Abstract

Public policy innovations such as social impact bonds (SIBs) have prompted critical attention in recent literature. Yet, little is known about the operations they require and the shapes they take. This study contributes to this research agenda through a focus on the problem of ‘feasibility’. We consider this notion as a vernacular preoccupation put forward by SIB practitioners. We theorize this phenomenon with reference to the notions of tactics (making sense of situations in which schematization and ordering are difficult) and trials (the success of an action depending on the transformations it faces in the process of becoming explicit). We focus on how ‘feasibility’ emerged as a distinctive concern in a number of SIB cases in Chile, Colombia and France. We show how this concern translated recurrently into ways of orienting the SIB arrangement toward shapes in which it could prove viable and tractable.

摘要

社会影响力债券（SIB）等公共政策创新在最近的文献中引起了广泛关注。然而，人们对它们所需的操作和它们所采取的形状知之甚少。这项研究通过关注“可行性”问题为这一研究议程做出了贡献。我们认为这个概念是 SIB 从业者提出的白话关注点。我们参考策略（理解图式化和排序困难的情况）和试验（行动的成功取决于它在变得明确的过程中面临的转变）的概念来理论化这种现象。我们重点关注“可行性”如何在智利、哥伦比亚和法国的许多 SIB 案例中成为一个独特的关注点。