Moral appeal

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The moral appeal ( English moral suasion , "gut zueden") is an appeal by governments or authorities in the context of political communication , which is intended to promote the insight , understanding or willingness of economic agents to encourage them to behave in a desirable way.

General

Moral appeals are the attempt to induce changes in behavior in certain target groups through persuasion. The state does not want to intervene in the economy through interventionism ( state interventionism ) based on legal norms or coercion , but relies on the voluntary nature of economic subjects .

The moral appeal is of three types:

This classification goes back to Aristotle , who already referred to these types in his work Rhetoric as rhetorical means of persuasion with " logos ", " pathos " and " ethos ". These types of appeals belong to political linguistics . They are intended to induce a certain behavior in the addressees, which can consist of doing , tolerating or omitting . Moral appeals can also consist of the threat of coercive measures or the threat of issuing legal norms / sanctions if the appeals are not fruitful.

General policy

Moral appeals are common in all areas of politics. Already John F. Kennedy demanded when he took office in January 1961: "Don't ask what your country can do for you, rather ask what you can do for your country". Political leaders like Barack Obama (“ Yes We Can ”, January 2008), Pablo Iglesias Turrión (“ Podemos ”, January 2014), Angela Merkel (“ We can do it ”, August 2015) to Donald Trump (“ America First ”, January 2017) have propagated banal , non-binding and meaningless phrases as appeals or slogans .

In economic policy, on the other hand, moral appeals are usually more concrete and binding. This enables economic agents to orient their behavior more precisely to the appeals, while with "We can do it" nobody knows whether and what task someone should perform at all. General incantations such as these or perseverance slogans such as “ final victory ” are therefore intended more for general motivation than to induce the addressees to take a certain action. General political appeals are subject to the same requirements as the moral appeals of the economic policy presented below.

Economic policy

The instruments of state economic policy include regulatory policy , economic process control , foreign trade policy and process policy ; the latter includes the means of moral appeals. They are used where there are either no clear legal regulations or where the government is reluctant to immediately take measures already provided for by law. Appeals rely on voluntary action, toleration or omission of the addressees and avoid the use of coercive measures.

Often moral appeals are addressed to specific target groups or interest groups . Central banks direct their moral appeals to credit institutions as their addressees in order to influence them without using monetary policy . The Deutsche Bundesbank earlier published its money supply targets for the coming year without this being an intervention measure, rather it was a psychological influence in the form of “moral suasion”. The Governing Council has in the introduction of the euro in January 2002, the reference value to an annual growth rate of money supply determined by 4.5% and has not changed him. The commercial banks are influenced by these targets to orient their economic behavior towards them.

history

Already in 1959 Günter Schmölders pointed in an essay to the possibility of moral suasion as “overcoming the resistance” of economic agents through “the method of refutation, amicable persuasion, appeasing and conjuring”. One of the most famous representatives of this method was Ludwig Erhard , who in a radio address on March 21, 1962 addressed his famous “appeals to the trade unions” after wages had risen by 10% in the previous year , but productivity had only increased by 5%. The German people must not lapse into excess, because "we cannot earn twice as much as we create in value". He postulated that the trade union orientation of wage increases to the inflation rate was economically wrong and that the economic indicator of labor productivity (and its change) should be the sole measure of wage demands. Savings appeals are very popular, calling on the addressees concerned to use resources sparingly .

aims

The basic idea of ​​the moral appeal is that, from an economic point of view, the individual utility function can also influence the utility function of other individuals, so that the knowledge of mutual dependence ( interdependence ) can influence one's own behavior. Moral appeals are aimed at the conscience , which is intended to induce economic agents to change their behavior voluntarily. To this end, the moral appeals must be permanently adopted into the addressee's own attitude system within the framework of internalization or acceptance through attractiveness . However, if the governments fail to achieve the desired state goal with these appeals, the only option left is to force them through laws or measures.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hermann May / Claudia Wiepcke (eds.), Lexicon of Economic Education , 2012, p. 421
  2. ^ Siegfried J. Schmidt, Handbuch Werbung , 2004, pp. 101 ff.
  3. ↑ Aristoteles / Christof Rapp (trans.), Rhetorik , 2002, 1356a2-20
  4. ↑ English Ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country
  5. ↑ became the name of the party
  6. ↑ all three of the latter slogans mean the same thing
  7. ↑ Alfred Katz / Claus Köhler, Money Management: Money Supply and Credit Policy , Volume 1, 1977, p. 311
  8. ↑ Dieter Coburger, The Monetary Policy Powers of the Deutsche Bundesbank , 1988, p. 49
  9. ↑ Günter Schmölders, The Overcoming of Resistance of Economic Subjects , in: Hans-Jürgen Seraphim , Problems of Formation of Wills and Economic Policy Leadership, 1959, p. 114 ff.
  10. ↑ Calendar sheet on Erhard's Maßhaltapppell
  11. ↑ Barbara Lueg, Economics of Trade with Environmental Rights , 2009, p. 97
  12. ^ Siegfried J. Schmidt, Handbuch Werbung , 2004, p. 101