The responsibilization of market actors in legalized local prostitution in the Netherlands

What is often called ‘the legalization of prostitution in the Netherlands’ is to be precise the lifting of the ban on brothels. From the year 2000 on, it became legal to exploit businesses offering prostitution like brothels and window prostitution. The lifting of the ban meant that these businesses now were under scrutiny of legal rules (legalization). Municipalities were the bodies to whom rulemaking, regulating and enforcing regulation was largely transposed to. Studies of the ‘legalization of prostitution’ in the Netherlands strangely enough leave the main targets of regulation (entrepreneurs) almost entirely out of the equation. This paper takes entrepreneurs in prostitution instead as a focal point. It shows that via a municipal strategy of responsibilization, they are asked to simultaneously play role as rule-taker and rule-intermediary, how they deal with these roles, and what the pros and cons of this regime at the short term are. On a theoretical level it tries to enrich regulatory research with a clear conceptualization of responsibilization, to contribute to developing insights on the roles and functions of intermediaries in regulatory regimes. To conclude we reflect on the supposedly neoliberal character of responsibilization as a governing technique.