Abstract
Defined as financial innovations in which a public entity enters into agreements to pay private investors only in case of achievement of a predefined level of social outcomes, Social Impact Bonds (SIBs) emerged as a mechanism aimed to introduce social innovation into the traditional schemes of public service provisions. More in detail, SIBs are a neoliberal procurement model—based on a mix of contracting out, private finance capital, and Payment-by-Results (PbR)—used for the delivery of social services in several policies and welfare areas. This chapter provides an overview of the SIBs phenomenon in some European countries by offering suggestions for their use to respond to the most pressing economic and social effects of COVID-19.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Albertson, K., Fox, C., O’Leary, C., Painter, G., Bailey, K., & LaBarbera, J. (2018). Payment by results and social impact bonds: Outcome-based payment systems in the UK and US. Policy Press.
Alonso, J. M., Clifton, J., & Díaz-Fuentes, D. (2015). Did new public management matter? An empirical analysis of the outsourcing and decentralization effects on public sector size. Public Management Review, 17, 643–660.
Anastasiu, A. (2019). SIBs in the Netherlands: Part 1—state of play, an interview with social finance Netherlands co-founder Björn Vennema. Government Outcomes Lab, University of Oxford. https://golab.bsg.ox.ac.uk/community/blogs/sibs-netherlands-state-play/
BNP Paribas. (2019). BNP Paribas announces the launch of three new social impact bonds in France. https://group.bnpparibas/en/news/bnp-paribas-announces-launch-social-impact-bonds-france
Broom, J. (2021). Social impact bonds and fast policy: Analyzing the Australian experience. Environment and Planning a: Economy and Space, 53(1), 113–130.
Cabinet Office. (2011). Open public services white paper. Cabinet Office.
Carè, R., & De Lisa, R. (2019). Social impact bonds for a sustainable welfare state: The role of enabling factors. Sustainability, 11(10), 2884.
Carè, R., Rania, F., & De Lisa, R. (2020). Critical success factors, motivations, and risks in social impact bonds. Sustainability, 12(18), 7291.
Carter, E. (2021). More than marketised? Exploring the governance and accountability mechanisms at play in social impact bonds. Journal of Economic Policy Reform, 24(1), 78–94.
Center for Global Development. (2020). Resettlement: The innovative finance for resettlement working group. https://www.cgdev.org/sites/default/files/Using_Innovative_Finance_to_Increase_Refugee_Resettlement.pdf
Chiapello, E., & Knoll, L. (2020). The welfare conventions approach: A comparative perspective on social impact bonds. Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis: Research and Practice, 22(2), 100–115.
Clifton, J., Comin, F., & Diaz-Fuentes, D. (2006). Privatization in the European Union: Pragmatic, ideological, inevitable? Journal of European Public Policy, 13(5), 736–756.
Dowling, E. (2017). In the wake of austerity: Social impact bonds and the financialisation of the welfare state in Britain. New Political Economy, 22(3), 294–310.
Edmiston, D., & Nicholls, A. (2018). Social impact bonds: The role of private capital in outcome-based commissioning. Journal of Social Policy, 47(1), 57–76.
EIF. (2020). BNP Paribas and European investment fund launch EUR 10m fund for co-investment into social impact bonds in the EU. https://www.eif.org/what_we_do/equity/news/2020/bnp-efsi.htm?media=rss&language=en
European Commission. (2019). EU support for re-integration of Dutch military personnel into the labour market. https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/IP_19_4049
European Investment Advisory Hub. (2021). Social outcomes contracting in Europe: An introductory guide to social outcomes contracting in European Union Member States. https://eiah.eib.org/publications/attachments/social-outcomes-contracting-in-Europe-10052021.pdf
Fi Compass. (2019). The Portuguese social innovation initiative. https://www.fi-compass.eu/publication/factsheets/factsheet-fi-compass-study-social-impacts-bond-programme-under-portugals.
FitzGerald, C., Carter, E., Dixon, R., & Airoldi, M. (2019). Walking the contractual tightrope: A transaction cost economics perspective on social impact bonds. Public Money & Management, 39(7), 458–467.
Fox, C., & Morris, S. (2019). Evaluating outcome-based payment programmes: Challenges for evidence-based policy. Journal of Economic Policy Reform. https://doi.org/10.1080/17487870.2019.1575217
Fraser, A., Tan, S., Lagarde, M., & Mays, N. (2018). Narratives of promise, narratives of caution: A review of the literature on social impact bonds. Social Policy & Administration, 52(1), 4–28.
Giacomantonio, C. (2017). Grant-maximizing but not money-making: A simple decision-tree analysis for social impact bonds. Journal of Social Entrepreneurship, 8(1), 47–66.
Government Outcomes Lab. (2021). Projects database. https://golab.bsg.ox.ac.uk
Gustafsson-Wright, E. & Osborne, S. (2021). Do the benefits outweigh the costs of impact bonds? https://s3.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/golab.prod/documents/Do_the_benefits_outweigh_the_costs_of_impact_bonds.pdf
Hajer, J. (2020). The national governance and policy context of social impact bond emergence: A comparative analysis of leaders and skeptics. Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis: Research and Practice, 22(2), 116–133.
Harvey, D. (2006). Neo-liberalism as creative destruction. Geografiska Annaler, 88(2), 145–158.
Impact Invest Lab. (2020). Le contrat à Impact social de étude de cas d’un contrat à impact social. Impact Invest Lab. https://iilab.fr/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/ETUDE-CAS-IMPACT-SOCIAL-ADIE.pdf
Klimavičiūtė L., Chiodo V., De Pieri B., & Gineikytė V. (2021). Study on the benefits of using social outcome contracting in the provision of social services and interventions—a cross—country comparative assessment of evolving good practice in cross-sectoral partnerships for public value creation. https://ec.europa.eu/social/BlobServlet?docId=23801&langId=en
Le Pendeven, B. (2019). Social impact bonds: A new public management perspective. Finance Contrôle Stratégie (NS-5).
Maier, F., & Meyer, M. (2017). Social Impact Bonds and the perils of aligned interests. Administrative Sciences, 7(3), 24.
Ormiston, J., Moran, M., Castellas, E. I., & Tomkinson, E. (2020). Everybody wins? A discourse analysis of competing stakeholder expectations in social impact bonds. Public Money & Management, 40(3), 237–246.
Pandey, S., Cordes, J. J., Pandey, S. K., & Winfrey, W. F. (2018). Use of social impact bonds to address social problems: Understanding contractual risks and transaction costs. Nonprofit Management and Leadership, 28(4), 511–528.
Rania, F., Trotta, A., Carè, R., Migliazza, M. C., & Kabli, A. (2020). Social uncertainty evaluation of social impact bonds: A model and practical application. Sustainability, 12(9), 3854.
Rijpens, J., Bouchard, M. J., Gruet, É., & Salathé-Beaulieu, G. (2020). Social impact bonds: Promises versus facts. What does the recent scientific literature tell us? (Working Paper, CIREC 2020/15) Liege University.
Robison, R. (2006). Neo-liberalism and the market state: What is the ideal shell? Palgrave Macmillan.
Scheuerle, T., & Nieveler, A. (2017). Implementing social impact bonds in Germany: Challenges for pay-for-success models in the German welfare system. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/323258634_Implementing_Social_Impact_Bonds_in_Germany_-_Challenges_for_Pay-for-Success_Models_in_the_German_Welfare_System
Sinclair, S., McHugh, N., & Roy, M. J. (2021). Social innovation, financialisation and commodification: A critique of social impact bonds. Journal of Economic Policy Reform, 24(1), 11–27.
Tan, S., Fraser, A., McHugh, N., & Warner, M. E. (2021). Widening perspectives on social impact bonds. Journal of Economic Policy Reform, 24(1), 1–10. https://doi.org/10.1080/17487870.2019.1568249
The French Ministry for the Economy and Finance. (2020). Lancement des contrats à impact. https://www.economie.gouv.fr/lancement-contrats-impact
Trotta, A., Carè, R., Caridà, R. & Migliazza, M. C. (2021). Fighting poverty and inequalities through social impact bonds: Learning from case studies to support the Covid-19 response. In Contemporary Issues in Sustainable Finance: Financial Products and Financial Institutions (p. 37). Springer.
Tse, A. E., & Warner, M. E. (2020). The razor’s edge: Social impact bonds and the financialization of early childhood services. Journal of Urban Affairs, 42(6), 816–832.
Vecchi, V., & Casalini, F. (2019). Is a social empowerment of PPP for infrastructure delivery possible? Lessons from social impact bonds. Annals of Public and Cooperative Economics, 90(2), 353–369.
Vecchi, V., Casalini, F., Cusumano, N. & Leone, V. M. (2021). From traditional to outcome-based public-private partnerships: Social impact bonds. Public Private Partnerships, 103.
Vickers, J. & Yarrow, G. (1988). Privatization: An economic analysis. MIT Press.
Warner, M. (2012, September). Profiting from public value? The case of social impact bonds. Draft paper prepared for Creating Public Value Conference. University of Minnesota.
Acknowledgment
This work has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 892293—COPERNICUS.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2022 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Carè, R. (2022). From New Public Management to Social Impact Bonds: The European Experience. In: Lévy, N., Chommeloux, A., Champroux, N.A., Porion, S., josso, S., Damiens, A. (eds) The Anglo-American Model of Neoliberalism of the 1980s. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-12074-9_18
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-12074-9_18
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-031-12073-2
Online ISBN: 978-3-031-12074-9
eBook Packages: Political Science and International StudiesPolitical Science and International Studies (R0)