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There has been a burgeoning of interest in social enterprise and the social economy on the part of policy makers and academics in recent years. In the UK, for instance, the third sector and social enterprises in particular have become closely associated with the strategies of the New Labour Government since 1997, notably its aim to reduce the obligations of the state by expanding the role of social (and private) enterprise in a mixed economy of public service provision. Most recently, advocates of the social economy and cooperative models have drawn attention to their increasing relevance in the context of the financial crisis and the evident flaws of the Anglo-American model of capitalism. In addition, there has been a somewhat belated wider recognition of the threat posed by catastrophic global climate change and the need to achieve a rapid transition to a low carbon, more sustainable economy. It is argued that the social economy and the third sector offer more democratic models of economic organization and enterprise which are better able to integrate ‘triple bottom line’ criteria for social, environmental and economic sustainability than is the private sector. This book therefore offers a timely and much-needed overview of the social economy and the third sector while attempting to assess their relevance to current and future issues. Despite the long history of the social economy, relatively little has been produced in the way of systematic research compared