The Role of Support Organizations in the Development of Cooperatives in Israel

Abstract

This article offers a historical analysis of the development of producer, service and transportation cooperatives in Israel. It focuses particularly on the role played by Israel's central trade union federation, the Histadrut, and the support organizations it has sponsored in facilitating the growth of this cooperative sector. With the exception of two large bus cooperatives, which enjoy monopolies in their service areas, the growth of this population has not been impressive. The article argues that several defects in the support structures associated with this population help account for these disappointing results. For many decades, these support organizations sought more to control the Israeli cooperatives than to represent them, did more to distort the development of cooperatives in Israel than to facilitate it, and did more to expose the weaknesses of Israeli cooperatives than to correct them. Their net effect was more to discredit the idea of producers' cooperation in Israel than to promote it. These injurious policies were eventually abandoned, but not until after they had caused what may have been irreparable harm to the Israeli urban cooperative sector.

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