Understanding Cooperative Finance as a New Common

Abstract

The emerging field of common good socio-economics is promising not only for the preservation of common natural resources but also for common goods created by people through collective action, the importance of which has been emphasized by the recent financial and economic crisis. Based on the case of cooperative finance, this paper's outcomes are twofold. First, it shows that while the boundaries between the nature and property regime of goods may be relatively clear for natural common goods, they appear much more interlinked for human-made goods, where commons are embedded in intergenerational reciprocity. Second, it demonstrates that financial cooperatives can be understood as human-made commons and proposes a new way of thinking about public policies to design adequate legislation to protect these commons from isomorphism, privatization and destruction.2 Demutualization occurs when cooperative financial institutions are converted into stock companies, through the sale of 100% of the shares to depositors and insiders as part of an initial public offer.

Epistemic Regards on Food as a Commons: Plurality of Schools, Genealogy of Meanings, Confusing Vocabularies

“…More importantly, the notion of the commons has being extensively and increasingly used as a paradigm of convergence of different struggles against neoliberal capitalism and the multiple enclosures it entails. Actually, the term can be seen as a catch-all concept (Perilleux and Nyssens, 2016) with academic contributions evolving in parallel with practical developments by activists. However, this widespread use of the commons terminology, often in a very uncritical way, has infused them with a mystic aura of social avant-garde and repository of all the virtues of horizontal and fair governance (Verhaegen, 2015).…”

“…This typology is rooted in Ancient Greek philosophy and defines the commons using two sets of attributes: the intrinsic features of the goods and resources (either material or immaterial such as knowledge or international agreements) or the perceptions, values or social practices that humans have around any given resource or action. This typology has been used by Van Tichelen (2015), Perilleux and Nyssens (2016) and Ruivenkamp and Hilton (2017) with different variations.…”

“…The proprietary rights and the governance mechanisms can be diverse as long as the main goal is achieved: guaranteed access to those essential goods to all as a matter of social justice and legal entitlements. Although commons are often associated to property regimes and governing mechanisms (Perilleux and Nyssens, 2016) they cannot be solely and always described based on who owns and who governs them. Actually, commons can be owned privately and governed by public institutions (Gerber et al, 2008) (ie.g.…”

“…Between those two typologies, Perilleux and Nyssens (2016) consider Elinor Ostrom, an economist that researched the political, institutional and behavioural features of commons, common-pool resources and commoners, as a sort of bridge between theorists and practitioners, since she and her colleagues navigated between the different but complementary epistemic regards, the ontological economic view and the phenomenological constituting power, with hundreds of real case-studies investigated in detail in multiple countries and scenarios.…”

The Firm As a Common. The Case of the Accumulation and Use of Capital Resources in Co-operative Enterprises

“…Some authors got to identify corporate dimensions that can be likened to common goods, and business enterprises 4 have been explicitly understood as "commons" themselves (Deakin, 2012;Sacconi and Ottone, 2015). However, to the best of the author's knowledge, no contribution has systematically analysed the corporate patrimony within the common-pool resources framework, and explicitly discussed in this line the specific features of "alternative" or "heterodox" enterprise forms, such as co-operatives, social enterprises, and entrepreneurial non-profit organizations (Lichtenstein, 1986), exception made for rare exceptions, such as Navarra (2011) on capital resources in worker co-operatives and by Perilleux (2017) on cooperative finance. This contribution is directed to widen the literature evidencing the analogies between business corporations and their patrimony with common goods, to study the features and economic functions of common-pool capital resources and to evidence the specificities of co-operative enterprises as organizational form suited to accumulate commonpool capital resources.…”