ReMo

Religion and Morality Politics

Prof. Dr. Eva-Maria Euchner

10/2017-03/2022, offene (kostenneutrale) Fortsetzung zur Finalisierung von Publikationsprojekten

Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Geschwister-Scholl-Institut für Politikwissenschaft, Prof. Dr. Christoph Knill Prof. Dr. Christoph Knill – Geschwister-Scholl-Institut für Politikwissenschaft (GSI) – LMU München (uni-muenchen.de)

Universität Bern, Institut für Soziologie, Prof. Dr. Christian Joppke Über uns: Prof. Dr. Christian Joppke – Institut für Soziologie (unibe.ch)

Institut Barcelona d´Estudis Internacionals, Prof. Dr. Irina Ciornei Irina Ciornei | IBEI

The project aims to explain the engagement of religious actors subsequent to morality policy adoption, at the implementation stage. Research has concentrated on the formulation phase and on how the influence of religious actors fades away in the course of secularization. It thereby largely neglected the implementation stage of morality policy. However, underspecified and vague laws make this stage extremely relevant for religious communities. We expect that the losers of the policy-making process seek to regain power in the phase of implementation (Mooney 2001). Our main argument is that religious communities’ engagement is determined by their governance capacity and the willingness to get involved. Church-state regimes and policy vagueness, in turn, offer the opportunity structure for religious group’s governance capacity. We examine this argument with regard to five morality policies – fields in which religious communities and the state meet and collide: abortion, euthanasia, homosexuality, prostitution and religious education – in six different countries (Denmark, Belgium, Switzerland, Great Britain, France and Germany). Based on Hood’s (1983) typology of policy instruments, we develop an innovative analytical tool that measures the governance engagement of religious groups. For gathering the data, we triangulate the analysis of official documents, organizations’ web pages, written press and expert interviews. Besides offering a new empirical perspective, the research project provides an innovative theoretical framework to explain the variance of the involvement of religious communities in morality policy implementation.

Forschungsbereich Demokratie und Wohlfahrtsstaatlichkeit

Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG), Schweizerischer Nationalfonds (SNF)