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Unlike academic and policy discussions over enduring and pervasive social problems like poverty or ill health, which focus on how they should be tackled, debates concerning individuals in prostitution are divided over how, and to what extent, prostitution even is a problem. This has led to apparently intractable disagreement over the legitimate representation of a subject at the juncture between vulnerable invisibility and liberated agency. Concretely, this raises a paradox whereby feminist researchers, seeking to facilitate emancipation through the illumination of the experiences of a stigmatised and invisible subject, must carefully give voice to the voiceless without speaking on their behalf. Drawing on contemporary feminist scholarship on prostitution, this essay argues that, to begin resolving this paradox, the field must explicitly engage with the underlying epistemological and methodological implications of conducting emancipatory social science research on prostitution. The essay concludes that, in order to contribute meaningfully to the feminist research agenda on prostitution, practitioners must acknowledge the inherently political nature of emancipation, as the expression of choice and power.

In April 2016, France adopted a new law enshrining a conception of prostitution as a form of violence against women that needed to be 'abolished' and setting up a complex policy framework to achieve this end. This framework comprises a criminal justice 'pillar' dedicated to prohibiting and punishing the purchase of sexual services, and a social service 'pillar' dedicated to providing fnancial and social support to individuals involved in selling sex—uniformly assumed to be women and systematically considered to be victims. The new policy was supposed to break from 70 years of symbolic politics characterised by ambiguous regulation, low political attention, and lax policy implementation. Drawing on documentary and interview data, and using the Gender Equality Policy in Practice framework to determine the policy's current and potential impact on women's rights and gender equality, this article argues that implementation of France's new anti-prostitution policy is currently at a critical juncture. Budget reductions, a lack of central state steering, and competing policy priorities are contributing to hollowing out the policy of its capacity to support individuals wishing to exit prostitution while possibly deteriorating the working conditions of those who cannot or do not wish to exit.

This volume explains a major gap between the stated aims of governments and the actual outcomes. Based on systematic theoretical and empirical analysis, the book helps us understand the puzzle enough to warn against repeating many mistakes of the past.

This volume explains a major gap between the stated aims of governments and the actual outcomes. Based on systematic theoretical and empirical analysis, the book helps us understand the puzzle enough to warn against repeating many mistakes of the past.

While the British electorate was asked to vote on a simple-sounding question during the UK referendum on EU membership in June 2016, the issues at play were extremely complex. In order to help potential voters make sense of the debate, the authors ran a free Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) on the referendum in the weeks leading up to the vote. The core of the MOOC featured all the common characteristics of this type of course: weekly video lectures, quizzes, question and answer sessions, forums and personal journals which participants could use to share and deliberate. This article reflects on the design and delivery of this course to assess its usefulness in an academic setting, especially when treating politically sensitive questions. In particular, we consider issues of format, participation, and interaction and also examine student outcomes as measured by a survey of users who completed the course. What this shows is that the ability of MOOCs to deliver on their initial promise as a revolutionary pedagogical tool for communicating knowledge remains somewhat limited. Nevertheless, the level of student satisfaction obtained and the desire expressed in discussion forums for more expert analysis outside conventional channels suggests there is probably a high demand for EU-related MOOCs.

While the British electorate was asked to vote on a simple-sounding question during the UK referendum on EU membership in June 2016, the issues at play were extremely complex. In order to help potential voters make sense of the debate, the authors ran a free Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) on the referendum in the weeks leading up to the vote. The core of the MOOC featured all the common characteristics of this type of course: weekly video lectures, quizzes, question and answer sessions, forums and personal journals which participants could use to share and deliberate. This article reflects on the design and delivery of this course to assess its usefulness in an academic setting, especially when treating politically sensitive questions. In particular, we consider issues of format, participation, and interaction and also examine student outcomes as measured by a survey of users who completed the course. What this shows is that the ability of MOOCs to deliver on their initial promise as a revolutionary pedagogical tool for communicating knowledge remains somewhat limited. Nevertheless, the level of student satisfaction obtained and the desire expressed in discussion forums for more expert analysis outside conventional channels suggests there is probably a high demand for EU-related MOOCs.

While the British electorate was asked to vote on a simple-sounding question during the UK referendum on EU membership in June 2016, the issues at play were extremely complex. In order to help potential voters make sense of the debate, the authors ran a free Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) on the referendum in the weeks leading up to the vote. The core of the MOOC featured all the common characteristics of this type of course: weekly video lectures, quizzes, question and answer sessions, forums and personal journals which participants could use to share and deliberate. This article reflects on the design and delivery of this course to assess its usefulness in an academic setting, especially when treating politically sensitive questions. In particular, we consider issues of format, participation, and interaction and also examine student outcomes as measured by a survey of users who completed the course. What this shows is that the ability of MOOCs to deliver on their initial promise as a revolutionary pedagogical tool for communicating knowledge remains somewhat limited. Nevertheless, the level of student satisfaction obtained and the desire expressed in discussion forums for more expert analysis outside conventional channels suggests there is probably a high demand for EU-related MOOCs.

While the British electorate was asked to vote on a simple-sounding question during the UK referendum on EU membership in June 2016, the issues at play were extremely complex. In order to help potential voters make sense of the debate, the authors ran a free Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) on the referendum in the weeks leading up to the vote. The core of the MOOC featured all the common characteristics of this type of course: weekly video lectures, quizzes, question and answer sessions, forums and personal journals which participants could use to share and reflect. To date, little research has been done on the potential for this course format to improve the public's understanding of, and engagement with, EU-related politics and policy issues. Consequently, this paper proposes some initial reflections on the opportunities and challenges presented by this MOOC for fostering broad public engagement with politics in the EU. By considering issues of format, attendance and attrition, participation and power dynamics, we identify the challenges for harnessing MOOCs as a pedagogical and communicative tool for counteracting the EU knowledge deficit.

The ways in which subnational governments develop and deliver distinctive policies is central to our understanding of effective multi-level governance systems. The existing literature focuses on institutional autonomy and the formal powers given to subnational governments but this is only one side of the story. Success also depends on the way in which policy actors deploy their powers, resources and legitimacy. This article presents an empirical analysis of two contrasting attempts to develop distinctive policy frameworks at the subnational level. It demonstrates the importance of looking beyond formal institutional powers and paying attention to policymakers' political skills and visibility, as well as the strategies and tactics that they employ in deploying formal powers. It highlights, in particular, the need for subnational governments to focus on those issues where they can make a difference and to exploit their nodality within policy networks to foster collaboration with state and non-state actors who bring complementary resources. Points for practitioners A subnational government's success in pursuing distinctive policy agendas depends on the issues it decides to focus on and the way it chooses to deploy the formal powers and resources available to it. There is little point in investing time and efforts in pursuing issues that national governments are unwilling to cede control over. However, where they are given a degree of autonomy, subnational governments need to exploit their pivotal position in policy networks to foster collaboration with a range of state and non-state actors who bring complementary resources.

Background: 'Health in All Policies' (HIAP) describes the pursuit of health equity. It has five main elements: treat health as a human right; identify evidence of the 'social determinants' of health inequalities, recognise that most powers to affect health are not held by health departments, promote intersectoral policymaking and collaboration inside and outside of government, and generate political will. Studies describe its potential but bemoan a major implementation gap. Some HIAP scholars learn from policymaking research how to understand this gap, but the use of policy theories is patchy. In that context, our guiding research question is: How does HIAP research use policy theory to understand policymaking? It allows us to zoom-out to survey the field and zoom-in to identify: the assumed and actual causes of policy change, and transferable lessons to HIAP scholars and advocates. Methods: Our qualitative systematic review (two phases, 2018 and 2020) identified 4972 HIAP articles. Of these, 113 journal articles (research and commentary) provide a non-trivial reference to policymaking (at least one reference to a policymaking concept). We use the 113 articles to produce a general HIAP narrative and explore how the relatively theory-informed articles enhance it. Results: Most articles focus on policy analysis (identifying policy problems and solutions) rather than policy theory (explaining policymaking dynamics). They report a disappointing gap between HIAP expectations and policy outcomes. Theory-informed articles contribute to a HIAP playbook to close that gap or a programme theory to design and evaluate HIAP in new ways. Conclusions: Few HIAP articles use policy theories for their intended purpose. Policy theories provide lessons to aid critical reflection on power, political dilemmas, and policymaking context. HIAP scholars seek more instrumental lessons, potentially at the cost of effective advocacy and research.

Policy 'incoherence' describes a lack of joined-up government that contributes to a confusing mix of policy instruments. It is an inevitable feature of multilevel policy-making, in which many actors compete to set the agenda, and 'inequalities policies', such as gender mainstreaming, which contain multiple and often-contradictory aims. This insight may prompt policy-makers to learn how other governments have responded pragmatically, rather than seeking to design abstract mainstreaming policies with unrealistic levels of coherence. Yet, policy learning is a political process characterized by contestation. Many policy-makers compete to define the policy problem, set the parameters for learning and determine which governments should take the lead. Therefore, we ask: How can we use policy theories to facilitate research-informed policy learning under these circumstances? We describe the framework that we developed for the Horizon 2020 project IMAJINE to encourage policy learning in multilevel policy-making systems. We then illustrate its value in a case study of our work for the Scottish Government's National Advisory Council on Women and Girls (NACWG), which asked us to identify lessons from gender mainstreaming policies in other nations. This framework and case study help explain the limited impact of research on policy learning.