The research opens to three central criteria for an effective role on policy and social movement. The first one covers the operating mechanisms, which are deeply influenced by the managerial trend: it seems determinant to link an alternative design in management science and researches about sociology of associations (with, for instance, the ideal type of a « solidary enterprise »). The second one has to do with political culture as a kind of nodus, from which a possible role oncommon sense (about society, public policies, economy and market, actors capabilities, citizenship), and a possible process rebuilding collective references and positive experience of a link to institutions, seem to depend. Such a perspective requires to refer to a long-term history of ideas, which is necessary to study how the humanist foundations of occidental democracies are questioned. The third one covers collective mobilization at the meso level, as documented by the researches about collective mobilizations and social movements, including the recent researches about social movements and solidary economy.