Transcending government structures

In the early days of government intervention it was quite clear what needed to be done. Society would benefit unambiguously by increased health, education and infrastructure spending. This still holds for much of the developing world. But in the rich countries things are now much more complicated. At higher levels of development the correlation between government spending and social and environmental wellbeing breaks down. The boundaries between the remits of governmental agencies become hazy: society has become too complex, and too interlinked to fit into self-contained adminstrative boxes. Education is no more just about schooling. It's influenced by policy on the arts, broadcasting, health and even taxation (if tax policy encourages women to work, for instance, that will affect, in non-straightforward ways, the way in which children learn). Health is no longer just about supplying clean water, sewers, and legislating against food adulteration. Crime and fear of crime are about more than policing.

Unfortunately, we lack ways of dealing with these complexities. Identifying the relationship between cause and effect is no trivial task, with all the obscure relationships and time lags. Eventually, I think we will come round to targeting outcomes, as Social Policy Bonds do. Government will specify an outcome, and reward people for achieving it, however they do so. Who is rewarded, by how much, will be left to the market. Currently these questions pre-occupy government agents to such a degree that they inhibit action. Organizational objectives supersede those of society and the result is a sort of policy paralysis. Bickering between government agents and the hijacking of policy goals by government employees are the result. This is particularly important when confronting those challenges for which there is little precedent: we'd pay a lot to insure against a nuclear exchange anywhere in the world, for instance, but our current system has few ways of channeling resources into that goal.

Under a Social Policy Bond regime, targeting such goals would be more feasible. There's no need to specify which government department shall be charged with achieving them. So not only would that achievement become more efficient, but we could think about targeting goals that do not fall into the traditional bureaucratic structures. I'd like to see nuclear proliferation and the risks of catastrophic environmental disasters (natural or man-made) targeted in this way, but there are plenty of other pressing issues that cannot get a proper hearing within the current institutional framework. And until we move to an outcome-based policymaking structure - it need not necessarily involve Social Policy Bonds - they're not likely to.