Policy as practice: explaining persistent patterns in prostitution policy

The purpose of this article is to present an approach to policy analysis that centres on the notion of practice. Traditionally policy 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 revert to more prohibitionist forms of regulation.