Introduction

Regulations on issues like abortion, stem cell research, homosexuality, and same-sex partnerships are commonly referred to as morality policies, and they provoke value-loaded conflicts in daily politics. For example: Is it morally “right” to acknowledge sex-work as regular job? Is it morally “right” to allow abortions? Should we allow medical experiments with embryos if the medical gains might outweigh the “human loss”? Or will such experiments contradict our fundamental value system? Similar debates will arise with regard to the regulation of transgender rights, self-steering cars with a hands-off regulation, the involvement of robots in elderly care, or the use of CRISPR in gene editing of embryos.¹ Hence, morality policies are a specific set of public issues that provoke fierce debates over the “right way” of living.

Morality policies started to enter political agendas in Europe in the mid-20th century. Since then, they have garnered increasing attention in the party manifestos and electoral campaigns of different European countries (see Figure 1).² Clear-cut examples are Denmark, Finland, France, the Netherlands, and Switzerland. The main driver of increased political attention on morality policies is a comprehensive process of societal transformation, which includes trends in secularization, societal value changes, and technological modernization. It brought to the forefront a new set of moral values and societal norms, such as sexual freedom, female emancipation, and protection of societal minorities (Inglehart & Baker, 2000). This change in value priorities motivated reflection on existing, as well as new, public problems related to fundamental moral values and hence, the (re-)emergence of so-called morality policies on societal and political agendas.

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Figure 1. Salience of morality policies in party manifestos in Europe (1940–2015).

Compilation based on Volkens et al.(2016; CMP-Data).

While the (re-)emergence of morality policies on political agendas is largely uncontested, several questions and problems have guided the young research field of morality policy analysis:

To address these questions, the article is organized as follows: The definition and goals of morality policy are discussed first. Then, the discussion turns to the main analytical angles employed and the explanatory factors for morality policy change. This is followed by discussion of the remaining key controversies and the avenues for future research. The final section summarizes the key findings.

Definition and Goals of Morality Policies

One of the major challenges of morality policy analysis is the classification of public questions as morality policies. There is broad agreement on one principal characteristic of morality policies but the concrete classification of topics remains contested. The primary agreement is that societal value conflicts, rather than diverging material interests, shape the political processes of morality policies (Knill, 2013; Meier, 1994; Mooney, 2001a; Tatalovich & Daynes, 2011). In other words, value conflicts over “first principles” and “battles between right and wrong” are indicative of this type of policy, while monetary values fade into the background (Meier, 1994, p. 4). Accordingly, the primary goal of morality policymaking is to solve value-laden public conflicts and to agree on concrete policy solutions. It means also that morality policies do not deal with the individual ethics of politicians or their violations of accepted norms of morality. Hence, the field does not address how to deal with corrupt politicians or other people in public life who violate moral standards (Hörster, 2008, pp. 8–10; Münkler, 2000; Studlar, Cagossi, & Duval, 2013).

Besides this general agreement, some scholars tried to structure the debate by linking morality policies with Lowi’s (1964) popular classification of public policies (distributive or redistributive versus regulatory policies). Tatalovich and Daynes (1998) picked up the argument and introduced a new subcategory, so-called social regulatory policies. The authors explained that “what is being regulated is not an economic transaction but a social relationship” (Smith & Tatalovich, 2003, p. 14). Thus, morality policies have in common the fact that legal authorities “affirm, modify, or replace community values, moral practices, and norms of interpersonal conduct” (Smith & Tatalovich, 2003, p. 14). In other words, morality policies are perceived as a particular category of regulatory policy in which a government regulates the behavior of citizens instead of the conduct of businesses that coincides with patterns of politics known from the debate on redistributive policies. Lowi (1998, p. xiii) reflected on this idea in the foreword to Tatalovich and Daynes’ (1998) prominent book on moral controversies and critically responded that a fifth policy type is not necessary because all policy types can be part of a process of radicalization through the use of moral arguments and rhetoric, and thus can be considered as morality issues in one or the other moment. In Lowi’s (1998, p. xvi) view, all policies work along two dimensions of politics, the “mainstream mode” and the “radicalization mode,” and the dominance of one mode over the other depends on its strategic attractiveness for political actors (for more details, see Figures 3 and 4 in Lowi, 1998). A process of radicalization is associated with extremes “precisely because people who insist on getting to the root of things are likely to express themselves intensely, rejecting the rules and procedures designed to produce compromise—in other words, rejecting mainstream or ordinary politics” (Lowi, 1998, p. xvi). In sum, while acknowledging that “typical” morality policies regulate social behavior, Lowi (1998) believed that any issue—distributive, redistributive, or constituent in nature—can be radicalized by political actors and therefore may become a “classical” morality issue.

Lowi’s (1998) new approach is very promising because it allows an answer to the “So what?” question that morality policy scholars are often faced with. Assuming that all policy types may be radicalized and hence may face similar pattern of politics as classical morality issues, the findings of morality policy studies should be of interest for all public policy scholars. However, this approach does not determine how to identify morality issues in advance without examining the politics around them first.

Other scholars who have also linked the debate on morality policies to Lowi’s early typology include Kenneth Meier, who is a founder of the morality policy literature and has trained the younger cohort of prominent U.S. scholars in the field. In his popular work The Politics of Sin (Meier, 1994), which explored drug and alcohol policy in the United States, Meier coined the term morality policy, and most importantly also put forward a definition of morality policy that has found broad application and that partly links up to Lowi’s typology of policy types. Meier distinguished between “one-sided” and “two-sided” morality policies: in the former category, everybody is opposed to deviant behavior, and in the latter category, two points of view are considered legitimate by different groups of actors. Accordingly, when we deal with “two-sided” morality policies, “one segment of society attempts by government fiat to impose their values on the rest of society” and “as such they are a form of redistributive policy that is rarely viewed as redistributive because the policies redistribute values rather than income” (Meier, 1994, pp. 246–247). The younger generation of morality policy scholars acknowledged the distinction between the two types of morality issues, while the related idea of value redistribution found less acceptance. Especially in the European context, there are hardly any studies theorizing on, or operationalizing, the concept in more detail. Thus, there is still discussion about the concrete classification of morality policies with regard to Lowi’s typology and the added value of such a classification for the research community more generally.

In consequence, due to the rather vague agreement—that conflicts over fundamental values are the central feature of morality policies in contrast to “ordinary” policies—a broad debate has arisen about the definition and selection of morality policies (see Heichel, Knill, & Schmitt, 2013). What issues are typical morality policies? And how can we identify them? The literature proposes three different analytical approaches for identifying morality policies, emphasizing politics, policy substance, and framing.

First, some researchers have acknowledged politics as the determining criterion surrounding an issue (Knill, 2013; Mooney, 2001a). Mooney (2001b, pp. 7–9) defined morality policies as issues involving “clashes of first principles on technically simple and salient public policy with high citizen participation.” Specifically, Mooney (2001b, p. 7) claimed to observe a degree of consensus among scholars on a few simple characteristics of morality policy. His first point was that morality policies are technically simpler than most nonmorality policies. Although all morality policies share certain technical and instrumental implications, controversial moral questions are far more prominent and dominate the political and social debates. Mooney’s second point was that, given the conflict over first principles, the debate on morality issues is highly salient to the general public. Third, these policies are related to higher levels of citizen participation (Mooney, 2001b).

Knill (2013) introduced another classification of morality policy, also emphasizing the role of politics, and particularly the underlying interest constellation within a field. While so-called manifest morality policies are characterized by a mode of decision-making that is strongly shaped by value conflicts (e.g., abortion policy, homosexuality), for so-called latent morality policies, value conflicts are not the “order of the day.” However, latent morality policies contain elements that can easily be “morally exploited” (e.g., issues such as gambling, pornography, gun control, and drug regulations; Knill, 2013, p. 314). Knill’s (2013) approach is analytically innovative and valuable, especially in pragmatic research terms. Mooney’s (2001a) proposal and the general idea of selection of morality policies based on particular characteristics of the politics around them, however, runs the risk of endogeneity: When morality policies are selected on the basis of particularities in the policymaking process, an analysis of Lowi’s proposition of “policies determine politics” becomes obsolete.

On the other hand, several scholars defended an approach that concentrates on the substance of an issue, meaning that issues are defined a priori as morality policies (cf. Engeli, Green-Pedersen, & Larsen, 2012b; Heichel et al., 2013). The literature provides a long list of obvious morality policies, which can be classified into four subfields: issues of life and death (e.g., abortion, euthanasia, capital punishment), issues of sexual behavior (e.g., homosexuality, prostitution, pornography, transgender rights), issues related to addictive behavior (e.g., gambling and drug consumption), and topics that reference the relationship between individual freedom and collective values (e.g., religious education, gun control, veil policy; Heichel et al., 2013). Engeli, Green-Pedersen, and Larsen (2012a, pp. 25–26) restricted the field to topics that address questions related to death, reproduction, and marriage because then the debate is most likely linked to the conflict between religious and secular groups. Thus, abortion, euthanasia, assisted reproductive technology (ART), and same-sex marriage are typical morality policies. Other issues that partially touch upon first principles, such as questions related to the individual’s right to self-determination (e.g., prostitution or passive smoking), are excluded from the analysis. These issues would not necessarily link up to the religious–secular conflict (Engeli, Green-Pedersen, & Larsen, 2012c, p. 24). Permoser (2019) built up on this idea but criticizes that the understanding of secular-religious party conflicts is too narrow. Based on political theory, the author argues that the divisions within modern societies over key principles of political liberalism is the main source of morality policy conflicts. Assuming that religion is a definitional trait of morality policies, they are embedded into more fundamental questions about how modern states should be organized: on the one hand, there is the primacy of individualism, religious freedom and state neutrality and on the other hand, responsibility of the state to protecting collective goods and up-hold the moral order. This idea is certainly highly innovative for the morality policy research but still needs more empirical grounding. So all in all, this second tradition is very useful in research pragmatic terms but it will always be confronted with the question whether the selected issue is indeed a morality policy characterized by conflicts about fundamental values and linkable to the religious–secular party political conflict line respectively the principal challenges of political liberalism.

Finally, a third group of scientists highlighted the importance of issue framing, a tradition rooted in arguments broached in early research projects. As Mooney (2001b, p. 4) explained, when “at least one advocacy coalition involved in the debate defines the issue as threatening one of its core values,” the policy can be defined as a morality issue. In other words, the perceptions and the fundamental values of the involved actors and the problem framing are decisive for the classification of morality issues. This argument has been applied and extended in more recent research (Burlone & Richmond, 2018; Euchner, Heichel, Nebel, & Raschzok, 2013; Ferraiolo, 2013; Grohs, 2019; Herrmann, 2002; Mucciaroni, 2011; Roh & Berry, 2008). Mucciaroni (2011) claimed that morality policies do not exist per se; rather, they are the product of a strategic approach on the part of political actors. Along that line, Euchner et al. (2013) found that the utilization of value-based arguments varies over time, potentially resulting in shifts in the classification of policies. This in turn means that scholars investigating the causes of morality policy change must be very careful in selecting the issues. For example, Herrmann (2002, p. 7) concluded that “gambling has managed to shift itself from the category of ‘sin’ to the category of leisure activity.” Meier (2001, p. 25) added that most policies are multidimensional, allowing transformations from policies regulating “sin” to normal policies, a conclusion that largely coincides with Lowi’s (1998) principal idea of radicalization.

In sum, most scholars agree that conflicts over fundamental values are the central feature of morality policies, and that the solution of these conflicts based on a commonly agreed set of moral understandings is their primary goal. The associations of morality policies with Lowi’s (1964) three-tier scheme and the classification of concrete public problems as morality issues remain diffuse and often contested in the literature. This is a major challenge in scholarship on morality policies that is further illustrated in the following discussions.

Analytical Angles and Explanatory Factors for Morality Policymaking

Additional Key Controversies and Avenues for Future Research

The key controversy that research on morality policies has faced is the question of the added value of its classification as a separate policy type. What is its contribution to public policy analysis? Is this research in fact able to contribute to Lowi’s idea (1964) that policies determine politics? Do morality issues substantially differ from ordinary policies?

On the one hand, morality policy analysis is interesting per se, as it picks up “tricky” public problems that have been ignored for a long time. All these policy studies provide important insights into the politics surrounding, and the regulatory substance of, certain value-laden questions (e.g., regulation of assisted dying or embryonic stem cell research). However, these studies have encountered difficulties in making any statement on the differences between morality and nonmorality policies. First, the focus on one or a few value-laden questions hinders more far-reaching conclusions. Second, and more importantly, the classification of public problems as morality policies is often contested due to the variety of definitions in the literature. To overcome this weakness, future studies should reflect more carefully on the classification of public problems as morality issues and consider their convertibility over time³; they should develop cross-policy designs, because they allow comparison of not only different value-laden questions but also morality and nonmorality issues in one analysis; and, at the same time, they should be brave in identifying new topics and analyzing them in light of the minimal consensus existing on the definition of morality policies (e.g., transgender rights, regulation of CRISPR, robots in elderly care).

Cross-policy comparisons not only will allow a response to one of the key questions that motivated the establishment of morality policy research but also will enable us to advance new and long-established theoretical concepts. This includes, for instance, the concept of “policy compensation.” While some morality policy scholars pick up the idea of policy compensation with regard to criminal sanctions (Knill, Adam, et al., 2015), the scientific community lacks a contrasting examination within different policy fields. Theoretically, one could expect compensation effects between relatively “cheap” morality policy reforms and comparable “expensive” social policy changes (e.g., pensions, unemployment insurance, or family benefits). Cuts in social benefits might be compensated through a more liberal or generous handling of value-loaded questions. This is only one example of how cross-policy comparisons between morality policy and “ordinary” issues could advance scholarly debates in the field of comparative public policy analysis, but many more are imaginable.

Besides these recommendations on how to solve one of the key controversies in the field and to advance public policy analysis more generally, the research on morality policy research would profit from three additional avenues. Some of these suggestions are motivated by inconclusive findings of previous studies, while other suggestions point out new ways forward for the young research field. Generally, the research will profit from an intensified exchange with other subdisciplines.

A first promising way forward is a more detailed examination of the role of political institutions in the process of morality policymaking. As outlined in the previous discussion, political institutions seem not to exert any (direct) effect on morality policy output decisions when conceptualized according “veto-player logic” (Hurka et al., 2016). But there seem to be different dynamics for how morality policies are processed within political systems, depending on the institutional setup of the country and the specific issue under consideration (Studlar et al., 2013; Studlar & Cagossi, 2018).

A promising way forward to advance these highly interesting findings is to conceptualize institutions as containers of certain moral values and templates, as suggested by historical and sociological institutionalism (Hall & Taylor, 1996). Such a conception of institutions allows us to better understand how the (historically grown) institutional context, including the different constellations of venues, deals with normative values and cognitive scripts, and how this institutional treatment of moral values affects the transmission and development of policy solutions. For instance, the composition of the Supreme Court of the United States (i.e., the balance between justices nominated by the Republican Party and by the Democratic Party) seriously affects the prevalence of religious values and principles, which in turn may impact on final court decisions related to morality policies, and especially on those morality policies that enter the legislative arena through juridical venues. Furthermore, some institutions were founded on religious ideas and principles, which might still be reflected in inner organizational processes and structures (cf. the German Basic Law and the separate constitutions of the German states).

In that sense, institutions not only are fundamentals that block and facilitate the transmission of certain policy ideas but also actively shape the formulation of policy ideas, depending on their value orientation. Such an analytical perspective clarifies the association of a country’s political, juridical, and administrative apparatus with religious values and moral templates for societal phenomena and how variation in moral templates across venues and issues may finally influence morality policy outputs. A couple of studies from political scientists have tried to push morality policy research in this direction; they explored classical morality policies, such as same-sex partnership rights and abortion policy, in addition to (Islamic) religious education and veil policy in Europe as well as in the United States and Canada (Blumenthal, 2009; Euchner, 2018; Grzymala-Busse, 2015; Schwartz & Tatalovich, 2018).⁴ Sociological research as well as the subdisciplines of political psychology and public administration could offer fertile ground for further development of this research agenda.

A second way forward concerns the analysis of the implementation of morality policies. This policy stage has been largely overlooked, although it is particularly interesting for this type of policy (but see Debus, Knill, & Tosun, 2012; Grohs, Adam, & Knill, 2016; Meier & McFarlane, 1993; Tatalovich & Studlar, 1995; Wagenaar & Altink, 2012; Wald, Button, & Rienzo, 2001). Morality policy output decision are often characterized by vague legal formulations and therefore are prone to administrative drift (Euchner & Preidel, 2018; Wagenaar & Altink, 2012). Moreover, the historically grown institutional setup—including individual moral templates of responsible bureaucrats and policymakers—may also challenge a uniform implementation process (Euchner, 2018). Second, an analysis of the implementation process for morality policies allows linkage to the research on regulatory governance and the impact of private actors. Popular private actors in morality policy implementation are religious communities, such as the Catholic and the Protestant Church and their welfare organizations (e.g., Caritas and Diakonie), as well as NGOs or the medical community (Engeli & Rothmayr, 2016; Euchner & Preidel, 2018). In consequence, the scholarly community would profit from a closer exchange with researchers in the field of regulatory governance, because they could borrow theoretical concepts and evaluate them for a new field of policies. Promising concepts may include “expertise” or “regulatory capacity,” but also questions related to “political trust” in private actors as well as the “legitimation” of them when they take over public tasks that are key for defining the general moral order of a country.

Finally, another promising and socially relevant way forward is a closer examination of the links among populist parties, religion, and morality policies in Europe. All typical populist parties in Europe, such as the AfD in Germany, the FPÖ in Austria, and the PVV in the Netherlands, emphasize Christian values and norms and their importance for German, Austrian, and Dutch identity (cf. volume edited by Marzouki, McDonnell, & Roy, 2016). Their basic premise is that Muslim citizens, and especially refugees, are different and should assimilate or leave the country. Paradoxically, these value-conservative parties reject stronger European integration or a core European identity—even though they emphasize Christian values as the main heritage that unifies a country’s people. Thus, one may ask what is the understanding of religion and religious values for these populist parties, especially their party leaders? Is religion in fact part of their core identity or is religion used as a source of political mobilization and scandalization? And what does it mean in terms of their preferences for morality policies?

The new populist wave in Europe equals a new process of societal transformation. It is not only an indicator of a “too fast and intensive” process of Europeanization for some citizens but also a sign of a too “far-reaching” modernization of value-loaded questions. The “losers” of globalization (Kriesi et al., 2012) may not only protest against economic and political modernization (in the European Union) but also against the abandoning of traditional moral values regarding marriage, family, and questions of life and death (Kriesi, 2010). Accordingly, the European Union must steer the economic market in a fair way (e.g., increase the equality of opportunity) and at the same define fundamental European core values that should be reflected in multilevel policymaking processes (Foret & Calligaro, 2018; Euchner & Engeli, 2018). This third way forward in morality policy research will profit from a close exchange with the literature on party competition, Europeanization, and religion and politics.

Conclusion

Morality policies are a specific set of public issues that provoke fierce debates over the “right way” of living (Knill, 2013; Meier, 1994; Mooney, 2001a). Exemplary questions are: Is it morally “right” to permit active euthanasia? Is it morally “right” to allow a woman to abort her unborn child? Should we permit the use of CRISPR in gene editing of embryos if the medical gains might outweigh the “human loss”? How should we deal with autonomous cars and with robots in elderly care? Who is legally and morally responsible if accidents happen and human beings are injured?

A common characteristic of all these public problems is that economic interests are secondary, while moral values prevail in the political and societal debate (Knill, 2013; Mooney, 2001a). Besides the agreement on this characteristic of morality policies, a more specific delineation is missing. The literature disagrees on additional characteristics and the concrete approach to identifying value-laden issues (see part 2 “Definition and Goals of Morality Policies”). This picture has not changed since an increasing number of European researchers have started to analyze value-loaded questions in different European states. The enlargement of the scientific community has increased the diversity of analytical angles through which morality policies are examined and has advanced the evaluation of typical explanatory factors (see part 3 “Analytical Angles and Explanatory Factors for Morality Policymaking”). Cross-country approaches have shown that interest groups, religion, and political parties are particularly decisive in morality policy change. Institutional characteristics of political systems seem to be less influential.

Although morality policies have found large scholarly attention in the last decades and the field has advanced empirically as well as theoretically, several key controversies remain unsolved. The most important controversy arises around the question of what we can learn from morality policy research more generally. Although there have been important insights into the policy sustenance of long-ignored public problems, the disagreement on the identification of morality policies challenges the identification of broader patterns of political processes. There is excellent research that compares different value-loaded issues, systematic comparisons between morality and nonmorality issues are largely lacking. Additional avenues for future research include an in-depth examination of political institutions as sociological entities, the implementation of morality policies, and interlinkage with processes of Europeanization and the rise of populist parties.