Suchergebnisse

1 Introduction -- 2 Morality policy as a party issue in a secular age -- 3 A new framework of attention on and change of morality issues in parliaments of the religious world -- 4 Comparing attention and change in morality issues -- 5 The rise and fall of morality policies in Austria, Germany, Spain and the Netherlands -- 6 Mechanisms of wedge issue competition -- 7 Explaining patterns of morality policy change in Austria, Germany, Spain and the Netherlands -- 8 The indirect effect of parliamentary attention on morality policy change through the stimulation of venue shifts and changing policy images -- 9 Morality politics in a secular age

AbstractA key to understanding regulation through private intermediaries is how third‐party actors are selected and controlled. This paper examines the question in prostitution policy, a value‐loaded policy field that stimulates regulators to carefully select private intermediaries to avoid regulatory capture. By means of a novel data set on prostitution policy in 25 OECD countries (1960–2010) as well as with a comparative case study on two German states, the paper discovers that the responsibilization of private intermediaries is a slowly diffusing phenomenon, accompanied by strong public oversight. Moreover, the selection of private regulatory intermediaries is an ideology‐driven process in which the congruence in (moral) goals is key for the establishment of any relationship, while regulatory capacities are secondary. Thus, private intermediaries generally rule under a "shadow of moral hierarchy" in prostitution policy. This emphasis on shared moral goals enriches the young research on regulatory intermediaries with a largely disregarded selection criterion, which is able to reduce the risk of regulatory capture by private actors in delicate regulatory areas.

"Morality Policy" published on by Oxford University Press.

The COVID-19 pandemic has uncovered the critical nature of social care for modern societies and the moral dilemmas related to the organisation of care, specifically in terms of frail adults. The scarcity of personnel in nursing homes challenged the possibility of adequate care, spurring debates on both the dignity of dependent people and end-of-life treatments. While 'classical' social care policies already stimulate conflicts about the 'right way' of caring, non-classical care policies, such as assisted dying, are particularly contested. We advance existing research by analysing public attitudes on both care policies jointly and, hence, integrate the literature on morality policy and social care. Based on multi-level analyses, combining individual-level with macro-level data from 34 countries, we uncover that gender and religious identity drive deviating attitudes in both fields, while long-term care expenditure mitigates scepticism among Catholics but less so among Muslims.

AbstractWe study the extent and nature of Christian engagement in morality policy implementation by means of a comparative case study in Germany. In particular, we observe that the nature of engagement varies between unconnected and corresponding types of activities, and we explain this variation with the policy-specific goal congruence between religious organizations (ROs) and the state. Goal congruence, in turn, can be linked to Catholic and Protestant moral doctrines that tell us about ROs' position on morality issues. The study contributes to the literature on faith-based welfare by highlighting the role of moral doctrines as drivers of ROs' social engagement.

AbstractRegulatory intermediaries have received attention in the analysis of different policy fields recently. Yet, their role in morality‐based national governance arrangements is hardly addressed, neither is the question of how regulators incorporate stigmatized private actors. The current special issue contributes to closing this research gap by examining the three‐party relationship between public regulators, private intermediaries, and targets in prostitution policy implementation. This introduction presents a typology of indirect moral governance, which is based on two dimensions: (1) the extent to which regulators perceive intermediaries as being trustworthy and (2) their operational capacities. Leveraging examples from the papers in the special issue, we elaborate on how the two dimensions lead to four forms of intermediation. Thus, the typology offers an innovative analytical tool to systematizes regulators' responses to governance and implementation problems in the case of morality policies and value‐laden issues more generally, including the responsibilization of stigmatized actors.

Although the scholarship on legislative behaviour widely agrees that electoral rules determine parliamentary activities, surprisingly little is known on the impact of gender quotas. We contribute to this research gap by developing an innovative interdisciplinary framework and by exploring it based on a unique dataset on varying gender quota designs throughout EU countries and parties running for the 7th term of the European Parliament (2009–2014). Based on the scholarship on gender diversity in management teams and the research on gendered processes in political parties, we argue that especially mandated gender quotas stimulate processes of social categorisation, intergroup biasing and competition due to a normative mis-fit between conceptions of gender equality and gender quotas, which in turn influences coordination and communication and hence, parliamentary activity more generally. Combining negative-binomial regression models and expert interviews, we indeed find that mandated gender quotas promote 'individual' parliamentary activities (e.g. speeches) and tend to impede 'collaborative' parliamentary activities (e.g. reports).

Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) have a multitude of parliamentary duties and, accordingly, have to prioritize some parliamentary activities over others. So far, we know comparably little about this prioritization process. Based on principal–agent theory, we argue first, that MEPs' parliamentary activities are systematically determined by the "visibility" and usefulness of parliamentary instruments for their key principal; second, we expect the exclusiveness of candidate selection procedures of an MEP's national party—the nomination and the final list placement—to determine her/his key principal (i.e., elites or members of national parties). Combining multi-level mixed effects linear regression models and expert interviews, we show that MEPs who are nominated and whose final list placement is decided by an exclusive circle of national party elites prioritize speeches, whereas MEPs who are nominated or whose final list placement is decided by more inclusive procedures prioritize written questions and opinions or reports. In other words, speeches seem particularly useful to communicate with national party elites, while other activities are used to serve larger groups of party members. These findings open up the black-box of the "national party principal" and illustrate how a complex principal–agent relationship stimulates very specific parliamentary activity patterns in the EU's multi-level system.

Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) have a multitude of parliamentary duties and, accordingly, have to prioritize some parliamentary activities over others. So far, we know comparably little about this prioritization process. Based on principal–agent theory, we argue first, that MEPs' parliamentary activities are systematically determined by the "visibility" and usefulness of parliamentary instruments for their key principal; second, we expect the exclusiveness of candidate selection procedures of an MEP's national party—the nomination and the final list placement—to determine her/his key principal (i.e., elites or members of national parties). Combining multi-level mixed effects linear regression models and expert interviews, we show that MEPs who are nominated and whose final list placement is decided by an exclusive circle of national party elites prioritize speeches, whereas MEPs who are nominated or whose final list placement is decided by more inclusive procedures prioritize written questions and opinions or reports. In other words, speeches seem particularly useful to communicate with national party elites, while other activities are used to serve larger groups of party members. These findings open up the black-box of the "national party principal" and illustrate how a complex principal–agent relationship stimulates very specific parliamentary activity patterns in the EU's multi-level system.

AbstractThis study examines the religious-secular party cleavage in German morality politics from a new perspective by tracing politicization patterns at the individual level. It builds on the idea of issue competition and explores whether conflicts between Christian Democrats and secular parties align with the traditional denominational divide between Catholics and non-Catholics or with religiosity. By means of logistic regressions of Member of Parliaments' politicization behavior in the German Bundestag (1998–2002) with regard to three morality policies, the study provides evidence that German politics is still structured by a conflict between Catholics and non-Catholics, whereas the influence of religiosity is secondary. If party competition is at work, non-Catholics draw attention to morality policies, while Catholics refrain from doing so. This finding contradicts research pointing to a decreasing significance of Catholicism for Christian Democracy. Moreover, the study proposes an innovative way to re-examine party cleavages at the individual level and in between elections.

AbstractScholars of morality policy change primarily analyse state regulation. Through this narrow focus, they ignore private actors and their varying engagement across time and policies. We contribute to this research gap by comparing and explaining private actors' involvement in euthanasia and prostitution policy in Germany. We argue that the extent of private engagement is determined by the private actors' capacity to govern, governmental decision-making barriers and private actors' interests. Thus, the present study makes an empirical contribution to the literature on private governance by exploring largely disregarded policy issues that are least-likely cases for the delegation of public regulatory competence. Furthermore, it adds to the morality policy literature in a theoretical way by showing that policy change in this field is not only a question of scope, timing and direction but also one of the types of governing actors.