Challenges in strategies for socioeconomic democratization. Assessing solidarity economy policies in Barcelona

ABSTRACT

To understand how policies for the social and solidarity economy can contribute to economic democratization and identify the challenges linked to this, we examined the impetus plan which Barcelona city council implemented between 2016 and 2019. Based on semi-structured interviews with policy actors, social entrepreneurs and engaged activists, and on participative observation of two city council assessment workshops, we explore the limitations of the social and solidarity sector from a political economy perspective. Barcelona's approach has previously been acknowledged as an outstanding and innovative strategy that confronts the lack of transversality across public administrations and the complexities around co-construction within the social sector itself. In this examination, we observe how sector actors address issues of cultural tensions around economic thinking and stress the need for a plural and transformative approach towards economic activity. We conclude that, to couple social and solidarity economy policies with economic democratization goals and enable tracking of changes in cities’ socioeconomic governance, it is necessary to work with an integrative perspective that takes into account other policy fields besides social entrepreneurship, and other types of actors, while also considering the connections between public bodies and the social and solidarity economy sector.

KEYWORDS:

• Social innovation
• social and solidarity economy
• democratic governance
• urban commons

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Garcia Jané (2014) of the cooperative l'Apòstrof estimated that the SSE in Catalonia comprises more than 27,000 organizations employing around 130,000 people (4.6% of employed population). These are rough figures because the sector is composed of different types of initiatives with varying degrees of commitment to its democratic and transformative principles. Fernández and Miró (2016) quantified the sector in Barcelona, calculating around 4718 socioeconomic initiatives, or 2.8% of all registered enterprises, employing over 53,000 (8% of local employment).

Additional information

Funding

This research was backed by the SOLIDEMOCITED project sponsored by the University of Barcelona and the Obra Social de la Fundació Bancària La Caixa. REF: LCF/PR/PR06/11010001.