Enabling Housing Cooperatives: Policy Lessons from Sweden, India and the United States

Housing cooperatives became active in urban areas in Sweden, India and the United States during the interwar period. Yet, after the second world war, while housing cooperatives grew phenomenally nationwide in Sweden and India, they did not do so in the United States. This article makes a comparative institutional analysis of the evolution of housing cooperatives in these three countries. The analysis reveals that housing cooperatives' relationship with the state and the consequent support structures explain the divergent evolution. Although the relationships between cooperatives and the state evolved over time, they can be characterized as embedded autonomy, overembeddedness and disembeddedness in Sweden, India and the United States respectively. Whereas the consequent support structures for housing cooperatives became well developed in Sweden and India, such structures have been weak in the United States. The article highlights the need for embedded autonomy and the need for supportive structures to enable the growth of housing cooperatives. Resume Les cooperatives de logement sont entrees en activite dans les zones urbaines de Suede, d'Inde et des Etats-Unis entre les deux guerres. Or, apres le second conflit mondial, elles se sont enormement developpees dans toute la Suede et l'Inde, contrairement aux Etats-Unis. L'article effectue une analyse institutionnelle comparee de l'evolution des cooperatives de logement dans ces trois pays. Ce travail revele que les rapports de ces cooperatives avec l'Etat et les structures d'accompagnement expliquent la divergence d'evolution. Bien que les relations entre cooperatives et Etat aient change avec le temps, on peut les qualifier d'autonomie integree en Suede, de sur-integration en Inde et de sous-integration aux Etats-Unis. Tandis que les structures d'accompagnement des cooperatives de logement se sont epanouies en Suede et en Inde, elles manquent d'ampleur aux Etats-Unis. L'article souligne la necessite d'une autonomie imbriquee et le besoin de structures de soutien pour permettre l'essor des cooperatives de logement.