| Abstract: |
In the last two decades, several innovative legal frameworks for social
entrepreneurship were developed across Europe. The differential success of
these innovations raise certain questions. Is the intrinsic design of these
legal frameworks optimal for social enterprises? Secondly, is the attractive
capacity of these legal frameworks high enough to attract both new as existing
social enterprises? And lastly, have these new legal frameworks reached full
maturity? If this is not the case, these changes may well impede rather than
encourage the development of social enterprises. In this paper, we look at the
Belgian situation where an innovative framework was introduced and where
multiple legal frameworks for social entrepreneurship coexist. By means of a
multi-disciplinary approach involving law and economics, we investigate the
joys and burdens of having numerous legal frameworks for social enterprises.
We provide an introduction to the Belgian legal environment for social
entrepreneurship, and argue that the current institutional design is
suboptimal. Finally, we conclude with lessons that can be learned from the
Belgian case relevant for other countries and contexts. |