G.J. Veerman bespreekt in zijn boek Nederlandse meesters over wetgeving: 1796-1940 de geschiedenis van de Nederlandse wetgeving in de negentiende eeuw. Hij doet dat niet chronologisch, maar aan de hand van een aantal thema’s. Zij betreffen bijvoorbeeld de kwaliteit (waaronder het taalgebruik en de vorm) van wetgeving en het wetgevingsbeleid. Veerman laat tientallen bekende en minder bekende Nederlandse juristen aan het woord over hun visie op (aspecten van) wetgeving. Zijn speurtocht levert een boeiende en breed uitwaaierende staalkaart op van de ontwikkeling van de Nederlandse wetgevingsgeschiedenis. De bril van Veerman is een hoofdzakelijk publiekrechtelijke. Daardoor vallen er soms wat thema’s buiten de boot.

The subject of this article is constitutional transformations in Sub-Saharan Africa upon and after the region’s encounter with the third wave of democratization in Africa (TWD) that took place between 1989 and 1994. Since failure in democratic rule in the region was associated with the ease with which political elites amended formal constitutions to subvert democracy, anti-authoritarian factions perceived the solution to the problems bedevilling democratic governance in Africa to lie in formal constitutional rewriting. Hence, virtually all countries ventured into constitutional change – amendment or substitution – in the early 1990s. Inasmuch as different countries changed different formal aspects of their constitutions, they largely recognized multiparty democracy and obliterated the hitherto formulations that either allowed or endorsed single-party political regimes. Yet, on the ground different transitional outcomes were achieved, with a majority of countries either failing to transform at all from de facto authoritarianism or simply making partial transitions into semi-authoritarian or rather hybrid regimes. Using Cameroon, Kenya and Benin, this article contends that disestablishment of authoritarian rule depends on certain enabling factors, which seem to go beyond textual formulation and which may account for both the present conditions of these countries and the different transitional outcomes that were realized after these countries changed their formal constitutions in the early 1990s.

In de serie ‘in gesprek met een pas gepromoveerde onderzoeker’ geven we aandacht aan promotieonderzoeken die voor toezichthouders relevant zijn. Hiervoor interviewen we als redactie van het Tijdschrift voor Toezicht (recent) gepromoveerde onderzoekers over hun onderzoek en de betekenis ervan voor het toezicht.
In dit interview spraken Anna Merz en Pieter Welp, redacteuren van het Tijdschrift voor Toezicht, met David de Kam, die in 2020 promoveerde aan de Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam op zijn onderzoek naar de wijze waarop de Inspectie Gezondheidszorg en Jeugd de kwaliteit en veiligheid van zorg inspecteerbaar maakt en welke effecten dit heeft. David werkt momenteel als onderzoekscoördinator bij het ministerie van Sociale Zaken en Werkgelegenheid.

This article reports several findings from a qualitative case study of six mosques in the Netherlands. In recent years, media, government, and society have paid increasing attention to their role, in part in relation to growing concerns of Salafist influences in the Dutch landscape. There are two major changes that can be witnessed. First, the role of the mosque as solely a religious institution is gradually shifting towards a broader interpretation. Second, there is a shift in the role of religious authority. These changes have the potential to create conflict.

In deze bijdrage zet de auteur uiteen wat de cyberverzekering inhoudt en licht zij drie specifieke aspecten daarvan uit: incident-responsediensten als directe hulp bij een cyberincident, boetes van de Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens en losgeld bij ransomware.

In de serie ‘in gesprek met een pas gepromoveerde onderzoeker’ geven we aandacht aan promotieonderzoeken die voor toezichthouders relevant zijn. Hiervoor interviewen we als redactie van het Tijdschrift voor Toezicht (recent) gepromoveerde onderzoekers over hun onderzoek en de betekenis ervan voor het toezicht.
In dit interview spraken Anna Merz en Pieter Welp, redacteuren van het Tijdschrift voor Toezicht, met Noortje de Boer die in 2020 promoveerde aan de Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam op haar onderzoek naar het effect van transparantie op uitvoerende toezichthouders. Zij werkt momenteel bij de vakgroep Public Governance and Management aan de Universiteit Utrecht.

In recent years, big data technology has revolutionised many domains, including policing. There is a lack of research, however, exploring which applications are used by the police, and the potential benefits of big data analytics for policing. Instead, literature about big data and policing predominantly focuses on predictive policing and its associated risks. The present paper provides new insights into the police’s current use of big data and algorithmic applications. We provide an up-to-date overview of the various applications of big data by the National Police in the Netherlands. We distinguish three areas: uniformed police work, criminal investigation, and intelligence. We then discuss two positive effects of big data and algorithmic applications for the police organization: accelerated learning and the formation of a single police organization.

Predictive policing is the use of historical crime and other data in complex statistical models to predict where and when there is a high risk of new crime events. These predictions can then be used to direct police patrols proactively. Despite the increasing use and commercialisation of predictive policing worldwide, academic research into the methodological and operational dimensions of predictive policing is relatively limited. Since 2015 we have researched and tested several predictive crime models methodologically and operationally, based on police and other (big) data sources in several Belgian police districts. In this article, we summarise the results of six years of empirical research into predictive policing and look to the future of predictive policing research and practice.

Some of the existential threats we currently face are global in the sense that they affect us all, and thus matter of global concern and trigger duties of moral global solidarity. But some of these global threats, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, are global in a second, additional, sense: discharging them requires joint, coordinated global action. For that reason, these twofold global threats trigger political – not merely moral – duties of global solidarity. This article explores the contrast between these two types of global threats with the purpose of clarifying the distinction between moral and political duties of global solidarity. And, in the absence of a fully developed global democratic institutional system, the article also explores some promising ways to fulfill our global political duties, especially those based on mechanisms of collective intelligence such as CrowdLaw, which might provide effective solutions to these global threats while enhancing the democratic legitimacy of public decision-making.

The article discusses the tension between social solidarity and religious freedom as demonstrated by the refusal of the ultra-Orthodox sects in Israel to comply with COVID-19 regulations. The article provides a detailed description of the refusal to comply with the regulations restricting mass prayer services in synagogues and studying Torah in the yeshivas, thus interfering with the ultra-Orthodox religious life. The article suggests possible explanations for that refusal, based on either religious beliefs or a socio-political claim to autonomy, and discusses whether the polity should be willing to tolerate such a refusal on the basis of the cultural defence. The article concludes that despite the drastic restrictions on religious life caused by the social distancing regulations, and the special importance of freedom of religion, reducing the pandemic’s spread called for awarding priority to solidarity over religious freedom, and the enforcement of social solidarity legal duties – the social distancing regulations – on all.