Cooperative federation
co-operative organization in which all members are co-operatives
A cooperative federation is a trade association whose members are cooperative organizations. As inter-cooperative structures, cooperative federations can also be secondary cooperatives, pooling resources and strengthening business relations among their members. Cooperative federations are a means through which cooperatives can fulfill the sixth Cooperative Principle, cooperation among cooperatives. The International Cooperative Alliance notes that “Cooperatives serve their members most effectively and strengthen the cooperative movement by working together through local, national, regional and international structures.” Historically, cooperative federations have predominantly come in the form of cooperative wholesale societies and cooperative unions.
Cooperative wholesale societies
According to cooperative economist Charles Gide, the aim of a cooperative wholesale society, which is owned by retail consumer cooperatives, is to arrange "bulk purchases, and, if possible, organise production". The best historical examples of this were the English and Scottish Cooperative Wholesale Societies, which were the forerunners to the modern Co-operative Group.
Cooperative unions
A second common form of cooperative federation is a cooperative union, whose objective (according to Gide) is “to develop the spirit of solidarity among societies and... in a word, to exercise the functions of a government whose authority, it is needless to say, is purely moral.” Co-operatives UK and the International Cooperative Alliance are examples of such arrangements.
Banking
Austria's Raiffeisen Banking Group includes many cooperative banks in Austria as well as operations (not organized as cooperatives) in eastern Europe.
Germany's Volksbanken and Raiffeisenbanken are cooperative banks within the German Cooperative Financial Group.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Cooperative federation” as co-operative organization in which all members are co-operatives. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the history & society register because the source frames it as co-operative organization in which all members are co-operatives. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 30, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3091505. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Cooperative federation” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.