Autonomy of the Community and Complementary Currencies in relation to State Law

Abstract

The emergence of complementary and community currencies (CCCs) at a global and local scale manifests the normative innovation that characterizes these initiatives. Based on three case studies of CCCs in the Basque Country (the Ekhi, the Eusko and the Txantxi) the present paper explores the normative order of the CCCs and their processes of institutionalization through tactics of legal convergence. The level of autonomy of each CCC is systematized from a socio-legal and a socio-economic approach. The study concludes that through CCCs new institutional fields are opened which strengthen the normative and economic autonomy of the communities.

Keywords

• complementary and community currencies
• autonomy
• normative innovation
• normative orders
• institutionalization
• socio-legal approach
• socio-economic approach