The social economy. An integrating approach

The first part of this article analyses the normative approach of the social economy. The social economy is developed in order to create an alternative economic and social space for the people excluded from life necessities and, furthermore, it is not a recent phenomenon; it relies on historical practices which have developed over several centuries in order to meet people’s needs. The social economy institutions from Romania and Greece are then presented. The purpose is to show that clear regulations contribute to the acceptance of the social economy as an alternative and complementary form of producing social welfare. In order to accomplish the normative purposes of meeting life’s necessities and of changing the existing social conditions, the social economy actors must start to think of themselves not as individual agents, but as belonging to a large movement acting within the continuum between the market and state intervention for welfare production.