THE INTERNATIONAL CENTER OF RESEARCH AND INFORMATION ON THE PUBLIC, SOCIAL AND COOPERATIVE ECONOMY (CIRIEC), A NETWORK TO BETTER UNDERSTAND AND PROMOTE THE SOCIAL ECONOMY AND COOPERATIVE ENTREPRENEURSHIP

Özet

CIRIEC is a non-governmental international scientific organization. It is a worldwide network with many members (12 national sections, other institutional members, researchers,…). For many years CIRIEC has realized and published a lot of scientific works on the social economy and especially on cooperatives. This is a long-standing tradition going back to the foundation of CIRIEC in Geneva (Switzerland) in 1947 1 or even to the foundation of its review The Annals of Public and Cooperative Economics in 1908.2 Most of these works are now realized by working groups set up with members of our scientific network. These groups usually publish their final results as a “collective” book under the editorship of those professors who take in charge the scientific coordination of a group. Among the many books published within 30 years on cooperatives and other Social economy organizations I may mention: - ZEVI A. and MONZÓN CAMPOS J. L. (eds), Coopératives, marchés, principes coopératifs, Bruxelles, De Boeck, 1995 - COTE D. (ed), Les holdings coopératifs. Evolution ou transformation définitive ?, Bruxelles, De Boeck, 2001 - CHAVES R. and SCHEDIWY R. (eds), Gobierno, democracia y directivos en las empresas cooperativas, Revista de economía publica, social y cooperativa, N°48, April 2004 - BOUCHARD M. J. (ed), The Worth of the Social Economy. An International Perspective, Peter Lang, 2009 - CHAVES R. and DEMOUSTIER D. (eds), The Emergence of the Social Economy in Public Policy. An International Analysis, Peter Lang, 2013 - BOUCHARD M. J. and ROUSSELIERE D. (eds), The Weight of the Social Economy. An International Perspective, Peter Lang, 2015. Of course, CIRIEC and its national sections also realize many other researches and publications. For example, CIRIEC carried out some important research programs for the European Union institutions (European Commission, European Parliament, European Economic and Social Committee, …) and for international institutions (International Labour Organization, COPAC (Committee for the Promotion and Advancement of Cooperatives 3) and so on). The purpose of this article is obviously not to synthetize all this work. It is simply to present the main topics currently dealt with by CIRIEC’s scientific network and to develop the current issues on its agenda. The two main themes studied by the members of CIRIEC’s scientific network during the last years are, firstly, the relation between social economy organizations and territories and, secondly, the evaluation of the social economy especially in the European Union. Social economy and territories The relation with the territory, the region, or the local area is a key feature of the social economy, even to the point of sometimes being considered as one of its constitutive values. This is particularly true for the cooperatives: a good illustration for it is that some of them have been strongly involved in nation-building process, for example the MONDRAGON coop group in the Basque country (Spain) and the DESJARDINS coop movement in Québec (Canada). To better understand this relation CIRIEC set up a working group with researchers from ten countries and two continents (Europe and the Americas). The results of this group will soon be published (Xabier ITÇAINA and Nadine RICHEZ-BATTESTI (editors), Social and solidarity-based economy and territory: between interaction and coconstruction, Peter Lang, forthcoming). Both Social economy and territories are spaces for interaction between various players and both are to a large extent, social constructions. As defined by B. PECQUEUR and X. ITÇAINA, a territory is “a gathering of players in a given spatial context that seek to bring out, then attempt to resolve under environmental constraint, a shared societal or production problem” 4 . Among these players, we can find cooperatives and other SE organizations that may play a pivotal role as they are used to develop specific governance models mixing corporate models, social and general interest objectives and necessity to stay close to their members. Both Social economy and territories are spaces for social innovation. Many cases analyzed in this international comparative analysis carried out by the CIRIEC group show the strong ability of cooperatives and other Social economy (SE) organizations to mobilize resources and to build social capital to cope with the consequences of economic and social crises, to satisfy the new needs of the people and to resolve problems that neither the public authorities nor the market have succeeded to resolve. They are able to develop new experiments, new forms of organizations and new solutions (short food supply chains, new modalities of job creation, responsible finance, management of common goods, …) taking advantage of their strong territorial anchorage and of their specific governance. Cases from Spain, France, Venezuela, Brazil, Romania, … show also the very great diversity of territorial cooperation and territorial governance with specific roles played by SE organizations. The more traditional forms of SE organizations such as cooperative banks and agricultural cooperatives, generally of large size, tend also to reinvent their relation to the territory, sometimes seeing it as a factor for competitiveness. Two small chapters of the foreseen book deal with this topic. I think that this is not enough considering the importance of those organizations in terms of production, employment and inter-cooperation. The cooperative banks, mutual and cooperative insurance companies, consumer and agricultural cooperatives are very often threatened by an isomorphism process: in order to cope with competitive pressures coming from other types of enterprises, they tend to do the same as these. This can involve a less close relation to members, a more formal governance, a more profit-oriented management, an opening of the capital to other private enterprises, and so on. This can be a very successful commercial strategy; but