“Going out to get in”—Roles of forest conflicts in bottom-linked environmental governance progressing toward socio-political innovations

Social innovation literature focuses commonly on roles of cooperation in addressing co-evolution of civil society initiatives and state-based governance toward sustainable solutions. However, roles of conflicts in driving social change are scarcely addressed in social innovation literature. We elaborated a concept of bottom-linked environmental governance, which can take place either via collaboration, or by conflict, and which can progress toward socio-political innovations. We show this progression by examining two longitudinal cases on forest controversies in Northern Finland. These are the cases of Inari and Muonio. They are characterized by dynamic processes of conflicts and collaboration between state-based organizations (e.g., Finnish forestry enterprise of Metsähallitus), civil society actors (e.g., reindeer herders, nature-based tourism entrepreneurs and environmental nongovernmental organizations). We conducted a qualitative deductive-inductive content analysis on the study cases and uncovered a set of “going out to get in” strategies by civil society actors, emerging from frustration on state-based participatory processes, and consisting of open disputes and pressure strategies outside the participatory processes to gain a seat and power at negotiation tables. Metsähallitus often responded by seeking to maintain its control over forest decisions. The interplay between these strategies led to continuous open disputes and finally to socio-political innovations (e.g., comanagement arrangement). The findings lead us to discuss reasons for prolonged disputes, the question of whether sociopolitical innovations can benefit all, considerations on power relations, strategies, and counter responses, all being relevant more broadly, for both, social innovation research and decision-making enabling socio-political innovations.