Explaining Patterns of Morality Policy Change in Austria, Germany, Spain, and the Netherlands

Abstract

This chapter analyzes the second research question of the book, namely how parliamentary issue attention impacts on morality policy change in the religious world. The chapter opens with a description of the regulatory pattern of the two morality policies in the four countries under study from 1994 to 2014. The precise extent of morality policy change is then calculated and plotted against the aggregated extent of parliamentary attention; as expected, the peaks of attention are not necessarily related to reform activity in the last twenty years. The descriptive statistics and some advanced inference-statistical analyses provide evidence that on the short run, high issue attention negatively impacts on the extent of morality policy change, while on the long run, enduring issue attention fosters morality policy change.