The of the Individual

8/13/2019 The of the Individual

1/39

The University of Chicago Press http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/669507.

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at.

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of

content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms

of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

The University of Chicago Pressis collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to

American Journal of Sociology.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 131.230.73.202 on Sat, 7 Dec 2013 00:29:38 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=ucpresshttp://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/669507?origin=JSTOR-pdfhttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/669507?origin=JSTOR-pdfhttp://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=ucpress


2/39

The Sacralization of the Individual: Human

Rights and the Abolition of the Death Penalty1

Matthew D. MathiasEmory University

In the latter half of the 20th century, countries abolished the deathpenalty en masse. What factors help to explain this global trend?Conventional analyses explain abolition by focusing primarily onstate level political processes. This article contributes to these studiesby analyzing world cultural factors that lend to the abolition trend.The main nding in three separate models on full, ordinary, and defacto cumulative measures of abolition show that the global sacrali-zation of the individual, measured as the institutionalization of the

human rights regime, represents a signi

cant driver of states

aboli-tion. Countries predominant religion is also found to signicantlyaffect the probability of abolition: predominantly Catholic nation-states are most likely to abolish the death penalty, and predominantlyMuslim nation-states are least likely to abolish. These ndings pro-vide evidence for world cultural factors that structure the abolitiontrend globally.

INTRODUCTION

Scholars have long been interested in the social factors impacting thepractice of punishment. Foucault1979famously argued that the devel-opment of the modern penal system was a political tool of control developedto mitigate increasing distaste for punishment as a garish public spectacle.Recent work on human rights treaty ratication interrogates raticationsimpact on states repressive behavior Hathaway 2002; Hafner-Burton and

1 Direct correspondence to Matthew D. Mathias, Department of Sociology, Emory Uni-versity, 1555 Dickey Drive, Atlanta, Georgia 30322. E-mail: [email protected]

1246 AJSVolume 118 Number 5 (January 2013): 124683

2013 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.0002-9602/2013/11805-0003$10.00

This content downloaded from 131.230.73.202 on Sat, 7 Dec 2013 00:29:38 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions


3/39

Tsutsui 2005, 2007; Hafner-Burton, Tsutsui, and Meyer 2008. The globaltrend toward abolition of the death penalty in the latter half of the 20th cen-

tury sits astride these two issues, embodying a change in states violentpunishment of their criminals and constituting a new human right in theindividuals catalogue. I explore the relationship between abolition and thehuman rights regime and argue that statespractice of this punishment isshaped by world cultural factors.

Several international nongovernmental organizationsINGOsstewardthe global movement against the death penalty and embed the movementwithin the vast institutional structure of the global human rights regime.These organizations hold states implementation of the death penalty totask and help channel popular opinion against the death penalty. Amnesty

International demonstrates the movements rhetorical power by describingthe death penalty as the ultimate denial of human rights. It is the pre-meditated and cold-blooded killing of a human being by the state. Thiscruel, inhuman and degrading punishment is done in the name of justice.It violates the right to life as proclaimed in the Universal Declaration ofHuman RightsUDHRAmnesty International 2008. The punishment isdescribed as a fundamental miscarriage of justice and a denial of humanrights because the death penalty is inherently opposed to the most basic ofall human rights outlined by the UDHR: the right to life. The modern abo-lition movement hinges upon a distinct conceptualization of the individualthat follows from a unique historical and cultural development.

Throughout the 20th century, positive attitudes toward the death penaltyagged, skepticism about its efcacy and morality rose, and abolitions ofthe death penalty rose sharplyCaldwell 1952; Bowers 1993; Radelet andBorg 2000; Hood 2002. Legal instruments abolishing the death penaltyalso gained prominence in international lawFijalkowski 2001; Schabas2002; Franck 2003. Though the death penalty has long been criticizedcf.Beccaria17642008, and abolitionist movements are not newcf. Filler1952; Hartung 1952; Green 1967; Sellin 1967;, a worldwide abolition trend

did not occur until the second half of the 20th century, a time also markedby an explosion of attention to human rights. Thus, I examine the question:what drives the recent worldwide trend toward legislative abolition of thedeath penalty, and what is its relationship to the global human rights regime?

I analyze global factors contributing to the abolition of the death penalty18632007. Abolition of the death penalty is propelled by denitionalscripts provided by international human rights treaties, covenants, orga-nizations, and so on. Human rights are now central to the organization ofthe global moral orderSjoberg, Gill, and Williams 2001; Boli 2006andprovide the foundation for what is considered the basic, ethical, and le-

gitimate treatment of all individuals. This global institutionalization of thehuman rights regime is a measure for what I call the sacralization of the

Human Rights and the Death Penalty

1247




4/39

individual. Sacralization identies the individual as an integral social unitin world society requiring protectionFrank, Meyer, and Miyahara 1995;

Frank and Meyer 2002; Elliott 2007, and transmogries the individualinto an important icon in world society. It fuels both legislative and non-legislative abolitions of the death penalty and embeds abolition within thelegitimate model for nation-states practice of punishment.

THE ABOLITION TREND

Figure 1 plots the number of abolitions every year from 1945 to 2007 inthree different forms. I follow Amnesty Internationals conventions in mon-itoring the death penalty to draw the most accurate picture of abolitions

worldwide.2 In the rst form, Abolition refers to complete abolition ofthe death penalty for all crimes and circumstances. The second form addscountries that have abolished the death penalty for only ordinary crimes.Amnesty International denes ordinary abolition as laws that providefor the death penalty only for exceptional crimes such as crimes undermilitary law or crimes committed in exceptional circumstances, such aswartime crimesAmnesty International 2008. The third adds de factoabolition: Countries that can be considered to have an established prac-tice of not using the death penalty but retain it in their laws AmnestyInternational 2008. Amnesty considers a country abolitionist in practiceif it has not executed a prisoner in at least 10 years.

The secondary y-axis represents the percentage of nation-states thathave abolished the death penalty as a proportion of all independent nation-states in a given year. The solid black line indicates the yearly count andpercentage of nation-states that have abolished for all crimes. The dashedblack line indicates the yearly count and percentage of nation-states thathave abolished for ordinary crimes or all crimes. Last, the dotted black linetraces the yearly count and percentage of nation-states that have com-mitted to any form of abolition.

The graph shows a dramatic rise in global abolition activity throughoutthe postwar period. By 1945, only eight nation-states had abolished thedeath penalty for all crimes,3 and the percentage of states abolishing thedeath penalty remained around 10% from 1945 to 1975. In the mid-1970s,the population of abolishers rose quickly and continued to do so by the endof 2007: 90 nation-states abolished the death penalty for all crimes, 12 abol-ished for ordinary crimes, and 33 retained but did not implement the death

2App. A gives a chronological listing of statesstrongest position on legislative abolitionof the death penalty.

3In order of abolition: Venezuela 1863, San Marino 1865, Costa Rica 1877, Ecuador1906, Uruguay1907, Colombia1910, Panama1922, and Iceland1928.

American Journal of Sociology

1248




5/39

penalty de facto. The percentage of abolishers climbed to 46% for allcrimes, 52% for all or ordinary crimes, and 69% for any of the three.

Figure 2 displays the number of yearly abolitions from 1863 to 2007 forthree different cumulative measures of abolition plotted againstve majorworld cultural human rights events. Abolition of the death penalty was ex-tremely rare from 1863 to 1962; only eight states abolishedfor all crimes

during these years. An ordinary abolition and two de facto abolitions werealso added during this period. Six more countries abolished by 1975, and15 more abolished by 1986. Abolition exploded between 1987 and 1991;18 states abolished the death penalty for all crimes. The abolition trendcontinues up to the present day, with the mid-1990s being a particularly fer-tile period for abolition.

Figure 2 also relates three types of important world cultural events tothe abolition trend:1 two documents from a growing collection of inter-national human rights instruments condemning the death penalty,2twoseminal statements establishing human rights global prominence, and

3Amnesty Internationals Nobel Peace Prize. The rst set of documentsidenties the death penalty as a province of the global human rights re-

FIG . 1.Cumulative counts of three forms of abolition, 19452007. Data source: Am-nesty International2008.


1249




6/39

gime. Amnesty International recognizes four such instruments: ProtocolNo. 6 to the European Convention on Human Rights1982, the SecondOptional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and PoliticalRights ICCPR 1989, the Protocol to the American Convention on Human

Rights 1990, and Protocol No. 13 to the European Convention on Hu-man Rights2002. I plot only the second optional protocolICCPR2andProtocol No. 13COE13to facilitate visual comparison in the gure. Alsorelevant are the UDHR1948and the International Covenant on Civil andPolitical Rights 1966 because of their suggestive language in oppositionto the death penalty and their prominence in establishing human rights asa global concern. I also plot Amnesty Internationals 1977 Nobel Peace PrizeA1 in g. 2because this award signaled an important world cultural mo-ment wherein the international community celebrated the organizationswork against political imprisonment and the death penalty.4 The award

thereby serves as a signal of a growing world cultural climate against thedeath penalty. Each event either precedes or coincides with surges in globalabolition activity. They mark breakthrough stages in the global abolitiontrend that linked the human rights regime to the abolition trend.

CURRENT EXPLANATIONS

Much study of the death penalty focuses on certain religious texts or an ex-amination of the moral and ethical dimensions of the death penaltySorell

4The actual year plotted was 1978 because Amnesty was awarded the prize in De-cember 1977.

FIG . 2.Abolitions per year with major world events, 18632007. Data source: Am-nesty International2008.


1250




7/39

1987; Baird and Rosenbaum 1995; Hanks 1997. In the social sciences,research explores the punishment with respect to deterrenceSellin 1967;

Peterson and Bailey 1988, retribution Berns 1979, criticism of statescapricious sentencing of the punishmentGolash 2005, and the prolifer-ation of international legal instruments addressing, condemning, and ban-ning the death penaltySchabas 2002. Two important questions linger:1what factors shape the legality of the death penalty worldwide, and2more broadly, what forces are responsible for the global abolition ofthe death penalty trend? Recent developments in the literature providesome clues for the rst question, but leave the second underexplored.

Political ExplanationsRecent work emphasizes political explanations for the abolition of thedeath penalty in one of three ways. First, studies argue that state-levelpolitical processes best predict abolitioncf. Mitchell and Sidanius 1995;Greenberg and West 2008; Neumayer 2008. These works argue that au-thoritarianism hinders abolition because they are less likely to support in-dividual freedoms and checks on governmental authoritycf. Killias 1986;Dunr and Geurtsen 2002; Miethe, Lu, and Deibert 2005. Conversely,Neumayer2008, p. 250claims that democracies, almost by denition, aremore willing to accept constitutional limits on governmental power and onewould at least expect them to respect better the human rights of their citi-zens. Democracies are conceptualized as being more habitable environ-ments for the development of human rights and are thereby more likely toabolish the death penalty.

Fijalkowski2001makes a similar argument in her examination of ab-olition of the death penalty in Central and Eastern Europe after the collapseof communism.5 Yet, while the association seems to be true, an importantquestion is apparent: Why should the collapse of communism have any-thing to do with an increase of abolition? Fijalkowski2011characterizes

these abolitions as moves constructed by

edgling democracies to gainfavor with the broader European community and eventual admission intothe European UnionEU. Such postures were certainly encouraged by theEUs nascent shift toward abolition in the 1970s and 1980s, a trend thatmatured in 2002 into a full requirement for admission. Abolition of thedeath penalty has been woven into the institutional fabric of the EU and isperceived as being a major element of European identityGirling 2005;

5I included a dummy variable for years after the Cold War in the models that I ran.This variable entailed a positive impact on countries likelihood of abolition but was

never signicant. Moreover, none of the other substantive ndings were changed by itsinclusion.


1251




8/39

Sarat and Boulanger 2005. The major question at hand should then behow did abolition become so central to European identity?

Second, violent political conict and civil war are considered to be po-tential threats to the state that could compromise its commitment to humanrightsDunr and Geurtsen 2002; Reicher 2003. States created a categoryof ordinary abolition that applies only in ordinary circumstances, a majorexception frequently being times of war. Dunr and Geurtsen2002de-scribe this reservation as a response to potential threats made against na-tional values and the states instinct for self-preservation. The death pen-alty would be used to protect, and purify, the polity from internal threatscaused by civil warfare. States riven by higher levels of civil warfare are lesslikely to abolish the death penalty.

A third perspective considers the inuence of political and intellectualelites on penal reform. Hammel2010argues that abolition took hold inEurope to the extent that these elites could exercise control on a givencountrys practice of punishment. Countries whose political elites wererelatively insulated from the mercurial and turgid waters of public opinionon the death penalty were able to institutionalize abolition without therisks of incurring public disfavorHammel 2010. The implication of thisargument is that countries whose lawmaking process is less directly dem-ocratic and whose criminal and penal codes are more nationalized aremore likely to abolish the death penalty. In these cases, ruling eliteswhoHammel argues are typically more likely to oppose the death penaltyarefree to impose their penal reforms

These political explanations are not complete. What is missing is howdemocracies and elites of any varietylearnthat abolition of the death pen-alty is synchronous with their values. This glissando in the current litera-ture is especially poignant considering that all regime types have avidlypracticed the punishment throughout history. If abolition is indeed a func-tion of degree of democracy, state security, and elite opinion and politicalcontrol, then we should see nation-states death penalty legislationuctuate

over time along with changes in these variables. Since this is clearly not thecase,6 it is safe to conclude that local politics alone do not account for theglobal abolition of the death penalty trend. Something about this trendtranscends national political contexts. By explaining theglobal abolitiontrend in terms of localpolitics, political arguments take the global impor-tance of human rights for granted.6Since 1985, only four countries have reinstated the practice after abolishing. Two ofthese, Nepal and the Philippines, have abolished once again. The other two, Gambia andPapua New Guinea, retain the legal status of the punishment but no longer use itAm-nesty International 2008. These countries nal positions on the death penalty are usedin the reported models. Nonetheless, I ran the model on full abolition without these coun-

tries in the data to make sure that their unique relationship with abolition did not exertany undue inuence on the general results. Results remained substantively the same.


1252




9/39

Economic Explanations

Some evidence provides reason to doubt economic developments impacton abolitionAnckar 2004; Neumayer 2008, but the relationship betweendevelopment and democracy has been thoroughly exploredLipset 1959.Greenberg and West2008 nd that economic developments impact onthe death penalty is indirect, shaping the structural conditions within asociety that impact political and civil liberties. Economic developmentseffect is diffused through the structures it helps to establish cf. Anckar2004for a similar argument. For example, economic development is re-lated to literacy, which is also strongly related to a politically active citizenpopulation and the development of democracyHadenius 1992, p. 89. If

economic development promotes arrangements that encourage abolition,then economic development could also be associated with an increase inthe likelihood of abolition.

Durkheims[18931984work on the division of labor examined howeconomic development impacted the organization of society. High levels ofrole differentiation led to a pronounced division of labor that sorted in-dividuals into specialized functions throughout society. Durkheim1900,1984 argued that such interdependence entailed an organic solidaritymarked by aconscience collectivethat was less tightly coupled and morefocused on the individual rather than on the collective. A cult of the indi-

vidual developed in these societies wherein individuals basic humanityformulated the strongest bond across disparate people. Crime in these so-cieties was less of a moral violation of the compact and rigid consciencecollective found in societies marked by mechanical solidarity and was morefrequently considered an infraction of individual needs, rights, and inter-estsDurkheim 1900; cf. Tiryakian 1964 and Spitzer 1975. These develop-ments spurred a movement away from physically retributive punishmentsand a movement toward more restitutive punishments. Differentiation anddevelopment are likewise associated with the modern rise of penal reha-bilitation and the elimination of penal colonies, debt prisons, and the declinein the number of crimes to which the death penalty applies.

Though similar to Durkheims conclusion, Foucaults1979argumentemphasized power and control. Foucault1979argued that, whereas his-torically the machinations of punishment were orchestrated to symbolizethe sovereigns authority and power, changes in the modern organizationof economic and political power led to new forms of punishment. For ex-ample, the development of global capitalism and the decline of monarchicauthority required a disciplined form of individuality that conditioned indi-viduals to fulll the variegated functions of a differentiated economy and

bureaucratic society Foucault 1979. Thus, vast changes in the structureand concentration of political and economic power in society led to the re-


1253




10/39

treat of punishment as a violent public spectacle, and the development ofa penal system that conditioned criminalsbodies and minds.

Religious Explanations

In its origins, the death penalty was frequently used as an effort to reafrmthe moral order and placate a groups gods Barnes 1930. Becausereligion systematically organizes and interprets the moral sphere, and pun-ishment seeks to defend against, deter, and redress violations of the sacred,religion and punishment are inextricably linkedcf. Douglas 1966; Durk-heim 1984. Indeed, many penal systems either explicitly or indirectly drawon religious tradition in their originsSmith 2008, p. 15. Three religions

Catholicism, Protestantism, and Islamoffer specic packages of ethics thatdirectly shape the cultural value of the individual as well as countriesprac-tice of the death penalty.

Despite Catholicisms variable relationship with the punishment throughhistory, the Vaticans 1969 abolition of the death penalty in Vatican Cityofcially opposes the Church to the death penalty. Since religion generallytravels wellcf. Sartori 1970, meaning that a specic religion is generallythe same throughout the world, the Vaticans abolition serves as a modelfor all predominantly Catholic nation-states. Furthermore, the Churchshierarchical and consolidated organizational structure helps to deliver thisparticular model worldwide. Additionally, the Vaticans abolition placesthe Roman Catholic Churchs position on the death penalty in line with itsstance on abortion: the unequivocal celebration and reverence for thesacrality of life. Predominantly Catholic countries should therefore be morelikely to abolish the death penalty for these reasons.

Sociologists since Weber have widely regarded Protestantism as fos-tering an individualist ontology. This ontology is more likely to institu-tionalize cultural models that protect, authorize, and empower the indi-vidual. Research shows that predominantly Protestant countries are more

likely to liberalize same-sex relationshipsFrank and McEneaney 1999,engender rape law reform Frank, Hardinge, and Wosick-Correa 2009;Frank, Camp, and Boutcher 2010, and professionalize psychologyFranket al. 1995. Protestant religious culture promotes values for the individualthat foment legislative reforms that empower and protect the individual.Thus, Protestantisms impact on increasing countries protection of theindividual should make predominantly Protestant countries more likelyto abolish the death penalty.

In distinction, predominantly Muslim nation-states are more likely toplace greater emphasis on theumma, or community of believers Miller and

Hashmi 2001; Anckar 2004. This form of social organization deemphasizesthe individual and favors the community broadly conceived of as Muslim


1254




11/39

society Anckar 2004. Furthermore, the death penalty is the legal pun-ishment for a variety of serious crimes in many Islamic nation-states

El-Awa 1982, andsharialawreligious law of Islamexplicitly endorsesthe principle of an eye for an eyeAnckar 2004, p. 34. This retributivestance on the pursuit of justice promotes more violent forms of punishment.Thus, Islams focus on theummaand the retributive nature ofsharialawshould make predominantly Muslim countries less likely to abolish.

To be sure, not all predominantly Islamic countries practice the deathpenalty. Neither do all predominantly Islamic countries practice the pun-ishment to the same degree. While my discussion above focuses on specicfeatures of Islam in general that might steer countriespractice of punish-ment away from abolition, it is certain that specic national contexts shape

countriesposition on the death penalty. Nonetheless, I show a general re-lationship between Islam, weaker forms of individualism, and a more re-tributive orientation to punishment that should make abolition less likely.My emphasis on the three religions above is not intended to indicate thatthese are the only religions with any bearing on the death penalty. On thecontrary, the death penalty is a matter of concern for too many religions tomention and fully discuss here. I focus on the three religions above becauseof their well-documented positions on the death penalty or their well-knownrelationships to individualism.

THE DEATH PENALTY IN WORLD-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE

World society has historically become increasingly organized around theindividuals interests and developmentMeyer 1986. I call this processthe global sacralization of the individual. The historical development ofthe individual and the global institutionalization of its rights, responsibili-ties, and protections have lifted the individual from the province of themundane to the highly codied realm of the sacred. The genesis of theglobal human rights regime ows from this sacrality and institutionalizes it

as a high value in world society. This historical sacralization process hasentailed a transformation in the world cultural model for the legitimatenation-state. Global individual sacrality recongured statesresponsibilityto their citizens: the execution of an individual is a desecration of a sacredsocial entity.

Human Rights and the Historical Sacralization of the Individual

The modern individual is a cultural model that has undergone signicantdevelopment over time e.g., Dumont 1986; Meyer, Boli, and Thomas 1987;

Elliott 2007. Many unique events, institutions, circumstances, and so forth,were important for the development of what we call the individual today;


1255




12/39

nonetheless, two historical developments are of particular importance forthe construction of the modern individuals rights, privileges, and respon-

sibilities. The rst is the humanism embodied by early Judeo-Christianthought. The second is the rational and secular spirit of the Enlightenment.Individual sacrality is the culmination of these two systems of thought.

Early Judeo-Christian thought established the individual as distinctfrom all other creation. Christianitys historical and global diffusion helpedto spread this ideology. Christian doctrines claiming that individuals aremade in Gods image, have a soul, can attain eternal salvation, and exercisedominion over Earth and all other creatures are central to the Christiantheology that sets the individual apart from all else. Humankind is notsimply a part of nature and the animal kingdom; it is the pinnacle and mas-

ter of both. In this theology, God loaded special signicance into human-kind that entitles individuals to certain rights and privilegesGrifn 2008.In these early formulations, individuals were sacred by virtue of human-itys relationship to God.

The Enlightenment rationalized this relationship into the language ofnatural rights and the social contract. Sacrality became an intrinsic propertyof the individual. A range of factors helped to spur the Enlightenmentsreconguration of the individual Wronka 1998; Ishay 2004. Aquinassnatural rights provided a step toward rationalizing the relationship betweenGod and the individual. The Reformation transferred moral authority to theindividual and rendered God remote and unknowableMeyer and Jepperson2000. Scientic discoveries made the world an object to be mastered andcontrolledMeyer and Jepperson 2000. Mercantilism expanded the scope ofinternational trade and fostered an increasingly dense systemization of in-teraction norms and regulations that favored interdependence and individ-ualized social forms cf. Simmel 1971. These social developments trans-formed the general ontological understanding of the world and led to the birthof the Enlightenments core liberal ideals: a commitment to freedom, reason,equality, the enshrining of the individuals inherent right to choose, and the

basic right to life. After the Enlightenment, social organization became cen-tered on the individuals development, protection, and fulllment. This sec-ular reorganization of the social world and the individual provided thefoundation for establishing the individuals right to life as a basic and uni-versal human right.

Cesare Beccarias 2008treatise, On Crimes and Punishments, is theapotheosis of this style of thought applied to statespractice of punishment.Beccaria argued that states right to punish applies only when punishmentis the only manner of preserving the social contract. If a punishment or itsseverity is shown to be useless or contrary to the social contract, then that

punishment is contrary to justice and the social contract2008, p. 13. Bec-caria, like Locke, argued that the social contract and political society are


1256




13/39

derived from only the most minimal concession of libertycf. Locke 1991,p.44. This point is demonstrated given that no rational person would grant

another the choice to kill him or herBeccaria 2008, pp. 5152. Further-more, Beccaria notes that most nation-states outlaw suicide, which begs thequestion: Why cannot one legally take his or her life, but the state can? Thistension, Beccaria argued, puts society in a condition where the state makeswar against its citizens. This condition revokes the social contract, which iscontrary to the function of punishments. Beccarias logic shows that thedeath penalty violates the social contract by invoking a punishment thatdestroys the individual, which is the basic unit of society and the socialcontract itself.

The Enlightenments vision of the individual helped to establish the

ideological foundation for a universal set of human rights that is separateand beyond the theological and dogmatic differences of competing religiousfaiths Grifn 2008. Modern human rights emphasize individual rightsirrespective of state sovereignty, individual duties to the state, or religiousfaith. Indeed, complete abolition of the death penalty implies a case whereinindividual sovereignty trumps state sovereignty. Less complete forms allowthe state to retain the punishment and thereby maintain some of the pre-vious monarchic logic that saw crime as a direct offense to the sovereign.Nevertheless, even these milder forms of abolition suggest that the sover-eignty of the individual has gained increased legitimacy in world culturalmodel for the state and also signal a more circumscribed conception ofcrime. Thus, the historical development of individual sacrality, and its mod-ern global institutionalization, fundamentally transformed the relationshipbetween the individual and the state.

Global Institutionalization of the Human Rights Regime

Durkheims1984 cult of the individualand religion of humanityaregiven by their rampant institutionalization via the global human rights

regime over the 20th centuryCasanova 1999. The regime institutional-izes a secular and civil religion dedicated to the empowerment and pro-tection of the individual. Human rights institutionalize individual sacralityglobally: they apply to all people on account of a universally shared hu-manityVincent 1986; Morsink 2009. The global human rights regime isitself also part of this long historical sacralization process. The rationalinstitutionalization of human rights helped to further locate the individualat the core of a global moral orderBoli 2006, and diminished the impulsefor harsh punishments against the human personcf. Joas 2008.

The human rights regime is helpful in explaining the global abolition

trend in two related ways. First, the human rights regime supplies one ofthe mechanisms of howthe abolition script was delivered to states world-


1257




14/39

wide. Human rights organizations and documents place explicit institu-tional pressures on states that compel abolition of the death penalty. Consider,

for example, the impact instruments like the Council of Europes 2002Protocol no. 13 have on countries abolition status. Second, the human rightsregime serves as a measure forwhythe abolition trend has swept the globe.The regime is a global proxy measure for the latent concept of sacrality.Human rights instruments and organizations have inuence because theycarry cultural denitions and requirements that resonate with the worldcultural model that safeguards and privileges the individual. Sacrality is thelogic that explains why these documents and organizations carry a culturalgravity that pulls states toward abolition.

Figure 3 plots the growth of the global human rights regime from 1863 to

2001 in three parts: international human rights documentsElliott 2007,human rights international nongovernmental organizations HRINGOs;Brewington 2005, and the sum of these two. At the beginning of the pe-riod, only one organization and document existed to protect and safeguardhuman rights. Both grew dramatically over the years. By 2001, 772 humanrights documents and 1345 HRINGOs existed. Their proliferation demon-strates an intense amount of global discourse directed at developing andprotecting the rights of the individual throughout the 19th and 20th cen-turies.

Table 1 shows the correlation matrix for the three cumulative measures ofdeath penalty abolition correlated with the human rights documents andHRINGOs measures. All of the measures are nearly perfectly correlatedwith one another. This striking level of association suggests that a commonglobal process underlies these phenomena. The direction of this relationshipis indicated bygure 2, which plots the dates ofve major world culturalevents that relate to the abolition of the death penalty and the globalestablishment of human rights. Abolitions cluster around these events. Alarge proportion of these gravitates around 1989, the year that the SecondOptional Protocol to the ICCPR was adopted by the United Nations.7

Some scholarship doubts the link between the global human rights re-gime and the recent worldwide abolition trendcf. Zimring 2003; Johnsonand Zimring 2009. The claim is that rhetoric for human rights becameattached to abolition of the death penalty in the 1980s and 1990s afterWestern Europe had already become a death-penalty-free zoneJohnson

7Abolition activity during this period could be the result of the end of the Cold War andthe resultingjumpin newly independent states seen.4above.Likewise,itispossiblethatany new state over my period may abolish the death penalty upon gaining independencesimply because it is adopting and incorporating the prevailing world cultural standardsfor statehood into its own formal structures. To test this idea, I constructed a dummy

variable that coded the rst three years after a state gained sovereignty. This variabledid not change the results presented below, and did not achieve its own signicance.


1258




15/39

FIG . 3.Human rights institutionalization, 18632001. Data sources: HR Docs,Elliott2007; HRINGOs, Brewington 2005.

TABLE 1Correlations Matrix between Three Forms of Abolition

1 2 3 4 5

1. Abolition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12. Abolition 1ordinary . . . . . . . . . . . .99 13. Abolition 1ordinary 1de facto . . . .99 .99 14. HR docs. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .99 .99 .99 15. HRINGOs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .97 .98 .98 .99 1




16/39

and Zimring 2009.8 Figure 4 shows that this claim is empirically not thecase, at least in terms of legislative abolitions of the death penalty. Thirty-

two abolitions against the death penalty took place in Europe from 1980to 2007, with 28 of these occurring after 1988. Furthermore, a great num-ber of Western European abolitions took place in the 1990s.9 Even if wetake seriously the claim that rhetoric for human rights had only takenhold in Western Europe during the 1980s and 1990s, which is certainly dis-putable, gure 4 clearly demonstrates that the institutionalization of theglobal human rights regime is prior to the majority of Europes 40 abo-litions.

National Mechanisms for StatesAbolition of the Death Penalty

World cultural models prescribe templates of legitimate behaviors, inter-ests, and identities for nation-state enactment Meyer et al. 1997. Suchmodels are constructed as universal and appear as basic and natural byexpressing what is legitimate and expected for nation-state structure andbehaviorBoli and Thomas 1997, 1998. These models comprise institu-tionalized elements of world society that pattern the diffusion of socialchange cf. Strang and Meyer 1993 and simultaneously serve as an or-ganizing logic for social mobilizationFrank 1997.

Nation-states with dense linkages to world society experience greaterexposure to world cultural models. Much research demonstrates thatnation-states with strong ties to world society are more likely to incorporateworld cultural models into their institutional structureFrank 1999; Frankand McEneaney 1999; Frank, Hironaka, and Schofer 2000; Tsutsui andWotipka 2004. It then follows that nation-states that are highly penetratedby specic domains of world society are more likely to implement particularworld cultural models. For example, nation-states more strongly penetratedby individualist ideologies should be more likely to implement culturalmodels favoring the individual.

8This argument is especially curious considering that Europes appellation as a deathpenalty free zonetypically refers to protocols 6 and 13 to the European Convention onHuman Rights. These protocols appeared in 1985 and 2002 and together made abolitionof the death penalty a requirement in the European Union. Moreover, these protocolsmake the connection between abolition and human rights in Europe explicit: abolition ofthe death penalty is a component of respecting human rights. Thus, it would seem thatthe much-ballyhooed European position with regard to the death penalty is a relativelyrecent developmentSarat and Martschukat 2011, p. 8that draws on the global modelfor human rights.9Ireland 1990, Switzerland 1992, Italy 1994, Spain 1995, Belgium 1996,andthe

United Kingdom1998are just some of the Western European nations to abolish thedeath penalty in the 1990s.


1260




17/39

The penetration of a world cultural model does not guarantee that anation-state will be able to recognize, decode, and implement the model.Certain institutional structures can be helpful, even necessary, to the re-ception and interpretation of cultural meanings. One important conceptis the receptor site, which are cultural opportunity structures Frankand McEneaney 1999that develop the capacity to receive, decode, andtransmit information from the outsidehere, world societyto local actorshere, nation-statesFranketal.200,p.103.Franketal.s 2000 conceptfocuses on the interpretive work local organizations and actors do in de-coding world cultural models. I translate this idea into general social re-ceptivity; particular social structures and institutions are integral in theimplementation and enactment of specic cultural models. Receptivity isdifferent from receptor sitesbecause its primary focus is on theinstitu-tionsand structuresthat develop the technical capacity, linguistic famil-iarity, social capital, and so forth, that provide the circuitry fundamental tothe successful implementation of world cultural models locally. In partic-ular, nation-states that have developed domestic structures to guaranteethe individual and its freedom should be more receptive to social changesfavoring the individual.

It follows that penetration and receptivity have a conditional relation-ship. The impact of the national penetration of specic world cultural mod-els and ideologies is conditioned by a countrys domestic social receptivity.

Likewise, a country with receptive social structures and institutions maynot implement a specic cultural model if the country is disconnected from

FIG . 4.European abolition per year, 19452007. Data source: Amnesty Interna-tional2008.


1261




18/39

world society. Successful implementation of a particular world culturalmodel is partly contingent upon the interaction between these two concepts.

Abolition should be more likely in nation-states with strong world culturalattachments to individualism that are coupled with national institutionalarrangements favorable to individual freedoms.

HYPOTHESES

The rst hypothesis theorizes that abolition is the result of the globalsacralization of the individual. The explosion of human rights documentsand HRINGOs institutionalized a world cultural model and helped toestablish the individual as sacrosanct in world society. This model re-

imaged nation-statesresponsibilities to the individual and included a re-sistance to the death penalty.

HYPOTHESIS1.As the global sacralization of the individual increases,the probability a nation-state will abolish the death penalty increases.

The second hypothesis represents a set of arguments about the relation-ship between individualism and abolition of the death penalty. The rstargues that a nation-state that is penetrated by a specic domain of worldsociety is more likely to enact the relevant cultural models. Specically,professionalized psychology is an indicator of individualism cf. Franket al. 1995; Frank and McEneaney 1999; nation-states more thoroughlysuffused by ideologies of individualism will be more likely to abolish thedeath penalty.

HYPOTHESIS2a.The greater the degree of national penetration of pro-fessionalized psychology, the greater the probability of abolishing the death

penalty.

Penetration, however, does not equate to receptivity. States must havethe appropriate institutional structures to decode and enact individualsacrality to abolish the death penalty. For example, nation-states that havedeveloped traditions of civil and political liberties, thus having a large

portfolio of approved individual freedoms, should be more likely to conferfurther freedoms to empower its individual citizens.HYPOTHESIS2b.States with more civil and political liberties will be

more likely to abolish the death penalty.

Three religions in particular have clear statements on the individual thatshould directly impact nation-states position on the death penalty. TheVaticansabolitionofthedeathpenaltyservesasaprominentmodelspurringpredominantly Catholic nation-states to abolish the death penalty. Protes-tantisms individualistic religious culture should promote statesprotectionand expansion of individual rights and should also increase their chances

for abolition. Last, Islam

s emphasis of theummaover the individual meansthat predominantly Muslim countries should be less likely to abolish.


1262




19/39

HYPOTHESIS2c.Predominantly Catholicthe reference categorynation-states should be most likely to abolish the death penalty, with predominantly

Protestant nation-states the next most likely to abolish, and predominantlyMuslim nation-states the least likely to abolish.

Studies have shown the importance of national penetration of particularideologies and the concomitant inuence of receptor sites in the imple-mentation of world cultural models. I argue that the adoption of culturalmodels depends upon both the exposure to a cultural script and the ca-pacity to decode and implement it. In other words, the impact the nationalpenetration of a particular ideology will have on the probability a nation-state will abolish the death penalty is conditional upon its level of civil andpolitical liberties, and vice versa.

HYPOTHESIS3.Nation-states that are strongly penetrated by ideologiesof individualism and have high levels of civil and political liberties will be

more likely to abolish the death penalty.

DATA AND METHOD

I use the Cox proportional hazards model Cox 1972; Cox and Oakes1984. This hazards model is useful for determining the impacts of co-variates on the hazard rate of the dependent variable over time Box-Steffensmeier and Jones 2004; Allison 1984. The Cox model is a semi-parametric model that does not assume any particular distributional formfor the baseline hazard rate Box-Steffensmeier and Jones 2004. Thisproperty is useful considering that little work has been done in this area,and there is therefore no reason to believe the hazard rate takes a particularshape. The model is given as

hit 5 h0tebX

; 1

wherehitrefers to the instantaneous risk of hazard for subjectiat timet.The unspecied baseline hazard function mentioned above ish0, and ebX

is a matrix of coefcients b and corresponding independent variables Xdescribed in the data descriptions below.

Countriesonset of risk for abolition of the death penalty in my modelbegins when they enter the data, which is 1972 for most countries; how-ever, a number of countries were not in existence at this time, and so theironset of risk begins when they enter the data. On a technical note relatedto statesrisk of abolition, the Cox model organizes the risk set by orderingthe duration times of failures, which leads to a complication in calculating

the partial likelihood function for tied failures, or failures that occur at thesame time duration. This problem leads to difculty in calculating the pa-


1263




20/39

rameter values for the covariates. To remedy this issue, I use the Efron1977method for handling tied failures.

Dependent Variable

My dependent variableDVis abolition of the death penalty measured inthree ways:1abolition for all crimes,10 2abolition for ordinary crimes,and3de facto abolitionAmnesty International 2008. I test how factorsinuence nation-states hazard of abolishing the death penalty. I reportcoefcients instead of hazard ratios; positive coefcients indicate greaterprobabilities of abolition, negative coefcients indicate lower probabilitiesof abolition. Given constraints due to missing data, my primary period of

analysis is 19722001.11

The rst DV identies only those nations that have abolished the deathpenalty for all crimes by law. I analyze 43 abolition events during the yearsfor the rst DV. The second DV combines therst set of abolition eventswith the set of nations that have abolished only for ordinary crimes. I an-alyze 53 abolitions of this kind. The third DV adds de facto abolition eventsfor nation-states abolishing in this form only to the second DV, allowingfor 81 analyzable abolition events of any kind. Abolitions that occur priorto the period cannot be modeled, and so I remove these countries from thedata set such that they do not appear to have not abolished. For each ofthe three DVs, I code in favor of the strongest form of abolition for coun-tries that Amnesty International lists as fullling more than one form. Forexample, if a nation-state has abolished for both ordinary and all crimes,I code in favor of abolition for all crimes. This strategy best models theimpacts of my predictor variables on the strongest version of abolition.

My analyses include 182 independent nation-states that either existedthroughout the entire period of analysis or came into existence during thetime period and were present at the ending point. Data on independencecome from the CIAWorld FactbookCIA 2008. Some nation-states have

10Abolition dates given by Amnesty International for Croatia, the Czech Republic, Eri-trea, Slovakia, and Slovenia occurred prior to independence according to the CIA WorldFactbook2008. In each case, abolition did not occur more than a few years prior tothe World Factbooks list year of ofcial independence. As such, I recoded each of thecountriesabolition events so that they occurred on the listed year of independence.11This issue isnt extremely limiting; action against the death penalty was rare prior tomy period of analysis: a total of only 5 complete, 1 ordinary, and 5 de facto abolitionsoccurred from 1945 to 1971, compared to the 98 abolition events taking place after 1972.Furthermore, I extend my analysis back to 1863 for Europe to see how the model per-forms for the very earliest cases of abolition activity. Unfortunately, data are simply not

available for other countries during this period, and so this extension of the model is notpossible for the majority of countries under analysis.


1264




21/39

reintroduced the death penalty since abolishing it. To simplify the analysis,I coded each nation-state with the abolition status Amnesty International

gives it at the end of my period. For example, a nation-state that abolished,reintroduced, and then abolished the death penalty again will appear inmy data set as an abolisher. I code in favor of a nation-states rst abolitionevent, as I am interested in what prompts this rst movement againstthe death penalty and take the nation-states second abolition of thedeath penalty as evidence that the ideology of abolition rst entered thenation-state during the initial abolition. On the other hand, if a nation-stateabolished and then reintroduced the punishment, I code in favor of the lat-ter throughout the period, considering thenal reintroduction of the deathpenalty as evidence that an ideology of abolition did not take hold. As I do

not allow countries to abolish more than once in my data, countries areremoved from the analysis after abolishing.

Independent Variables

Global institutionalization of the sacrality of the individual.Thisconcept is composed of two different measures.12 First, I count the cumu-lative number of HRINGOs for every year throughout the periodBrew-ington 2005. Data come from the Union of International AssociationsUIA2002 database. Second, I count the number of global human rightsdocuments in existence for each yearElliott 2007. I sum these variables tocreate a single measure indicating the yearly global institutionalization ofthe human rights regime throughout the period of interest. Since this var-iable indicates the degree of global attention to and concern for humanrights, it is thereby a measure for the global institutionalization of individ-ual sacrality.

National penetration of individualist ideology.I use the yearly countof psychology INGOs to which residents of a given country are membersas a measure for a type of individualism that is a prevalent element in

world society.

13

The variable measures the national penetration of the ide-ology of the complex interior individual. This variable counts the numberof psychology INGOs to which residents of each country belong, as re-ported to the UIA. I add 1 to each case to eliminate zeroes and log the var-iable to account for skew in the data.

National social and cultural receptivity.Freedom House2008pro-vides a measure of freedom, on a scale from 1 to 7, based on political and

12I ran the models with each component of this measure separately, and results werelargely the same. I choose to retain both parts of this variable to more completely measureglobal individual sacrality and its institutionalization via the human rights regime. See

app. B for descriptive statistics of the untransformed independent variables.13Frank et al.2010generously supplied this measure.


1265




22/39

civil liberties. I take the average of the two measures and consider it anation-states freedom score, a measure for the level of individual free-

dom institutionalized in civil society. To provide for a more interpretableresult, I recoded the Freedom House scale such that higher values indicatehigher levels of political and civil freedom. Considering that the FreedomHouse data are highly correlated with an important control variablei.e.,democracy, I use residualization to isolate the variation in the FreedomHouse data that is not due to my data for democracy.14 Concretely, the var-iable captures degree to which a given society has institutionalized structuresreceptive to the ideology of individualism and freedom.

Interaction term.This variable measures the interaction between thenational penetration of the ideology of individual and receptivity. The var-

iable is the product of a nation-states count for national penetration multi-plied by that nation-states ordinal level freedom score.

Dominant religion.I use the World Christian Database 2008 fordata on dominant religion. The database provides the percentage of ad-herents for each religion for 238 countries for the years 1900, 1970, 2000,and 2005. I inferred countriesdominant religious group to be the religiousgroup with the largest share of the population in the year 2005. If a dis-crepancy occurred between 1970 and 2005, then the dominant religiousgroup in 1970 indicated the dominant religion for a nation-state in the1970s, and 2005 indicated the dominant religion for a nation-state there-after. I created dummy variables for Muslim, Catholic, and Protestantreligious dominance. Anal dummy was created as a container for all otherreligions. Catholic is my reference category.

Control Variables

Democracy.I use the Polity IV 2008 variable for democratization,which provides a scale ranging from high autocracy210to high democ-racy10for the years 18002006. Higher levels of this variable indicate

higher levels of democracy.GPD per capita.Heston, Summers, and Atens 2006 Penn WorldTables provide data on gross domestic product per capitapGDP. Thedata extend back to 1950 and continue to 2004, covering 188 countries. Ilog the variable to account for skew in the data.

Civil war.I control for the level of civil war within nation-states overtime. These data come from Marshalls2009Major Episodes of Political

14This procedure involved modeling National Social and Cultural Receptivity as alinear function of democracy and saving the residuals to a new variable. The coefcientfor this variable represents the relationship between the outcome and the component of

civil and political liberties that is not explained by democracy. My thanks to an AJSreviewer for this suggestion.


1266




23/39

Violence data set and are the sum of all civil war episode magnitude scoresinvolving each state.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

Table 2 displays results from three Cox models.15 Model 1 presents nd-ings on 43 abolitions against the death penalty for all crimes; model 2displays results on 53 abolitions, ordinary plus the strongest form of abo-lition; model 3 reports ndings on 81 abolition events, de facto plus or-dinary and complete abolitions.

Figure 5 displays the baseline survival function for any abolition of thedeath penalty generated by model 3. The two dashed lines represent its

95% condence envelope. The survival function shows that the likelihoodofnotabolishing the death penalty in some form decreases by nearly 50%over the period. Moreover, the 95% condence interval suggests a rela-tively narrow margin of uncertainty.

Hypothesis 1 argues that as the global sacralization of the individualincreases, so too should the likelihood of abolition. The results providestrong support for this hypothesis. This sacralization process increased thelikelihood of abolition in all three models, and was signicant to a highdegree in all models. To gain a more substantive understanding of thisresult, consider: the beta coefcient generated by model 1 for any aboli-tion of the death penalty is 0.003. To get the percentage impact of thiscoefcient on the hazard rate of abolition, we can perform the follow-ing calculation: expbetaunit change in x 5 percentage change inhazard. Thus,exp 0:00310 5 1:03. This value is interpreted as follows:holding the other covariates constant, a yearly increase of 10 HRINGOsor human rights documents leads to a 3% increase in the hazard ofcomplete abolition. Following this procedure reveals that an increase in10 HRINGOs or human rights documents leads to a 2% increase in thehazard of abolition in models 2 and 3 respectively. As gure 3 demon-

strates, the global sum of HRINGOs and human rights documents greatlyincreases throughout the period, from 856 in 1972 to over 2,117 in 2001,an increase of 1,261 over the period. Clearly, this explosion of human rightsin the 20th century had an immense impact on nation-stateslikelihood ofabolition in all three forms.

This nding indicates that not only does the human rights regime exertan inuence on stateslegislative position on the death penalty but it alsodeters states practice of the death penalty as well. In other words, the

15I tested the Cox models proportional hazards assumption by plotting the scaledSchoenfeld residuals against the transformed survival time. The plots revealed no time-

dependent trend in the variation of these residuals and thereby provide evidence that thereported models do not violate the proportional hazards assumption.

1267





24/39

TA

BLE2

EstimatesofCoefcientsImp

acting

ThreeFormsofAbolit

ion

MODEL1

MODEL2

MODEL3

b

expb

b

expb

b

expb

Globalindividualsacrality....

.003***

1.0

03

.002***

1.0

02

.002***

1.0

02

.0

005

.0

005

.0

004

Penetrationofindividualism...

2.2

28

.796

2.2

20

.802

2.0

59

.943

.2

81

.2

55

.2

14

Receptivity................

2.2

20

.803

2.3

40

.712

2.2

46

.782

.2

09

.3

47

.1

98

Mus

lim

..................

21.5

99**

.202

21.9

41***

.144

21.1

50**

.317

.6

05

.5

89

.3

94

Prot

estant................

2.3

85

.681

2.6

11

.543

2.4

90

.613

.4

24

.4

10

.3

43

Other....................

2.5

02

.606

2.3

10

.733

2.4

31

.650

.3

85

.3

25

.2

64

Receptivity

ties...........

.218

1.2

43

.332

1.3

94

.164

1.1

78

.1

38

.2

04

.1

44

GDPpercapita............

.455*

1.5

76

.443*

1.5

58

2.0

09

.991

.2

18

.1

81

.1

50

Dem

ocracy................

.090**

1.0

95

.102***

1.1

08

.060**

1.0

62

.0

29

.0

25

.020

Civilwar.................

.019

1.0

19

.025

1.0

25

2.0

37

.964

.1

22

.1

06

.0

85

No.

ofabolitions............

43

53

81

N5

countryyearsatrisk.....

3,1

98

3,0

26

2,6

76

Waldtest.................

119.6

***

130.1

***

93.03***

N

OTE.

RobustSEsarereportedinp

arentheses.Expbreportcoefcien

ts

impactonthehazardrateforabolition.Expb

unitshiftinx5t

heshifts

impactonthehazardofabolition.

1

P

.10,

two-tailedtest.

*

P

.05.

**P

.01.

***P

.001.




25/39


26/39

nationspredominant religion impacts abolition of the death penalty dif-ferently. Relative to predominantly Catholic nation-states, all three dummy

variables measuring dominant religion exhibit negative impacts on coun-triesabolition of the death penalty. In particular, predominantly Muslimnations are much less likely to abolish relative to predominantly Catholicnations, a nding that is quite signicant across each of the three models.Following the procedure above, predominantly Muslim nations are 79.8%,85.6%, and 68.3% less likely 12 exp bx 2 1 to abolish the deathpenalty relative to predominantly Catholic nations in table 2, models 13,holding all else constant.

The control variables garner some support, most notably economic de-velopment and democracy. Per capita GDP has a positive impact on ab-

olition in all but the third model, where it fails to achieve any level ofsignicance. This nding suggests that economic development is morestrongly related to the more formal i.e., legislative forms of abolition.Democracy achieves signicance in all models, and its coefcient is con-sistently positive. This nding provides further conrmation that democ-racy is an important domestic factor. Nonetheless, the results also dem-onstrate that it is not democracy alone that drives abolition of the deathpenalty; cultural factors like the global sacralization of the individual andpredominant religion also drive countries decisions to abolish the deathpenalty. Finally, the measure for civil warfare is not supported. Contraryto the prediction, it is negative in only the third model. These argumentsfalter when world cultural factors are introduced to the model.

Yet thendings above are based on a coding of countriesmost extremeform of abolition. As countries tend to legislatively abolish the death pen-alty after they cease executing prisoners, as well as after ordinary abolition,it stands to reason that the model only captures these variablesimpact onthe latest forms of abolition per country. If this is the case, then the abovemodel fails to capture how these factors impact countriesearliest move-ments away from the death penalty.16 While full legislative abolition does

not lag far behind de facto or ordinary abolition in many countries, it isthe case that a number of European countries discontinued their practiceof the death penalty long before they fully abolished the punishment. Thesede facto and ordinary abolitions in Europe also represent some of the ear-liest moves away from the death penalty. In these early cases, it is quitepossible that the model described above is ineffective in accounting forthe early European abolition trend.17 If this were indeed the case, then it

16My thanks are due to the AJSreviewers for making this astute observation.17It is also the case that much of the contemporary abolition activity occurred in Europe.

Thus, it is possible that the model does more to elucidate the impact of human rightsinstitutionalization on Europes regional abolition trend than it does to report on the


1270




27/39

would appear that human rights and global individual sacrality is un-related to the inchoate beginnings of the global abolition trend.

To test this line of reasoning, and to determine the relationship betweenthe global institutionalization of the human rights regime and these earlyabolitions, I applied my model to Europes earliest movements againstthe death penalty.18 Specically, I coded abolition data for European coun-tries back to 1863. Data on the independent variables were available formy measure of global individual sacralityglobal human rights documentsand HRINGOs, democracy, and GDP per capita.19 I also retain the dummyvariables measuring countries predominant religious afliations. Accord-ingly, this model addresses how these factors impact Europes earliest ab-olitions of the death penalty and also helps to specify how the global insti-

tutionalization of human rights was related to this early abolition activity.Table 3 presents results on factors impacting early European abolition

activity. The results reveal very similar patterns to the results presentedabove in table 2. The previous nding that human rights institutionali-zation positively increases countries hazard of abolition holds for theseearlier abolition events. Following the procedure described above, a 10-unitincrease in global human rights institutionalization is associated with a 2%increase in the hazard of an early European abolition. As before, since thelevel of human rights institutionalization increases dramatically through-out the period, the probability of not abolishing diminishes rapidly. Globalindividual sacralization is clearly related to Europes earliest abolition ac-tivity.

18Data on region came from the European Union and included both countries that werelisted as EU members and countries that were considered European but not in the EU.This counting amounted to 47 countries in my data set. Iceland, Serbia, and Malta wereexcluded from the analysis because Amnesty International lists their earliest departurefrom the death penalty as being more than 10 years prior to their ofcial independence,which made data collection on the other independent variables impossible. Liechten-stein 1785, Monaco 1847, Portugal 1849, and San Marinos 1468 early movesaway from the penalty were also impractical to analyze because they occurred wellbefore data were available.19Historical data on GDP per capita came from Angus Maddisons 2011 website,http://www.ggdc.net/MADDISON/oriindex.htm. Data on human rights and democracy

came from the same sources. Unfortunately, data on my other measures were eitherentirely unavailablee.g., the Freedom House dataor were impractical to code.

globalabolition trend. To attenuate this problem, I excluded Europe from the analysesand reran the modelssee app. C. I also ran these models excluding European humanrights documents and INGOs, though these results are not reported because of theglobalimportance and focus of these documents and organizations despite their region oforigin. The results in both analyses are strikingly similar to those reported in table 2. Themost major differences are that the coefcients for global individual sacrality and re-ligion increase in magnitude and signicance. Receptivity also gains a positive and

signicant impact.


1271




28/39

Interestingly, none of the religious dummy variables emerge with sig-nicance; however, some differences do arise between the rst modelsdiscussed and this model for earlier abolition. The most major differencearises between the impact of the Protestant and Catholic dummy variables.Whereas in previous models, predominantly Catholic countries were themost likely to abolish, it appears that predominantly Protestant countriesare the most likely to abolish during these earlier periods in Europe. Pre-dominantly Catholic countries are next in line for those most likely to abol-

ish, with

other

being next, and predominantly Muslim countries being theleast likely to abolish early in Europe.The results in table 3 also indicate that democracy was an important

factor inuencing European countriesearly abolition activity. Higher lev-els of democracy increase countries hazard of abolishing the death pen-alty. Thisnding reveals that democracy also spurred Europes early movesto abolish. The story is not the same for economic development. While eco-nomic development appears to inuence formal abolitionnamely, com-plete and ordinary abolitionin the contemporary period, the results intable 3 suggest that it was not associated with early European abolitions of

the death penalty.

TABLE 3Estimates Impacting Early European Abolition

MODEL 4

b expb

Global individual sacrality . . . .002*** 1.002.0005

Muslim . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21.028 .3581.062

Protestant . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .773 2.165.659

Other. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.547 .578.422

GDP per capita . . . . . . . . . . . 2.042 .959

.507Democracy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .087* 1.091

.037No. of abolitions. . . . . . . . . . . 33N 5country years at risk . . . . 1,301Wald test . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39.28***

NOTE.Robust SEs are reported in parentheses. Expbreport coefcientsimpact on thehazard rate for abolition. Expb unit shift in x 5 the shifts impact on the hazard ofabolition.

* P .05, two-tailed test.** P .01.*** P .001.


1272




29/39

While the results above provide ample evidence that global individualsacrality is strongly related to statesabolition of the death penalty, this is

not to say that it works uniformly in all domestic contexts. For example,global individual sacrality appears to work differently than the individu-alism of the United States. This difference reects a libertarian streak inthe United Statesbrand of individualism that emphasizes both freedomandresponsibility. The criminal is seen as freely choosing his or her crim-inal behavior and is therefore considered fully responsible for his or heractions. This vision of crime and punishment could give rise to stiffer penal-ties in the United States and could also be responsible for the United Statesuncommonly large prison population. Note that American individualismhighlights individuality as difference, whereas global individual sacrality

is founded upon a Durkheimian sense of the individual that relies upon acommon image of the human family. Likewise, Helfer2002considers aninteresting case of overlegalization wherein three Caribbean Common-wealth countries friendly to human rights rescinded their ratication of theFirst Optional Protocol to the ICCPR in an effort to suppress a growingdeath row populations complaints to the UN Human Rights Committee.Overlegalization suggests that commitments to human rights treaties canoccasionally outstrip stateswillingness to comply when domestic pressuresforce a trade-off between compliance and the pursuit of national politicalinterests. Consider furthermore that several pro-human rights countries inWestern Europe arrived relatively late to the global abolition trend seen. 8. So, while global individual sacrality is an important driver of abo-lition, it is nonetheless the case that various domestic congurations maymake certain states slow or reluctant to abolish.

CONCLUSION

Abolition of the death penalty is shaped by a constellation of global anddomestic factors. My analysis emphasizes cultural factors in explaining

states

abolition activity. In particular, I show that the sacralization of theindividual spurs states abolition of the death penalty in all forms. Thismodel has been institutionalized globally in the 20th century as the humanrights regime. Packages of cultural values distributed by nationspredom-inant religious orientation also shape the diffusion of this script. Overall,the worldwide growth in statesabolition of the death penalty is stronglyshaped by the deepening global sacralization of the individual and its in-stitutionalization via the global human rights regime.

I offer evidence for world cultural explanatory factors that have diffusedthe abolition script to states throughout world society, and argue that the

individual has increasingly become a fundamental unit of modern world


1273




30/39

society Durkheim 1984; Frank et al. 1995; Frank and Meyer 2002. Thehistorical construction of the individual led to the sacralization of the in-

dividual and the modern institutionalization of the global human rightsregime in world society. Abolition of the death penalty was thereby writteninto the nation-state as a fundamental responsibility to the sacred unit ofmodern society: the individual. My argument also connects the modern sa-cralization of the individual to the decreasing spectacle of violent punish-ment in modern penal systems. Thus, punishment in society is not simplyderived from local contexts but is also inspired by broader cultural scriptsin world society.

My analysis builds on previous research that has relied on domesticeconomic and political causes Dunr and Geurtsen 2002; Jacobs and

Carmichael 2002; Greenberg and West 2008; Neumayer 2008or national-level structural hierarchy, social differentiation, and legal systemsSpitzer1975; Mitchell and Sidanius 1995; Jacobs and Carmichael 2002; Greenbergand West 2008as motivators or obstacles for abolishing the death penalty.Though my emphasis on world cultural forces differs from these accounts,domestic contexts surely do affect abolition of the death penalty. In additionto predominant religious orientation, democracy and GDP per capita wereshown to directly impact nation-statesrecent abolition activity. Further-more, my analysis of early European abolitions showed that democracy wasinuential in statesabolition during the inchoate stages of the trend. Do-mestic factors work in concert with the world cultural foundations of thetrend to deliver the abolition script to states worldwide.


1274




31/39

APPENDIX A

TABLE A1Table of Nation-StatesAbolition of the Death Penaltyin Three Forms, 19452007

Abolitionist for All CrimesAbolitionist for

Ordinary Crimes Abolitionist in Practice

Honduras1956 Israel 1954 Nauru1968Monaco1962 Fiji 1979 Niger1976Dominican Republic 1966 Peru 1979 Sri Lanka1976Austria 1968 El Salvador1983 Grenada 1978Vatican City State 1969 Argentina 1984 Togo 1978Finland1972 Brazil 1988 Mali1980

Sweden 1972 Bolivia 1997 Central African Republic1981Niue 1974 Latvia 1999 Gabon1981Portugal 1976 Chile 2001 Gambia1981Denmark1978 Kazakhstan2007 Congo, Republic of1982Solomon Islands1978 Kyrgyzstan 2007 Suriname 1982Tuvalu1978 Tonga1982Kiribati1979 Swaziland1983Luxembourg1979 Benin 1987Nicaragua1979 Kenya 1987Norway 1979 Mauritania 1987Vanuatu1980 Burkina Faso 1988Cape Verde 1981 Laos1989France 1981 Tunisia 1991Netherlands1982 Malawi 1992Australia1985 Algeria 1993Marshall Islands1986 Ghana1993MicronesiaFederated States 1986 Morocco 1993Germany 1987 Myanmar1993Haiti1987 Tanzania 1995Liechtenstein1987 Cameroon 1997Philippines1987 Korea South 1997Cambodia1989 Zambia 1997New Zealand 1989 Russia1999Romania1989 Liberia 2000Andorra 1990 Tajikistan 2004Hungary 1990Ireland 1990

Mozambique1990Namibia1990Sao Tome And Principe 1990Macedonia 1991Angola 1992Paraguay 1992Switzerland1992Guinea-Bissau1993Seychelles1993Italy 1994Palau 1994Djibouti1995Mauritius1995

Moldova1995

1275




32/39

TABLE A1 (Continued )

Abolitionist for All Crimes

Abolitionist for

Ordinary Crimes Abolitionist in PracticeSpain 1995Belgium1996Georgia 1997Nepal 1997Poland 1997South Africa 1997Azerbaijan1998Bulgaria1998Canada 1998Estonia1998Lithuania1998United Kingdom 1998Timor-Leste1999Turkmenistan1999Ukraine 1999Cote DIvoire 2000Malta2000Bosnia-Herzegovina2001Cyprus2002Armenia2003Bhutan2004Greece 2004Samoa 2004Senegal 2004Turkey 2004

Mexico2005Albania2007Cook Islands2007Rwanda2007

1276




33/39

1277

APPENDIXB

TABLEB1

DescriptiveStatistics

forIndependentVariables

GlobalIndividual

Sacrality

Penetrationof

Individualism

Receptivity

Muslim

Protestant

Other

GDPper

capita

Democracy

Civil

War

Min

imum........

856

0

1

0

0

0

69.44

210

0

1stquartile.......

1,1

27

0

2

0

0

0

876.8

7

27

0

Med

ian.........

1,3

96

1

3

0

0

0

2,3

14.25

25

0

Mea

n...........

1,4

80

1.6

32

3.1

62

.2936

.1926

.2047

4,4

70.79

21.4

24

.9376

3dq

uartile.......

1,9

32

2

5.5

0

0

0

5,7

74.29

7

1

Maximum

.......

2,1

17

17

7

1

1

1

43,1

29.52

10

11

Missing.........

None

154

155

None

None

None

351

672

666

Transformation...

None

11andlogged

Residualized

None

None

None

logged

None

None




34/39

1278

APP

ENDIXC

TABLEC1

Estimat

esofCoefcientsImpactingT

hreeFormsofAbolition

excl

uding

Europe

MODEL1

MODEL2

MODEL

3

b

expb

b

expb

b

expb

Globalindividualsacrality....

.007***

1.007

.006***

1.0

06

.003**

1.0

03

.0

01

.0

01

.0

008

Penetrationofindividualism...

21.2

64**

.283

2.9

5*

.387

2.2

54

.775

.4

70

.4

27

.2

86

Receptivity................

.844*

2.326

.719**

2.0

53

.249

1.2

83

.3

93

.2

78

.1

93

Mus

lim

..................

23.8

20**

.022

24.6

96***

.009

21.2

79**

.278

1.2

79

1.3

27

.4

74

Prot

estant................

21.2

03

.300

22.1

88***

.112

2.8

52*

.426

.8

69

.5

94

.4

30

Other....................

2.0

36

.965

21.0

79*

.340

2.7

03*

.495

.7

34

.5

29

.3

54

Receptivity

ties...........

2.4

69

.625

2.9

12***

.402

.063

1.0

65

.4

42

.2

22

.1

82

GDPpercapita............

.771*

2.161

.739**

2.0

93

2.0

41

.960

.3

32

.2

69

.1

76

Dem

ocracy................

.0781

1.081

.149***

1.1

61

.060*

1.0

62

.0

42

.0

34

.0

25

Civilwar.................

.149

1.160

.123

1.1

30

2.0

41

.960

.1

09

.0

98

.0

84

No.

ofabolitions............

18

26

53

N5

countryyearsatrisk.....

2,8

13

2,6

60

2,312

Waldtest.................

64.2

6***

78.7

4***

27.87*

*

N

OTE.

RobustSEsarereportedinparentheses.

Expbreportcoefcients

impactonthehazardratefora

bolition.

Expb

unitshiftinx5

theshifts

impactonthehazardofabolition.

+

P

.10,

two-tailedtests.

*

P

.05.

**P

.01.

***P

.001.




35/39

REFERENCES

Allison, Paul D. 1984. Event History Analysis: Regression for Longitudinal EventData.Sage University Paper series on Quantitative Applications in the Social Sci-ences, 07046. Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage.

Amnesty International. 2008. The Death Penalty Website. http://www.amnesty.org/en/death-penalty.

Anckar, Carsten. 2004.The Determinants of the Death Penalty: A Comparative Study ofthe World.New York: Routledge.

Baird, Robert M., and Stuart E. Rosenbaum, eds. 1995. Punishment and the DeathPenalty: The Current Debate. New York: Prometheus.

Barnes, Harry Elmer. 1930.The Story of Punishment: A Record of Mans Inhumanity toMan. Boston: Stratford.

Becarria, Cesare.17642008. On Crimes and Punishments. Pp. 186 in On Crimes andPunishments and Other Writings, edited by Aaron Thomas. Toronto: University of

Toro

The of the Individual

Documents

Transcript of The of the Individual