Social Impact Bonds in Sweden: Structural and operational impediments from experts’ perspectives

Abstract

Background and Purpose Social Impact Bonds has recently received attention in Sweden as a new financing model that might enable increased efficiency and innovation within public service provision. As a financing model, Social Impact Bonds’ outcome-based structure, allows increased service provision measuring, enabling increased transparency and new thoughts and practices to be put in place in areas of the social services where problems are prevailing. To date, there are only a few Social Impact Bonds launched in Sweden and the model fit within the Swedish Welfare State is not widely understood and researched. As such, this study aims to illuminate how the experts involved in the first Social Impact Bonds in Sweden have worked with this model to ensure successful implementation in Sweden. Further, the study has viewed the Swedish Social Finance Infrastructure to assess how well it can facilitate Social Impact Bonds in its current state and possible areas of improvement for the future. Methodology For the study, a comprehensive literature review on Social Impact Bonds was performed culminating in an understanding of where the field currently is, in terms of maturity, in Sweden. The literature review was followed by qualitative semi-structured interviews with experts within Social Impact Bonds in Sweden. Findings and Conclusions One of the main findings in the study is that the Welfare System of Sweden, which can be considered extensive in comparison with many western countries to date, has affected the implementation of Social Impact Bonds to the extent that the authors coin the term Swedish Social Impact Bond (SSIB) to emphasize the difference. The effects resulting from this include a larger need for specialized experts to assist in the implementation of the SSIB and a need for increased Pro-Social Finance fiscal and regulatory policy.