Social Entrepreneurship Policy in Korea, Japan, China, the United Kingdom, the United States, France and Germany, 2023

Entrepreneurial Ecosystem Policy Review (EEPR), 11(2) · January 2024

This report reviews the social entrepreneurship policy that the governments of Korea, Japan, China, the United Kingdom, the United States, France and Germany set out from January to December 2023 in six domains — regulation and law, finance, culture, support, human capital and markets — and analyses it in its context, against theory and in practice. Support was redrawn around self-reliance and general instruments: Korea announced that direct support for social enterprises would be merged into general schemes, Germany adopted a strategy without a legal form or a budget of its own, and France’s reshuffle of July left no ministerial post named for its social and solidarity economy. Dormant money was the main new source of finance in Japan, the United Kingdom and France, and the United States kept funding its community development lenders, while the United Kingdom closed its tax relief for social investment. Legal reform concerned charities, cooperatives and dormant money rather than social enterprise, public purchasing was the least realised lever, and culture was the thinnest domain.