Publication Type: Proceeding
Abstract: Does morality policy exist? A growing body of scholarly work has examined the ways in which the politics of something called "morality policy" (e.g., abortion regulation, gay marriage restrictions, and capital punishment) differ from those of other policy. Morality policies are said to have certain common characteristics, namely that they generate conflicts of basic moral values, they do not lend themselves to compromise, and they are widely salient, technically simple, and generate a good deal of citizen participation. Using a telephone survey of just over 700 Illinois residents in 2005, we test the assumptions that four of these characteristics vary together across policies. We find that, indeed, there are policies that generate greater conflict of basic moral values than others and that the level of this conflict correlates with the expectations of morality policy scholars. We also find that two of three secondary characteristics that we test that are assumed to be present in morality policy also vary across policies in the expected way. Thus, morality policies exist. But we suggest that the best way to think about morality policies is as having a single defining characteristic—that they generate conflict of basic values. The fact that they are technically simple and not amenable to compromise (but not widely salient) should be thought of as the result of this defining characteristic rather than as an intrinsic attribute of the policies themselves.