More than marketised? Exploring the governance and accountability mechanisms at play in Social Impact Bonds

ABSTRACT

Social Impact Bonds are considered a highly marketised form of public service delivery and are understood to “work” through the introduction of new capital into payment-by-results contracts. This paper, for the first time, connects findings from UK SIBs to the evaluation of conventional payment-by-results contracts and the theoretical literature on governance and accountabilities. Markets and capital emerge as a potential red herring with hybridity of governance and the “social” positioned as important dimensions facilitating qualitatively different services. This raises questions as to whether it is possible to extend SIBs, or whether increased scale and mainstream investors will dilute the “SIB effect”.

KEYWORDS:

• Social Impact Bonds
• social investment
• public services
• payment-by-results
• employment support

Acknowledgements

The author wishes to thank participants at the conference on “Widening Perspectives on Social Impact Bonds” in London in September 2016 for their comments. I also wish to thank the Editor and three anonymous referees and for their comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. See investors in UK SIBs listed here: https://golab.bsg.ox.ac.uk/knowledge/project-database/