Social and Political Entrepreneurship: Ways and Means to Develop Sparsely Populated Regions?

Abstract

Social entrepreneurship as a variant of entrepreneurship is probably only in the beginning of its conceptualization as scientific subfield, and applicable theories are yet to be defined. However, starting from the empirical findings in a global perspective, I find that the phenomenon that could be labelled social or societal entrepreneurship has existed under other synonyms for quite a while. Personally, I find the borderlines between these concepts and social economy, third-sector entrepreneurship, public–private enterprises, and so on, rather blurred. The ambition must nevertheless be to develop the necessary conceptual tools for social entrepreneurship as means for measuring and comparing regional development, for example, in sparsely populated areas. Political entrepreneurship as a concept is comparatively new too, although connotations to earlier political science terms can be noted. The meaning of the term refers to political actions in connection with governance structures in a multi-level perspective, but obviously also has consequences for government in traditional political settings, and the question of accountability. My aim in this chapter is to develop a model for social and political entrepreneurship, and, with a comparison of small municipalities in the Swedish rural peripheries, to be able to find out, whether or not this can cause changes in socio-economic regional development over time. To examine these aspects, I have chosen the number of inhabitants, firms per inhabitants, ranking of municipal entrepreneurship, and employment rate, associations and social capital networks. Tentatively, I expect to find stronger socio-economic development when social and political entrepreneurship is combined over time, as this seems to be a necessary path to combat depopulation and loss of employment and taxation. Five municipalities have been chosen for examination, four in the central Sweden region, and one from the southern Småland region with a strong entrepreneurial tradition, also situated in the periphery, by and large as a bench-marking unit for the comparison. The results confirm that a combination of social and political entrepreneurship is required for the shift of downward trends, as far as Swedish small-sized municipalities in the periphery are concerned.