Jason S. Spicer, "Co-Operative Enterprise in Comparative Perspective: Exceptionally Un-American?" (Oxford UP, 2024)

In Conversation: An OUP Podcast · May 24, 2026 · 35m

Co-operative enterprises, which are democratically owned and governed by their workers, customers, or suppliers, have long captured the imagination of activists and social scientists alike. In centering economic democracy and a collectivist-democratic logic, and in embodying a "third way" alternative to profit-maximizing corporations and state-owned enterprises, co-operatives offer the promise of a more sustainable and equitable economy. Despite extensive study of co-operatives' real and imagined benefits, we know little about the conditions under which they achieve the lasting scale needed…