From Fixing Markets to Fixing People: Entrepreneurial Economics, Pastoral Power, and the after-Market Design of School Choice

Gabriel Chouhy, Universidad Central de Chile

In recent decades, algorithmic market design has transformed school choice systems across the globe. In Chile, this transformation has been particularly consequential. Following decades of market-oriented education reforms under dictatorship and democracy, the 2015 Inclusion Law introduced a centralized enrollment system (SAE) to curb socioeconomic segregation and limit schools’ discretion over admissions. The SAE was designed as a technical fix to a politically contested market failure. While much attention has been paid to the design of matching algorithms, we know far less about what happens after these systems are implemented. I argue that a second moment—what I call after-market design—is crucial for understanding how education markets are governed in practice. In this phase, economists, data scientists, and other experts-cum-entrepreneurs use the SAE as a data-generating infrastructure to continuously diagnose and optimize the system. Empirically, the paper traces how experts in Chile exploit SAE data to scrutinize applications, test behavioral interventions, and develop digital tools that enhance parent’s calculative capacity and mitigate the risk of not being placed. These interventions are made possible by the platform’s capacity to generate fine-grained data on applications, preferences, and outcomes, turning the system into a site of ongoing experimentation. Increasingly, the epistemic object of expert work shifts from the rules of the game to how players play the game. Parents’ preferences—once assumed to be given—become objects of scrutiny, correction, and intervention. Theoretically, the paper contributes to the sociology of knowledge and expertise by reconceptualizing algorithmic market design as an iterative, infrastructural process rather than a one-time intervention. It also advances debates on technocratic power by identifying a form of governance that combines “libertarian paternalism” with a privatized version of pastoral power: the guidance of individuals’ conduct through digital infrastructures. After fixing markets, fixing people naturally follows.

No extended abstract or paper available

 Presented in Session 34. Sustained Interventions in Schooling: Case Studies from Around the World