The Relationship Between Agricultural Cooperatives and the State in Sweden: The Legislative Process

Abstract

On the basis of interviews made with twenty seven leading personalities from cooperatives and government institutions, it is identi¢ed, that two main dimensions, the economic and the social, are emphasized by di¡erent interest groups involved in the cooperative process. It is also indicated that the relationship between state and cooperatives, in varying degrees, combines these two basic dimensions over time in the actual cooperative law and thus focuses on one dimension, neglecting the other.Relationship is meant to anchor the economic and the social values of cooperatives in the political process, and enable them to be accepted. In conclusion, it can be argued that the state can in£uence the character of cooperatives by selecting speci¢c actors in speci¢c processes. For this reason, in order to secure a sustainable autonomous development of cooperatives, it is important to synthesize and take into consideration di¡erent interests in future relations between cooperatives and the state. &CIRIEC 2000. Published by Blackwell Publishers,

Politiques publiques et économie sociale en Europe: Le cas de l’Espagne

“…Cependant, il s'agit essentiellement d'e¨tudes partielles. En e¡et, soit, elles n'abordaient que certaines branches de l'ES comme le secteur coope¨ratif (Vienney, 1985;Rojo et Vidal, 1988;OIT, 2001) ou le secteur non-lucratif (Rose-Ackerman, 1986; James et Simon, 1990;Knapp, Robertson et Thomason, 1990;Sajardo, 1996), soit, elles se limitaient a© e¨tudier des politiques spe¨ci¢ques comme celles des subventions et de la ¢scalite¨ (Clotfelter, 1985;Simon, 1987;Julia© et Server, 1996), soit encore, elles se concentraient sur l'e¨tude du processus d'e¨laboration de ces politiques (Dobkin, 1988;Kendall et Anheier, 1999;Fregidou-Malama, 2000).…”