mentally shift demand curves without any changes in regulatory policies. A full theory of morality politics needs to incorporate these demand shifts. The Question of Supply The present theory generally ignores the supply side of sin. Some individuals cannot sin simply because no one is willing to provide the product in question ( Morgan and Meier 1980). 16 Sinning is obviously easier in San Francisco than in Sisseton, South Dakota. Many Sisseton residents never get the opportunity to try heroin or purchase sexual services. A complete theory of morality politics needs to incorporate the supply side of sin and derive equilibrium models of the policy process. Conclusion This chapter addressed three questions: Why are morality policies adopted? Why do they sometimes change into redistributive policies? Why do morality policies fail? A great deal of empirical work has addressed these questions and has built a large collection of findings. Quite clearly, morality politics generates two sets of relatively unique patterns of politics--sin politics and redistributive politics-- that produce policies with a given set of characteristics. These consistencies were the logical result of a few simple assumptions about sin and the people who sin. At the same time, the unique patterns of morality politics should not blind one to the commonalities that they have with other types of public policy. My belief is that the relatively parsimonious models here can be applied to other forms of policy so that this chapter can serve as the first step in using morality policy as a stepping stone (gateway drug?) to a general reformulation of the study of public policy. The basic concepts used here apply equally well to distributive policies, regulatory policies, and other redistributive policies. To illustrate briefly, I note how three main types of policies can be gener- ally fit into this framework. In regulatory policies that do not attempt to regu- late sin (e.g, environmental regulation, utility regulation), full information often exists so that the perception of demand accurately reflects actual demand. The result should be median voter policies that respond to the relative influence of advocacy coalitions. Distributive policies simply reframe the density of demand distributions as a free lunch rather than as sin. These are policies using the frame that everyone is thus better off generating the politics of pork and inclusion. A key variable is whether bureaucracy possesses policy-relevant expertise and, thus, actually allocates the pork. Redistributive policies are much the same as they are in this chapter, but the basis for redistribution is economics rather than values. -34- |