TY - JOUR
T1 - Networks of knowledge production and mobility in the world of social impact bonds
AU - Broom, Jacob
AU - Tchilingirian, Jordan
N1 - Funding Information:
A version of this paper was presented at the ASNA Conference in November 2020. The authors would like to thank Dr Adam Hannah for his helpful comments, and the two anonymous reviewers for their insights and suggestions. The usual disclaimers apply. This research was supported by an Australian Government Research Training Program scholarship.
PY - 2022/12/31
Y1 - 2022/12/31
N2 - Social impact bonds (SIBs) are a social policy model for privately financing social programs on an outcomes basis. Like other social and development policy trends of the last decade, the construction of SIBs has been characterised by a global circulatory infrastructure that has seen them emerge in upwards of 30 countries. In this article, we interrogate the dynamics of the SIB ‘policy world’ that has enabled that mobility. We build a novel dialogue between the theoretical frameworks of ‘policy mobilities’ and ‘policy knowledge networks’. We argue that the lack of engagement with the internal dynamics of networks is a missed opportunity for political economy and policy mobilities approaches. As such, we employ a novel form of social network analysis, examining the ties of collaboration and advice between the authors of SIB policy texts and the organisations that they are embedded in. We find that SIB texts were authored by a disconnected community that rarely collaborated across organisational or jurisdictional borders. Knowledge production in the SIB world was uneven, as places and actors with ‘good knowledge’ were repeatedly engaged. We conclude that the financialisation of global social policy that SIBs impel is constructed through hierarchies of space and place.
AB - Social impact bonds (SIBs) are a social policy model for privately financing social programs on an outcomes basis. Like other social and development policy trends of the last decade, the construction of SIBs has been characterised by a global circulatory infrastructure that has seen them emerge in upwards of 30 countries. In this article, we interrogate the dynamics of the SIB ‘policy world’ that has enabled that mobility. We build a novel dialogue between the theoretical frameworks of ‘policy mobilities’ and ‘policy knowledge networks’. We argue that the lack of engagement with the internal dynamics of networks is a missed opportunity for political economy and policy mobilities approaches. As such, we employ a novel form of social network analysis, examining the ties of collaboration and advice between the authors of SIB policy texts and the organisations that they are embedded in. We find that SIB texts were authored by a disconnected community that rarely collaborated across organisational or jurisdictional borders. Knowledge production in the SIB world was uneven, as places and actors with ‘good knowledge’ were repeatedly engaged. We conclude that the financialisation of global social policy that SIBs impel is constructed through hierarchies of space and place.
KW - impact investing
KW - networks
KW - policy knowledge
KW - policy mobilities
KW - Social impact bonds
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85127328601&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1080/13563467.2022.2054965
DO - 10.1080/13563467.2022.2054965
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85127328601
SN - 1356-3467
VL - 27
SP - 1031
EP - 1045
JO - New Political Economy
JF - New Political Economy
IS - 6
ER -