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Despite the interest in the death penalty, no statistical studies have isolated the social and political forces that account for the legality of this punishment. Racial or ethnic threat theories suggest that the death penalty will more likely be legal in jurisdictions with relatively large black or Hispanic populations. Economic threat explanations suggest that this punishment will be present in unequal areas. Jurisdictions with a more conservative public or a stronger law-and-order Republican party should be more likely to legalize the death penalty as well. After controlling for social disorganization, region, period, and violent crime, panel analyses suggest that minority presence and economic inequality enhance the likelihood of a legal death penalty. Conservative values and Republican strength in the legislature have equivalent effects. A supplemental time-to-event analysis supports these conclusions. The results suggest that a political approach has explanatory power because threat effects expressed through politics and effects that are directly political invariably account for decisions about the legality of capital punishment.
WHY IS THE death penalty present in some jurisdictions but not in others? No other contemporary punishment is more severe, yet the literature is almost silent about the social and political influences that affect the legality of this punishment. A few informative case studies about attempts to change death-penalty provisions in particular states have been published (Galliher and Galliher 1997; Haines 1996; Koch and Galliher 1993), but general tests of theoretically derived hypotheses about this issue do not seem to exist. This gap in the literature is puzzling because other aspects of the death penalty have been intensely investigated. Many studies assess the racial and other determinants of death sentences (Paternoster 1991). The literature on deterrent effects is equally substantial (Paternoster 1991). Yet little is known about the social and political forces that make capital punishment legal.
In part because executions are such vivid demonstrations of state power, we focus on the political sociology of this punishment. Garland (1990) reveals some of the conceptual promise of a political sociology of punishment when he writes, "Penal law, at base, concerns itself with social authority and the governing claims of those with power. It reinforces these claims by coercive sanctions as well as symbolic displays" (p. 123). Both Foucault (1977) and Garland (1990) see...