Abstract
This article describes and discusses the results of two comparative studies of prostitution policy in Europe that are complementary in their design and methodology. One is a comparison of 21 countries using a most different systems design; the other an in-depth comparison of Austria and The Netherlands, using a most similar systems design. The two studies found a remarkable continuity in the inherent approach to the regulation of prostitution and its effects. Despite differences in political regime, administrative organization, and national cultures, since the middle of the 19th century, the purpose of prostitution policy has been to impose strict controls on sex workers and to a lesser extent their work sites. The effects of this approach have been disappointing: despite rhetorical claims to the contrary the control of sex workers has no discernable effect on the prevalence of prostitution in society. The effects of policies aimed at control are mostly negative in that they corrode the human and labor rights of sex workers. The article discusses several challenges to the regulation of prostitution (such as its deeply moral nature and the lack of precise and reliable data) as well a number of other important outcomes (such as the importance of local policy implementation for the effects of regulation). The article concludes with the empirically substantiated suggestion that a form of collaborative governance in which sex worker advocacy organizations participate in the design and implementation of prostitution policy offers real prospects for an effective and humane prostitution policy.
Highlights
Introduction1The concerted efforts by governments to regulate prostitution through laws, bylaws, licenses, prohibitions, inspections, enforcement and other policy instruments, is underrepresented in the academic literature on prostitution (Wagenaar et al 2017, chap. 1)
This is despite the fact that since roughly the beginning of the 19th century, in the wake of the consolidation of the Western nation state, prostitution as a social phenomenon is entangled with the efforts of authorities to prohibit, contain or regulate it (Corbin 1990; Gibson 1986; Walkowitz 1980)
The first was an in-depth comparison of the regulation of the sex trade in Austria and The Netherlands since 2000 that offered an analysis of
Summary
The concerted efforts by governments to regulate prostitution through laws, bylaws, licenses, prohibitions, inspections, enforcement and other policy instruments, is underrepresented in the academic literature on prostitution (Wagenaar et al 2017, chap. 1). Tackling the social ‘problem’ of prostitution has required the mobilization of considerable resources at all levels of government: financial, organizational, administrative, legal, diplomatic (in negotiating international treaties), intellectual (by financing research) and ideological Despite these resources, for over a century and half the regulation of prostitution has been largely ineffective. Precise and reliable data on even the most elementary parameters of prostitution (such as the number of sex workers in a particular locale) are lacking; whatever data are in circulation are unreliable and mostly subservient to ideological purposes Policy changes, both progressive and repressive were almost exclusively based on changes in doctrine and/or political regime (Wagenaar et al 2017; Jahnsen and Wagenaar 2017). The introduction of the voice of sex workers in the design and implementation of prostitution policy through collaborative governance arrangements has been shown to result in effective and humane forms of regulation
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