The evolutionary approach to policymaking

In today's polarised political climate Social Policy Bonds suffer by being seen as a 'right-wing' way of achieving 'left-wing' goals, in that they use markets to achieve social and environmental objectives. Rather than appealing to both political ideologies, they appeal to neither. They are also quite unconventional in that they stipulate desirable outcomes and reward people for achieving them. This differs from the usual approach of governments - even those that care about their citizens - which is to take existing bodies (public- or private-sector) as a given, and try to negotiate their competing demands. I think Social Policy Bonds can improve on this approach for two main reasons:

Society is so complex, ever-changing and beset by time lags that it is more efficient to reward evolutionary solutions to our social problems than it is for any single body to try, using current knowledge, to develop solutions that will necessarily be top-down and once-size-fits-all. Just as evolution in nature leads to diverse, adaptive solutions to the problem of surviving in a complex, changing environment, so would an evolutionary approach lead to diverse, adaptive solutions to our social problems. Such approaches are unlikely to be conceived by any single conventional organisation, which is why I expect issuing Social Policy Bonds would generate a new type of organisation, one whose structure, composition and activities would be solely dedicated to achieving society's social and environmental goals at least cost to the taxpayer. 

A Social Policy Bond regime would encourage long-term thinking because (unlike Social Impact Bonds) they would be tradeable, so that the time-till-redemption of the bonds could be much longer than any investor's time horizon. There would be time for bondholders to try an array of innovative approaches, and the incentives would be there for them to refine and implement the most efficient of these approaches - and, importantly, to terminate those that are unpromising. Once the Social Policy Bond concept has been used at the national level, lessons learned could be applied to solution of global problems, including those often thought to be intractable, such as regional or global conflict.