Support Structures for Social Economy

Summary

Social, solidarity, and community economies do not operate in silos. Instead, they develop in real geographical contexts where local conditions define to a great extent the type, scale and amplitude of the social economy organizations that can emerge and sustain over time. In contrast to mainstream capitalist enterprises, whose level of success is measured by economic performance alone, thus creating structural inequalities, social economies can only thrive in an ecosystem made up of social structures that support their development. We call this set of conditions “Support Structures for Social Economy”, and for analytical reasons divide them in three categories: (i) top-down supporting mechanisms, (ii) support structures from the bottom-up, and (iii) local conditions.

Editorial

Support structures are locally defined but they are produced in various scales, from local neighbourhoods all the way to the international level. They also vary in type, ranging from tangible assets like specific infrastructure, financial support instruments, or physical geographic advantages, to more intangible conditions, such as favourable institutional frameworks or local traditions. In addition, support structures are weaved through both gradual long-lasting historical processes and exceptional breakthrough events triggered by social movements or natural disasters. What is more, the level of this embeddedness ultimately defines whether the social economy will flourish or perish over mainstream economies. Below, we present the three pillars, and provide in each case with a few illustrative examples in order to better understand the proposed classification.

(i) Top-down supporting mechanisms: The first pillar refers all those actors and institutions that support the social economy from a position outside the field, i.e. the state and the national supportive legislation, local and regional authorities with their supportive schemes, private foundations and other civic (non-SE) private institutions and organizations that offer financial support as well as other forms of aid, and ultimately, international institutions such as EU that create a series of supportive tools and mechanisms at the international and even the global level. Examples:

• The Pla d’Impuls de l’Economia Social i Solidaria, is a strategic plan for the city of Barcelona, which aims to promote the Social and Solidarity Economy at the municipal level. It provides mentoring and training to individuals and groups who want to set up a social economic enterprise, supports ethical finance and access to funding, fosters inter-cooperation by favouring the creation of second-tier networks and cooperatives, works on communication by promoting and visibilising the social and solidarity economy, provides access to resources, and works on territorialisation as a way to address the socio-economic inequalities between neighbourhoods. The local policies and strategic plans of the local government of Barcelona, also work within the policy framework of the region of Catalunya, which has its own support structures for the Social Economy. These two institutional levels provide an example of cooperation and tension between actors, with disagreement over what the Social (and Solidarity) Economy is or is supposed to be.
• In Italy, one example of legislation which supports the social economy is the legal recognition of the social welfare cooperatives in 1991. Despite being here included as an example of top-down institutional support, this law came to existence because it had been called for by cooperatives in order to legislate the growing cooperative sector, since previous legislation only applied to worker cooperatives, and did not facilitate the existence of consumer cooperatives.
• The UK, is an example where the legal and policy-oriented support structures are not as defined. For example, there is no legislation for specific types of cooperatives. A couple of legislative tools which apply to the SE sector more broadly are: the status of “community interest company”, and the “Industrial and provident society” or “company law”, which allows SE enterprises to acquire nominal shares as low as 1£. This formally allows an organisation to be owned by member shareholders. More recently, in 2012, the Public Service (Social Value) Act was passed, according to which public services must consider their economic, social and environmental impacts. Despite the lack of national legislation or policy making, there are some local examples of policy making oriented towards the support for the Social Economy. The Preston Model is often referenced as a successful example of Community Wealth building and democratisation of the economy.

(ii) Support structures from the bottom-up: The second pillar includes all supportive structures that are being created from the bottom up, from the SE organizations for the development and strengthening of the social economy. In this category, we can include all the local networks that operate with horizontal structures and democratic processes, the umbrella organizations, the networks and confederations of local economy actors, the various incubators and accelerators for social economy, cooperative and ethical banking initiatives, informal solidarity hubs, crowdfunding campaigns and schemes, or mutuals. Examples:

• EQUAL, a programme which ran between 2000 and 2007, funded by the European Social Fund. Among other things, it promoted entrepreneurship in the Social Economy, by bringing together local authorities, cooperatives and voluntary bodies. In the UK, this partnership has worked in close contact with policy makers in the Office of the Third Sector. Examples of bottom-up networking, initiated by social economy stakeholders themselves, and to the scale and relevancy of the following examples in Italy and Catalunya are not to be found.
• In Italy, there are several examples of SE networks which operate at the local and national context. The Distretti di Economia Solidale are networks which promote local development and coordinate production, distribution and consumption chains, often through the collaboration of the SE with business and public institutions. They are comprised of various SE enterprises in a particular region which form “economic circuits”. Recently this model was up-scaled to the national level with the Rete Italiana per l’Economia Solidale (RIES).
• In Catalunya, there is the Cooperativa Integral Catalana (CIC), which is a network of cooperatives which aims at the comprehensive provision of services for its members. It was originally founded by Enric Duran, and aims to promote a post-capitalist economy. The XEE is a similar network, under the umbrella of the Catalan government.

(iii) Local conditions: The third pillar includes all those elements that can be termed “local conditions”, i.e. the context-specific physical or cultural conditions that have developed historically in a place that can support or hinder the development of the social economy. Such conditions usually involve traditional forms of cooperative provisioning, local imaginaries of sharing and co-producing, elements of physical geography that can, under certain circumstances, foster a spirit of cooperation (e.g. insularity), cultural norms of gift sharing and caring for the elders, imaginaries of well-being without profit-seeking and economic growth, crises, natural disasters and other forms of social deregulation that can potentially enact alternative practices, and other forms of social rupture and unrest such as social movements and mobilizations. All these factors have historically contributed to the fabrication of unique context-specific support structures that have given birth to enduring and diverse forms of the social economy such as in Catalonia or the Basque Country in Spain and elsewhere.

• In the UK, the socio-economic context is defined by policies of deregulation, and the prevalence of the voluntary and charity sector, over that of cooperatives and other forms of SE entrepreneurship. This is largely due to the political context of New Labour’s policies, which were a continuation of neoliberalism, and later the Conservative Party’s concept of the “Big Society”, which promoted austerity and saw the promotion of the voluntary sector as a way to defund the public sector. On the other hand, despite the weakness of the trade union movement in the UK since the 1980s, trade unionism and SE entrepreneurship have led to the emergence of other forms of SE entrepreneurship. This is the case of the recent creation of Wings, a worker co-op for ethical food delivery, which is taking on the business model of companies like Deliveroo.
• In Italy, grassroots movements have led to the creation of SE networked social movements such as Genuino Clandestino, where a broad alliance of small-scale food producers, agricultural sector workers, craftspeople, students, and families advocates for food sovereignty. This creates a relationship between "producers" and "consumers'' which aims to break from traditional capitalist relations. People who buy the food are called "co-producers", because, among other things, they support the business model based on Participative Guarantee Systems. Another example is that of the Gruppi di Acquisto Solidale, which are grassroots movements, sometimes linked to social centres, which work outside of the boundaries of the law and regulations in the food market to promote alternative ways of producing, distributing and consuming food.
• In Catalunya, the flourishing cooperative sector has its roots in the cooperativist and libertarian movements of the 20th century. La Lleialtat Santsenca, originally a consumer cooperative, expropriated during the fascist period, is now a space for community organising. It is managed by a democratic assembly and is owned by the municipality. The cooperativist movement still has a close relationship with grassroots movements to this day, especially in the city of Barcelona. One such example is Can Battlo’, an old factory

Index of Resources

Title	Type	Description	Language
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Towards Public Policies Supporting the Social and Solidarity Economy (SSE) for Sustainable Development	Other	Joint Declaration of the International Leading Group on Social and Solidarity Economy	EN
Supporting the SSE in the EU	Academic Article	Looks at examples of SE enterprise in Germany, France, Italy and the UK. What makes them successful? Topics include: Funding; social support networks, social and civic entrepreneurs; project partnerships; from local initiatives to SSE; Economic institutionalization; policy recommendations.	EN
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Commons Associations By Christian Siefkes, Johannes Euler, Gunter Kramp and Nikolas Kichler	Academic Article	showcases an idea for unifying commons-based projects in a self-organised solidarity economy that’s easy and convenient to join Suggests an Association of commons-based projects. Through vertical cooperation (coord between projects that provide for different needs), and horizontal cooperation (coord between projects that  provide similar goods).
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