Social economy

Abstract

This chapter presents two main reflections. First, it flags the risk of not knowing how to properly grasp the potential of a particular term. Second, and not unrelated, it highlights how the credibility of social economy/third sector studies has been compromised - especially among social economy researchers. The term social economy has existed in Europe since 1905 when introduced by economist Charles Gidé. The three major components of social economy in Europe are cooperatives, mutual societies, and associations. All three share a formal meaning of being associations of persons; as a result of this formal meaning their main characteristic lies in their governance, which is based on the democratic principle of one person one vote. In particular, the relationships based on collaboration among the private sector, government, and social economy organizations are crucial to understanding the profile of the social economy. © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2010.