Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jkksz Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T07:22:26.483Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Principled or Pragmatic? Morality Politics in Direct Democracy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2019

Céline Colombo Open the ORCID record for Céline Colombo [Opens in a new window]
Céline Colombo*
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, University of Zurich
*
*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Political scientists often distinguish between two types of issues: moral versus non-moral issues or social-cultural versus economic issues. The implication is that these types of issues trigger different types of reasoning: while economic issues rely on pragmatic, consequentialist reasoning, social-cultural issues are said to be dependent on principles and deontological reasoning. However, it is not known whether this distinction is as clear-cut from a citizen's perspective. Scholars agree that understanding the morality of voters’ political attitudes has implications for their political behaviour, such as their willingness to compromise and openness to deliberation. However, few studies have analysed whether citizens reason in principled or pragmatic ways on different issues. This study takes an exploratory approach and analyses the determinants of principled versus pragmatic reasoning in direct democracy, in which citizens make direct policy decisions at the ballot box. Using a unique dataset based on thirty-four ballot decisions in Switzerland, it explores the justifications voters give for their ballot decisions in open-ended survey answers. It distinguishes between pragmatic (or consequentialist) arguments and principled (or value-based) arguments. The analysis shows that principled justifications are not tied to particular issues. Voters use both types of justifications almost equally frequently. Moral justifications are more likely when an issue is personally relevant, as well as when a proposition is accepted, while pragmatic justifications prevail when a proposition is rejected. Furthermore, right-wing voters more often argue in pragmatic terms. Finally, the framing of the issue during the campaign significantly affects moral versus pragmatic justifications.

Keywords

morality politicsjustificationsdirect democracyprinciplespragmatismframing
Type
Article
Information
British Journal of Political Science , Volume 51 , Issue 2 , April 2021 , pp. 584 - 603
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Altemeyer, B (1996) The Authoritarian Specter. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Amit, E and Greene, JD (2012) You see, the ends don't justify the means: visual imagery and moral judgment. Psychological Science 23(8), 861–868.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Benoit, K and Laver, M (2006) Party Policy in Modern Democracies. London: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Biggers, DR (2011) When ballot issues matter: social issue ballot measures and their impact on turnout. Political Behavior 33(1), 3–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Binzer Hobolt, S and Brouard, S (2011) Contesting the European Union? Why the Dutch and the French rejected the European constitution. Political Research Quarterly 64(2), 309–322.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bornschier, S (2010) The new cultural divide and the two-dimensional political space in Western Europe. West European Politics 33(3), 419–444.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chong, D and Druckman, JN (2007) Framing theory. Annual Review of Political Science 10, 103–126.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cohen, J (1989) Deliberation and democratic legitimacy. In Hamlin, A and Pettit, P (eds), The Good Polity: Normative Analysis of the State. Cambridge: Basil Blackwell, pp. 67–92.Google Scholar
Colombo, C (2019) Replication Data for: Principled or Pragmatic? Morality Politics in Direct Democracy. https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/QICYLQ, Harvard Dataverse, V1.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dancygier, R and Walter, S (2015) Globalization, labor market risks, and class cleavages. In Beramendi, P, Häusermann, S, Kitschelt, H and Kriesi, H (eds), The Politics of Advanced Capitalism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
de Vreese, CH (2007) Context, elites, media and public opinion in referendums: when campaigns really matter. In de Vreese, CH (ed.), The Dynamic of Referendum Campaigns – An International Perspective. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Domke, D, Shah, DV and Wackman, DB (1998) ‘Moral referendums’: values, news media, and the process of candidate choice. Political Communication 15(3), 301–321.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Druckman, JN, Peterson, E and Slothuus, R (2013) How elite partisan polarization affects public opinion formation. American Political Science Review 107(01), 57–79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Engeli, I, Green-Pedersen, C and Larsen, LT (2012) Morality Politics in Western Europe: Parties, Agendas and Policy Choices. Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Frank, T (2004) What's the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives won the Heart of America. New York: Metropolitan Books.Google Scholar
Furnham, A (1984) The Protestant work ethic: a review of the psychological literature. European Journal of Social Psychology 14(1), 87–104.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Garrett, KN and Bankert, A (2018) The moral roots of partisan division: how moral conviction heightens affective polarization. British Journal of Political Science 1–20. doi:10.1017/S000712341700059XGoogle Scholar
Graham, J, Haidt, J, Nosek, BA (2009) Liberals and conservatives rely on different sets of moral foundations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 96(5), 1029–1046.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gray, K, Schein, C and Ward, AF (2014) The myth of harmless wrongs in moral cognition: automatic dyadic completion from sin to suffering. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General Ward 143(4), 1600–1615.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Grummel, JA (2008) Morality politics, direct democracy, and turnout. State Politics & Policy Quarterly 8(3), 282–292.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Habermas, J (1981) Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns. 2 vols. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.Google Scholar
Habermas, J (1993) Justification and Application: Remarks on Discourse Ethics. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Haider-Markel, DP and Meier, KJ (1996) The politics of gay and lesbian rights: expanding the scope of the conflict. The Journal of Politics 58(2), 332–349.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Haidt, J (2001) The emotional dog and its rational tail: a social intuitionist approach to moral judgment. Psychological Review 108(4), 814.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Haidt, J (2003) The moral emotions. In Scherer, KR, Davidson, RJ, and Goldsmith, HH (eds), Handbook of Affective Sciences. New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 852–870.Google Scholar
Haidt, J (2012) The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion. New York: Random House.Google Scholar
Hainmueller, J and Hopkins, DJ (2014) Public attitudes toward immigration. Annual Review of Political Science 17, 225–249.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Häusermann, S and Kriesi, H (2015) What do voters want? Dimensions and configurations in individual-level preferences and party choice. In Beramendi, P, Häusermann, S, Kitschelt, H and Kriesi, H (eds), The Politics of Advanced Capitalism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 202–231.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Helbling, M, Höglinger, D and Wueest, B (2010) How political parties frame European integration. European Journal of Political Research 49(4), 495–521.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hobolt, SB (2009) Europe in Question: Referendums on European Integration. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hopkins, DJ (2017) The exaggerated life of death panels? The limited but real influence of elite rhetoric in the 2009–2010 health care debate. Political Behavior 40(3), 1–29.Google Scholar
Janoff-Bulman, R and Carnes, NC (2013) Surveying the moral landscape: moral motives and group-based moralities. Personality and Social Psychology Review 17(3), 219–236.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Janoff-Bulman, R, Sheikh, S and Baldacci, KG (2008) Mapping moral motives: approach, avoidance, and political orientation. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 44(4), 1091–1099.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kitschelt, H (1994) The Transformation of European Social Democracy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kriesi, H et al. (2006) Globalization and the transformation of the national political space: six European countries compared. European Journal of Political Research 45(6), 921–956.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kriesi, H (2005) Direct Democratic Choice: The Swiss Experience. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.Google Scholar
Kriesi, H (2012) Political Communication in Direct Democratic Campaigns: Enlightening or Manipulating? Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Kriesi, H et al. (2012) Political Conflict in Western Europe. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lakoff, G (2002) Moral Politics: How Conservatives and Liberals Think. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Laver, M, ed. (2001) Estimating the Policy Position of Political Actors. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Layman, G (2001) The Great Divide: Religious and Cultural Conflict in American Party Politics. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
LeDuc, L (2002) Referendums and elections: how do campaigns differ? Routledge ECPR Studies in European Political Science 25, 145–162.Google Scholar
Leidner, B, Kardos, P and Castano, E (2017) The effects of moral and pragmatic arguments against torture on demands for judicial reform. Political Psychology 39(1), 143–162.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lerch, M and Schwellnus, G (2006) Normative by nature? The role of coherence in justifying the EU's external human rights policy. Journal of European Public Policy 13(2), 304–321.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lodge, M and Taber, CS (2013) The Rationalizing Voter. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Medrano, JD (2003) Framing Europe: Attitudes to European Integration in Germany, Spain, and the United Kingdom. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Milic, T (2009) Von der Parteilichkeit der Argumente. Jahreskongress der Schweizerischen Vereinigung für Politische Wissenschaft, St. Gallen, 8–9 January 2009.Google Scholar
Mooney, CZ (2001) The Public Clash of Private Values: The Politics of Morality Policy. Washington, DC: CQ Press.Google Scholar
Mooney, CZ and Schuldt, RG (2008) Does morality policy exist? Testing a basic assumption. Policy Studies Journal 36(2), 199–218.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nelson, TE and Oxley, ZM (1999) Issue framing effects on belief importance and opinion. The Journal of Politics 61(4), 1040–1067.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ryan, TJ (2014) Reconsidering moral issues in politics. The Journal of Politics 76(2), 380–397.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ryan, TJ (2017) No compromise: Political consequences of moralized attitudes. American Journal of Political Science 61(2), 409–423.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schein, C, Gray, K (2015) The unifying moral dyad: liberals and conservatives share the same harm-based moral template. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 41(8), 1147–1163.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Scheufele, DA (2000) Agenda-setting, priming, and framing revisited: another look at cognitive effects of political communication. Mass Communication & Society 3, 297–316.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sciarini, P, Nai, A and Tresch, A (2014) Analyse de la votation fédérale du 9 février 2014. VOX 114, i–viii.Google Scholar
Shah, DV, Domke, D and Wackman, DB (1996) ‘To thine own self be true’: values, framing, and voter decision-making strategies. Communication Research 23(5), 509–560.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sheikh, S and Janoff-Bulman, R (2010) The ‘shoulds’ and ‘should nots’ of moral emotions: a self-regulatory perspective on shame and guilt. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 36(2), 213–224.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sjursen, H (2002) Why expand? the question of legitimacy and justification in the EU's enlargement policy. Journal of Common Market Studies 40(3), 491–513.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Skitka, LJ (2010) The psychology of moral conviction. Social and Personality Psychology Compass 4(4), 267–281.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Skitka, LJ and Bauman, CW (2008) Moral conviction and political engagement. Political Psychology 29(1), 29–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Skitka, LJ, Morgan, GS and Wisneski, DC (2015) Political orientation and moral conviction: a conservative advantage or an equal opportunity motivator of political engagement? In Forgas, J, Crano, W and Fiedler, K (eds), social Psychology and Politics. New York: Psychology Press.Google Scholar
Tavits, M (2007) Principle vs. Pragmatism: policy shifts and political competition. American Journal of Political Science 51(1), 151–165.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thompson, DF (2008) Deliberative democratic theory and empirical political science. Annual Review of Political Science 11, 497–520.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Van der Brug, W (1999) Voters’ perceptions and party dynamics. Party Politics 5(2), 147–169.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Westen, D (2008) The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation. New York: Public Affairs.Google Scholar
Supplementary material: Link

Colombo Dataset

Dataset

https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/QICYLQ
Link
Supplementary material: File

Colombo supplementary material

Online Appendix

Download Colombo supplementary material(File)
File 53.6 KB