Social Policy Bonds haven't gone very far

This is post number 1361; as good a time as any to look at why Social Policy Bonds haven't gone very far in the few decades since the idea has been in the public arena. 

Similar sounding Social Impact Bonds, with which I've had no involvement, have been issued in at least 25 countries. Unlike Social Policy bonds, they are not tradeable. I'm ambivalent about them for reasons I've explained more fully here and here, but in essence they are inherently short term in nature, and do not encourage new entrants nor much in the way of diverse, adaptive approaches; the range of social and environmental outcomes they can target is inherently narrow. However, they could be a stepping stone on the way to my original concept - or they could discredit the whole notion of injecting market incentives into the achievement of goals currently the remit of government.

The main reason why I think the original Social Policy Bond concept hasn't made much progress is that it threatens existing institutions, including those currently charged with allocating funds to service suppliers, and the service suppliers themselves. Under a bond regime, the government bodies that allocate funds to favoured service suppliers would relinquish that power, though government would still articulate society's wishes and raise the revenue used to redeem the bonds when targeted goals had been achieved. Existing service suppliers, would survive under a bond regime only if they were efficient, or deemed capable by bondholders of becoming so. 

Sadly, our existing institutions, by which I mean government at all levels and the bodies they fund, are failing in their duties to respond effectively to our social and environmental problems. At the national level, our politicians and senior bureaucrats appear unresponsive to the needs and wishes of ordinary people. At the global level, a concern such as the increasing probability of large-scale war is a lower priority, as measured by where human ingenuity and creativity are  most in evidence, than generating profits for the wealthiest investors or advertising dog-food. The gap between our leaders and the people they are supposed to represent grows ever larger.

Existing bodies, I realise now, aren't likely to do anything. Like every other institution, from trade unions to universities to religious organisations, their main priority is self-perpetuation. I've tried to interest philanthropists, via their journals, but I don't think that has achieved anything: perhaps philanthropists, like governments, relish their power to distribute funds to favoured organisations rather than to the achievement of social goals. My goal now is to carry on, and to keep my body of work on the bonds accessible over the internet for some years, via this site and the main Social Policy Bonds site and the papers and book chapters that are linked there. 

For more about applying the Social Policy Bond concept to peace, click here.