EXPLAINING THE EMERGENCE AND GRADUAL TRANSFORMATION OF POLICY REGIMES: THE CASE OF CONTEMPORARY FRENCH PROSTITUTION POLICY (1946-2016) Emily St.Denny A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of Nottingham Trent University for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy July 2016 1 This work is the intellectual property of the author. You may copy up to 5% of this work for private study, or personal, non-commercial research. Any re-use of the information contained within this document should be fully referenced, quoting the author, title, university, degree level and pagination. Queries or requests for any other use, or if a more substantial copy is required, should be directed to the owner of the Intellectual Property Rights. 2 Abstract Immediately after the Second World War, France began to abolish the regulation of prostitution, first by outlawing brothels in 1946, then by dismantling all remaining medical and police registers in 1960. In doing so, it adopted an ‘abolitionist’ approach to prostitution. This stance, which distinguishes itself from both regulation and prohibition, is based on criminalising the exploitation of prostitution, and providing social support to individuals involved in prostitution, who are perceived to be inherently ‘victims’. However, since then, the policies and programmes enacted in the name of ‘abolitionism’ have varied considerably: policies based on supporting ‘victims’ have been succeeded by some that seek to criminalise individuals in prostitution by outlawing soliciting. More recently, in April 2016, the country adopted a policy of client criminalisation which is intended to ‘abolish’ prostitution entirely. Thus, on the one hand, France has remained steadfastly committed to abolitionism throughout the period. On the other hand, the policy framework has demonstrated significant internal reform. Yet current institutional scholarship remains ill equipped for explaining how a policy framework can simultaneously persist and change. This thesis therefore investigates how and why contemporary French prostitution policy has changed the way it has since the end of the Second World War. To do this, it deploys a historical case study of contemporary French prostitution policy from 1946 to 2016, drawing on unique interview and archival data to explain the gradual and cumulative evolution of state intervention in this area. In the process, it makes a number of conceptual and theoretical contributions to institutionalist scholarship on policy change and stability. In particular, it conceptualises prostitution policy and the different policy frameworks states set up to address the issue. These frameworks are often referred to as ‘regimes’ but have yet to be fully unpicked and defined. Moreover, drawing on the emerging policy literature on regimes, the thesis identifies French abolitionism as a particular type of policy regime: an ‘anemic’ one which, while often challenged, has endured. Using this case as an empirical ‘lens’, it demonstrates that our current understanding of regimes as either strong or ‘anemic’ overshadows the mechanisms which allow institutionally weak regimes to endure but be incrementally reformed in the context of strong adherence to their core values and ideas. This explains how French abolitionism 3 has been gradually converted from a regime based on the abolition of state regulation but the tacit tolerance of prostitution between adults to one that explicitly seeks to ‘abolish’ prostitution itself. The thesis concludes that institutional stability is often illusory, and what appears to be the endurance of a single regime actually masks the gradual but ultimately transformative accumulation of minor changes. 4 Acknowledgements: It is customary, and for very good reason, to thank supervisors first in such acknowledgements. I hope I can be forgiven for defying convention and expressing my thanks first to my family, and especially my father who is bravely battling cancer, for their endless support and love. This thesis is as much a testament of their commitment to me, as it is of my commitment to social research. Mom, Papa, Elizabeth, Kelly, and Saph, I love you. Thanks for helping me ‘eat the bear’ with this project, the debt I owe you can never be repaid, not even by bringing unsolicited cups of tea until the end of time. I also cannot begin to express my gratitude to my supervisors, Gill Allwood and Chris Reynolds, as well as to my independent assessor, Amanda Smith. They have both steadfast and unwavering in their support. The advice and mentorship they gave me is invaluable. I can only hope that all PhD students get the pleasure of working with similarly bright, engaged, and kind team of supervisors. Thank you. Innumerable others have also contributed to this thesis becoming a reality. I want to thank Gregg Bucken-Knapp, for believing in the project to start with, and for keeping a watchful eye on its progression. This thesis owes you its very existence, I hope it lives up to your expectations. Thanks also go to Paul Cairney, whose mentorship and advice I have also benefited from greatly. He says he is still waiting for a student to come up to graduation and tell him that he changed their life, well, let me be the first to say it then: You changed my life. The opportunities and insights you have shared with me are priceless, and I can only hope to achieve half as much as you have. It is wonderful to have such a role model to aspire to. Much unofficial pastoral care was dispensed by Graham Meikle, too, usually during walks around the Stirling University loch. Thank you for believing in me, and for helping me believe in myself when the trudge was hard. Thanks also to Andy Aitchison, who always has an insightful comment or kind word of encouragement – I first developed an appreciation for social inquiry during my time as your student. I would be remiss to omit the people who kindly shared their time with me either in interviews or archives. I think the story in this thesis was worth telling, you 5 agreed, and you helped me tell it. I hope it does you justice and leaves a little trace of the immense energy – and sometimes antagonism – that goes into crafting public action, however imperfect it may be. I want to acknowledge more broadly the fact that I have been gifted with an incredible support network of unimaginably bright peers. I would like to personally thank: Malcolm Harvey, Lucy Dean, Matt Wood, Anne Dance, Kate Buchanan, Fiona Duncan, Billie Lister, Karin Persson Strömbäck, Dominic Hinde, Craig McAngus, Kirsty Primrose, Sam Houston, Michelle Craig, Kat Neumann, Kirsteen Shields, Siabhainn Russell, Tara Warden, and all the others who went before me and lit the way. At the same time, I want to acknowledge the warmth and collegiality of my alma mater, the University of Stirling. In particular I want to thank Andrea Baumeister, Andrew Glencross, Gyorgy ‘George’ Toth, Kirstein Rummery, Holger Nehring, Catherine Mills, Sarah Brommage, Emma MacLeod, Colin Nicolson, Matias Margulis, and Tim Peace for their kind words and encouragements. I also warmly embrace my friends from the Stirling and Clackmannanshire branch of the Scottish Green Party: Gordon Cowtan, Mark Ruskell, Maggie Gilbert, Annette Kuptke, and the Tollemaches. Your warmth and kindness comforted me more than you can know. Similarly, I want to recognise the impact that the wonderful group of friends I made through Nottingham PubhD has had on my life. Merci beaucoup, Sera, Derek, Kash, Regan, Gav, Yves, and Hollie. Merci aussi to those who have walked alongside and let me lean on them when I got weary, or who showed me the way when I got lost and chapter deadlines loomed: Tim, Jessie, Buster, Lexie, Arthur, Mike and Judith, Matt Williams, Talis, Grant, Natasha, Beka and Becca, Richard, Bill, Marina, Anna-Corrine, Henri, Julia, Brandi and Jules, Sasha, the Symes, Holly and Egil, Leo and the Jarry, Had & Jia, Arto, Luke, Cindy, Mandy, Ken, the staff at McArees, and many many others. Finally, I want to take this opportunity to remind my very best of friends, Franz and Tamasyn, that I love them dearly and promise to be a little less serious from now on. But only a little. The adventure continues! 6 Contents INTRODUCTION ..................................................................................... 13 1.1. THE UNFOLDING POLITICS OF PROSTITUTION POLICY ................................... 15 1.1.2. The research context ............................................................................ 16 1.1.3. The research puzzle ............................................................................. 19 1.2. AIMS AND CONTRIBUTION............................................................................ 23 1.3. THE RESEARCH APPROACH ........................................................................... 28 1.3.1. Research framework and methodology................................................ 28 1.3.2. Being a reflexive researcher ................................................................ 31 1.4. CHAPTER OUTLINE ....................................................................................... 33 SECTION I. THE CONCEPTUAL, THEORETICAL, AND METHODOLOGICAL RESEARCH FRAMEWORK ......................... 35 CHAPTER 2. CONCEPTUALISING PROSTITUTION POLICY ..... 36 2.1. CONCEPTUALISING PROSTITUTION POLICY ................................................... 38 2.1.1 Prostitution as a social and policy problem ......................................... 38 2.1.2. Prostitution policy as morality policy