The Routledge Dictionary of Politics, Third Edition
Although capital punishment has historically been universal, and although the range of crimes for which it has sometimes been seen as suitable is wide, opposition to the death penalty is not as recent as is often imagined. Some European countries abolished the death penalty, at least temporarily, as early as the late 18th century. Even in the USA, which is today the only Western liberal democracy to execute criminals, some states have very early experience of abolition, or at least restriction, of capital punishment. Michigan and Wisconsin, for example, had abolished judicial execution by the mid-19th century.
Nevertheless, until the second half of the 20th century, most states of all political types felt it legitimate to kill people who broke certain laws, even in peacetime. The most liberal of modern societies often allows capital punishment, at least theoretically, during wartime. After the Second World War, partly as a reaction of revulsion to state terror in general, the penalty was abolished in many European countries. Abolition of the death penalty is now, in fact, a requirement for membership of the Council of Europe. Thus by the early 21st century, about 90 countries had formally relinquished capital punishment, and perhaps another 20 have not executed anyone for so long that they can be considered, in practice, as having done so. In particular, states escaping from long periods of authoritarian rule after 1989 have rapidly moved to make execution illegal, as did South Africa almost immediately after the ending of apartheid.
Outside the world of developed and stable liberal democracies, the death penalty is still very widely used, and often not only for crimes against the person; for example, drug related offences continue to attract the penalty in many Asian countries.
In some Islamic areas there appears to be a religious basis behind the cultural support for executions (see Shari‘a) in other areas, such as some Caribbean countries, belief in the deterrent effect of execution continues strongly. To a very large extent opposition to capital punishment is élite-led. Even in Europe, public opinion is often much more favourable to the idea of restoring the penalty than those opposed would expect: in some polls as many as 70% of the British public would like to see the return of execution for some types of murder.
It is against this background that one must consider the outstanding exception to the trend away from relying on the state taking life to enforce its law—the USA. For a few years in the 1970s executions were halted in the USA because of the Supreme Court’s uncertainty about the constitutionality of the death penalty. When they finally ruled in its favour, in 1976, many of the states drafted new capital punishment laws so that by the beginning of the 21st century 38 states allowed the penalty, and several hundreds of people had been executed, often despite considerable international public pressure. The enthusiasm for execution is not as widespread in the USA as this figure suggests. Several states which put capital punishment laws back on the statute book after 1976 have never used the sentence. More importantly, extensive use of the penalty is largely restricted to the conservative south. Over two-thirds of all executions since 1976 have been in Texas, Virginia, Missouri, Florida, Oklahoma and Georgia. In 2001, the Federal Government also returned to the practice, though there are relatively few federal criminal laws to which it can be applied.
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