Social Economy and Polycentric governance of transitions

The various challenges involved in a socio-ecological transition towards a post-growth society are typical problems of collective action. The current literature on these issues highlights the notion of “polycentric” systems of public good governance, which refers to a multiplicity of independent decision-making centres sharing an overarching set of common rules. A polycentric system also involves a high degree of self-organized citizen participation. The organizational forms necessary to support such citizen participation, however, have received little scholarly attention thus far, at least in relation to the socio-ecological transition. Given these theoretical gaps, this chapter seeks to explore the roles that social economy organizations may play in this respect. We show how their organizational specificities make them particularly well-suited to govern self-organized citizen initiatives and thus to foster the implementation of polycentric governance regimes for a socio-ecological transition. Finally, we apply this framework to two empirical fields: energy and food production and consumption systems.