France, Spain, and Italy have seen a rise in the strength of the cooperative movement. There are at least 25,000 cooperatives in Italy, about 17,000 in Spain, and about 2,600 in France (Perotin, 2016).

Government legislative and financial support for cooperatives has continued in both France and Italy, in marked contrast to the experience of the UK where there are about five to six hundred. In western Germany, a network of business projects was initiated in the alternative sector. These businesses did not necessarily adopt formal cooperative status, but shared many of their characteristics, such as collective ownership and democratic management. They also had a strong commitment to providing a socially useful product or service and aimed to pay an income equivalent to the general level of wages. In the USA, as in Europe, the new wave of cooperative development was associated with the alternative movement (see Ehrenreich and Edelstein, 1983; Lichtenstein, 1986). In the occupied territories of Palestine, women have set up local cooperatives to process and sell products such as couscous, thyme, honey, and grape molasses. A larger cooperative then buys the products, tests them for quality, packages and brands them, and then markets them at home and abroad (Handy, 2010). (For more information on enterprise development and rural cooperatives see King et al., 2012.)

Do these principles of cooperation appeal to you?