Les déterminants de l'intensité des alliances capitalistiques entre groupes coopératifs agricoles

The French agricultural cooperatives develop as cooperative groups while maintaining a high density of partnerships. The objective of this article is to better understand the determinants that motivate cooperative groups to build capitalistic alliances them. Alliances are identified from an exhaustive national database on cooperative groups in 2005. By mobilizing social capital theories to explain the network of alliances, two econometric models of selection and intensity of alliances are proposed to analyze the role of geographical and organized proximities in relation with the Group?s activity. The results highlight a strong relationship between the group size and its influence within the alliance network. The same dominant activity and geographical proximity are criteria favoring alliances between groups. The alliances aim at strengthening leader cooperatives in enabling them to extend their activities and their influence in the territories.