Proposal for presentation in second international CIRIEC research conference on the social economy (1.-2.10.2009, Östersund)

Presentation proposal for the thematic area: The social economy and new public policies (interaction and partnerships with public and private actors)

Promotion of social economy in the region of Tampere city – Case cooperative entrepreneurship and intermediate labour markets

Social economy as a concept has still largely failed to become established and is unknown to the wider public.

The Mondragon cooperative group of the Basque Country of northern Spain is considered one of the most successful examples of cooperative enterprise in the world, with annual sales of over €16 billion. But substantial cultural and economic changes have taken place since the cooperatives’ founding era, and this paper addresses a crucially important debate underway in Mondragon about whether satisfaction with ownership arrangements is now significantly lower among younger workers than among their older colleagues.

Arguably, the international co-operative movement has its western intellectual roots in the eighteenth century, a time of shifting attitudes on the nature of the world, the beginnings of internationalism. It was a time when many Europeans were trying to absorb what some 3-400 years of exploration had revealed, to acquire knowledge that was universal, and to develop general – and hence international – laws for political behaviour.

 The practice of Fair Trade has been one of the most widely acclaimed movements for promoting local development through international co-operation. Fair Trade links small producers in the South more directly to Northern consumers through the intermediation of Fair Trade Organizations (FTOs) that are committed to “Fair Trade Principles” and the development of more just trade practices.

En una situación de recesión económica global como la actual, en la que las distintas instituciones de todo el mundo han comenzado a adoptar medidas de distinta naturaleza para hacerla frente, resulta de interés el análisis de la incidencia que tienen la legislación fiscal, mercantil, laboral, etc.

The paper tries to analyze the following research question: “How does the formation of social capital among activists of community-based cooperatives effect local development?”

Given tight budget constraints and a backlog in infrastructure investments, small municipalities are seeking new forms of providing public services (e.g. eldercare) which build on civic participation. In contrast to outsourcing these services in the form of Public-Private-Partnerships, cooperative Public-Citizen-Partnerships support civic democracy on a local level.

For more than 150 years, co-operatives have been established as an instrument to enhance the social and economic position of workers, artisans and farmers. Over time and space, co-operatives have been (re)invented to address mutual problems by working together. Internationally, a co-operative movement evolved around a common set of values and principles, summarized by the ICA Statement on Co-operative Identity.