Political Activism as Driver of Cooperative Sector

It has been shown that, in a context of economic crisis, cooperatives remain more resilient and flexible than other forms of entrepreneurship. The current study investigates the possible explanations for the varying dimension of cooperatives sector in different countries. To this end, focusing on the institutional environment, this work introduces a variable not commonly found in studies on entrepreneurial activity, political activism. We present an empirical analysis based on a structural equation model (SEM-PLS) applied to a database on 52 countries. The model leads us to draw the conclusion that there exists a direct and indirect relationship between political activism and the size of cooperative sector.