1DRAFT-- Not for Quotation or Citation without Authors ’ Permission Moral-Values Politics: From Status Group Conflict to Institutionalized Party- Movement Electoral System

Historical sociologists interested in “moral-values politics ” in the United States have focused on episodic outbreaks of campaigns against drink, vice, and corruption, in which the dominant Protestant majority has asserted traditional, ascetic moral standards in the face of the pleasure-seeking enjoyments and alternative cultural norms of urban, working-class, and immigrant groups. The idea of conflict over moral values as Protestant status assertion against the backdrop of rising Catholic and immigrant strata can be found, for example, in Gusfield’s (1962) work on the “symbolic politics ” of the Temperance movement and in Beisel’s (1990) work on “moral panics ” in urban campaigns against vice. Some analyses of the contemporary religious Right have also adopted the status-group conflict interpretation (see, e.g., Evans 1996). These interpretations are indebted to the Weberian theme that status politics arise during periods in which economic growth brings challenges to the dominant status group. In this view, “moral values ” campaigns can be interpreted as symbolic reassertions of the dominance and prestige of white Protestant culture.1 A classical statement of the status politics position is found in Richar