In January we started our survey  on soft law usage by administrations and courts in France and Germany. The survey allows to fill some variables that have been notoriously difficult to study in case analysis in order to complement and systematize theoretically relevant categories and factors. And it increases the external validity of our findings by providing information how typical the findings from the case studies on how and why soft law is used are. The survey has already generated good responses and will be running until March with the aim to collect reach comparable data across the studied policy fields and countries.