Beyond Lambert's régie coopérative concept: Principles and characteristics of the Swedish public cooperative Kommuninvest

TOPIC 15- STAGE 3 – MICRO In 1986, as a response to the lack of cost-efficient and diversified access to credit, ten Swedish local governments created Kommuninvest, a cooperative of financial services and local government... [ view full abstract ]

TOPIC 15- STAGE 3 – MICRO

In 1986, as a response to the lack of cost-efficient and diversified access to credit, ten Swedish local governments created Kommuninvest, a cooperative of financial services and local government funding agency which procures funds in the capital markets and assigns them through loan programs to their members. Today, 90% of the Swedish local authorities are members and the cooperative is the sector leader. Despite the fact that Kommuninvest is one of the rare examples of a régie coopérative, a public coopérative, which we can find in the world, the cooperative had not aroused attention from scholars. This is even more surprising as the first local government funding agency, the Crédit Communal de Belgique was considered by Lavergne (1926a, 1955) as the first régie coopérative in the world as well as aroused significant interest from researchers and actors of the cooperative movement and social economy. Moreover, in the aftermath of the financial crisis of 2008, many European local governments suffered of a credit crunch which led French and British local governments to create a local government funding agency following the Swedish model.

This paper explores from a micro level perspective Kommuninvest’s organisational and governance model discussing its principles and characteristics and determining whether they fulfil the requirements of a régie coopérative as defined by Lambert (1962). I have used qualitative empirical methods based on ad-hoc questionnaires and on the analysis of the bylaws and annual reports.

Key characteristics of the governance model are the unique collaborations of politicians from all colours and of all Sweden’s regions which represent their local or regional community in the general assembly along with a double legal structure that separates the political and professional level of the cooperative in order to prevent the risk of political intrusion in the accommodation of loans to the members. Moreover, the foundations of governance root in Cooperative Principles, such as democracy, solidarity and voluntary membership. The results show that Kommuninvest is a régie coopérative as defined by Lambert (1962), even exceeding his requirements in many aspects. Therefore, I stress the necessity to develop a richer conceptual fund for the economic activity of the public and social economy sector as proposed by Fecher and Florio (2011).