Social and solidarity economy and social and solidarity commons: Towards the (re)discovery of an ethic of the common good?

This research poses the ethic of the common good and the institutions of the social and solidarity economy (SSE) as the foundation of commoning practices. Specifically, it illustrates how the latter may contribute to regenerating the commons, fostering open and shared access to key productive resources and essential goods and services. The analysis focuses on social and solidarity commons (SSC), defined as all those relational practices that contribute to the accumulation and regeneration of human and social (as well as other types of) critical capital. To achieve this research goal, this study collected new and old issues debated in the academic literature concerning the geographic nature of commons and their juridical and economic treatment within socioeconomic disciplines. Then, a historical overview of the commons highlights their dynamic and multifaceted nature and illustrates how they have often been co‐owned and co‐governed according to shared rules and norms. Within this general framework, SSC are introduced, and a role for the institutions of the SSE is proposed to foster an ethic of the common good as a necessary (but not sufficient) condition for expanding and enforcing people's participation in commoning practices.     

Imagining the European Economy: 'Competitiveness' and the Social Construction of 'Europe' as an Economic Space

This article analyses the political and ideological agency of an emergent European transnational capitalist class in the socioeconomic governance of the European Union (EU) by examining the case of the European Round Table of Industrialists (ERT). It seeks to show that the ERT‐as an elite forum mediating the interests and power of the most transnationalise d segments of European capital‐has played a significant role in shaping European governance in as much as it has successfully articulated and promoted ideas and concepts thathave at critical times set the political agenda and, beyond, have helped to shape the discourse within which European policy making is embedded. Here, the increasingly neoliberal orientation of the ERT reflects, and at the same time is a constitutive element within, the construction of a new European order in which governance is geared to serve the interests of a globalising transnational capitalist elite, and hence the exigencies of global 'competitiveness'. Although in recent years some detailed work has been done on the role of the ERT in the internal market programme, there has as yet been little attention paid to (and thus interpretation of) the content of the ideas promoted by the ERT and hence to the ideological power that this forum of transnational capitalists exercises. The article is divided into four main parts. The first briefly elaborates the theoretical framework that informs my analysis. Drawing upon what has come to be labelled the 'neo-Gramscian school' in International Relations (IR), I willadvance a historical materialist understanding of the dynamics of European integration, emphasising in particular the role of transnational social forces‐as engendered by the capitalist production process‐in the political and ideological struggles over European order. The second part introduces the case of the European Round Table. I will claim that the ERT is neither a simple business lobby nor a corporatist interest association, but must rather be interpreted as having developed into an elite platform for an emergent European transnational capitalist class from which it can formulate a common strategy and‐on the basis of that strategy‐seek to shape European socioeconomic governance through its privileged access to the European institutions. It is this latter role of the ERT that will be the focus of the final two parts. As such, the third presents an analysis of the evolution of ERT's strategic project and the initiating role the Round Table played in the relaunching of the integration process from Europe 1992 to Maastricht. Following this, the fourth part will analyse the ideological orientation and strategic outlook of today's Round Table and its current role in shaping what I will call the neoliberal discourse of competitiveness which, I argue, increasingly underpins European governance.     

Realitic and Analytic Syntheses of Macro- and Microeconomics

We study the impact of employer's opportunism on wage rigidity in capitalist companies by arguing that the need to fix wages is crucially influenced by the asymmetric distribution of decision-making power and information in favor of the stronger contractual party — the employer, and against the weaker contractual party — employees. The capitalist entrepreneur can make decisions, whose negative consequences are borne by workers in terms of lower wages and more intense work pace. Excessive wage reductions in the face of negative exogenous shocks or too risky investment decisions represent the main instances of such opportunistic behavior. Fixed wages can represent workers' best response to the emerging risk of the employer moral hazard, but this implies a heightened risk of layoffs since wages and employment levels cannot be fixed at the same time. Besides discussing piece rate contracts, profit-sharing and codetermination as counterexamples, we observe worker cooperatives which depart from the presence of contrasting interests and private information in the principal-agent framework. Indeed, several empirical studies have shown greater employment stability and wage flexibility in worker cooperatives vis-à-vis the capitalist firm.     

Entrepreneurial ecosystem for cooperatives: The case of Kyrgyz agricultural cooperatives

The article discusses the development of agricultural cooperatives in Kyrgyzstan from an entrepreneurial ecosystem (EE) perspective. Agricultural development priorities explain cooperatives’ importance in Kyrgyz government's policies, but cooperatives still fail at countering the challenges of the smallholder economy. Considering agricultural cooperatives as a form of rural entrepreneurship, this paper aims to contribute to the discussion of the factors that support cooperatives in developing countries adapting the EE framework to cooperative entrepreneurship. Using a content analysis method, we analysed and coded textual data from documentary and archival publications on the agricultural cooperatives in Kyrgyzstan published by the government, cooperatives and their unions and the reports of international organizations. We identify five main dimensions of the cooperative entrepreneurial ecosystem for cooperatives: (1) policy and regulatory framework; (2) education and skills; (3) market environment; (4) culture; (5) networks. We found that even if the overall structure of cooperatives’ EE can be comparable to conventional enterprises, its sub-elements significantly differ for cooperative enterprises. Despite its exploratory character and single-case research design, this article contributes to the theoretical discussion on cooperative entrepreneurial ecosystems in post-socialist developing contexts and offers a framework of analysis for cooperative development policies and practices.     

An Epistemological Reflection on Social and Solidarity Economy

Social and Solidarity Economy (SSE) is emerging as life affirming solutions to the global crises through the multiple ways people locally reinvent economic life on the margins of the capitalist system based on values of solidarity, reciprocity and sustainability. Although the SSE builds on a strong foundation of real practices and institutions of economic transformation as the way forward for us, this paper argues that this world of practice is in need of its theory to frame discourses and engage with the bigger picture with confidence as an alternative to the dominant economic paradigm. The author argues that the orthodox economics, with its ontological construct of the homo economicus, Cartesian dichotomy and logical positivist epistemology severely constrains our abilities to understand and appreciate economic alternatives based on ‘other’ rationalities. Hence, there is a need for an epistemological revolution to construct a coherent theoretical framework from the wreckages of the neoclassical economics for the SSE. This paper seeks to outline the basic structure and the key elements of the ontological and the epistemological framework for this ‘science-in-the-making’ as a step to stimulate further debate for a paradigm revolution.     

Do socially motivated self‐help groups perform better? Exploring determinants of micro‐credit groups’ performance in Eastern India

Group‐based micro‐credit initiatives, as part of the broader social and solidarity‐based finance initiatives, have gained prominence over the past decade, especially in developing economies like India. Lending to the poor, especially women, through micro‐credit groups, are significantly associated with the utilization of commons. Apart from their financial operations, self‐help groups promote social empowerment activities and collective action following a dual bottom‐line approach. However, the causal role of the group's motivation towards pursuing social objectives has not been explored in the past. The present study, therefore, investigates the interlinkages between the group's intrinsic motivation and efficiency using an innovative two‐stage double bootstrapped DEA‐based methodology. Results from the study affirm that apart from traditional factors like maturity, accessibility and group management, the motivation of the group is a crucial determinant of social efficiency. Additionally, the group's loan‐to‐savings ratio and receipt of cash payments significantly affect its long‐term financial sustainability. Micro‐credit groups cannot contribute sustainably as a viable alternative to traditional means of access to credit if it merely offers innovative forms of financing and consumption. They need to be socially aligned to serve the community better and contribute to the group's overall performance and galvanize community‐based resource management.     

New evidence on wages and employment in worker cooperatives compared with capitalist firms

This article presents new econometric evidence on the comparative behavior of worker cooperatives and capitalist firms, highlighting the differences in wages and employment responses. We use a comprehensive panel data set that covers the entire population of cooperatives and their capitalist counterparts registered in the social security records in Uruguay from April 1996 to December 2005. We analyze the data to study the employment and wage decisions in both types of enterprises, the results of which suggests that their adjustment mechanisms to idiosyncratic price changes and macroeconomic shocks may differ greatly. The data set also allows us to estimate wage and employment variations for members and non-members of cooperatives separately, and provides an empirical test for the so-called degeneration hypothesis. Our findings are broadly consistent with previous studies for Italian cooperatives and plywood cooperatives in the United States. As studies of this kind are so few, our research provides a significant contribution to the empirical literature on labor managed firms. Moreover, comparing worker cooperatives and capitalist firms offers an exceptional opportunity to determine how control by workers may lead to different organizational behavior.     

Rationality, political economy, and fiscal responsibility: wrestling with tragedy on the fiscal commons

The continuing budget deficits and accumulating public debt that commonly plagues western democracies reflects a clash between two rationalities regarding human governance: one of private property and its conventions and one of common property and its procedural framework. Democratic budgeting creates a form of fiscal commons whose governance is subject to the tragic outcomes depicted by Garret Hardin (in Science 162:1243?C1248, 1968). To be sure, tragedy can be avoided as Elinor Ostrom (1990) explains, but only to the extent that the fiscal commons is governed in a manner consonant with Antonio De Viti de Marco??s (1936) model of the cooperative state. While the tragedy of the commons that results from this tectonic clash is an inherent feature of democratic political economy, that tragedy can nonetheless be limited through reasserting the conventions and institutions of a constitution of liberty.     

HOW COOPERATIVE ARE SAVINGS AND CREDIT COOPERATIVES IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES?: AN ANALYSIS OF DATASETS FROM UGANDA

Building successful savings and credit cooperatives (SACCOs) that actually embody the cooperative principles is a challenge to development agencies. Although SACCOs form the majority of microfinance providers in many developing countries, the most recent literature on microfinance governance and performance has given little reference to the longstanding body of relevant cooperative literature. SACCO representation in microfinance datasets is biased. Drawing on so‐far unexploited datasets of Ugandan SACCOs and savings groups, this paper empirically analyses policy debate regarding SACCO‐ and savings group regulation. The findings point to the relevance of practically implementing the principle of ‘cooperation between cooperatives’ to ensure effective governance at SACCO level. Moreover, the paper introduces two new measures, based on members' savings and shares, which could become useful tools to track the application of cooperative principles in developing countries, and hence improve evidence‐based policy‐making for SACCOs.     

COLLECTIVE ACTION AND ASPIRATIONS: THE IMPACT OF COOPERATIVES ON ETHIOPIAN COFFEE FARMERS’ ASPIRATIONS

Aspirations motivate behaviours, serve to mobilize and direct energy into actions, and are regarded as important determinants of success. Given the importance of aspirations and their formation in social interaction, the objective of this article is to evaluate if cooperative membership can have effects on members' aspiration levels. Face‐to‐face interviews were conducted with 305 Ethiopian coffee farmers on their aspired levels in five dimensions of their lives. Results, using a propensity score matching technique, show that membership in cooperatives significantly improves the aspiration levels of the members. The article emphasizes the utilization of this hidden but important benefit of cooperatives.     

COMMUNITY AND COOPERATION: THE EVOLUTION OF COOPERATIVES TOWARDS NEW MODELS OF CITIZENS' DEMOCRATIC PARTICIPATION IN PUBLIC SERVICES PROVISION

The community cooperatives that are spreading today in many parts of the world are the arrival point of an evolutionary process that has seen the progressive shift of cooperatives’ focus from specific social and professional groups to society as a whole. This evolution is marked by two changes. The first was at the turn of the 19th century when there made their appearance the first community cooperatives which catered to the needs of a whole community. Among them were electric cooperatives, cooperative banks and some kinds of agricultural cooperatives. A further development relevant to the evolution of community cooperatives occurred towards the end of the last century with the enlargement of cooperatives’ aims to embrace society's benefit. From this process there emerge in total four categories of cooperatives which taken together constitute a complete classification of the cooperative universe. New community cooperatives are the off‐springs of the old ones but the picture is rather confused. The term itself is relatively new and similar institutions are named differently at different times. Moreover, though having a few basic features in common, they differ much from one another and from the old ones. To take care of this we elaborate a concept of community cooperative consistent with its evolution and the classification of cooperatives we have identified. Basic elements of the concept are community goods, territory and citizenship, which are discussed extensively with reference to factual cases. We then discuss in what way new community cooperatives differ from old ones. The paper closes with a discussion of their future prospects.     

Elements of the institutionalization process of the forest and pasture commons in Romania as particular forms of social economy

In Romania, the study of jointly owned property (dev?lm??ie) has been of great interest for social scientists during the different political regimes of the country. After the fall of the communist regime and after over 50 years of state ownership, the forests and pasture commons (ob?ti and composeorate) returned to be private property of newly established associative forms. This paper aims to identify and define the contemporary Romanian commons by reference to the general characteristics of social economy organizations. In order to achieve this and obtain a clearer view of the place of the commons in Romania's organizational environment, presentation of some elements of the commons’ institutionalization process after the fall of the communist regime is included. The data used for answering these two objectives comes from the analysis of a database comprising 328 questionnaires applied to board members of commons in Romania and various legal documents. The main argument of the paper is that the restitution process that led to the re‐establishment of the Romanian commons from public property to common private property—marked by hardships, conflicts, misunderstandings or faults—deepened the scarce knowledge of the political actors, general public and other stakeholders in regard to these organizations and perpetuated their unclear position in the organizational field.     

Public good,collective action and financial regulation

The economy‐wide liberalization reforms implemented from the 1980s onwards in major capitalist economies had deep impact on financial markets. Public financial regulation has been replaced by self‐regulation, financial innovations proliferated and gave rise to many diversified and complex speculative operations that financialized most economic decisions and actions. Recurrent instabilities and crises became common ground in advanced as well as in emerging market economies and converged on the global systemic crisis in 2007–08, notwithstanding the efficient market doctrine that kept supporting financial liberalization. This crisis raised concerns about the relevance of market‐based financial regulation with regard to the systemic viability of capitalist economies and brought forward the central role of financial regulatory framework in the sustainable working of open societies. This article considers financial stability as a collective action problem through the lens of the literature on the commons and public goods. It seeks to contribute to the development of a relevant paradigm of collective action in the provision of a particular public good, financial stability, through a particular public action, financial regulation. After recalling the broad outlines of the evolution of financial markets and the institutional environment in the last decades, the monetary and financial characteristics of a capitalist economy are presented. The monetary and financial structure turns out to be a public infrastructure. The criticalness of financial transactions for the whole economic society together with the non‐rivalrousness and non‐excludability of financial stability determine the very publicness of the latter. The continuity of financial relations fundamentally needs a viable financial system. However, this is a complex issue as it falls into the classical opposition “private vs public” and calls for a collective action framework consistent with the characteristics of a financialized economy. This article argues that financial stability cannot be ensured through individual‐decision‐based market relations because of the endogenous limits of individual actions and the systemic nature of instabilities they can provoke. A specific treatment of finance as a public utility and of financial stability as a public good is then required. The study on the organization and management of financial markets, namely financial governance issue, ultimately leads to consider financial regulation as a collective action problem that calls for a public supervision framework through an extra‐market macroregulation, apt to allow economy to work in a viable way.     

RAISING CAPITAL BY ISSUING TRANSFERABLE MEMBERSHIP IN A WORKER COOPERATIVE

It is generally recognized that worker cooperatives have a disadvantage in raising capital compared with conventional capitalist firms. In this paper, we explore a method for a worker cooperative to raise non‐redeemable equity by issuing transferable membership shares as financial securities.     

EMPLOYMENT STABILIZATION INSIDE FIRMS: AN EMPIRICAL INVESTIGATION OF WORKER COOPERATIVES

There is evidence that worker cooperatives provide a greater stabilization of employment compared to capital‐managed firms. While the reasons of this behaviour can be ascribed to their property and governance structure, less is known of the tools to put it into practice. I discuss two possible ways to guarantee employment insurance: by letting wages fluctuate, or by accumulating reinvested profits into an income stabilizing fund that copes with downturns without firing and without reducing wages. In this second case, I find out that asset locks play a wage smoothing role. This may explain the large share of profits that are reinvested in this indivisible and not appropriable fund. I provide evidence for this mechanism by means of original data at the firm level and of first‐hand collected survey data at the individual level on risk perception in a sample of Italian cooperatives.     

On the stability of the cooperative type of organization

The stability of producer cooperatives in market economies is analyzed in a dynamic context. It is shown that, when permitted to hire wage laborers, a producer cooperative, even if its labor productivity is higher than in an otherwise equivalent capitalist firm, is likely to lose its cooperative character because members' personal income will be maximized when “expensive” members are replaced by “inexpensive” wage-laborers. Producer cooperatives will maintain their organizational character best when they operate in a marginal industry where cooperation enhances members' productivity so that their earnings exceed their opportunity wages. In general, competitive markets for membership are not a sufficient condition to prevent the transformation of cooperatives into capitalist firms.     

A REVIEW OF THE EMPIRICAL LITERATURE ON FARMER COOPERATIVES: PERFORMANCE,OWNERSHIP AND GOVERNANCE,FINANCE, AND MEMBER ATTITUDE

The empirical literature on farmer cooperatives is now fast emerging and developing in the areas of performance, ownership and governance, finance, and member attitude. We discuss 56 peer‐reviewed publications to illustrate the main findings and conclusions while outlining challenges and opportunities for future research. Generally, cooperative membership is found to positively impact price, yield, input adoption, income, and other indicators of member performance, yet there is growing evidence of an uneven distribution of benefits for small and large producers. In terms of structure, evidence of a causal relationship of ownership and governance to performance has been elusive, yet there are now many findings of inherent equity and long‐term debt constraints, often in the context of consolidation to drive scale and scope economies. Further inefficiency is observed to be driven by increased heterogeneity in member attitudes and objectives, in particular in terms of commitment and participation. Thus, overall, empirical work portrays farmer cooperatives as flawed and complex business organizations which nonetheless have a strong positive impact on its members. While applied research may progress in various directions, a general improvement in empirical methodologies is needed to allow robust analysis of mixed objectives in dynamic environments.     

COMPARATIVE EFFICIENCY OF AGRICULTURAL COOPERATIVES AND CONVENTIONAL FIRMS IN A SAMPLE OF QUASI‐TWIN COMPANIES

The resilience of cooperatives and their positive contribution to employment in times of crisis is well established. However, their overall economic performance relative to conventional firms is still controversial, casting doubt on the ability of this alternative organizational form to govern the fundamental drivers of productivity. To shed new light on the issue, we study the comparative technical efficiency of agricultural cooperatives (ACs) and conventional firms (CFs), drawing on a unique data set comprising all wine‐producing companies in Sardinia (Italy) from 2004 to 2009. Due to the similarity of the habitats in which the firms operate and the careful measurement of several key inputs, the observed units are ‘twins’ in all non‐organizational respects, providing an ideal setting for comparison. Having generated efficiency scores through Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), we regressed the scores on external covariates and ownership type using a pooled truncated maximum likelihood formulation. Our findings, which survive correction for spatial correlations, indicate that cooperatives are less technically efficient than their capitalist counterparts and struggle more to adapt to extreme weather fluctuations. Both results are particularly worrying in light of the main challenges facing the wine industry in the near future: liberalization of EU planting rights and climate change.     

Is there life after degeneration? The organizational life cycle of cooperatives under a ‘grow‐or‐die’ dichotomy

This article provides an in‐depth, longitudinal analysis combining real‐time and retrospective data on a set of Mondragon's industrial cooperatives that are organized as international groups. We examine the life cycle of these international cooperative groups, which is expected to evolve differently to that of small‐ and medium‐sized cooperatives that operate exclusively on a local scale. The article is theoretically informed by the cooperative life cycle theory, as well as by recent insights from the degeneration and regeneration theses. Our analysis yields an intricate picture of the evolution of cooperatives faced with a ‘grow‐or‐die’ dichotomy. On the one hand, our findings reject the highly simplistic and deterministic view of the degeneration thesis by demonstrating that these cooperatives can mobilize resources to revitalize cooperative values and practices. On the other, we find that regeneration may not occur in a consistent, sequential fashion as the previous literature suggests, but rather degenerative and regenerative tendencies can occur simultaneously, even leading to long‐lasting, unresolvable situations. In light of this, the article asks future research to draw on power‐aware and politically informed approaches for further understanding of how cooperatives manage the tensions at each organizational stage of their life cycle, and of which organizational actors benefit, and how, from reversing some degenerative tendencies while maintaining others intact.     

DRIVERS OF PRO‐ACTIVE MEMBER PARTICIPATION IN AGRICULTURAL COOPERATIVES: EVIDENCE FROM BRAZIL

Effective governance of cooperatives depends on the pro‐active participation of members in the governance. However, it is commonly argued that, especially in cooperatives with high heterogeneity of membership, additional decision‐making and influencing costs could emerge if members who participate in the governance do so to obtain direct or indirect economic benefits at the individual farm level. The objective of this paper is to assess whether or not farmers’ economic motivations for continued association are relevant drivers of pro‐active participation. Data originate from 148 farmers from a large agricultural cooperative in Brazil. The results suggest that economic motivations for continued association are drivers of participation in the General Assembly, but not of ‘pro‐active’ participation in boards and committees.