Japan highlights innovative Asia Pacific model for Social Impact Bonds

SIBs are emerging as a way to reconfigure relationships between the state and civil society in ways that their Western inventors may not have anticipated but may wish to replicate.

Japan’s experience of Social Impact Bonds (SIBs) offers some important insights. First, it challenges the notion – held by some – that SIBs should be seen chiefly as a way to cut costs: in Japan we see a typically Asia-Pacific framing of SIBs that’s more focussed on developing civic society. It’s an approach that may catch on more widely around the world.

Secondly, the Japanese experience demonstrates the importance of institutional infrastructure and culture – and not only availability of finance – to make SIBs work well. SIBs require a complicated culture in which to thrive: Japan shows how it can take time for the various elements to be established.

See full article here on the PIRU site.