Between 1998 and 2004, eleven out of the fifteen parliaments of the European Union (EU) countries debated whether to regulate prostitution at the national level, something that had, until then, been regulated by cities. Fears about globalization and the transfer of sovereignty to the EU created a context in which nations asserted themselves by imposing national standards to protect vulnerable women, strengthening states in the face of "global" pressures. Prostitution reforms allowed governments to apprehend women who are "loose" in the sense that they lack formal or clear connections to state benefits, national labor markets, or international human rights protections. Case studies of the first four EU countries that reformed prostitution, The Netherlands, Sweden, Germany, and Finland, are told through ninety in-depth interviews with people who helped craft, implement, or enforce new prostitution policies. Departing from previous accounts that stress the differences within these debates, The Cultural Politics of European Prostitution Reform instead analyzes their commonalities, foregrounding the increasing moral power of the state in a globalizing world and the endurance of national cultural difference.
