Morality Politics and Authoritarianism in Poland, Russia, and Turkey
The politicization of abortion, LGBTQ+ rights and other morality issues is on the rise around the world. [1] Would-be autocrats often turn to morality issues in their quest for political power. Why do would-be autocrats choose certain morality issues and not others to politicize? When do leaders politicize these issues? Why are some politicized morality issues adopted and implemented but not others?
Existing research on morality issues point to numerous potential explanations for why governments adopt restrictive morality policies including the influence of a dominant religious institution, that religion’s doctrinal views on the morality issue, the level of religious affiliation or religiosity of the country’s population, public opinion on the morality issue, the strength of the feminist movement, transnational movement dynamics, and political institutions.[2] From this existing literature, we know quite a lot about the cross-national differences in the formal or de jure restrictiveness of morality policy. However, we know less about the choices of political leaders to discuss morality issues in their speeches, the timing when they launch morality reforms, or the relationship between morality issues and autocratization processes. We also do not know much about the informal or de facto policy practiced in everyday spaces such as hospitals and schools that impact minorities and other marginalized populations.
Morality Politics and Authoritarianism in Poland, Russia, and Turkey sheds light on these under-studied aspects by offering an argument emphasizing the choices of political leaders and the need for their political survival in contexts of backsliding hybrid regimes. Morality politics can help leaders survive politically. This book emphasizes the vital role that morality politics plays in the legitimization of authoritarianism. Drawing on the moral cognition literature, this book demonstrates that morality issues are useful for would-be autocrats because they motivate, legitimize, and justify political actions to the public.[3]
The argument proceeds in three steps organized around the book’s three questions. The first argument explains which issues are politicized by discussing how popular morality issues can help would-be autocrats win elections in backsliding hybrid regimes. For leaders wanting to strengthen and maintain their grip on power, morality politics is one of several strategic tools they can choose. Political leaders choose to politicize and launch reforms in certain morality issues based upon their calculation of a morality issue’s utility. Morality issues that are very popular among the leader’s core supporters can be quite useful. Leaders also consider the costs or disadvantages associated with politicizing unpopular morality issues.
The second argument addresses the question about the timing of when morality issues are politicized. Morality politics in backsliding hybrid regimes plays different roles during different phases of regime development: coming to power and keeping power. When parties first come to power, morality politics is a tool for governments to undermine checks and balances from state actors that can act as institutional veto points.[4] Would-be autocrats face the obstacle of an “unusable state” when they first enter the government due to holdover bureaucrats from a previous government.[5] Morality appeals can provide justification for weakening democratic norms and eliminating these institutional veto points. And once state actor veto points are removed, morality politics is a tool for distracting from crises that threaten the government’s hold on power. A morality appeal can shift attention from the economic agenda during an economic crisis to a morality issue, helping the party maintain support.
The third argument explains varying levels of adoption and implementation of morality issues ranging from implemented formal restrictions, unimplemented formal restrictions, implemented informal restrictions, and no restrictions. The adoption and implementation of restrictive morality policies depend on the interaction between state and society: the strength of the illiberal social movement is a background condition influencing the relative level of restriction, and the leader’s decision is central for the choice to restrict in a particular morality issue area.
Methodologically, the book uses a case selection strategy of countries (Poland, Russia, and Turkey) with three different dominant religious traditions (Roman Catholicism, Christian Orthodoxy, and Sunni Islam) to test the logic of the theory across different contexts, religions, and regions. This innovative design, drawing inspiration from the “comparative areas studies” approach advocating for inter-regional and cross-cultural analyses, allows for theory building that potentially allows for a higher degree of generalizability.[6] I also use a “controlled comparison” approach to carefully consider the similarities and differences between the cases so as to evaluate other explanations.[7] To develop the book’s theory, I conducted over two years of fieldwork where I interviewed more than forty experts, activists, and/or policymakers working in these three countries.
The book employs a mixed methods approach to evaluate these arguments and alternative explanations in the literature. The first two empirical chapters (chapters 3 and 4) use media content analysis that describes the frequency/degree and timing of politicization of more than 30 different morality issues. For this content analysis I created an original dataset that codes politician’s references to restricting morality issues in more than 6,000 newspaper articles. Cases studies and process tracing of different morality issues illustrates the mechanisms of the first two arguments about which issues and when these issues are politicized. The third empirical chapter (chapter 5) presents the findings of an original survey experiment fielded in Turkey in 2022 to test the claim that morality issues can help governments distract publics from crises that threaten their hold on power. The fourth and fifth empirical chapters (chapters 6 and 7) present comparative historical analysis of morality issues across Turkey, Russia, and Poland to test the third argument about why adoption and implementation of restrictive morality policies vary.
[1] Morality issues are non-economic, value-based issues such as abortion, LGBTQI+ rights, and religious education that involve clashes over the right way of living (Euchner 2019). My typology, building on Heichel, Knill, & Schmitt (2013), organizes approximately 30 issues into six substantive categories: sex, marriage, life/death, education, addictive substances, and self-determination.
[2] On religious institutions, see Calkin and Kaminska (2020); Grzymala-Busse (2015). On religious doctrine, see McClendon and Riedl (2021). On religiosity, see Forman-Rabinovici and Sommer (2018). On public opinion, see Githens and Stetson (1996); Daby and Moseley (2022). On feminist movements and transnational movement dynamics, see Asal et al (2008); Budde and Heichel (2017); Ayoub (2015); Pollert and Mooney (2022). On political institutions, see Asal et al (2008); Budde and Heichel (2017).
[3] See Gerring et al (2018); Jung (2020); Koesel (2014) Mooney (2001); Ryan (2014); Skitka (2002); Skitka et al (2005).
[4] Tsebelis (2002).
[5] Linz and Stepan (1996).
[6] Ahram, Kollner, and Sil (2018).
[7] Slater and Ziblatt (2013).
Daniel J. Schulte, Ph.D. 