RICERCA ITALIANA     

Emerging networks of welfare society among public, private and third sector

Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore

Abstract

Nowadays, the study of the forms the societal partnership can take on is at the centre of a widespread interest due to the growing pluralisation of the social players engaged in personal and inter-subjective welfare actions.
In particular, the contribution of the third sector is currently strategic to the start of a transition toward a welfare society, whose realisation depends on the rising of forms of reciprocal and trustful partnership among public, private, third sector and informal subjects.
Thus, the third sector deserves a notable action space and becomes an unavoidable partner in the service offer network. The subsidiarity model, claiming the promotion of the most suitable active subjects in the provision of pro-social needs, gives recognition not only to the institutional agencies, but also to private, third sector, social private and informal networks.
The entrance of new players in the welfare system generates innovative synergies in the answer of the more and more complex social needs and widens the services recipients' right of choice. As the number of the subjects involved grows, the quality of the interventions needs to be verified, not only in terms of efficiency, but also in terms of effectiveness, that is by measuring its capability of well being production.
Such a plural offer system of services, based on a balanced coordinated approach, can become a useful instrument in order to guarantee the desired outcome as much as possible, that is the well being regarded as a relations matter
In order to adequately verify this hypothesis the research project aims to study and empirically analyse two emerging experiences referring to social policies based on the principle of subsidiarity: the creation of "good practices" networks among third sector players and other players of the plural welfare in the production of services addressed to the family needs; the action of the emerging community foundations, aimed to promote the community well being through a networking process among resources, providers and recipients of the services, based on the culture of solidarity and social responsibility.
This research project involves two universities as research units: the Catholic University of Milan and the University of Molise.
Each of them will be in charge of observing different social networks: the role played by the actors belonging to the informal world in the answer of the family needs, and the role played by more formal actors, as the community foundations. The aim is to understand what they actually generate and how it affects services and actions with refer to the well being outcomes, both subjective and collective.

The final goal of the national research group is to outline the peculiar characteristics of some innovative social policy models aimed to build a plural welfare, regarded not as sum of different subjects, each dedicated to specific activities and sectors, but as a way of undertaking common actions and fostering relations; in other words a plural welfare that links different skills thanks to trust and collaboration. <<<

Principal Investigator

Giovanna ROSSI Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore

Research Objectives

In the welfare plural society the social policies cannot be seen as public policies (that is implemented solely by the political-administrative system), but as societal policies realised by a network of public, private and social private subjects, endowed with the same rights and duties.
Within this frame, particularly valuable are those experiences of organisational co-ordination among different subjects, in which a high level of collaboration is achieved between public and non public players in public/private decision making networks.
The possibility of referring to a welfare society is strictly related to the actual existence of virtuous relations' networks among the three main social subjects.
It is very interesting, from a scientific viewpoint, to analyse the first real attempts of experimenting a virtuous partnership between different social subjects, especially while the whole system is moving towards a welfare society model.

The research project's goal is to individuate significant experiences of virtuous networks among the different society actors and to analyse their capability to increase the reciprocal trust, to activate exchanges of reciprocity and to develop under banner of collaboration, so to generate social capital from the networking process.
The research intends to focus on these complex dynamics and choses as strategic research material two experiences emerging from a new social policy based on the principle of subsidiarity: on the one hand (Milan Research Unit) the more "operative" realisation of services addressed to the family needs, on the other hand (Molise Research Unit) the action of emerging attempts as the community foundations, aimed to generate a networking process among resources, providers and recipients of the services, due to the culture of solidarity and social responsibility.


AIM OF THE MILAN RESEARCH UNIT

The Milan Research Unit intends to observe the networks (partnerships) of public, private, third sector and informal agencies aimed to the provision of family services, in order to discover how the good practices and the social capital are generated and whether and how the two processes are synergetic. This research group focuses on policies specifically designed for the family in normal-not critical conditions, with a clear promotional aim: the family is treated as an active and fundamental subject rather than as a simple recipient in the service provision process.
Therefore the networks of relations involved in the assistance process will be analysed, by carrying out some case studies concerning good practices of partnership among public, private and third sector agencies in the realisation of specific intervention. The underlying rationale is that a global increase of social capital can be documented as a result of the networking process.

From the theoretical viewpoint, the research intends to define more precisely what a ‘good practices' is, especially with regards to the in-person services.
From the whole research plan the following result is expected to be achieved: to understand and be able to observe the formal and informal relations, in such a way to individuate, under a partnership perspective, which kind of social bonds makes easier and fosters the realisation of good practices, that is effective practices and tuned on the familiar codes in answering the family needs.

AIM OF THE MOLISE RESEARCH UNIT

The Research Unit of Campobasso, Molise, intends to verify whether and to what extent the community foundations, as an emerging experience of partnership among heterogeneous subjects within the same community, are able to specifically strengthen the third sector, in a national context where it shows some point of weakness.
Besides, the community foundations' capability of contributing to the generalised social capital through the creation of new networks of local community relations will be analysed. Under this perspective, the Molise Research Unit intends to focus on the community foundations operating in Lombardy, in order to verify whether and to what extent they actually cope with the strategic societal role assigned to the third sector; in particular whether they work as an integration mechanism able to avoid the disruption of the system without stopping the differentiation process of a typical advanced society. It will also be evaluated under what circumstances this experience is transferable to other territorial contest. <<<

Timescale

24 months

National and international background

Under the theoretical perspective, three issues are crucial to the structure of the welfare system in the post-modern society:
- the necessity of restructuring the process of well being production on the base of a welfare society model, built on the principle of subsidiarity and on the activation of a plurality of public as well as private and social private subjects;
- the necessity to adopt a network paradigm to be able to read the current societal dynamics;
- the opportunity to refer to the concept of social capital, as an emerging effect of the networking among the players of the subsidiary welfare.


The welfare society
The fast and deep changes regarding the welfare structure lead to modify the beliefs about the nature of the societal well being, the involved actors, the social citizenship rights, the concept underlying the social policy performances, the organisation of services and interventions.
In particular, the third sector organisations and families can be strategic players in the realization of personal and social welfare policies, together with the state and the market,within a plural, civic and welfare society.

A long believed interpretation has read the third sector as a product of the welfare systems crisis of the past decades: this analysis poses the failure of the state and of the market in achieving a satisfying well being level as the cause of the third sector breaking into the social stage.
Under this perspective, the societal dynamic is trapped between the couple state-market and the third sector represents a modality to compensate their failures.
Many authors has shown how old fashioned this interpretation is. Firstly, the social dynamics are dogmatically interpreted through the economic categories: this interpretative process already showed to be highly inadequate to explain a typically social phenomenon as the third sector. In the second instance, the sociological approach is nowadays concordant in refusing a scheme claiming that the whole social field has to be reconducted in a state-market binomial: state and market are the only entitled to take care of the public well being.

Sociologically speaking, the relational society analysis sheds light on the existence of a plurality of actors to refer to, in order to understand the contemporary society's dynamics. The social players' pluralisation process has been outlined for some time
by P. Donati, G. Rossi and I. Colozzi. This consideration has a strong effect on the search of the social well being and on the modalities the policies intend to achieve it.
Under this viewpoint, a global change of mind is required with regard to the entire societal dynamic, to the social identity of the involved players and to their relations: third sector, family and informal networks, state, market.
If the social dynamic is characterised by a pluralisation, the third sector is a strategic actor beside state, market, family and informal networks, in the realisation of effective social policies, oriented to the provision of relational goods and services (that is, able to be received only within a relation).
As a consequence, the social policy widens its boundaries to include all the goods and services provided by the public, private, third sector (social subjects acting for solidarity purposes) and the fourth sector (family and informal networks). As long as the principle of subsidiarity is the base of the plural welfare, all the actors are entitled to participate to the promotion of the common well being.

The trade-offs among the social players are based on the reciprocity code: it represents the normative frame of the societal actions aimed to the persons well being.
In the plural welfare, the well being is regarded as the realisation and empowerment of subjective and inter-subjective relations and is an active responsibleness of the single individuals and of the collective subjects intending to achieve a generalized humane life.
Overall, thus, each societal subject originally and specifically contributes to the production of the common well being: in fact, the state realizes a well being regarded as an institutional offer of standardised performances, the market tends to an individualistic well being, the families and informal networks are keen on the primary relations care. In the welfare plural society, the social policies cannot be seen as public policies (that is implemented solely by the political-administrative system), but as societal policies realised by a network of public, private and social private subjects, endowed with the same rights and duties.

Within this frame, particularly valuable are those experiences of organisational co-ordination among different subjects, in which a high level of collaboration is achieved between public and non public players in public/private decision making networks. Public institutions play no longer an authoritative role (government role) - under the assumption that the public is hierarchically superior to the other players (persons, associations, market and third sector subjects) -, but develop a partnership approach (governance) capable of associating a plurality of social subjects in the realisation of social policy interventions. A network policy making has to be structured.


The social capital as emerging factor of the welfare society
In considering the networks of the welfare society's players it is better to take into account the symbolic means used by each of them – the power for the state, the money for the market, the reciprocity for the third sector, the gift for the family; also each player produces peculiar goods – public goods, private, relational secondary and primary goods. Some lements make the networking process able to generate the social capital: the capability of creating virtuous networks among the societal players - where the relations increase the reciprocal trust and follow the reciprocity code -, the capability to create virtuous networks among the societal players, to increase the reciprocal trust, to activate exchanges of reciprocity and to develop under banner of collaboration.

As widely known, the social capital starts to emerge in small informal groups, particularly in the family (primary social capital), but, in order to develop, has to prime a networking process, creating networks of networks, and to broaden its boundaries to the community and society level. In this sense, the social capital production is facilitated where positive synergies among all the plural welfare players are achieved in a subsidiarity approach.


The network paradigm to study the welfare society
In the present research, the network is the paradigm of reference in order to understand the whole social reality: the society is relations as a whole, a network of relations both at the interpersonal and macro social level; beside, it is a network of networks as it is composed by a mix of primary and secondary, formal and informal, networks.
The possibility of referring to a welfare society is strictly related to the actual existence of virtuous relations' networks among the three main social subjects.

With regard to the aim of the research, the concept of join is very important, as it represents the place where the relations meet each other. The networks joins are polymorphous: they can be individuals, social actors and/or collective subjects, institutions.
Within a unique social network different joins-subjects can be in conjunction: this shows, at the same time, the polifunctionality of the social networks and the identity of the subjects-joins. In fact, the subjects' identity effects the nature of the relations and, consequently, the network extension and its capability of acting on the society.

The sociological itinerary leading to the above mentioned definition of network encompasses different theoretical contributions:
- network as connected systems;
- network as a network of communications in a close system;
- network as a strategy of the individuals aiming to offer a multiple collocation in different social contexts.
Under the relational perspective - considering the social network as "social relations related each other as a whole"- the above reminded contributions shed light on some peculiarities of this concept: the predisposition to foster connections, to create new ones and to strengthen the already exsisting. They also refer to the network as a resource and a constraint at the same time, and as the "material" a society's social capital is made of.

The term "sociability" indicates the spontaneous capability of creating new networks starting from the relations an individual has. It outlines the "productivity" as the ability of building social links, that can be expressed both at the individual and collective level, as it is shown by the friendship's networks, by those public spaces played at the same time by more actors, and so on.

It is useful to remind the main categories used to classify the social networks, as the two Research Units of this project will observe the subsidiarity welfare's networks from different points of view: on the one hand, the reference to the family focuses on the connection between primary and secondary circuits, formal and informal, on the other hand, the reference to the community focuses on the territorial level.

The main classifications are:
1. A typology is built starting from the geographical and social territorial environment of reference.
2. A second typology, useful at a descriptive and interpretative level, follows the criterion of the network proximity, with regard to the informal world of the subjects involved in the network itself. It is possible to distinguish among: primary networks, constituted by neighbours and friends; secondary formal networks, based on a legal exchange and represented by the institutions operating in the social and health area; secondary informal networks, based on a solidarity exchange due to the reciprocity rather than the legal code; secondary and third sector networks, characterised by solidarity and legal exchanges (volunteering organisations, social cooperatives, associations, foundations); secondary market networks, based on the money exchanges as companies and shops; secondary network with legal and money exchanges as the private hospital.
3. A third typology distinguishes the networks on the base of the individual and collective subjects within them. Under this perspective, the classification does not differ much from the previous one, however it starts from the subjects side and encompasses: families and relatives networks, neighbours and friendships networks, voluntary networks, third sector networks, market networks, institutional networks.

Besides these different classifications, the networks are dynamic social forms and create forms of social identity characterised by unstable boundaries and high morphogenetic activity; they produce different forms of social capital, from a micro to a meso and macro level.

The subjects of primary networks
In the social field there are some subjects that, at the same time, create social networks and are actors themselves in these networks: families, relatives, neighbours and friends. Overall, in the contemporary society these relations are personal and sentimental bonds, oriented toward exchanges rich of social capital.

The subjects of secondary networks
They are:
- social private groups and associations, regarded as semi structured groups strongly solidarity oriented;
- third sector organisations, regarded as solidarity forms at a high level of formalisation, as social cooperatives or pro-social foundations;
- institutional and/or market actors.

It is here fundamental to stress the relations' system existing among the different subjects of the secondary networks (social private, third sector, public institutions and market), present on the territory. The sociological perspective enables to claim that a subject at the centre of a complex relational networks exchanges contents with other individual and collective subjects and obtain a feedback; this is a dynamic trade off able to modify all the network's players.
The research intends to focus on these complex dynamics, considering, on the one hand (Milan Research Unit), the more "operative" realisation of effective services addressed to the family needs, on the other hand (Molise Research Unit), the action of emerging attempts of community well being support as the community foundations, aimed to generate a networking process among resources, providers and recipients of the services, due to the culture of solidarity and social responsibility. <<<