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EU Morality Politics: An American Culture Wars Scenario? Insights from the Religious Restructuring Theory

par Mondo, Emilie
Référence IPSA-AISP - 24th Congress of Political Science (July 23-28, 2016: Poznan (Poland))
Publication Non publié, 2016-07-12

Communication à un colloque

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Résumé :

This paper explores the heuristic power as well as the limits of the American literature on religion and politics in the analysis of EU morality politics. Secular Europe is presently confronting some challenges raised by the increased politicization of morality issues. Morality issues feed value-based conflicts between actors holding diverging worldviews. Religious groups in particular seek to promote their own ethical interests on a variety of matters such as bioethics, environment, LGBT issues, etc. The American literature on religion and politics offers valuable insights into how to theorize the involvement of religious groups in morality politics. The religious restructuring theory, popularized under the “culture wars” label, explains how ideological differences crosscut denominational lines and create new religious alignments with political parties. The paper considers the possibility of transposing this American theory to the European Union; in other words: how and to what extent the American culture wars can provide a useful theoretical framework for studying EU morality politics? Taking into account the limits of such a transposition, the objective is to define how the culture wars scenario fits EU morality politics in the light of the social, institutional and political features of the Union. For this purpose, the culture wars theory is given two different – not necessarily antagonistic, rather possibly complementary – meanings: 1/ a political style emphasizing group differences in order to substantiate policy positions and to attract public attention; 2/ a polarizing force creating new and sustainable cleavages between and within social and political groups. This paper is arguing that EU morality politics corresponds more to a sensationalizing and absolutizing political style than to new deep and structural cleavages. In other words, religion does not produce a strong and structural polarizing effect as is the case in U.S. politics.