Pour une étude des rapports entre l’Etat et l’économie sociale : spontanéité et instrumentalisation

Based on the experience he acquired as the president of the Groupement National de la Coopération and Cnlamca, Jacques Moreau here puts some questions to researchers. His questioning is twofold. The author raises some important questions concerning the relationship between the State and the social economy which few studies have addressed. Neither the conditions that give rise to the relationships of instrumentalization that prevail in France nor their effect on the movements and identity of the social economy is well understood. The relationship between instrumentalization and spontaneity is also not well understood. The author lists several questions and suggests possible directions for research and comparative studies. While raising these questions, Jacques Moreau puts forward some explanatory hypotheses, showing in particular that the degree of correlation between, on one hand, government objectives and those of cooperatives and, on the other hand, the political clout of these cooperatives largely determines the effect of instrumentalization.