Criminalising the Client

Josefina Erikson is a researcher and university teacher in the department of Government, Uppsala University where she defended her PhD thesis in 2011. She has since worked with educational policymaking, both in a governmental inquiry, and in a number of research projects. Her research interests also include gender and politics and in particular feminist institutionalism, she is currently exploring the inner life of the Swedish parliament through a multimethod approach.

Asking how Sweden came to be the first country in the world to criminalize the purchase of sexual services, this book employs ‘dynamic frame analysis’ to provide a deep exploration of parliamentary dynamics – offering a convincing alternative account highlighting the gradual changes in gendered institutions, culminating in the institutionalization of a radically new gender regime to understand and tackle prostitution.

• 1. Introduction: Prostitution, Feminism, and New Institutionalism / 2. Understanding the Swedish Gender Equality Model - Possibilities and Limits / 3. Frame Analysis as a New Approach for Studying Feminist Institutional Change / 4. Tracing Ideational Changes Concerning Prostitution / 5. Proponents, Resistance, and Strategies / 6. Conclusion: When an Individual Idea Becomes an Institution