How can counter-hegemonic social movements and other political forces promote public action strategies aimed at “qualitative growth” which also support the development of solidarity economies? Capra and Henderson, the authors of the concept of “qualitative growth” (2014), claim that growth is an essential dimension of the sustainability of biological and social organisms. Therefore, it is necessary to understand the economy as one aspect of the “metabolism” of social organisms, and consequently apply systems thinking to the development of rules which make the impact of economic activity sustainable for the whole system. Social ecologists such as Janet Biehl and Peter Staudenmeier claim that implicit in this approach is a world view that, when translated into collective action and public policy, may lead to approaches to resource allocation and political participation that, although based on regenerative and even anti-capitalist principles, may also have anti-democratic and elitist dimensions (Biehl and Staudenmeier 1995, 2011; Staudenmeier 2013). This paper is based on the hypothesis that a convergence between the organizational forms and strategies of governance and political action promoted by the Commons and Solidarity Economy movements would promote “qualitative growth” while ensuring equity, justice and participatory democracy in access to resources. It uses a comparative case study approach to explore the characteristics of the predominant organizational forms and strategies of political action emerging from these movements, as well as the aspects which need to be addressed in order to make such convergence possible. It compares and contrasts three major types of commons-based peer production (CBPP): An ecovillage, an “integral cooperative” and a self-identified commercialization-based solidarity economy network. Benkler (2006) defines CBPP as a modular form of socioeconomic production in which large numbers of people work cooperatively over any type of commons. The case studies were chosen due to the fact of being leading agents whose practices are reproduced within three of the largest and most significant international social movement networks operating in the fields of the Commons and Social Solidarity Economy. They also represent three infrastructure types of “new commons”: a) Tamera, an ecovillage founded in 1995 in southwestern Portugal, which applies regenerative ecology and community-building to the development of a “foundational economy” (Conaty 2015), meaning the infrastructures that sustain everyday life (i.e. food, water, energy, housing); b) Cooperativa Integral Catalana, an “integral cooperative” founded in 2010 in Catalonia. It defines itself a governance system that combines information technologies and face-to-face assemblies in the promotion of a network management system for economic activities; c) Esperança-Cooesperança, an urban commons-based commercialization network based on Solidarity Economy principles and goals, based in the town of Santa Maria, in the heartland of the southern Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul. It was founded in 1985 with the support of pre-existing Ecclesial Base Communities, as well as Caritas Brazil. These case studies also represent attempts at developing respectively an alternative political ecology, an alternative political institutionality and an alternative political economy. Each of them was the object of four months of fieldwork, carried out between 2015 and 2017.

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