Regional Policy Frameworks of Social Solidarity Economy in South America

Abstract

This paper looks at how the Social Solidarity Economy (SSE) discourse has been deployed at the regional level by UNASUR and MERCOSUR and the implications of these new policy frameworks for the advancement of SSE practices. Though civil society groups have presented SSE as a new economic paradigm, regional policy frameworks implement it as an add-on or compliment to dominant capitalist economies. This happens in two key ways: 1.) The SSE sector and cooperatives in particular are cast as drivers of regional integration and socioeconomic policy, however limited involvement in major integration projects represent missed opportunities for SSE to be mainstreamed; and 2.) Though SSE policy is portrayed as a kind of intervention that combines social and economic policies, implementation almost exclusively by ministers of social development means that SSE is institutionally limited to the realm of poverty eradication not restructuring of the dominant economy. SSE is also fiscally dependent on those dominant industries, which ultimately does not reverse or challenge the ongoing process of economic centralization in key sectors.