Comparing prostitution regimes: morality policy regulation in New South Wales, AUS and England, UK.

In the context of increasingly diverse regulatory regimes in prostitution policy, this paper compares the development of a decriminalised prostitution policy regime in New South Wales with the more traditional criminalised framework in England. In order to understand the principal factors which led to policy change in New South Wales - compared with the relatively stable regime of England - the first part of the paper builds on qualitative comparative analysis of interview data with stakeholders and analysis of relevant documents to provide an explanation of policy change and continuity. This is founded upon concepts derived from existing theories of the policy process alongside theories of multi-level governance, policy transfer and policy networks. Findings show that the resources, positioning and participation of sex workers’ organisations and advocacy play a major role in shifting perspectives in policy debates, greatly contributing to the refashioning of existing regimes. They also suggest that the given institutional and political structures of countries under scrutiny shape opportunities for policy change. If prostitution policy is understood as a morality policy, then the degree to which the prostitution debate is moralised, as well as the opportunity for competing moralities to access decision-making forums, should be taken into account. The second part of the paper focuses on the presence and strength of competing moral and political positions in prostitution debates at both the structural/institutional and discursive level. In particular, the popularity of competing feminist positions is observed and related to changes in societal level values, which contribute to shaping individuals’ positions on moral and moralised issues such as prostitution. The paper will make use of network analysis to demonstrate that different sets of values and beliefs inform stakeholders’ positions in prostitution debates, in such a way as to support virtually opposite regulatory regimes (i.e. criminalisation of buyers versus decriminalisation)