berties Union in the United States today. Furthermore, the survival of the death penalty as a policy is peculiar among other legislative issues because the pro-death penalty lobby is hardly an organized force at the national or state level. Considering this logic, neither homicide rates nor the influence of special interests are recognized as significant variables under review today.
A review of the literature concerning death penalty abolition in different countries has revealed the prevalence of two significant competing theories, cultural disposition and political structure (Guess 1999, 54) . Building on previous work, this literature review examines comparative historical analyses and longitudinal case studies that identify at least one of these theories in the findings. This narrowing process exposed an ongoing academic debate over whether political structure or cultural disposition is the defining variable that explains a Western democracy's policy towards execution. After reviewing a range of findings, it is clear that the academic literature now slant heavily towards a political structure explanation.
In the comparative historical analysis “Transatlantic Perspectives on Capital Punishment,” Austin Sarat and Jurgen Martschukat explore the historical differences between the United States and Europe and identify both cultural disposition and political structure as key indicators of abolition (Sarat and Martschukat 2011). The article first discusses the influence of cultural disposition, for example how the American death penalty can be seen as a "vestige of frontier mentality" (Ibid., 6). The authors then discuss the influence of a more "porous" political structure, for example how the two-year term in the U.S. House of Representatives ties public officials to the emotions of their constituents. Sarat and Martschukat argue, “the European experience posits this: public opinion tends to follow decisions by political elites rather than leading them" (Ibid., 4). The findings suggest that cultural disposition and political structure both should be considered as explanations for differences in death penalty politics across the Atlantic.
For years, many criminal justice scholars have insisted that cultural disposition is the most influential variable in whether a Western democracy abolishes or retains the death penalty in the 21st century. Notable scholars on American capital punishment, such as Zimring, maintain that the American cultural tradition of punitiveness is the ultimate explanation for its death penalty policies (Zimring 2003). In "Capital Punishment and American Exceptionalism," Steiker focuses on the theory that the United States has a sub-culture of violence derived from its Wild West roots (Steiker 2002, 127). Other scholars point to the Puritan notion of a social deviant's estrangement from society as a key cultural disposition that supports the continuation of the policy in the United States (Grasmick, Cochran, Bursik, & Kimpel 1993, 296). All of these theories on cultural disposition are supported by the fact that the death penalty is complemented by other punitive elements in the American criminal justice system, including the imposition of lengthy incarceration sentences and felony disenfranchisement.
However, these cultural disposition theories err by highlighting certain cultural facets and disregarding those that contradict the hypothesis. For example, America's "frontier mentality" may suggest a proclivity to the death penalty but America's emphasis on individualism and self- determination certainly suggests an opposing tension. If the full range of cultural facets is considered, the influence of the cultural dispositions on a certain policy is much more complicated than the reductionist theories in the field today. While each of the cultural conception theories add interesting dimensions and contribute to a multi-causal explanation, cultural disposition theories alone paint an overly simplistic picture for this policy divide between like-minded Western democracies (Sarat and Martschukat 2011, 7). I