Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The Politics Of Court Driven Morality Policy: A Comparative Analysis Of Abortion And Same-Sex Marriage 1971-2015, Korey L. Hughes

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

My dissertation had two principal components. First was the development of an argument outlining the five critical differences between abortion and same-sex marriage policy, which highlight the current insufficiency of the existing morality politics framework. These differences were: the duration of the issue, whether it demonstrated an incrementalist of a punctuated equilibrium theory of policy change, the scope of conflict, the degree of institutional entrenchment within the two parties, and the social construction of stakeholders. I then advanced five hypotheses to explain why these differences between the two policy areas in both process and outcome existed, for the purpose of …