The Politicisation gap in socio-ecological transitions: lessons from Portugal

The multiple challenges of the Anthropocene set a new context for transformative social innovation towards a form of living and working based on the principles of sustainability. Community-based initiatives (CBIs), the most visible representatives of the latter, have started to appear worldwide and are increasingly perceived as a crucial actor in the socio-ecological transition towards sustainability. CBIs are receiving a growing attention from transdisciplinary academia. Yet, there remains a research blind spot on the transformative social innovation dynamics in Portugal. This paper addresses this gap by inquiring into Portugal’s CBI dynamics, appearance, buildup, reach and future transitional pathways. Having traversed a rapid and significant growth over the last decade, CBIs, their practices and discourses are still marginalised in Portugal’s public arenas. Therefore, this paper argues, Portuguese CBIs remain an untapped resource for socio-ecological transitions and institutional innovation in Portugal. We scrutinize why the latter falter to engage head-on with the public and political spheres and identify key contextual changes and premises that determine CBIs social innovation potential in Portugal: a) CBIs need to engage the existent institutional landscape and become politicized change actors in order to sit at key decisionmaking processes, and b) CBIs’ full potential is unlikely to bloom without favourable institutional frameworks and policy environments. This paper applies a value-based lens onto social transformation frameworks and engages in a wider theoretical debate on the role of niche actors, thereby adding to the existing literature on socio-ecological transitions. Based on an actor-, politics- and governance-centered approach, we ultimately inquire into Portugal’s CBI’s agency and how it can bring about wider structural change in a socio-ecological transitions.