Abstract
AbstractA key to understanding regulation through private intermediaries is how third‐party actors are selected and controlled. This paper examines the question in prostitution policy, a value‐loaded policy field that stimulates regulators to carefully select private intermediaries to avoid regulatory capture. By means of a novel data set on prostitution policy in 25 OECD countries (1960–2010) as well as with a comparative case study on two German states, the paper discovers that the responsibilization of private intermediaries is a slowly diffusing phenomenon, accompanied by strong public oversight. Moreover, the selection of private regulatory intermediaries is an ideology‐driven process in which the congruence in (moral) goals is key for the establishment of any relationship, while regulatory capacities are secondary. Thus, private intermediaries generally rule under a “shadow of moral hierarchy” in prostitution policy. This emphasis on shared moral goals enriches the young research on regulatory intermediaries with a largely disregarded selection criterion, which is able to reduce the risk of regulatory capture by private actors in delicate regulatory areas.
Highlights
A key question of the regulation and governance literature concerns the shift from classic command and control styles of regulation to more collaborative modes of governance
By means of a novel data set on prostitution policy in 25 OECD countries (1960–2010), this paper shows that responsibilization of private regulatory intermediaries is a slowly emerging phenomenon, which is accompanied by strong administrative and punitive public oversight
A comparative case study of two German states shows that the selection of private intermediaries is strongly ideology-driven, indicating that congruence in goals is key to the establishment of any relationship between regulators and private intermediaries
Summary
A key question of the regulation and governance literature concerns the shift from classic command and control styles of regulation to more collaborative modes of governance. This paper makes an important theoretical and empirical contribution because it relies on a uniquely comprehensive dataset on the regulation of prostitution policy that includes data for 25 OECD countries for a time period of 50 years (1960–2010), and complements this dataset with an in-depth comparative case study in two German states This mixed-methods approach allows to describe changes in direct and indirect governance modes on a large scale (i.e. across countries and time) and is able to detect the causal mechanisms driving the selection of private intermediaries indirectly governing the field in the case studies. Germany is in a promising case to study because until 2016 the country had a relatively vague legal framework in place, including only three paragraphs that legalized brothels and defined prostitution as “regular job” but missed to specify more detailed implementation guidelines This condition inspired and allowed subnational governments to responsibilize different regulatory intermediaries. Within the paradigm of direct governance, we observe a trend away from punitive toward more administrative steering activities
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