Patterns of Death Penalty Abolition, 1960–2005: Domestic and International Factors

Patterns of Death Penalty Abolition, 1960–2005: Domesticand International Factors1

Anthony McGann and Wayne Sandholtz

University of California

On the eve of World War II, eight countries had completely abolished the death penalty and another six hadbanned it for ordinary crimes. As of early 2008, 92 countries had prohibited capital punishment for all crimesand 10 more had ruled it out for ordinary crimes. The goal of this article is to account for the pattern ofnational abolition of the death penalty since 1960. We hypothesize that certain kinds of democracies are moreliable to end capital punishment than others. Specifically, the negotiated form of democracy produced by par-liamentary systems with proportional representation (‘‘consensus democracy’’ in Lijphart’s terms) is morelikely to do away with the death penalty than are other forms of democracy. As previous research indicates,democratic transitions also increase the likelihood of abolition. Finally, international influences can also tipcountries toward abolition. We suggest that incentives provided by international organizations, particularly inEurope, have drawn some countries toward abolition. The empirical analysis of approximately 150 countriesfor the period 1960–2005 confirms our expectations.

On the eve of World War II, eight countries hadcompletely abolished the death penalty and anothersix had banned it for ordinary crimes (AmnestyInternational 2008b). As of early 2008, according toAmnesty International, 92 countries had prohibitedcapital punishment for all crimes and ten more hadruled it out for ordinary crimes; 33 countries wereclassified ‘‘abolitionist in practice’’ (Amnesty Inter-national 2008a).2 The expansion of death penaltyabolition has been especially dramatic in the last fewdecades (see Table 1). In 1988, 28% of 180 coun-tries had abandoned the death penalty; by 2001,46% of 194 had done so (Hood 2002:14). Parallel tothe abolition of the death penalty in national legalsystems has been the emergence of internationalnorms against capital punishment. As Schabas notes,since World War II, international law has steadilyrestricted the application of the death penalty andmoved toward its abolition. A growing number ofcountries are now bound by international conven-tions abolishing the death penalty (Schabas 1997:1–2, 20–21). The charters of the major internationalcriminal tribunals rule it out as a punishment.3

Death penalty abolition may well be an emergentinternational norm, as Schabas has suggested. Butwhether or not abolition becomes a rule of interna-tional law, its increasing incorporation into domesticlaw is a phenomenon to be explained. Our purposein this article is to account for the pattern ofnational abolitions of the death penalty since 1960.We focus on the period from 1960 because abolitionbefore 1960 was a relatively infrequent event. By1960 only 19 countries had abolished the deathpenalty for either ordinary or all crimes (althoughthis was 44% of the 43 democracies that existed in1960s). Clearly, there were forces driving deathpenalty abolition in some states, although it had notyet become an international norm.

In the period we study, however, countries facedan environment conducive to the abolition of thedeath penalty. Pushed by a number of governmentsand later by human rights non-governmental organi-zations (NGOs), abolition of the death penaltybecame part of the world cultural environment. Allcountries came into contact with the idea of endingexecutions; they encountered it in United Nationsconferences, in the diplomatic activities of abolition-ist states, and in the activism of international NGOs.In other words, the idea of death penalty abolition ispart of the world cultural environment in which allstates and societies are embedded.

Yet ending executions is a political choice thatsome states embrace and others do not. We seek toexplain that choice. Our analysis moves beyond thefrequently noted link between democracy and deathpenalty abolition (see also Neapolitan 2001; Neuma-yer 2008:263). Abolition is always associated with

1 Author’s notes: We are grateful for the excellent research assistance ofMark Kutzbach, Benjamin Bohr, Ramon Broers, and David Swanson. Thepaper also benefited from the constructive suggestions of Evan Schofer andthe participants in the UC Irvine International Comparative SociologyWorkshop and from those of the anonymous reviewers.

2 Countries considered ‘‘abolitionist in practice’’ include those thathave not executed anyone within the previous 10 years or have made aninternational commitment not to apply the death penalty.

3 The death penalty is not available as a sentence at the InternationalCriminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, the International CriminalTribunal for Rwanda, nor the International Criminal Court.

McGann, Anthony and Wayne Sandholtz. (2012) Patterns of Death Penalty Abolition, 1960–2005: Domestic and International Factors. International Studies Quarterly,doi: 10.1111/j.1468-2478.2011.00716.x� 2012 International Studies Association

International Studies Quarterly (2012), 1–15

democracy, as authoritarian governments do not giveup the death penalty. It would therefore be tempt-ing to explain this pattern by linking democracy tohuman rights: democracies abolish because they aremore committed to human rights than are autocra-cies. The difficulty with that intuitively appealingconclusion is that in many, if not most, instances,popular majorities in democracies favor the deathpenalty. That is, death penalty abolition has notbeen a plebiscitary response to voter demands. Giventhat only democracies give up capital punishment,why do they abolish it with varying degrees of alac-rity? Why does abolition overcome popular opposi-tion in some democracies but not in others? Thisarticle seeks to answer such questions.

We hypothesize that certain kinds of democraciesare more likely to end capital punishment than oth-ers. Specifically, the negotiated form of democracyproduced by parliamentary systems with proportionalrepresentation (PR) (‘‘consensus democracy’’ inLijphart’s terms) is more likely to do away with thedeath penalty than are other forms of democracy. Asprevious research indicates, democratic transitionsalso increase the likelihood of abolition. Finally,international influences can also tip countriestoward abolition. We suggest that incentives pro-vided by international organizations, particularly inEurope, have drawn some countries toward aboli-tion. The empirical analysis of approximately 150countries for the period 1960–2005 confirms ourexpectations.

Explaining Patterns of Abolition: InternationalInfluences

The emergence of abolition as a politically potentidea was part of the development of a broader inter-national human rights regime after World War II.Beginning with the Universal Declaration of HumanRights (UDHR), the international human rightsregime expanded dramatically and took shape in agrowing array of formal treaties. The two broad cove-nants, the International Covenant on Civil and Polit-ical Rights (ICCPR) and the International Covenant onEconomic, Social, and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), both

approved by the General Assembly in 1966, includewide-ranging catalogues of rights. Other treatiesaddress more specific rights domains, includingracial discrimination, equality for women, torture,and the rights of children.4

Death penalty abolition has been part of thisbroader international human rights regime, propa-gated and diffused at the international level.5

Though a number of countries abolished capitalpunishment in the nineteenth and early twentiethcentury’s, consistent efforts to make death penaltyabolition an international norm only began after1945. During the negotiations over what wouldbecome the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, anumber of states pressed for a provision banningcapital punishment, whereas others argued forrecognizing the death penalty as an exception to thewidely accepted ‘‘right to life.’’ The eventual com-promise incorporated ‘‘right to life’’ language butmade no mention of the death penalty (see Schabas1997:24–40). Similarly, the ICCPR includes provi-sions guaranteeing the right to life, but it also estab-lishes limits to (without prohibiting) capitalpunishment (see Schabas 1997:44-80). GeneralAssembly resolutions in 1971 (United Nations Gen-eral Assembly 1971) and 1977 ‘‘reaffirm’’ the objec-tive of ‘‘progressively restricting the number ofoffences for which the death penalty may beimposed, with a view to the desirability of abolishingthis punishment’’ (United Nations General Assembly1977). A Second Optional Protocol to the ICCPR,passed in the General Assembly in December 1989,bans executions in states party to the Protocol.

Theories of International Norm Diffusion

Two complementary theories—the ‘‘transnationalactivist’’ and ‘‘world society’’ approaches—help toexplain the international diffusion of the idea ofabolition. In the transnational activist perspective,domestic groups favoring the new norm establishcoalitions with like-minded groups, sometimes withinthe same country but, increasingly, with foreign orinternational NGOs. These alliances produce trans-national activist networks (Keck and Sikkink 1998),which are able to bring pressure on national govern-ments from above (internationally) and below(domestically) (Brysk 1993, 2000). The result can bea ‘‘spiral’’ (Risse and Sikkink 1999) or ‘‘cascade’’(Finnemore and Sikkink 1998) of norm acceptance.

Various international NGOs have supported effortsto end capital punishment. On its Web site, AmnestyInternational notes that it began, shortly after itsfounding in 1961, by appealing to governments on

TABLE 1. Death Penalty Abolition by Time Period (Number ofStates Abolishing)

Abolished forall crimes

Abolished forordinary crimes Total

Before 1950 8 9 171950s 1 1 21960s 4 2 61970s 7 4 111980s 11 2 131990s 34 4 382000–2008 19 2 21

(Notes. Many countries first abolished for ordinary crimes and in a lateryear abolished for all crimes. Both such abolitions are counted in the table,which simply reports the number of each type of abolition by period.Source: Amnesty International (2008a,b).)

4 Scholars in international relations, international law, and world cul-ture traditions have produced excellent accounts of the development ofinternational human rights. For example, see the studies by Boli (1987);Donnelly (1989); Brysk (2002); Elliott (2007); Hathaway (2002); Landman(2005); Lauren (2003); Risse-Kappen, Ropp, and Sikkink (1999); Simmons(2009).

5 For insightful accounts, see the study by Amnesty International(1989), Schabas (1997), and Hood (2002).

2 Patterns of Death Penalty Abolition

behalf of ‘‘prisoners of conscience’’ condemned todeath. The organization subsequently made its oppo-sition to the death penalty general and universal. In1989 it published When the State Kills, a country-by-country survey of capital punishment around theworld and a call to abolish it (Amnesty International1989). Since then Amnesty International has publi-cized execution rates around the world and pressedfor abolition. Human Rights Watch (HRW) has alsoopposed capital punishment for many years andpressed governments to end it. Both Amnesty andHRW belong to the World Coalition Against theDeath Penalty, an alliance of some 99 organizationsfounded in 2002 (World Coalition Against the DeathPenalty 2010).

In other words, transnational NGOs have helpedto make human rights, and the idea of death penaltyabolition, part of what the ‘‘world society’’ approachin sociology views as world culture. This approachsuggests that ‘‘[w]orldwide models define and legiti-mate agendas for local action, shaping the structuresand policies of nation-states and other national andlocal actors in virtually all of the domains of rational-ized social life’’ (Meyer, Boli, Thomas, and Ramirez1997:145). World society establishes models for legit-imate nation-state identities and purposes, whichstates enact in ways that produce strikingly similarinstitutional structures and policy goals (isomor-phism). The primary goals of world society and itsinstantiation in states are rationalization, progress,and justice (construction of the individual withrights). World society theory posits that internationalgovernmental organizations and NGOs are primarycarriers of world cultural ideals and models intodomestic contexts (Thomas, Meyer, Ramirez, andBoli 1987; Boli and Thomas 1998).

Transnational activist networks have thus played abroad and diffuse role, spreading and publicizinginternationally the proposed norm of death penaltyabolition. As Neumayer notes, ‘‘[n]on-state actorsand transnational advocacy groups like AmnestyInternational or HRW have played a very importantrole... in defining the death penalty as a humanrights issue and in lobbying for its abolition world-wide’’ (Neumayer 2008:251–252). Abolition, as anideal or aspiration, has thus become part of worldculture. Political elites around the world, and publicsin many parts of it, have encountered the idea ofabolition and at least some of the arguments in favorof it. Yet, though virtually all countries in the worldhave been exposed to the idea, not every country

abolishes the death penalty and those that doembrace abolition do so on varying timetables.

We suggest that explaining the pattern of deathpenalty abolition implicates causal factors at two lev-els, the international and the domestic. At the inter-national level, the idea of death penalty abolitionhas diffused to such an extent that all countries havebeen exposed to it.6 We examine the propositionthat the international norm of abolition, when for-malized in treaties and institutionalized in specificinternational organizations, affects national decisionsto abolish. We also look to domestic-level factors,especially the institutional form of democracy, toexplain much of the variation in the timing ofnational decisions to abolish. This approach paral-lels, albeit in a quite different domain of research,the opportunity and willingness approach developedby Starr and others, in that it separates the questionof what environmental forces tend toward an out-come from the question of why some countries suc-cumb to these forces while others do not.7 Thequestion we seek to answer is, given that the idea ofabolition has been available around the world withincreasing visibility since the 1960s, why some stateshave chosen to end capital punishment and othershave not.

Regional Norms and Institutions

We suggest that anti-death penalty norms diffuse mosteffectively when they are institutionalized in regionalorganizations. Research has produced some evidencethat the diffusion of international norms sometimeshas a strong regional effect (Ramirez, Soysal, andShanahan 1997; Simmons 2000). Two mechanismscould produce this phenomenon. The first is a type ofcontagion effect; states are more likely to abolish capi-tal punishment, the more other states in their regionhave already done so. The second is an institutionalmechanism: regional organizations can create variousincentives for states to abolish the death penalty. Neu-mayer finds that both regional contagion generallyand specific regional organizations in Western Europeaffect the likelihood of abolition (Neumayer 2008). InEurope, both the Council of Europe (COE) and theEuropean Union (EU) have actively promoted deathpenalty abolition. Hood goes so far as to arguethat though multiple causes are responsible for thespread of abolition, none is as ‘‘vital as the politicalinfluence and pressure exerted by European politicalinstitutions’’ (Hood 2002:16). We hypothesize thatregional institutional incentives had an effect on abo-lition, especially among the Central and Eastern Euro-pean countries that democratized after 1990.

The main European institutions (the COE andthe EU) actively promoted abolition in newly

6 This is not to argue that world culture is the only source of the ideaof abolition, only that it is an important and global one, especially with therise of international human rights after World War II. In some states, theidea of abolition emerged from local sources. For instance, the dynamicdeath penalty abolition movement in Britain predated the creation of theimportant international human rights NGOs like Amnesty International.The engine of abolition was a committed core of political figures in theLabour Party (with its roots in the pre-World War II era) and supportiveprivate associations within Britain (Christoph 1962; Rutherford 1996). Abo-lition in the United Kingdom (provisionally in 1965 and permanently in1969) certainly contributed to the international abolitionist movement.

7 The opportunity and willingness framework seeks to explain the diffu-sion of modes of political interaction or organization. It also, as we do,highlights both geographic and political explanatory variables. See the stud-ies by Siverson and Starr (1990); Starr (1991); Cioffi-Revilla and Starr(1995); Starr and Lindborg (2003).

3Anthony McGann and Wayne Sandholtz

independent states of Central and Eastern Europe.The COE and the EU exercised considerable influ-ence because the transition states were eager to con-solidate their fledgling democracies and marketeconomies by joining these key European institu-tions. With respect to the COE, some newly indepen-dent states abolished the death penalty beforejoining; it is difficult to assess the extent to whichanticipation of COE membership figured among themotivations for abolition. In other cases, the Parlia-mentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE)played an active role in pushing for abolition. TheParliamentary Assembly did not make death penaltyabolition an explicit requirement for the early appli-cants, like Hungary in 1990 or Estonia and Lithuaniain 1993. It did, however, attach ‘‘great importance tothe commitment expressed by the Lithuanianauthorities to sign and ratify the European Conven-tion on Human Rights’’ (the opinion on the Esto-nian application contained similar language)(Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe1993a,b).

By the mid-1990s, the COE had made signatureand ratification of Protocol No. 6 to the ECHR acondition of joining (Parliamentary Assembly of theCouncil of Europe 1994: paragraph 6; ParliamentaryAssembly of the Council of Europe 1996a: paragraph6). Protocol No. 6 (Council of Europe 1983) bansexecutions, though it permits states to retain capitalpunishment provisions for times of war or imminentthreat of war (Art. 2). Thus, the PACE opinion onLatvia’s application for membership declared thatLatvia had committed itself to ratifying the ECHRand Protocol No. 6 within a year of accession (Parlia-mentary Assembly of the Council of Europe 1995d).The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Arme-nia, Georgia, and the Federal Republic of Yugoslaviaalso agreed to 1-year time frames for ratifying Proto-col No. 6.8 The agreements with Moldova, Albania,Ukraine, Croatia, and Russia required ratification ofProtocol No. 6 within 3 years of joining the COE.9

Some Council of Europe accession agreements obli-gated new members to establish an immediate mora-torium on executions (Albania, Russia, Ukraine) orto pass within 1-year legislation abolishing the deathpenalty in domestic criminal codes (Armenia). Inshort, we suggest that the most powerful interna-tional influences on death penalty abolition havebeen incentives institutionalized in the major Euro-pean organizations.

Explaining Patterns of Abolition: Domestic Factors

Though abolition as a nascent international normhas been gaining prominence since World War II,some countries have embraced it more quickly thanothers. Domestic institutional and cultural factors

condition a country’s receptivity to new internationalnorms (Cortell and Davis 1996, 2000; Koh 1996,1998).

Consensus Democracy

The most prominent pattern is that abolition occursonly in democracies. Indeed, autocratic governmentsoften use executions as a tool of social and politicalrepression, to eliminate critics and intimidate poten-tial opponents. Thus, in a cross-sectional analysis of140 countries, Ruddell and Urbina (2004:922) findthat ‘‘democratic countries are more likely to haveabolished capital punishment.’’ Neumayer confirmsthat finding using time series data covering 1950–2002 (Neumayer 2008).

The precise nature of the link between democra-cies and death penalty abolition is less clear. Democ-racies do not necessarily end capital punishment asa simple response to public opinion. Indeed, aboli-tion frequently occurs despite solid majorities ofpublic opinion that favor its retention. For example,popular majorities supported the death penalty inFrance, Germany, the United Kingdom, and Canadawhen those countries abolished it (Hood 2002:234).During the more recent round of abolition in Cen-tral and Eastern Europe, public opinion frequentlyfavored retention of the death penalty. In Czechoslo-vakia, for instance, Parliament banned the deathpenalty for all offenses in May 1990, ‘‘despite sub-stantial public opposition’’ (Frankowski 1996:227).Similarly, during the 1990s, a solid majority of thePolish public opposed abolition, even as Polandended capital punishment (Frankowski 1996:230). InLithuania, 70–80% of the public favored the deathpenalty, and public support for abolition declinedfrom 27% in 1990 to 18.3% in 1997 (Dobryninas2004:236–37). Nevertheless, Lithuania abolished thedeath penalty for all crimes in its criminal code in1998 and ratified ECHR Protocol No. 6 in 1999. Insome countries, majority public support for capitalpunishment has persisted even after its legal aboli-tion; examples include Austria, Canada, the UnitedKingdom, and Romania (Frankowski 1996). In Geor-gia, a 1996 opinion poll showed that after the rein-statement of a moratorium on executions, 38% ofrespondents supported abolition, with 47% opposed(Svanidze 2004:278).

Only democracies abolish the death penalty, butthey do it on widely varying timetables. The Nether-lands abolished capital punishment for ordinarycrimes in 1870, Norway did so in 1905, Switzerlandin 1942, New Zealand in 1961, and Canada in 1976(Hood 2002:249–251). We argue that institutionaldifferences among democracies affect the likelihoodthat a democracy will abolish the death penalty. Wehypothesize that institutions that encourage adeliberative form of democracy are more likely tolead to abolition than institutions that produceplebiscitarian decision making, and that PR parlia-mentary systems tend most toward deliberativedecision making. Presidentialism and plurality

8 Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (1995c, 1999a,2000, 2002).

9 Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (1995a,b,e,1996b,c).


(‘‘first-past-the-post’’) elections tend toward plebisci-tarian outcomes.

Theorists of deliberative democracy, such as Fish-kin (1995), argue that a well-functioning democracydoes not simply amplify unreflective public opinionbut rather produces the outcome that direct democ-racy would produce if everyone had the time toinform themselves and engage in a public debate.Experimental evidence suggests that deliberationmay lead to quite drastic changes in public opinion.For example, a deliberative poll supervised by Fish-kin in Bulgaria in 2002 found that 55% of a panelselected randomly from the population supportedcapital punishment before deliberation but that afterdeliberation only 34% did (Center for DeliberativeDemocracy 2002). We are not arguing that delibera-tion leads to a normatively superior outcome (fornormative arguments about deliberative and plebisci-tarian democracy see Christiano 1996: chapter 6;Powell 2000; McGann 2006: chapter 6); we cite thisresearch only to suggest that forms of democracythat foster greater deliberation might produce differ-ent configurations of public opinion and differentpolicy outcomes.

We can divide democratic institutions according totwo criteria: whether the electoral system for thelegislature is proportional or not and whether theexecutive is directly elected (presidential) orappointed by the legislature (parliamentary). Wewould expect, following Nino (1996) and McGann(2006), that the institutions most likely to promotedeliberation are PR elections and parliamentary gov-ernment. PR leads to multi-party legislatures whereno single party has a legislative majority (Duverger[1954], 1963; Rae 1967; Taagepera and Shugart1989). However, in a parliamentary system, it is nec-essary to assemble a majority coalition to govern. Asa result, government formation and policy making isthe result of a process of negotiation between par-ties, as opposed to there being a winning party thatis able to impose its will. In negotiated democracies,even parties that do not form the eventual govern-ment have considerable influence over policybecause of their role in the bargaining process(Strom 1990). However, both single-member districtplurality (first-past-the-post) elections and presiden-tial systems have a winner-take-all dynamic that leadsto more plebiscitarian decision making. Pluralityelections often lead to single party government, andonly one candidate can win the presidency. In bothcases, the electorate is often faced with a clearchoice between two viable and competing alterna-tives, which have little incentive to negotiate withone another. Our distinction is similar to Lijphart’s(1999) distinction between ‘‘consensus’’ and ‘‘major-itarian’’ democracy, except that Lijphart considersmany presidential systems (especially those withmany checks and balances) to be ‘‘consensusdemocracies.’’

Let us consider how this applies to death penaltyabolition. Let us assume that a majority of the publicin each of these countries favors retention. What

needs to be shown is that one type of politicalsystem is more likely than another to allow pro-abolitionist parliamentarians to win abolition inparliament. One way to demonstrate the point is tothink of the differing severity of obstacles that differ-ent political systems place in the way of abolition.Winner-take-all political systems (systems with presi-dentialism or plurality elections) present the mostformidable obstacles to abolition, including the mostformidable of all: they keep abolition off the politi-cal agenda. In a political system with only twoparties, and when a majority of the public favorsretention of the death penalty (as we have assumed),neither party in a two-party system has any incentiveto step forward in favor of abolition. In a two-partysystem, both parties must appeal to the median voterand the median voter is abolitionist. Neither partywill oppose capital punishment because to do sowould be politically costly, as the other party wouldexploit such a stance by accusing the abolitionistparty of being ‘‘soft on crime.’’ Even if there were anarrow public majority in favor of abolition, it maywell be rational for both parties and candidates toavoid taking a position on an issue that divides theelectorate. Either way, the abolition issue stays offthe agenda. Presidential systems may provide yetadditional obstacles for abolition. Presidential sys-tems are typically associated with constitutionalchecks and balances and separation of powers thatrequire more than a simple majority to change thelaw.

Proportional representation parliamentary democ-racies place fewer obstacles in the way of abolition,even when similar popular majorities favor retention.First, in contrast with winner-take-all democracies,abolition can be on the political agenda. Parties donot have to tailor their policies to the median voter;they can mobilize and appeal to more diverse seg-ments of opinion. Second, where abolition can beon the agenda, it is discussed and debated. In con-trast, for example, in the two-party United States,death penalty abolition is simply not a political orelectoral issue. There is no death penalty debate ofany political consequence. When abolition can beon the agenda and debated, elite and mass opinionsupport for it can grow. Third, given the complexdynamics of negotiated coalition governments, it ispossible for a parliamentary coalition to support abo-lition even though a majority of the public does not.Center-left coalitions could fit this description. Evenwhen abolition is supported by smaller partners in acoalition government, the other parties might agreeto abolition as a condition for the pro-abolitionparty’s support on other issues. Finally, it may alsobe the case that the some of the practical argumentsfor abolition (administration costs, reluctance ofjuries to convict in capital cases, propaganda valuefor terrorists) may be very persuasive in a parliamen-tary setting, but have far less effect on public opinionor on parties in a two-party, winner-take-all system.

Existing empirical evidence is consistent with theargument that consensus democracies place fewer


obstacles to abolition than do systems that tend toproduce two-party competition. Lijphart (1999) sug-gests that this ‘‘consensus’’ form of democracy is‘‘kinder and gentler’’ than ‘‘majoritarian’’ democra-cies. He finds that among the 36 democracies heexamines, the consensus democracies are ‘‘less puni-tive... with fewer people in prison and with less orno use of capital punishment’’ (Lijphart 1999:297).Another study found a bivariate correlation betweenthe number of political parties in parliament andabolition of the death penalty. Multi-party systemswere associated with abolition (though the relation-ship did not achieve significance in a multipleregression). The authors interpreted that result asindicating that whereas two-party systems require pol-iticians to stake out a retentionist position, multi-party systems allow politicians to ‘‘be involved inmore nuanced discussions of the death penalty’’(Van Koppen, Hessing, and de Poot 2002:86).

In sum, we expect countries with a parliamentarysystem and PR to be more likely to abolish thancountries with other electoral systems. Abolitionwould be less likely in countries with parliamentarygovernment and single-member district elections,and still less likely in presidential systems. Even here,however, abolition will be far more likely than innondemocracies.

Democratic Transitions

Democracies may also experience an impetus towardabolition during periods of transition from repres-sive regimes. Three arguments support a connectionbetween democratic transitions and death penaltyabolition. First, abolition may be a reaction againstthe use of capital punishment as a political weaponunder previous, repressive regimes. Reacting againstpast abuses, democratizing regimes may be moti-vated to eliminate capital punishment. Indeed,Schabas points out that the ‘‘right to life’’ languagethat appeared in post-World War II internationalhuman rights documents was aimed principally atthe death penalty, a reaction to the horrible excessesthat had occurred in the use of executions for politi-cal and wartime purposes (Schabas 1997:6–7).Regarding the democratic transitions of the 1980s,Amnesty International noted: ‘‘Dramatic politicalchanges may create new opportunities for the pro-motion of human rights. Countries such as Argen-tina, Brazil, Haiti, Nicaragua, Peru and thePhilippines have all abolished the death penalty overthe last decade after emerging from periods of polit-ical repression’’ (Amnesty International 1989:72–73).

Second, when governments in democratizingcountries include elements from the previous repres-sive regime (postcommunist parties, for examples),they may support abolition as a means of shieldingparticipants in the former regime from capital pun-ishment. For instance, within a month of the fall ofCeasescu in Romania, the National Salvation Frontdecreed an end to the death penalty, replacing itwith life in prison. Public reaction to abolition was

‘‘largely negative,’’ in part because of a perceptionthat the Front, led by former Communist Party secre-tary Ion Iliescu, had acted simply to protect formermembers of the communist regime from possibledeath sentences (Frankowski 1996:226). Third, gov-ernments in transition states may perceive that deathpenalty abolition is necessary in order to be acceptedas a legitimate, modern state. Abolition may not bepart of legitimate statehood everywhere in the world,but it clearly is in Europe where it has become insti-tutionalized in Europe’s core regional institutions,the EU and the COE.10 Democratizing countries inEastern and Central Europe in the 1990s frequentlyabandoned the death penalty in order to beaccepted as ‘‘European’’ and to gain admission tothe EU and the COE.

We have outlined three arguments as to why coun-tries undergoing democratic transitions might bemore likely to abandon the death penalty. The threearguments are complementary; the motivations theydescribe could be present simultaneously in a givendemocratizing state. In addition, prior research hasfound a relationship between democratization anddeath penalty abolition (Neumayer 2008:250). Wetherefore include it as a variable in our analysis.

Variables and Data

The unit of analysis in our empirical models is thecountry-year. Our data run from 1960 to 2005, whichessentially cover the post-World War II period (onlytwo countries abolished the death penalty duringthe 1950s, Austria for ordinary crimes in 1950 andHonduras for all crimes in 1956). Only three aboli-tions occurred in the 1940s, all for ordinary crimes(Finland, Italy, and Switzerland). We are interestedin what causes countries to abolish the deathpenalty. However, because of ‘‘left censoring’’ (thefact that some countries abolished before 1960), werequire two dependent variables. The first is theprobability that a country abolishes in any givenyear, given that it has not previously abolished (tech-nically, the hazard rate). Secondly, there is the prob-ability that a country will be left censored, that is,that it abolished before 1960. Given that the dataare annual, we can estimate the probability of aboli-tion using a simple probit link function (see Beck,Katz, and Tucker 1998).11 We do not make specificassumptions about how the baseline hazard functionchanges over time. Instead we use a natural cubicspline to model the background hazard rate with a

10 Death penalty abolition may in time become part of the world-cul-tural model of legitimate statehood; indeed, this article is in part an exami-nation of the process by which that is occurring. At present, it is difficult toclaim that abolition already constitutes part of the world-cultural model.Out of 197 countries evaluated by Amnesty International, 58 still qualify asretentionist. Among the 58 are major states like China, Egypt, India, Indo-nesia, Japan, Nigeria, and the United States. See the study by AmnestyInternational (2010).

11 Formally, the model is p(abolition|not yet abolished) =N(BX + spl(t)), where X are the independent variables, B the coefficients,spl(t) is the spline smoothed time intercept explained in the Appendix,and N() is the cumulative standard normal distribution function.


knot for each decade (1960, 1970, 1980, 1990, 2000,and 2005). The resulting intercepts can be inter-preted roughly as dummy variables for each timeperiod, except that the intercept changes smoothlybetween the knots instead of changing suddenlyevery decade (see De Boor 1978). This is roughlyequivalent to the Cox nonparametric approach forcontinuous duration data (see Box-Steffensmeierand Jones 2004). We would expect the probability ofabolition in the 1960s to be low (most of the likelycandidates will have already abolished), but torecover in the 1980s and 1990s as new democraciesenter the data set.

Our main independent variables concern forms ofdemocratic government and the signing of interna-tional conventions. We have three variables thatexhaustively classify democratic governments aseither PR parliamentary, presidential, or winner-take-all (WTA) parliamentary. The source of the classifi-cation is Colomer (2001). A system is presidential ifthe chief executive is democratically elected by thepeople, and parliamentary if it is chosen by the legis-lature. Winner-take-all legislative electoral systemsinclude single-member district plurality, run-off,single-transferable vote, and mixed systems where atleast half the seats are not PR. A nondemocraticregime is indicated by a score of zero on all threevariables.

We operationalize international effects in twoways. Firstly, there is a set of independent variablesthat captures state participation in various interna-tional treaties designed to eliminate capital punish-ment. We employ the year of signature rather thanthe year of ratification because the act of signing aninternational convention indicates a country’s inten-tion to accept, and comply with, the legal obligationenunciated in the treaty. Furthermore, it is possiblefor countries to abolish the death penalty in domes-tic law after signing the relevant convention butbefore ratifying it. Belgium, for example, signed theECHR Protocol No. 6 in 1983, abolished the deathpenalty for all crimes in 1996, and ratified ProtocolNo. 6 in 1998. In such cases, we would consider thesignature of the treaty to have influenced the domes-tic decision to abolish. The ACHR variable indicatesthe year in which a country signed the Optional Pro-tocol to the American Convention on Human Rights(Organization of American States 2006). The ECHRvariable records the year in which a country signedProtocol No. 6 to the European Convention onHuman Rights (Council of Europe 2006). TheICCPR variable captures the year in which a countryeither signed or acceded to the Second OptionalProtocol (Office of the United Nations High Com-missioner for Human Rights 2006).

Secondly, we consider the effect of the regionalenvironment in terms of abolition. We divided theworld into ten regions (see online Appendix) andconstructed a new variable with the percentage ofcountries in each region that had abolished in eachyear. This captures diffusion and demonstrationeffects. It should be noted that regional abolition

rate and the international treaty variables are verycollinear (countries that sign international conven-tions that call for abolition tend to be in regionswith high abolition rates). Therefore, the regionalabolition rate variable and the international treatyvariables were not used together in the analysis.

The analysis also includes a number of additionalcontrol variables. One basic control is a measure ofdevelopment level, Gross Domestic Product (GDP)per capita. Economic development appears to influ-ence social and political values. We also include aseries of dichotomous variables to control for majorreligious traditions, indicating countries where thepredominant religion is Islam, Catholicism, orProtestantism (all others constituting the omittedcategory). Major religious traditions are commonlyincluded in cross-national analyses as variables thatcapture elements of culture (along with geographicregions, which we have included as well). We includethese variables as controls, holding no theory-basedexpectations regarding their relationship with aboli-tion. Previous research does indicate an empiricallybased expectation regarding Islam. In various inter-national forums that have addressed proposed inter-national norms against capital punishment, Islamiccountries have consistently opposed such agreements(Schabas 2000:225).

Results

We will start by considering the probability of aboli-tion prior to 1960 (Table 2). We then consider theprobability of abolition given that abolition did notoccur prior to 1960. Table 2 gives the probit resultsfor abolition prior to 1960. PR parliamentary democ-racy has a very strong positive effect, while presiden-tial democracy has a weaker, but still positive effect.There were no cases of winner-take-all democraciesabolishing before 1960. Similarly, there were no pre-dominantly Muslim countries that abolished prior toour time period. The other religious variables andGDP per capita did not have significant effects.

Probit regression is nonlinear, and as a result, it isdifficult to interpret the coefficients directly. How-ever, we can generate simulations. Table 3 gives theprobability of countries of various types abolishingbefore 1960. It is notable that a PR parliamentarydemocracy with a median income had a more than60% probability of abolishing the death penaltybefore 1960. Middle income Protestant countrieshad only an 11% probability of abolishing before1960, but when PR parliamentary democracy wascombined with Protestantism, the probability rose toover 95%.

Table 4 gives the result of the analysis of the haz-ard rate for abolition given that abolition did notoccur prior to 1960. As expected, PR parliamentarydemocracy and signature of ECHR Protocol No. 6have significantly positive effects on the probabilityof abolition. Signing the ACHR optional protocolhas a very strong effect—indeed it is sufficient toguarantee abolition by itself, as the protocol directly


abolishes the death penalty. It is notable that percapita GDP has next to no effect. We suspect thatthe effect of democratic government absorbs most ofthe effect of GDP, as long-lived democracies are typi-cally middle or high income. The intercepts for thevarious years are calculated using cubic splinesmoothing (see Appendix). Thus, the interceptchanges smoothly from )1.81 in 1960 to )2.575 in

1970. This accounts for the change in the back-ground hazard over time.

We also ran a few other specifications to check therobustness of the results. (These results are given inthe online Appendix.) We reran the analysis withregional dummy variables. None of the regionaldummies had a significant effect except that forCentral and Eastern Europe, and the results wereotherwise extremely similar. We also ran the analysiswith a dummy variable for being a postcommunistcountry. Unsurprisingly, this behaved very similarlyto the Central and East Europe dummy variable andhad a significant effect. It seems that Central andEastern Europe after the fall of communism was veryripe territory for death penalty abolition. However,although abolition was more likely in this regionthan elsewhere, the factors affecting the relative like-lihood of countries to abolish (PR parliamentarydemocracy and membership of international conven-tions) were the same. We also performed the analysiswith abolition for all crimes (as opposed to ordinarycrimes) as our dependent variables. The results arevery similar—it appears that the same factors thatmake abolition for ordinary crimes likely also dis-pose countries to abolish for all crimes.12

As noted, probit regression results are extremelydifficult to interpret directly. However, we can gener-ate simulations using our model results.13 Table 5gives the probability of countries of various typesabolishing in a 10-year period. As noted, abolition inthe early periods is unlikely because most of thecountries that were likely to abolish had already

TABLE 2. Determinants of Abolition Prior to 1960

Coefficient SE z p

(Intercept) )2.655 0.07548 )3.517 0.000GDP per capita 0.00002090 0.00007807 0.268 0.789Catholic 0.09653 0.07216 1.338 0.181Protestant 1.409 0.09734 1.447 0.148Muslim )3.274 No Muslim-majority countries

abolished before 1960PR parliamentary democracy 2.895 0.09515 3.043 0.002Presidential democracy 1.653 0.06146 2.690 0.007WTA parliamentary democracy )3.857 No winner-take-all

parliamentary democraciesabolished before 1960

(Note. N = 92. Statistically significant coefficients are in bold.WTA, ‘‘winner take all’’; GDP, Gross Domestic Product; PR, proportional representation.)

TABLE 3. Probability of Abolition Prior to 1960 (GDP at Median)

PR parliamentary democracy 60.6Presidential democracy 16.6WTA parliamentary democracy 0Catholic 4.8Protestant 11.2Muslim 0PR Parliamentary + Protestant 95.3

(Note. GDP, Gross Domestic Product; PR, proportional representation.)

TABLE 4. Determinants of Hazard Rate for Abolition

Coefficient SE z p

Intercept: 1960* )1.810 0.187 )18.135 2.00E-16Intercept: 1970 )2.575 0.117 )18.678 2.00E-16Intercept: 1980 )1.790 0.1136 )25.102 2.00E-16Intercept: 1990 )1.667 0.116 )4.638 3.52E-06Intercept: 2000 )1.472 0.1941 )33.663 2.00E-16Intercept: 2005 )2.902 0.2436 )4.585 4.54E-06GDP per capita )0.000002082 0.00001199 )0.174 0.862Catholic 0.06218 0.1606 3.873 0.000Protestant 0.1710 0.3312 0.516 0.606Muslim )0.2406 0.2078 )1.158 0.247PR parliamentarydemocracy

0.7436 0.3164 2.350 0.019

Presidentialdemocracy

0.1999 0.1955 1.022 0.307

WTAparliamentarydemocracy

0.3615 0.2001 1.807 0.071

Signed ECHR 0.5826 0.3577 1.629 0.103Signed ACHR 6.358 23.21 0.274 Sufficient

conditionSigned ICCPR )0.7856 0.6716 )1.170 0.242

(Notes. Statistically significant coefficients are in bold. *See Appendix.GDP, Gross Domestic Product; PR, proportional representation.)

12 Abolition for ordinary crimes is the outcome of greatest interest, asit covers capital punishment for offenses under a country’s criminal stat-utes. The death penalty for ordinary crimes is the category of capital pun-ishment that publics and political elites are aware of and debate. Theremaining category of capital punishment covers only special and narrowlydefined offenses like treason or crimes committed during times of war ornational emergency. Such offenses are, compared to ordinary crimes sub-ject to capital punishment, exceptionally rare.

13 The probability of abolition in the intercept years (1960, 1970, 1980,1990, 2000, and 2005) can be calculated simply as: p(abolition) = N(XB),where X are the independent variables, B the coefficients (including therelevant intercept), and N is the cumulative standard normal distributionfunction. For years between the intercept years the spline approach givenin the Appendix is used so that the background probability changessmoothly.


done so by 1960, leaving only the cases less disposedto abolish. Therefore, abolition is most likely in the1990–1999 and 2000–2005 periods where democratictransitions have replenished the pool of likely candi-dates for death penalty abolition. The simulationsfor 1990–1999 demonstrate that there are a numberof factors, any one of which is enough to make aboli-tion more likely than not within a 10-year period.Even without other favorable factors, PR parliamen-tary democracy, Catholicism, and signing ECHR Pro-tocol No. 6 raise the probability of abolition within10 years to around 50%. If more than one favorablefactor is present, then the probability is even higher.This is consistent with the hypothesis that domesticconditions, such as PR parliamentary democracy, canlead to abolition on their own, but that regionalorganizations, such as the COE and the EU, can bevital in cases that are not determined by domesticfactors. In particular, pressure from the EU and theCOE (to ratify the ECHR and its Protocol No. 6)may have been decisive in the 1990s in several statesin Central and Eastern Europe that adopted presi-dential forms of democracy.

The results of these simulations can be graphed.Figure 1 illustrates the equivalence of various factorsthat lead to abolition. Each line represents thechange in probability of abolition during the suc-ceeding 10 years for a specific variable across time.For reasons previously noted, the baseline probabil-ity of abolition falls in the 1960s, but rises again inthe 1980s and 1990s as many new countries democ-ratize. In every time period, the presence of a PRparliamentary system in a country is the single vari-able that most increases the probability of abolition.Indeed, during the 1990s, the probability of aboli-tion happening in PR parliamentary countries within10 years peaks at over 60%. However, both Catholi-cism and signing the ECHR also raise the probabilityof abolition very significantly.

Figure 2 demonstrates the effects that combina-tions of variables have on the likelihood of abolition.According to our simulations, a Catholic countrywith a PR parliamentary system (the top line) isalmost certain to abolish during the 1990s. A Protes-

tant country with a PR parliamentary system is alsohighly likely to abolish during this period. However,a Protestant country with presidential democracythat has signed the ECHR is actually slightly morelikely to abolish than a Protestant PR parliamentarycountry. Thus, while domestic political institutionsmay make abolition highly likely in some cases, inter-national norms can play a significant role wheninternal conditions are not so favorable to abolition.

TABLE 5. Estimated Probability of Abolition Within Period (GDP at Median Value)

1960–1969 1970–1979 1980–1989 1990–1999 2000–2005

Baseline probability 1.5 1.6 5.7 14.5 2.4Catholic 8.9 9.3 25.2 47.2 11Protestant 2.6 2.7 8.9 21.1 3.8Muslim 0.7 0.7 2.8 8 1.2PR parliamentary democracy 11.9 12.5 31.8 55.6 14.2Presidential democracy 2.8 3 9.6 22.4 4WTA parliamentary democracy 4.5 4.7 14.3 30.8 6.1Signed ECHR 23.3 44.5 10.1Signed ACHR 100 100 100Signed ICCPR 5.7 14.5 2.4PR parliamentary + Catholic 40.8 42.2 73.2 90.7 41.1PR parliamentary + Protestant 17.6 18.3 42.5 67.3 19.8Presidential + ECHR + Protestant 19.1 19.9 45.1 69.9 21.3

(Note. GDP, Gross Domestic Product; PR, proportional representation.)

FIG 1. Equivalence of Various Factors in Probability of Abolition(probability of abolition within 10 years)

PR parliamentary + Catholic

PR parliamentary + Protestant

Presidential + Protestant + Signed ECHR

baseline

FIG 2. Probability of Abolition under various Scenarios (probabil-ity of abolition within 10 years)


That is, countries whose political systems make themless likely to abolish can nevertheless be tippedtoward abolition by regional organizations that cre-ate powerful incentives to sign abolitionist treaties.

For instance, Poland adopted a presidential systemupon independence in 1989. Since the 1960s, about55% of the Polish public had favored retention ofthe death penalty. That share rose after 1989, possi-bly because of the increase in crime that followedthe collapse of the communist regime (Frankowski1996:230). Given its presidential system and strongpopular sentiment favoring retention of the deathpenalty, Poland would seem an unlikely prospect forabolition in the 1990s. Poland applied for EU mem-bership in 1994; the European Commission’s assess-ment of the Polish application noted that any statedesiring to join the EU must first have ratified theECHR and ‘‘its main additional protocols.’’ TheCommission then pointed out that Poland had notyet ratified Protocol No. 6 (European Commission1997a: section 1.2). In its annual reports on enlarge-ment, the Commission included tables listing themajor human rights conventions and showing whichof them had been ratified by the applicant countries.The 1999 and 2000 reports showed Poland as nothaving ratified Protocol No. 6 (European Commis-sion 1999b: annex 3, 2000: annex 3). The continuedattention of the EU paid off; by 2001 Poland waslisted as a ratifier of Protocol No. 6 (European Com-mission 2001: annex 4). A similar pattern can be seenin Lithuania. Here, in spite of strong public supportfor the death penalty and a presidential system, theCOE played a significant role in creating an environ-ment in which the Lithuanian Constitutional Courtruled the death penalty unconstitutional (Hodgkin-son 2000:637; Dobryninas 2004:236; Puhar 2005).

It is also worth noting that pressure from Euro-pean organizations proved crucial in some countriesthat did not have presidential systems. Georgia, forinstance, had not fully consolidated its transition inthe mid-1990s and in our data set does not appearas either a presidential or a parliamentary democ-racy. It was, however, applying for membership inthe COE. According to one observer, the need toaccede to the ECHR and its protocols was the mostpowerful argument put forward by proponents ofabolition (Svanidze 2004:281). In fact, the preambleto the 1997 law that abolished capital punishmentmade reference to the desire of Georgia to integrateitself into Europe (Puhar 2005:79); ratification ofProtocol No. 6 followed in 2000. Estonia, on theother hand, had instituted a PR system, but stillfound it difficult to abolish the death penalty. Esto-nia signed Protocol No. 6 in 1993 when it joined theCOE, but the parliament delayed ratification, withmost speakers calling for retention of the death pen-alty (Puhar 2005:75). Peter Hodgkinson, as the COEexpert on the death penalty, participated in thedeath penalty abolition discussions with Estonia.Hodgkinson concluded that Estonia, which hadbeen ‘‘the most vociferous opponent to abolition,’’had ratified Protocol No. 6 because it had been

included on ‘‘the short list for prospective member-ship in the EU’’ (Hodgkinson 2000:636–637).

The EU has similarly promoted abolition throughits enlargement process. By the early 1990s, as thenewly independent states of Central and EasternEurope began to apply for EU membership, all ofthe existing 15 EU member states had ratified Proto-col No. 6 except Belgium, Greece, and the UnitedKingdom. All three ratified by 1999. The EuropeanCouncil established in 1993 the ‘‘Copenhagen Crite-ria,’’ political, economic, and legislative conditionsthat applicant states would have to meet beforeaccession. The reports by the European Commissionon progress by acceding states toward meeting thesegoals included progress toward abolishing the deathpenalty and ratifying Protocol No. 6. This death pen-alty criterion, applied to the 2007 entrants (Bulgariaand Romania) as well, will apply in any subsequentenlargements. In short, specific cases reinforce theresults of the data analysis, which indicate a signifi-cant role for European organizations in tippingstates toward abolition when domestic political obsta-cles might otherwise have prevented it. Europeaninstitutions have played an active role in pushingnew democracies in Eastern and Central Europetoward abolition of the death penalty.

We can also consider the effect of internationalinfluence through regional effects instead of throughinternational agreements. (It is noted that because ofcollinearity, it is not possible to consider the twoeffects simultaneously.) Table 6 gives the results forthe hazard rate for countries that did not abolishprior to 1960. The results are very similar to thosereported above, with PR parliamentary democracyand Catholicism having strongly significant effects.The regional variable also has a significant effect.

We can generate simulations as before. We dem-onstrate our results graphically in Figure 3. PR par-liamentary democracy substantially increases theprobability of abolition in all time periods, evenwhen the country is in a region where no othercountries have yet abolished. However, being in aregion where 75% of countries have abolished alsoraises the probability of abolition greatly. A countrywith PR parliamentary democracy in a region wheremost other countries have already abolished isalmost certain to abolish within a 10-year period.

Conclusion

The idea of ending capital punishment becameincreasingly prominent internationally after WorldWar II. Some states and major NGOs have pusheddeath penalty abolition as an emergent norm, but it isa norm that some states choose to embrace and othersdo not. Only democracies abolish. We argued thatsome kinds of democracy—namely, consensus democ-racies defined by PR, parliamentary systems—are more likely to abolish than others. Parliamentarydemocracy and transitions from repressive regimeslead to abolition both among the early abolishers andin many of the recently democratized countries.


Where domestic factors were not sufficient to end capi-tal punishment, the incentive of membership in keyregional institutions has frequently been decisive.Prior to 1960, one path to abolition clearly stands out:Protestant countries with PR parliamentary systemswere extremely likely to abolish capital punishment.After 1960, there is a lull in abolition, followed by aburst of abolitions in the 1980s and 1990s, accompany-ing the waves of democratization in Latin Americanand in Central and Eastern Europe. For all of the inde-pendent variables, the probability of abolishing thedeath penalty rises sharply upward in the 1980s and1990s (Table 5). A crucial driving force behind theexpansion of abolition in the 1990s is the influence ofthe core European organizations. The prospect ofmembership in the COE and eventually in the EUpulled many of the new democracies of Central andEastern Europe toward abolition.

A few general conclusions appear to be validacross the period covered by our analysis. First, par-liamentary democracies with PR are more likely toend capital punishment than other types of political

systems. Our findings thus go some distance towardexplaining the oft-noted American exceptionalismwith respect to capital punishment.14 This study’sempirical findings support our argument that givenwidespread public support for capital punishment,consensus democracies are most able to abolish it.In two-party systems, the fear of being labeled ‘‘softon crime’’ inhibits either party from taking the leadon death penalty abolition. Second, religious tradi-tions exert a clear effect on the probability of aboli-tion. Following Vatican II, the Catholic Churchopposed capital punishment, and the effect of theCatholicism variable in the analysis clearly rose. Incontrast, Islam and Protestantism are not statisticallysignificant after 1960 (prior to that year, Islam is aperfect predictor of retention).

Naturally, a good deal of research remains to bedone. Though PR democracies are more likely toabolish the death penalty, the mechanisms by whichthey do so need to be explored. How the incentive ofCOE and EU membership led democratizing coun-tries to abolish should also be further examined. Weredomestic conditions in the transition democraciesfavorable to abolition, with membership in Europesimply tipping them in a direction they alreadyleaned? Or did the prospect of membership in Eur-ope lead to abolition in countries that might other-wise not have done away with capital punishment?

Appendix: Smoothing with Natural Cubic Splines

We use splines to deal with the fact that the back-ground hazard rate for the abolition of the deathpenalty varies over time. We could simply usedummy variables for different time periods (say,1960–1969, 1970–1979, etc.), but this would producea sharp change in the probability of abolition every10 years. Splines allow us to model a smooth transi-tion between the time periods.

Let us consider the simplest possible example of anatural cubic spline:

With splines we use ‘‘knots’’ to divide the graphinto sections. Each section is then represented by its

TABLE 6. Determinants of Hazard Rate for Abolition with RegionalAbolition Rates

Coefficient SE z p

Intercept: 1960 )2.419 0.1896 )18.013 2.00E-16Intercept: 1970 )3.202 0.1182 )19.368 2.00E-16Intercept: 1980 )2.450 0.1129 )25.238 2.00E-16Intercept: 1990 )2.317 0.1161 )6.64 3.15E-11Intercept: 2000 )2.167 0.1865 )35.105 2.00E-16Intercept: 2005 )3.383 0.227 )4.363 1.28E-05GDP per capita )0.000007072 0.00001331 )0.531 0.595Catholic 0.4308 0.1790 2.406 0.016Protestant 0.1012 0.3278 0.309 0.757Muslim )0.2122 0.2098 )1.011 0.312PR parliamentarydemocracy

0.7648 0.2636 2.901 0.004

Presidentialdemocracy

0.1959 0.1946 1.007 0.314

WTAparliamentarydemocracy

0.3045 0.2017 1.510 0.131

Regionalabolition rate

0.7182 0.2971 2.417 0.016

(Notes. Statistically significant coefficients are in bold.GDP, Gross Domestic Product; PR, proportional representation.)

baseline

PR parliamentary

PR parliamentary + regional abolition = 75%

Regional abolition = 75%

FIG 3. Effect of Democracy and Regional Abolition Rates on Prob-ability of Abolition within a 10-year period

x1(lower bound of data)

x3(upper bound of data)

x2

y1

y3

y2

f1: y = a1 x3 + b1 x2 + c1 x + d f2: y = a2 x3 + b2 x2 + c2x + d

14 Steiker (2002) insightfully explores ten political, sociological, andcultural propositions that might account for America’s retention of thedeath penalty as compared with Western Europe’s complete abandonmentof it; she does not, however, examine differences among democratic sys-tems.


own cubic equation. The graph pictured has threeknots—two boundary knots (x1 and x3), which repre-sent the lowest and highest data points, and oneinterior knot (x2). For values between x1 and x2, theheight of the graph is given by function f1 (y = a1

x3 + b1 x2 + c1 x + d), between x2 and x3, it is given byfunction f2 (y = a2 x3 + b2 x2 + c2x + d).

Although this gives us eight parameters, if weknow the height of the graph at the three knots (y1,y2 and y3), we can uniquely determine all eightparameters and thus give the y value for any value ofx. This is because we impose certain constraints. Weassume that the graph is continuous at the interiorknot, so f1(x2) = f2(x2). We also assume that the firstand second derivatives are continuous at the knot,so f1¢(x2) = f2¢(x2) and f1¢¢(x2) = f2¢¢(x2), where f ¢ andf ¢¢ are the first and second derivatives of f. Finally,we assume that beyond the boundary knots, thegraph is linear and thus that the second derivativesat the boundary knots are zero (f1¢¢(x1) =f2¢¢(x3) = 0). (This last assumption makes our exam-ple a ‘‘natural spline’’.) Thus, our constraints are

f1 x1ð Þ ¼ a1x31 þ b1x2

1 þ c1x1 þ d ¼ y1

f1 x2ð Þ ¼ a1x32 þ b1x2

2 þ c1x2 þ d ¼ y2

f2 x3ð Þ ¼ a2x33 þ b2x2

3 þ c2x3 þ d ¼ y3

f 1 x2ð Þ ¼ f2 x2ð Þ : a1x32 þ b1x2

2 þ c1x2 þ d

¼ a2x32 þ b2x2

2 þ c2x2 þ d

f 01 x2ð Þ ¼ f 02 x2ð Þ : 3a1x22 þ 2b1x2 þ c1 ¼ 3a2x2

2 þ 2b2x2 þ c2

f 001 x2ð Þ ¼ f 002 x2ð Þ : 6a1x2 þ 2b1 ¼ 6a2x2 þ 2b2

f 001 x1ð Þ ¼ 6a1x1 þ 2b1 ¼ 0

f 002 x3ð Þ ¼ 6a2x3 þ 2b2 ¼ 0

We can put these linear constraints in matrix form:

x31 x2

1 x1 1 0 0 0 0

x32 x2

2 x2 1 0 0 0 0

0 0 0 0 x33 x3

3 x33 1

x32 x2

2 x2 1 �x32 �x2

2 �x2 �1

3x22 2x2 1 0 �3x2

2 �2x2 �1 0

6x2 2 0 0 �6x2 �2 0 0

6x1 2 0 0 0 0 0 0

0 0 0 0 6x3 2 0 0

2666666666664

3777777777775

zfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflffl}|fflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflffl{A

a1

b1

c1

d1

a2

b2

c2

d2

2666666666664

3777777777775

zfflffl}|fflffl{P

¼

y1

y2

y3

0

0

0

0

0

2666666666664

3777777777775

zfflffl}|fflffl{Y

This can be written A = P*Y. Premultiplying bothsides by the inverse of A gives us:

P = A)1 Y

Thus, if we have the values y1, y2 and y3, we cancalculate all the parameters of the spline simply byinverting a matrix. We can then calculate the heightof the graph at any point. Inverting a matrix can eas-ily be done in most statistical and mathematics soft-ware packages. This example can be extended in astraightforward way to splines with any number ofknots.

We estimated our models using the open-sourcestatistics package R. Procedure ns() in R produces abasis vector of n values for each year (where n is thenumber of knots, in our case 6). These vectors (onefor each data point) can then be inputted as datainto a regression (in our case probit regression).The spline coefficients produced have no meaningwithout the accompanying basis vector for each year.Therefore, we used the coefficients to generateintercept terms at each knot (the y1, y2, … values)using procedure predict ns(). These are the coeffi-cients reported in the tables and can be used to cal-culate the probability of abolition for any values ofthe independent variables using the approach out-lined earlier. The standard errors, z scores, and pvalues apply to the original coefficients. The coeffi-cients reported by R, although meaningless withoutthe original data set, can be recovered from thetables by multiplying the z scores by the standarderrors.

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