Law

Why do welfare states with similar institutional settings respond so differently to similar social policy problems? What factors can account for the incremental adjustment of unemployment policy in Belgium and the drastic change of disability policy in the Netherlands? This study draws on two perspectives to explain the diverging responses.

Non-human virtual identities have an increasing impact on our society. A virtual identity is not just an online identity of a person, but a new technical and social phenomenon. What if software agents, powered by artificial intelligence, start acting on your behalf in a digital marketplace? What are the legal consequences of decisions made by these autonomous virtual agents?

Ideally, European legislation stimulates uniform rule application within the Member States and equal circumstances for ‘the regulated’. The European Union, however, is not involved in enforcing these rules and thus does not control the process in which the ‘law in the books’ becomes the ‘law in action’. Enforcement remains the responsibility of individual Member States.