The underutilization by the Puerto Rican Cooperative Movement of its capacities to systemically promote Intercooperation and the Social Economy under the existing public policies

Abstract

Cooperatives are required to operate in accordance with cooperative values, as expressed through the seven principles (ICA, 2015:2). To the extent that these values and principles are incorporated into national legislation, they may acquire the character of norms of mandatory compliance for cooperatives. Consequently, the juridical enforceability of the cooperative principles depends on the manner in which national legal systems adopt them and on whether they provide for legal consequences arising from their non-observance. Thus, in order to determine whether a binding obligation of compliance exists, it becomes necessary to ascertain whether domestic legal frameworks assign specific duties of compliance to the various special subjects of Cooperative Law. Several authors maintain that in those jurisdictions where national cooperative movements (NCM) are entrusted with a defined role in the governance and promotion of cooperativism—and are expressly delegated the authority to carry out such functions—these NCM should be recognized as special subjects of Cooperative Law, in addition to the traditional subjects such as the members, the cooperative entities and the specialized state agencies.
In line with the foregoing, we analyze the role that cooperative law assigns to the Puerto Rican cooperative movement regarding the promotion of the Sixth Principle and the structuring of a Social Economy (SE) sector in the Caribbean country. Our review of the relevant legislation revealed that Puerto Rican law recognizes the NCM as the main actor responsible for promoting cooperativism and the SE in general, assigning it the task of turning cooperativism into a tool for advancing an alternative, fair, and balanced economic model for the country—one that is alternative to and independent from capitalist enterprise. Although public policies delegate to the NCM the role of consolidating cooperativism as a driver in the development of an autonomous SE sector and provide it with good legal tools to fulfill these responsibilities, our research found a low level of utilization by the MCN of the public policy instruments available to pursue those goals. While the legal frameworks appear adequate and sufficient to allow and encourage concerted action by the MCN in promoting the stated objectives, in practice the MCN has proven quite reticent to take the lead in generating an ecosystem conducive to its robust development, let alone in promoting a differentiated sector of the Social Economy. Since we found clear inconsistencies between public policy declarations and the concrete actions of the cooperative movement, we offer several suggestions to address the issue.