementioned challenging areas. Some innovators engage in social entrepreneurship activities because of subsistence-oriented goals, while others follow idealistic or life-style oriented goals, thus creating new social values. Moving beyond these observations, this paper also identifies means to overcome institutional voids, such as creation of context-specific organisational structures, improved legal frameworks, and innovative financial mechanisms.

Keywords: institutions; policy support; institutional void; transition countries; forestry; rural development (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (16)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:11:y:2019:i:24:p:7248-:d:298930

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