Morality Issues and Agenda-Setting

Abstract

This panels focuses on the emergence and development of a special group of public policies called morality issues. In contrast with other policy issues, morality issues launch political conflict over non-economic and personal values, often regarding broad moral issues such as the beginning of life and death, religious beliefs, privacy and personal orientations. Policies with such a moral dimension imply a redistribution of values instead of an economic redistribution. Morality issues have achieved a great political importance across Western countries. Issues such as gambling, pornography and prostitution, biotechnology and organ transplantation, same-sex marriage and euthanasia are becoming more and more politicized in Western countries. The task arises to understand and to explain how, why and to which effects governments regulate morality issues in Western countries? The panel’s aim is to provide a "European venue" for discussing and confronting agenda setting approaches on morality politics and policy. It will focus on the dynamics of issue attention and address the following research questions: How are morality issues politicized? How to account for variation in the politicization of morality issues across countries, sectors, and time? What are the impacts of party competition on morality politics? Proposals on empirical studies analyzing morality politics and/or policies in different countries or applying agenda setting hypotheses on country/sector study are particularly welcomed.

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