The development in France of partnerships between public and social economy organizations and the new paradigm of public action

The chapter explains why and how the institutional and social transformations that have taken place in France during the last decades with the advent of the new public management are at the origin of new forms of cooperation between social economy organisations provided in the past by public organisations or private companies providing public services and in charge of the missions entrusted to them. Today, public and social economy partnerships are encouraged by public enterprises, public non-market organisations or public authorities, which see it as a means to extend public service delivery in a context of reducing financial resources. These transformations have the advantage of the cooperation of different organisations to maintain or increase public service provisions for the benefit of citizens. However, the future of this emerging model raises three main interrogations: the capacity of social economy organisations to retain their own identity by becoming largely providers of public organisations or authorities; the resilience of the fundamentally centralist conception which permeates the French model and limits the scope of these new partnerships; and last the banalization of social economy organisations as a result of the deployment of new public management and the neoliberal conception that limit the ability to co-construct the general interest with the different partners.