The position of a party cannot be understood independently from the positions of the other political actors within the same party system. The determination of the agendas of the political parties consists in a competition over specific public policy issues and the arrival of a new competitor or new issue often leads to a redefinition of this party competition. This paper therefore intends to demonstrate the importance of morality issues in Belgian party manifestos and that this presence varies over time, across party families and regions. Given the fact that parties compete for issues, this variation will be explained by the surrounding party competition and the specific emphasis put on these issues by several political actors. Different patterns of competition will be identified, depending on the linguistic community, time frame and party system environment. This paper relies on quantitative data from the content analysis of party manifestos in Belgium. All electoral programs of Belgian parties in the Parliament between 1977 and 2007 have been coded according to the CAP (Comparative Agenda Project) coding frame. Statistical analyses will allow us to position these parties on morality issues (such as privacy issues, religion, health-related ethical questions, prostitution, etc.), to identify niche parties and their property on these issues, and to compare their positions over time, across parties and across party systems. This paper will study ideological convergence and the contamination of morality issues on niche and mainstream parties’ manifestos. In other words, do we witness an ‘issue contagion’ effect between (successful) parties concerning morality issues on their agendas ? Which parties were the most affected by this contagion and – a party manifesto being a zero-sum game – which other issues have been put aside ?
