at raped and killed his wife. Dukakis infamously appalled audiences when he insisted that his opposition of the death penalty was independent from those emotions. On the night of the debate, Dukakis's polling numbers dropped from 49% to 42% (Terry 2012). After this political debacle, Democratic officials were urged to stick to conservative death penalty positions. For example, Democratic President Bill Clinton ran three television advertisements for re-election that emphasized the expansion of death penalty statutes (Gerber 2007, 183). Crime control was so central to national politics that capital punishment had become "our nation's litmus test for measuring suitability to handle all the delicate affairs of high office, even those having nothing to do with capital punishment" (Gerber 2007, 183).
While death penalty statues had been primarily determined in state legislatures, the federal Violent Crime Control & Law Enforcement Act of 1994 and the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 passed with sweeping bipartisan support in Congress during this time period. While the first act expanded the punishment to apply to sixty new offenses, even some non-homicidal crimes, the second piece of legislation tightened habeas corpus laws in an attempt to speed up and reduce the cost of execution. The popularity of the "tough on crime" agenda did not just influence national legislation but also judicial and prosecutorial discretion. The 1990s saw a tremendous rise in the number of executions nationwide, from 117 to 763, an increase of nearly 650 percent between decades (Galliher 2002, 4). This American development in the 1990s provided a clear juxtaposition with Britain's gradual "phasing-out" of the institution despite temporal variations in death penalty opinion.
Summary of the Findings
The findings of the comparative historical analysis in both critical time periods support the hypothesis of the study. Considering that policy-making in democracies is invariably multi-causal, the findings merely suggest the relevance of a structural variable that transcends the influence of other variables effecting a Western democracy's abolition or retention of the death penalty. In the case of the United States, a comparative historical analysis reveals that, at a decisive turning point, “more democratic” institutions and practices hindered the country on the path to death penalty abolition. The U.S. emerged from the 1970s re-affirming the moral legitimacy of capital punishment because American institutions, including the independent Supreme Court, were structurally influenced by a change in public opinion. As public support for the death penalty peaked in the 1990s with the advent of “tough on crime” agenda, death penalty retention was further entrenched by American political leaders who echoed popular sentiment to score well in their campaigns. In a broad sense, the death penalty debate at these two junctures in history serve as a perfect example of the functioning of the quintessential American democracy, in institutional make-up and decision-making practices. At the political tipping point for the nation on the death penalty issue in the 1970s, it was America's direct democratic institutions that held the country back from abolishing the death penalty at the Supreme Court level or gaining momentum in the state legislatures.
In the case of Great Britain, a comparative historical analysis reveals that, at a decisive turning point, “less democratic” institutions and practices spurred the nation forward on the path to death penalty abolition. The distanced political system allowed British politicians to make the initial leap of abolishing the death penalty in the 1960s through the Murder Act despite the fact that 80 percent of constituents supported the mechanism. The British Parliament exercised accepted practices of Burkean trusteeship, a theory of political representation that allowed them to gamble on the fact that general support for the death penalty would decrease after the public saw the criminal justice system functioning 