Commissioned Book Review: Mildred A Schwartz and Raymond Tatalovich, The Rise and Fall of Moral Conflicts in the United States and Canada
| Author | Gabriel Lévesque |
| DOI | 10.1177/1478929920901657 |
| Date | 01 May 2021 |
| Published date | 01 May 2021 |
| Subject Matter | Commissioned Book Reviews |
Political Studies Review
2021, Vol. 19(2) NP11 –NP12
journals.sagepub.com/home/psrev
Commissioned Book Review
901657PSW0010.1177/1478929920901657Political Studies ReviewCommissioned Book Review
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Commissioned Book Review
The Rise and Fall of Moral Conflicts in the
United States and Canada by Mildred A
Schwartz and Raymond Tatalovich. Toronto,
ON, Canada: University of Toronto Press, 2018.
240 pp., £20.99 ISBN 9781442628830
The Rise and Fall of Moral Conflicts in the
United States and Canada compares the evolu-
tion of six contentious moral issues (abortion,
capital punishment, gun control, marijuana,
pornography and same-sex relations) and their
development as subject of political conflict.
Using an original framework called the ‘phase
model’, Schwartz and Tatalovich trace the soci-
ological and political trajectories behind each
issue in order to underline the similarities and
differences in their treatment by major actors.
Chapter 1 extensively reviews the literature
on morality politics, which is broadly defined
by the authors as dealing ‘with values that
define whose interests and which conceptions
of what is right or good should be dominant in
the society’ (Schwartz and Tatalovich, 2018:
190). They develop a ‘phase model’ frame-
work, where the life histories of issues are dis-
sected into five distinct but nonetheless
intertwined phases: emergence, establishment,
decline, resurgence and resolution. This frame-
work is a key contribution to our understanding
of timing and politics, as it offers an organized
way of dealing with timing and processes in
moral policy analysis.
Using the phase model, Chapter 2 traces the
development of prohibition in the United
States and Canada. The issue is well-suited for
testing the model since it has already been
thoroughly investigated (see Joseph Gusfield,
1986 [1963]) and has also been solved in both
countries. What is best underlined by this
example is the impact of the confrontation
between civil society groups on political dis-
course across time. This in turn lays solid foun-
dations for the examination of the remaining
six contemporary issues. From the example of
alcohol policy, the authors operationalize their
five-dimension phase model into 18 hypothe-
ses. Hypotheses imply a wide range of factors,
from institutional features, to actors’ position-
ing, to resources and timing.
Before testing the hypotheses, Chapters 3
and 4, respectively, provide an overview of
each moral issue covered and of the socio-
historical development of both Canada and the
United States. The latter is a great summary of
the similar and dissimilar social trajectories in
both countries. It is thus tremendously relevant
to any comparative politics student interested
in these cases.
At core of the books’ aim, Chapters 5 to 9
look at each phase of the model with regard to
the six moral conflicts selected. This structure
allows to examine each phase individually,
enhancing the comparative strength of the
study. However, it is accompanied with much
repetitions and very short sections on each
issue (sometimes as short as one-third of a
page), which makes reading redundant at
times. Although issue-centered chapters would
have reduced comparative outlooks, it would
certainly have enhanced overall fluidity.
Method-wise, the comparison grounds
mostly on a process-tracing where the authors
succeed in underlining similarities and isolat-
ing distinctive features. Another component of
their analysis is a review of media coverage for
each issue across time. Even if done in a sys-
tematic way and although it provides some
interesting results, one could question the
choice of media coverage as a measure of the
political salience of an issue. Historically,
some issues heavily covered by the media are
at the bottom of governmental priorities in both
countries. The opposite can also be held true.
The authors themselves point out to the weak-
nesses of such association: ‘Media coverage
does not perfectly align with policy outcomes,
since the former is likely to be affected by dra-
matic events and therefore displays more une-
ven patterns of rise and decline’ (Schwartz and
Tatalovich, 2018: 160).
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