Democracy and the making of contentious policy: The role of democracy in the abolition of the death penalty, 1950–2010
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Previous scholarship discussed the pivotal role of democracy in promoting human rights policies. However, prior work did not examine the distinct process of how democratic regimes adopt contentious policies with low public support. In focusing on the distinct policy-making process of contentious policy, this study examines how democracy can lead to a policy change with one contentious policy in particular: the abolition of the death penalty. The research compares dissimilar dynamics within gradual and immediate abolition processes with data from 164 countries between 1950 and 2010. The results of a competing risks event history model suggest that a country’s overall level of democracy, a specific democratic component such as the institutional separation of powers, democratic transition, and the presence of democratic legacy increase the likelihood of gradual abolition. However, democracy does not lead to immediate death abolition, except in cases where there is a sudden transition to democracy. The results have important implications for understanding the role of democracy in promoting contentious and unpopular policies.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.006 | 0.022 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.005 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".