Reviving Social Economy in Romania – between emerging social enterprises in all sectors, surviving communist coops, and subsidiaries of globalization actors

Social economy could be considered a response to the current eco-socio-economic crisis, in fact the first crisis of the globalization era. Developing social economy could mean sustainable, largely non-exportable jobs, social inclusion, improvement of local social services, and territorial cohesion. Maybe the tensions between “global” and “local” show a new wave of globalization system whose pre-condition is a sustainable territorial development. Romania in particular has faced a fast-paced transition from a closed society and economy to a country acting in a global market, including an open, global labor market. This meant dramatic changes in property regime and work, employment conditions, a context in which solutions from the top did no longer work and generated a framework for new organizational and entrepreneurial forms of social economy to play a role. Can institutions of the social economy create the path towards territorial, locally-based development in Romania? Could these territories become anchors in the context of the structural changes we live, for a real “globalization with human face” and for the ambitious objectives to be reached by 2020 by Europe in the five main areas: employment, innovation, climate change, education and poverty? We face a paradigm shift in a changing Europe, we have to unlock the potential of social enterprises – the emerging types, but also the past surviving coops