IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/policy/v48y2015i3p273-291.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Toward the permissive society? Morality policy agendas and policy directions in Western democracies

Author

Listed:
  • Donley Studlar
  • Gordon Burns

Abstract

Employing two theories of morality policy, Policy Types and the "Two Worlds" of religious/secular party systems, we describe and attempt to explain the empirical patterns for five morality policy issues (abortion, capital punishment, euthanasia, assisted reproductive technology/stem cell research, and same-sex marriage) across 24 Western democracies since World War II. What is the content of policy adoption? Are some countries consistently more permissive or restrictive on morality issues? How long do these issues stay on the political agenda? These issues have been on the agendas of all of the countries for varying time periods, with some being older in vintage (death penalty, abortion, euthanasia) than others (ART/stem cells and same-sex marriage). The general tendency has been toward greater permissiveness, but there still remains considerable policy diversity. While there has been substantial change on morality policies in Western democracies since World War II, the change is more thorough in some jurisdictions and in some regions more than others. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media New York 2015

Suggested Citation

  • Donley Studlar & Gordon Burns, 2015. "Toward the permissive society? Morality policy agendas and policy directions in Western democracies," Policy Sciences, Springer;Society of Policy Sciences, vol. 48(3), pages 273-291, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:policy:v:48:y:2015:i:3:p:273-291
    DOI: 10.1007/s11077-015-9218-9
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s11077-015-9218-9
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s11077-015-9218-9?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Donley T. Studlar, 2008. "U.S. Tobacco Control: Public Health, Political Economy, or Morality Policy?," Review of Policy Research, Policy Studies Organization, vol. 25(5), pages 393-410, September.
    2. Kenneth D. Wald & James W. Button & Barbara A. Rienzo, 2001. "Morality Politics vs. Political Economy: The Case of School‐Based Health Centers," Social Science Quarterly, Southwestern Social Science Association, vol. 82(2), pages 221-234, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Christoph Knill & Xavier Fernández‐i‐Marín & Emma Budde & Stephan Heichel, 2020. "Religious tides: The time‐variant effect of religion on morality policies," Regulation & Governance, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 14(2), pages 256-270, April.
    2. Job P. H. Vossen & Gabriëlle L. Pooter & Petra Meier, 2022. "Conceptualizing morality policy: a dyadic morality frame analysis of a gendered legislative debate on abortion," Policy Sciences, Springer;Society of Policy Sciences, vol. 55(1), pages 185-207, March.
    3. Eva Thomann, 2018. "“Donate your organs, donate life!” Explicitness in policy instruments," Policy Sciences, Springer;Society of Policy Sciences, vol. 51(4), pages 433-456, December.
    4. Maria Clara Figueiredo Dalla Costa Ames & Mauricio Custódio Serafim, 2023. "Multiple Cases of Pro-life Volunteering in a Neo-Aristotelian Ethical Approach," RAC - Revista de Administração Contemporânea (Journal of Contemporary Administration), ANPAD - Associação Nacional de Pós-Graduação e Pesquisa em Administração, vol. 27(Vol. 27 N), pages 210315-2103.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Yongjin Choi & Ashley M. Fox, 2022. "Fact‐value framework for adjudicating public health policy debates," Review of Policy Research, Policy Studies Organization, vol. 39(6), pages 820-844, November.
    2. Stephanie Kotin & Grace R. Dyrness & Clara Irazábal, 2011. "Immigration and integration," Progress in Development Studies, , vol. 11(4), pages 263-284, July.
    3. Raymond Tatalovich & Dane G. Wendell, 2018. "Expanding the scope and content of morality policy research: lessons from Moral Foundations Theory," Policy Sciences, Springer;Society of Policy Sciences, vol. 51(4), pages 565-579, December.
    4. Schudson, Michael & Baykurt, Burcu, 2016. "How does a culture of health change? Lessons from the war on cigarettes," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 165(C), pages 289-296.
    5. Nathalie Burlone & Rebecca Grace Richmond, 2018. "Between morality and rationality: framing end-of-life care policy through narratives," Policy Sciences, Springer;Society of Policy Sciences, vol. 51(3), pages 313-334, September.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:kap:policy:v:48:y:2015:i:3:p:273-291. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.