Policy as Practice: Explaining Persistent Patterns in Prostitution Policy
| Date | 01 September 2018 |
| Author | HENDRIK WAGENAAR |
| Published date | 01 September 2018 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/hojo.12271 |
The Howard Journal Vol57 No 3. September 2018 DOI: 10.1111/hojo.12271
ISSN 2059-1098, pp. 379–400
Policy as Practice: Explaining
Persistent Patterns in Prostitution
Policy
HENDRIK WAGENAAR
Senior Advisor, The International School of Government, King’s College
London
Abstract: The purpose of this article is to presentan approach to policy analysis that centres
on the notion of practice. Traditionallypolicy analysis rests on two types of categories: the
substantive categories of the policy issue at hand and the general conceptualisations that
emerge from the discipline itself,such as policy formulation, policy implementation, policy
instrument, agenda-setting, and so on. Challenging these categories and unpacking policy
as a bundle of practices, makes it possible for the analyst to unearth the taken-for-granted
and tacit dimensions that stabilise a particular policy in place and time. Using the case
of prostitution policy, I will show how a practice approach allows for a critical analysis of
certain empirical features of this type of policy, such as some remarkable constancies over
many countries and long historical periods in regulatory approach and the propensity for
even progressive policies in this domain to revertto more prohibitionist forms of regulation.
Keywords: neo-abolitionism; penal policymaking; policy theory; practice
theory; prostitution policy; stigma
Introduction: The Puzzling Persistence of Ineffective Modes
of Regulation in Prostitution
The purpose of this article is to explain certain puzzling constancies in
the regulation of the sex trade in the face of its persistent failure to attain
its self-professed goals of diminishing, controlling, let alone, eradicating
prostitution from society.1This adherence to a mode of regulation that
can hardly be called successful is a robust finding that holds across nations
and across time. Between 2010 and 2015, I led two research projects on
prostitution policy in Europe (Wagenaar, Amesberger and Altink 2017;
Jahnsen and Wagenaar 2017). The first was an in-depth comparison of the
regulation of the sex trade in Austria and The Netherlands since 2000,
that offered a synthetic analysis of the multilevel nature of prostitution
governance. The second was a comparison of the prostitution policies of
22 European countries over the past 150 years. The two studies – one, in the
parlance of comparative political research, a most similar systems design,
379
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2018 The Howard League and John Wiley & Sons Ltd
Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK
The Howard Journal Vol57 No 3. September 2018
ISSN 2059-1098, pp. 379–400
the other a most different systems design – generated complementary
bodies of evidence, with one highlighting the different and the other the
similar features that account for the observed policy outcomes (Landman
2003, p.70).
What were the outcomes of the two studies? In broad-brush strokes, and
despite the differences in political regime, administrative organisation, na-
tional cultures, and national discourse about prostitution, we observed the
following patterns.2From the mid-19th Century onwards the authorities
of all countries under study attempted to control and regulate prostitu-
tion. These attempts at control took the form of the sequestration of sex
workers (by quarantining them in separate neighbourhoods or buildings,
by prohibiting their freedom of movement), of imposing regimes of med-
ical inspection, and of subjecting sex workers to an array of more or less
coercive regulations and supervisions (Wagenaar 2017, p.12). Despite opti-
mistic rhetoric to the contrary no country had succeeded in significantly re-
ducing the number of sex workers, let alone eradicating prostitution from
society altogether. Regulation did have effects but these overwhelmingly
amounted to an erosion of the human and civil rights of sex workers and
the abetting of their exploitation at the work site. The more fine-grained
comparison between Austria and The Netherlands showed that human
rights violations happened in the course of everyday administrative be-
haviour and were not considered particularly problematic by officials or
politicians (Wagenaar, Amesberger and Altink 2017, p,142). Although The
Netherlands had legalised and partly decriminalised the sex trade, in its
implementation policy it had gradually drifted towards more repressive
measures. Finally, precise and reliable data on even the most elementary
co-ordinates of prostitution (such as the number of sex workers in a partic-
ular locale) were lacking; policy changes, both progressive and repressive
were exclusively based on changes in doctrine and/or political regime. Yet,
the lack of precise and reliable data did not prevent officials making seem-
ingly authoritative statements about the sex trade in their country and
initiating and implementing wide-ranging regulatory efforts.
The literature provides several explanations for the stubborn preva-
lence of prostitution in (urban) societies worldwide and its resistance to
regulation. One important line of argument is that prostitution is the out-
come of the twin processes of feminisation of poverty and migration (de
Vries 1997; Kempadoo 2012). In different forms, (female) poverty and
migration have been at work throughout history, either resulting in in-
ternal or transnational migration, sometimes through coercion or threat,
from largely poor rural areas to more affluent urban centres. Prostitution
is one of the occupations that poor migrant women take up, in addition
to working in the domestic, cleaning, agricultural, care, and hotel indus-
tries. In fact, compared with these other industries, as the large major-
ity of interviewed sex workers in our two-country comparison expressed
(Wagenaar, Amesberger and Altink 2017), prostitution is relatively attrac-
tive as it offers higher income, more self-determination, and somewhat
more attractive work conditions.3However, while this is an explanation
for the existence of prostitution in society, it has little to say about policy
380
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2018 The Howard League and John Wiley & Sons Ltd
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