The moral compass of politics: parties’ use of morality in political communication

Husson, Clara

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URN:	urn:nbn:de:bsz:180-madoc-710530
Dokumenttyp:	Dissertation
Erscheinungsjahr:	2025
Ort der Veröffentlichung:	Mannheim
Hochschule:	Universität Mannheim
Gutachter:	Prof. Dr. Richard Traunmüller
Datum der mündl. Prüfung:	2025
Sprache der Veröffentlichung:	Englisch
Einrichtung:	Fakultät für Sozialwissenschaften > Political Science, Empirical Democracy Research (Traunmüller 2017-)
Lizenz:	Creative Commons Namensnennung 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
Fachgebiet:	320 Politik
Freie Schlagwörter (Englisch):	moral foundations theory , moral rhetoric , political communication , party politics , multi-party systems , electoral strategy , parliamentary debates , moral psychology , computational text analysis
Abstract:	Morality and politics are deeply intertwined: morality provides politics with meaning, while politics gives morality institutional form and influence. This dissertation explores how moral values are expressed, contested, and strategically deployed within political discourse. Using Moral Foundations Theory (MFT) as a conceptual and analytical framework, it examines how political parties across European multi-party systems use moral language to communicate ideology, shape debate, and pursue strategic goals. MFT conceptualizes morality as a multidimensional construct grounded in five universal moral foundations: Care-Harm, Fairness-Cheating, Loyalty-Betrayal, Authority-Subversion, and Sanctity-Degradation. These moral foundations allow for systematic analysis of how moral appeals vary across ideological and contextual settings. Methodologically, the dissertation makes a key contribution by developing and validating multilingual Moral Foundations Dictionaries in French, German, Italian, and Spanish, along with a novel cross-linguistic validation procedure for dictionary-based text analysis. Substantively, it provides the first cross-national, party-level study of moral rhetoric across European democracies. The findings demonstrate that moralized language follows predictable ideological patterns: left-wing parties emphasize individualizing foundations (Care and Fairness), while right-wing parties prioritize binding ones (Loyalty and Authority). However, the analysis also reveals that moral appeals are issue- and context-dependent, rather than purely ideology-driven. The dissertation further investigates the behavioral implications of moralized discourse within parliamentary debates, showing that while certain moral foundations (Care, Fairness, Loyalty) elicit stronger reactions, morality itself is not a primary driver of disagreement; strategic and institutional factors play a larger role.Finally, an examination of election campaign communication demonstrates that parties strategically adjust their moral rhetoric in response to electoral dynamics: adopting inclusive, balanced appeals in mass mobilization phases and reverting to partisan, binding rhetoric when consolidating core support. Overall, this dissertation advances both methodological and theoretical understandings of moral communication in politics. It extends MFT beyond its Anglophone and individual-level applications, enriches the study of party competition and political communication, and shows that moral rhetoric is simultaneously ideological, emotional, and strategic, a central mechanism through which parties seek to persuade, mobilize, and govern.