社会影响力债券:利用社会资本解决社会问题

"社会影响力债券"是公共部门吸引私人资本投资社会公益服务项目的一种新型社会合作治理工具。从资源依赖、新公共管理、网络治理和多中心治理等理论视角,可以把社会影响力债券阐释成一种以结果为导向的多方、多层次合同,将政府、市场和社会三者结合在一起的特有的合作治理模式;以共同解决社会问题,产生良性的社会影响效应,私人投资同时获得回报为目的。通过梳理现有文献和总结社会影响力债券近十年的实践发展可以看到,社会影响力债券相对于政府购买社会服务和PPP模式,具有将风险从政府转移到私人投资者、更多元主体参与和评估机制更严谨等特点。社会影响力债券以其多主体合作与"共赢"模式,以项目组织方为连接中心形成协同运作机制,能够有效解决传统社会公益项目资金不足、资源吸引能力弱、治理绩效低、评估监测不足等问题。尽管社会影响力债券在世界各国得到很大的关注,但是现有案例显示,它仍存在着风险过高、项目结果不确定性大、吸引的私人投资者不足等问题。在未来,社会影响力债券在风险机制、评估机制、问责制等方面都具有很大的研究空间。在日益复杂的社会治理领域,社会影响力债券的研究和发展对各国社会问题的改善和解决都具有很好的借鉴和启发。

Social Impact Bonds:Utilizing Private Capital to Solve Social Problems

Social impact bonds(SIBs) as a new financial instrument help the public sector to attract private capital to invest and scale up social service projects.Through the lenses of resource dependence,new public management,network governance,and polycentric governance,SIBs can be conceptualized as results-oriented,multi-party,and multi-level contracts where government,market,and the third sector work together in a unique collaborative governance model,for the purpose of addressing social problems,generating social impacts,and yielding return on private investment.After reviewing the extant SIB literature and practices over the past ten years,we find that,different from government procurement of social services and public-private partnerships(PPPs),SIBs transfer risks from the government to private investors,involve more players,and are subject to more rigorous performance evaluation.In such a"win-win" collaborative model orchestrated by a leading organization operated as an intermediary,SIBs can address some challenges facing conventional philanthropic projects:insufficient funding,weak resource mobilization capacity,poor performance,and inadequate evaluation.Having received much attention around the world,SIBs are experimented in various countries.Yet a review of existing SIB cases exposes such problems as excessive risks,huge uncertainty on project outcomes,and insufficient private investment.SIBs offer many opportunities of future research on risk mechanisms,assessment tools,and accountability.In an increasingly complex arena of social governance,furthering SIB studies will provide insights as to how to address social problems facing countries around the world.