Exploring transformative social innovations for a wellbeing economy: insights from citizens’ juries in Vienna and Oxford

Abstract The Wellbeing Economy has emerged as an alternative development approach that focuses on human and ecological wellbeing instead of material growth, but its implementation, particularly at the local level, remains underexplored. This paper argues that Democratic Innovations as specific forms of Transformative Social Innovations can help operationalise the Wellbeing Economy by fostering participatory, place-based interventions. Transformative Social Innovations can challenge, alter, or replace dominant institutions in specific socio-material contexts. However, their transformative impact and ability to change institutional configurations is hampered if their inherent ‘paradoxes’ are not adequately addressed. Using the cases of citizens’ juries in Vienna and Oxford, the paper examines how Democratic Innovations align normative visions, enable mechanisms of exchange, and operationalise transformative change to achieve more just governance outcomes. We highlight whether, and how, these deliberative democratic processes contribute to a Wellbeing Economy in place and how they dealt with their paradoxes and contradictions. Our findings indicate the relevance of socio-material, political-institutional, and cultural-discursive contexts for these types of innovations. We thus contribute to a more nuanced understanding of transformative impact for wellbeing in place and argue that Transformative Social Innovations can help bridge the gap between global and abstract notions of a Wellbeing Economy and local implementation if their paradoxes and contradictions are adequately considered.