Dr. Donley T. Studlar will be visiting the University of Alabama Political Science Department on Wednesday, March 6th to give a talk in ten Hoor 346 from 12:00-1:30 pm.

Talk title:  “Morality Policy Processes in Advanced Industrial Democracies

Abstract:  This research summarizes several papers written in recent years investigating how political institutions in 24 Western democracies are involved in morality policy debate.  Five individual morality policies are examined:  the death penalty, abortion, euthanasia, stem cell research/ART, and gay marriage. Using data from 1945 to 2014, the research compares three theories of how morality policy relates to political institutions: 1) policy types; 2) Two Worlds of religious/secular party systems; and 3) US/European cultural exceptionalism.   A number of questions are considered, including:  1) Is there a distinctive field of ‘morality policy’ cross-nationally? and 2) If so, what theories can help explain it, across countries, agenda issues, and differing content?  The overall aim is to develop a more comprehensive, comparative, empirically-based theory of how political institutions relate to morality policy formation.

Bio:  Donley T. Studlar (Ph.D., Indiana University, 1974) has been a publishing scholar for 45 years in a variety of internationally read journals and books, including the American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, British Journal of Political Science, Comparative Politics, and Journal of Politics. Currently he is an Emeritus Professor of Political Science at West Virginia University and Adjunct Faculty in the College of Public Health at East Tennessee State University. He also has taught at the University of Strathclyde, Oklahoma State University, Centre College, and the University of Nebraska, in addition to short-term visiting appointments in several universities in the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and Denmark. Studlar continues to be actively involved in research in comparative public policy, especially in public health policy and comparative morality policy.  He has published six articles and chapters on morality policy in recent years.