Public policy and advocacy for SSE. A Euro-American reading

After several years of economic growth and apparent consolidation of social welfare systems, unemployment, inequality, exclusion and poverty continue to persist, with the aggravating factor that, in addition to the problems of the past, there are enormous challenges of planetary sustainability given the negative externalities generated by market economic practices and the recovery of health systems and socioeconomic guarantees lost in times of pandemics. The return to a war economy, marked by the rising cost of energy and raw materials, will bring with it a deepening of extractivist practices and restrictive economic systems in inflationary contexts.

In this context, the role of the State, civil society and companies that participate in the markets is central in order to value the guidelines and strategies of co-constructed public policies, with shared implementation and in a global key, without forgetting the particularities of the economic culture of the territories. This is part of the agenda of cooperative, mutual and other social and solidarity economy organizations around the world, which are increasingly structured as networked agents for the development of public policies in line with the above.

However, the dispersion of socio-economic initiatives with little scaling, the diffuse normativity and disarticulation between governmental measures, the slow capacity of technological adaptation of some experiences and of generating socio-economic transitions, contribute to generate gaps between what is said and what is done. And although the transformative capacity of the social and solidarity economy is known, it is necessary to articulate common spaces for its empowerment. In this scenario, discussions on studies related to public policies, their links with the territory, the role of citizenship and the links between entrepreneurship, environment and technologies are essential to project the impact of the social and solidarity economy as a protagonist of transformations.

OBJECTIVES

Therefore, the session will focus on highlighting the particularities of public policies that can be strengthened with an active participation of the SSE in terms of:
1. Valuation of satellite accounts, impact and contributions to local development,
2. Alternative markets, public procurement and incentives for social balance,
3. Analysis of the institutional framework for the promotion, protection and supervision of the social and solidarity economy.

GUIDING QUESTIONS

• From a Euro-American perspective, what do we know about the institutional framework for the promotion, protection and control of the social and solidarity economy?
• How to strengthen public policies for the social and solidarity economy?
• How to integrate the social and solidarity economy as a protagonist actor of transformations in the public policies of the territory?

METHODOLOGY

For the development of this theme, four meetings will be held, under the webinar format, which analyze from the local, Latin American, Euro-American and global territorial scope the various aspects that make up the state of the situation of the incidence of the social and solidarity economy and its expression in public policies. The previous meetings will be organized by CIRIEC Colombia and will be held in May, June, July and August. Prior to each meeting, documents will be sent for discussion by the participants and guidelines will be drawn up to summarize the participations under the policy brief format. These documents will be made available on the event’s web page and will be introduced for discussion with special guests during four different moments in the event.

The thematic session will have a duration of one hour and thirty minutes. This time will have five moments corresponding to the views of incidence of the social and solidarity economy and its expression in public policies in Colombia, Latin America, EuroAmerica and the world.

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