Ta 72367

While the social economy originated in Europe (Desroche, 1983; Gueslin, 1997; Vienney, 1994), by the nineteenth century it emerged in North America as well, particularly in Canada and Quebec with its ties to the United Kingdom and France as well as other European countries, especially Germany and Belgium. Today, it is interesting to explore the renewal of the social economy in Europe and in Canada in the final third of the twentieth for a number of reasons. First, although Canada is an integral part of the North American continent, inter alia because of its participation in free trade agreements (including NAFTA), it shares many characteristics with Europe, including economic policies that are more interventionist, a more comprehensive welfare state than in the United States, and social movements that are more organised and more widely recognized by government. (Brunelle and Lévesque, 2004; Lévesque, 2001). Second, the renewal of the social economy, notably in Quebec, benefited from a rich dialogue inter alia with France, on theoretical approaches as well as from comparisons of experiences. An important example of comparative analysis was undertaken by the France-Quebec Social and Solidarity Economy Project that influenced the development of public policy to support the social and solidarity economy. Lastly, new theoretical approaches to the social economy are increasingly the result of a fertile exchange between several scientific associations and international research networks such as CIRIEC, EMES and ISTR (Evers and Laville, 2004; Laville and Cattani, 2005).