Browsing by Author "Ogman, Robert"

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    The broken promises of the social investment market
    (Sage, 2019-01-25) Harvie, David; Ogman, Robert
    The United Kingdom is pioneering a new model for the delivery of public services, based around the device of a social investment market. At the heart of this social investment market is an innovative new financial instrument, the social impact bond (SIB). In this paper we argue that the SIB promises (partial) solutions to four aspects of the present multifaceted crisis: the crisis of social reproduction; the crisis of capital accumulation; the fiscal crisis of the state; and the crisis of political legitimacy. In this sense, we conceive the social investment market as a crisis management strategy. We draw on evidence from the world’s first SIB, the Peterborough SIB, launched in 2010, as well as from other SIBs, in order to assess the extent to which the social investment market delivers on its four promises. In doing so, we argue that the crisis of neoliberalism and the social investment market are not only in historical correspondence, but in a relation of causality to one another. In developing this argument, this paper contributes to contemporary theories of neoliberalism by investigating how concrete state developments and societal restructuring is being advanced around the idea of linking marketization with progressive social change. It also supports critical practitioners by offering a theoretical lens to identify the contradictions of this increasingly popular policy approach.
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    Crisis, hegemony, and the social investment market: The cultural political economy of an emerging governance strategy
    (De Montfort University, 2018-10) Ogman, Robert
    This thesis contributes to contemporary research on neoliberalism by analysing the ‘social investment market’ (SIM) as part of the reproduction and remaking of hegemony since the financial crisis of 2008. It describes the modernisation attempts under the idea of ‘ethical capitalism’ to deal with multiple problems of market governance, by linking it with new notions of public responsibility, in order to bring about a sustainable recovery by harmonising relations between government, market, and society. My original contribution to knowledge is the fusion of a cultural political economy perspective, developed by Sum and Jessop (2013), with a historical materialist policy analysis, which allows me to explain ‘moral capitalism’ – defined by Clarke (2010a, p. 388) as a “muted echo of popular scepticism and outrage about the crisis of the present” – in strategic-relational terms. This is understood as an encounter, negotiation, and provisional and unstable compromise between competing projects of restructuring, namely between an effort to ‘restore’ neoliberal hegemony on the one side, and efforts to advance ‘progressive post-neoliberal alternatives’ (Peck, Theodore, & Brenner, 2010, p. 112), on the other. I demonstrate this perspective by reconstructing two cases of Social Impact Bonds – projects seeking to employ markets for the achievement of public goals, identifying both the possibilities for substantive change as well as limitations, in the ongoing context of political economic crisis.
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    “Ethical capitalism” in the city: Embedded economy or marketization? The case of social impact bonds
    (Taylor and Francis, 2019-07-10) Ogman, Robert
    Translator disclaimer Full Article Figures & data References Citations Metrics Reprints & Permissions Get access ABSTRACT This paper offers a cultural political economy approach to efforts to advance the “social investment market” as a specific crisis management strategy in response to the economic crisis of 2008. Analyzing social impact bonds (SIBs), it looks at efforts to combine market mechanisms with new notions of public responsibility, and structures of accountability often described as “ethical capitalism” today. Three central claims are interrogated, both as forms of framing and resolving the crisis. First, the paper is concerned with SIBs’ approach to socio-economic polarization through the development of preventative services focused on creating “social impact.” Second, it focuses on their efforts to avoid exacerbating the state’s fiscal crisis by allowing for private investment in public services. Third, the analysis shows how SIBs intend to counter the economic problem of slow and uneven growth with its idea of creating “shared value” between society and investors. The text is based on empirical case research into two of the world’s first two SIBs, seeking to reduce prisoner re-incarceration in New York City and Peterborough, UK. It analyzes policy papers and 30 interviews conducted with policy actors, to reconstruct the SIB as an asymmetrical, contradictory, and provisional compromise between actors holding divergent policy agendas. Drawing on Nancy Fraser’s concept of “progressive neoliberalism,” it shows how SIBs combine notions of public responsibility with market-based structures of a profit-oriented economy, thereby limiting the effort to re-embed the economy in society. Connecting empirical research to theory, it describes a complex process of negotiation on the conflicted terrain of city politics, between efforts to extend market governance on the one hand, and those initiatives seeking to overcome it, on the other.