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Political Culture and the Death Penalty

NCJ Number
213103
Journal
Criminal Justice Policy Review Volume: 17 Issue: 1 Dated: March 2006 Pages: 48-60
Author(s)
Patrick Fisher; Travis Pratt
Date Published
March 2006
Length
13 pages
Annotation
This study determined the degree to which political culture influenced a State's execution rate during the period 1990-95.
Abstract
The study found that political culture, defined as "a shared set of ideas about the role of government and about whom should influence public policy," had a significant influence on the median execution rates of States between 1990 and 1995. States with a more "traditionalistic" political structure, as defined by Daniel Elazar (1984), were more likely to have adopted a death penalty statute and to execute inmates more often than other States with death penalty statutes. According to Elazar, a "traditionalistic" political culture limits the role of government to maintenance of the existing social order, and those who have not been elected to political office are not expected, nor encouraged, to be active in influencing government policies. The link between political culture and the execution rate remained strong even when controlling for a host of other factors that were linked to the death penalty in prior research. Political culture was measured with a three-point scale that rated Elazar's features of his various typologies of political culture. An additional measure of political culture was Ira Sharkansky's rating of Elazar's typology of features of political culture, using a nine-point scale. The measurement of capital punishment rates in the States determined whether a State had a capital punishment law as well as the frequency of executions during the period 1990-1995. Two weighted least squares regression models predicted the frequency of executions. 3 tables and 61 references

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