A large share of policy interventions in the Netherlands is captured in laws. Despite the growing piles of evaluations of laws, a clear picture of the overall proceeds of laws is lacking so far. This contribution contains the results of a synthesis investigation into a large number of Dutch evaluations of laws. We collected 75 evaluation reports that were completed in the period 1998-2005, covering a variety of policy domains. We performed our synthesis on 59 methodologically sound reports, using a realist evaluation framework. First, we unravelled the various interventions in laws. We found that most interventions were directed at executive bodies rather than citizens or businesses. We also found that only part of the end objectives of laws were actually achieved.

In line with the realist evaluation approach, we then attempted to map out the chains of events (mechanisms) produced by interventions in laws. We found that many evaluations lacked an explicit reconstruction of these chains of events. Nevertheless, we found eleven basic mechanisms, for example ‘agencification’ and ‘self-management’, to recur across laws and across policy domains. Finally, we synthesised findings relating to the influence of context on the functioning of laws. We found, for example, that adjacent rules and regulations as well as managerial cultures inside implementing bodies affected the functioning of various laws to a significant degree.

Since 1 January 2005, citizens in the Netherlands are obliged to show their ID if a police officer asks them to. The (extended) identification duty is meant to prevent crimes and to improve the enforcement of the law. Bart van Klink (Tilburg University) and Nicolle Zeegers (University of Groningen) have investigated how the identification duty is enforced in legal practice by interviewing 12 police officers in 4 different cities and looking at statistical data on enforcement. According to most of the police officers interviewed the identification duty helps to remove anonymity from citizens, which may keep them from committing crimes (in particular crimes in groups, e.g., hooligans). Moreover, the identification duty appears to be instrumental in normalizing citizens: by asking for an ID, police officers are able to discourage behaviour that conflicts with some (legal or moral) standard of normality. This small-scale empirical research indicates that police officers stress the law’s preventive effect. Although prevention may be a valuable goal, it may also constitute a pretext for far-reaching intrusions on citizens’ freedom. An important normative question is how to prevent the police from using this legal instrument too actively for the sake of prevention.