Faith-Based Social Innovation from the Global South: Repositioning Nahdlatul Ulama as a Global Social Innovation Hub in Polycentric Global Governance
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Abstract
This article develops the Global South Social Innovation Hub (GSSIH) framework to explain how large faith-based organizations (FBOs) can move beyond service delivery and become scale-bridging infrastructures for social innovation in polycentric global governance. The study addresses a persistent gap between social innovation scholarship, which remains strongly shaped by Global North institutional experiences, and FBO research, which has more often emphasized welfare provision, advocacy, or diplomacy than recurrent innovation capability. Methodologically, the article uses a conceptual research design combining a purposive integrative review, institutional analysis, and theory synthesis. Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) is treated as an illustrative institutional case rather than as an empirically validated global innovation hub. The synthesis produces three findings. First, institutional legitimacy and a differentiated organizational ecosystem provide the social and organizational foundations for experimentation, but only when authority is coupled with accountability and cross-unit coordination. Second, local knowledge production and transnational networks create a mechanism for codifying, translating, and circulating contextually grounded solutions across settings. Third, knowledge diplomacy can convert circulated knowledge into broader normative influence only when external engagement remains reciprocal, evidence-based, and connected to internal learning. These findings are integrated into a four-stage cycle - embedding, generating, circulating, and legitimating - and operationalized through six testable propositions. The article's originality lies in repositioning Global South FBOs as potential knowledge and innovation infrastructures while specifying the institutional conditions and failure modes that distinguish genuine hub capability from organizational scale, symbolic internationalization, or elite-centered diplomacy. The framework offers a comparative agenda for future empirical research and a diagnostic tool for organizations seeking to strengthen socially embedded innovation capacity
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