Ruling under a shadow of moral hierarchy: Regulatory intermediaries in the governance of prostitution

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Euchner, Eva-Maria
• 署名单位: University of Munich
• 刊物名称: REGULATION & GOVERNANCE
• ISSN/ISSBN: 1748-5983
• DOI: 10.1111/rego.12294
• 发表日期: 2022
• 页码: 836-857
• 关键词: policies

摘要

A 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.