Project Description
(1) To what extent are religious groups engaged in the implementation phase of morality policies?
(2) Which factors account for the variance in denominations’ governance engagement across and within Western European countries on morality policy issues?
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 howin the course of secularization, the influence of religious actors fades away. It thereby largely neglected the implementation stage of morality policy. However, underspecified and vague laws makes this stage extremely relevant for religious communities. In particular, 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 where religious communities and the state meet and collide (abortion, euthanasia homosexuality, prostitution and religious education) and 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 with 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.
