On the Road to Permissiveness? Change and Convergence of Moral Regulation in Europe

On the Road to Permissiveness? seeks to describe and explain how European countries have been resolving political issues that involve conflicts of fundamental values. Specifically, these political issues include the regulation of abortion, euthanasia, homosexuality, prostitution, pornography, cannabis, sports betting, and handguns. The book addresses the empirical question of how morality policies have changed in recent decades and analyses the change and regulatory trends in different areas of morality policy. It provides a systematic long-term empirical assessment of morality policy change across countries and different fields of morality policy and compares morality policies in 19 OECD countries over a period of 50 years. On the Road to Permissiveness? is divided into three parts. Firstly, it discusses the conceptual framework and measurement approach developed by the editors and the theoretical framework guiding the empirical analyses. In the second part of the book, the editors explore the changes and trends in morality policies, and the third part develops theoretical conclusions and implications on the basis of these findings.

Christoph Knill is Chair of Political Science and Public Administration at the University of Munich. His main research interests concentrate on policy-making in the European Union, the analysis of processes of international policy convergence and policy diffusion as well as research on policy implementation. He has published in journals such as Public Organization Review, the Journal of Political Science, the International Journal of Drug Policy, the Journal of Theoretical Politics, and the Journal of Common Market Studies. Christian Adam holds a position as post-doctoral researcher at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University of Munich. He completed his doctoral studies with honors (summa cum laude) at the University of Konstanz. His research focuses on comparative public policy. He has published in journals such as Public Organization Review, the Journal of Political Science, the International Journal of Drug Policy, the Journal of Theoretical Politics, and the Journal of Common Market Studies. Steffen Hurka works as a post-doctoral researcher at the Chair of Empirical Theories of Politics at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University of Munich. His research focuses on the analysis of morality policies in general and gun policies in particular. In addition, he works on matters relating to the legislative organization of the European Parliament. His work has been published in European Union Politics and the Journal of European Public Policy.