Anything but outcomes

"[T]he essence of leadership has changed into something that is less and less about significant undertakings and more and more about dramatic stunts." Christopher Caldwell, The Triumph of Gesture Politics, New York Times, 23 January 2005.

What drives policymaking? Extreme distance between consumption and production is a defining feature of a developed economy. Corporate bodies, whether government or private sector, subsidise the infrastructure that promotes this separation. They also benefit from it, not least because it means that the effects of a policy are difficult to trace back to their cause. Indeed, the relationships between cause and effect are so obscure that politicians can seldom be judged by the outcomes of their policies. Ideology, the reception given to spending announcements, celebrity endorsement, or the dramatic stunts of gesture politics - anything but outcomes - increasingly dictate which policies shall be undertaken.

This naturally generates cynicism about politics and a worrying disengagement from the political process. Social Policy Bonds would make a policy's goals explicit from the outset. Doing so, they would draw natural persons, as distinct from corporate bodies, into the policymaking process, helping to close the gap between policymakers and the public.