'The outcomes were terrible but the process was immaculate'

'The outcomes were terrible but the process was immaculate'

Social Policy Bonds aim to achieve social and environmental goals as efficiently as possible. For many years, I've written about how politicians and the public are distracted, cynically or otherwise, from these goals to the supposed ways of achieving them (see here, here, here and here for some random examples). So we fuss over funding arrangements or the composition and structure of the bodies whose ostensible remit is to help achieve these goals, but whose over-arching objective is almost invariably self perpetuation. When it comes to politics, we focus on the politicians: their personalities, their looks, soundbites, what they may have said when they were decades younger. In short: anything except the outcomes we want to see. The current Economist looks at how Britain uses process, often in the form of committees of enquiry, as a delaying mechanism: 'When the choice is between doing and discussing, British politicians instinctively opt for the latter.' 

Social Policy Bonds would be completely different. Their starting point would be the social and environmental outcomes that society wants to see. Politicians would retain the power to articulate and prioritise society's wishes, and to raise the revenue that would reward their achievement. But they'd relinquish the power to decide how our goals would be achieved, and which organisations would achieve them. That would be left to investors in the bonds, who would be rewarded for choosing only the most efficient approaches to solving our social problems. Most of our goals are long term in nature: slashing crime rates, reducing unemployment, improving health, for instance at the national level; ending conflict, mitigating the effects of climate change, and improving the environment at the global level. Today's politics, with its focus on politicians, personalities and process, is ill equipped to address our long-term needs. I suggest that Social Policy Bonds could be the way forward. They would lead to the creation of a new sort of organisation, whose sole focus would be on the achievement of our desired outcomes. I hope the article in the Economist (How means conquered ends, 9 January 2025, from which the quotes above are taken) is a portent of a necessary shift of policymakers' focus from means to ends.