Conscience Issues

Conscience Issues in politics are issues concerning morality based on first principles. The Primary examples of these include homosexuality, capital punishment, abortion and euthanasia.

For political academics these are of particular interest, as the approach taken by members of legislatures when dealing with legislation pertaining to such matters is often different to how standard bills are dealt with. Rather than to adopt the same view as the party to which one is affiliated, legislators' policies on issues like the ones above will be tied directly to their own conscience. This is particularly noticeable during votes in the legislature: for example, in the UK Parliament, these votes (or divisions) are not whipped, and as a result party coherence is very low.