Lifting the ban on Dutch brothels: Do local social needs and local political demands matter for municipal prostitution policies?

This article examines to what extent Dutch municipalities have adapted new local prostitution regulations to local needs and demands following decentralisation in 2000. We examined the extent to which a national template is locally adapted, and which factors inspired such adaptations. We found that many municipalities extensively copied the regulatory template developed by the Dutch Association of Municipalities. Our analyses show that – unexpectedly and contrary to popular arguments on the merits of decentralisation – local needs and demands played no major role in explaining local policy-adaptations. Political fragmentation and size-related municipal resources however do explain differences in local adaptations.