Lecture: A Global Cooperative Commonwealth? The International Diffusion of the Cooperative Movement since 1800

We cordially invite you to the lecture ‘A Global Cooperative Commonwealth? The International Diffusion of the Cooperative Movement since 1800’ by Prof Dr Sebastian Schedelik on February 03 at 18:00 s.t.. The lecture will take place at the Goethe University in the building PEG (1.G 165).

Prior to the emergence of national welfare states and their near-universal global diffusion, decentralized cooperative welfare institutions based on the principles of self-help, voluntary participation, and democratic governance began to address the welfare gap left by dismantled guilds in the early 19th century. While much has been written about their numerical decline in the West, this paper investigates the factors behind their successful global diffusion. Pioneered in its modern form in the UK, this article illustrates how cooperative welfare spread worldwide, reaching virtually all countries by the end of the 20th century. We find that cooperatives, in contrast to welfare state introductions, primarily arose from economic necessity. Both welfare states and cooperatives thrived in democratic environments and tended to flourish under non-left governments. Common-law countries and those with a British colonial legacy were more likely to introduce consumer cooperatives earlier, while Scandinavian and German-law jurisdictions were pioneers for housing, banking, and farming cooperatives. Although transnational movements culminated in the foundation of the International Cooperative Alliance (ICA) in 1895, our findings show that cooperatives expanded functionally from one sector to another rather than geographically from neighboring countries. We conclude that countries with a more established cooperative tradition were more likely to develop redistributive types of welfare states.