Democracies Abandon Death Penalty - Holdouts Remain
Are well-functioning Democracies more likely to abolish the death penalty? Take a look at our chart to find out.
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The Death Penalty & Democracy
Last year, I wrote an extensive report about how the United States still uses the Death Penalty in all its cruelty and injustice.
In that report, I also noted that the US is a bit of an outlier, as most other Western nations have long abolished capital punishment, and the leading executioners in the world are usually authoritarian regimes. Nevertheless, other developed Democracies, like Japan, retain the Death penalty. So, I wondered, does a well-functioning democracy have an impact on whether or not a nation uses the death penalty?
The following chart is my attempt to answer this question. It shows all 167 countries on the Economist’s Democracy Index, ranked from a perfect Democracy (score of 10) to a total dictatorship (score of 0), as well as each nation’s use of the death penalty. Countries, which are colored red, retain the death penalty, though the number of actual executions can vary greatly. Blue dots mark countries that have either completely or de facto abolished it.
Note: Keep in mind that the Democracy Index is from 2024. As a result, events like Donald Trump’s attacks on the institutions of democracy or regime changes in places like Nepal are not yet reflected in the chart.
As you can see, most countries that still use the death penalty are located in the lowest quartile of the Democracy Index and are classified as “authoritarian regimes”. Nations like China, Iran, or Saudi Arabia use the death penalty as a tool of brutal enforcement that keeps the opposition in check. They also frequently lead Amnesty’s yearly list of nations with the highest number of executions.
The middle and the top of the Democracy Index are dominated by countries that have abolished the death penalty. Nevertheless, there are still high-scoring Democracies that retain it. Almost all of these nations - Japan, Thailand, Taiwan, or Singapore - are located in Asia, where the public still views the death penalty more favorably. There is only a single Western nation where that is the case, only one, where a majority of the people still believe in the death penalty: The United States.
No other Western nation, no other NATO or EU member, still uses or approves of capital punishment. Most of them have abolished it long ago, citing systemic injustice, the finality of imperfect verdicts, and moral issues. The abolishment of the death penalty has even become a binding requirement for new EU member states. In the United States, however, the method is still used every year, often under cruel and scandalous circumstances.
A Significant Difference
While some democracies hold on to the death penalty and some authoritarian regimes like Venezuela or Niger have abolished it, a clear trend becomes visible when we calculate the average Democracy-Index Score of a) nations that have abolished the death penalty and b) nations that retain it.
Abolitionist countries achieve an average Democracy Index score of 5.5, compared to 3.6 for Retentionist countries. In other words, Abolitionists have a 54% higher democracy rating.
High-ranking democracies may lead the charge in the abandonment of the most unjust form of justice in the world, but holdouts remain. In recent years, it was mostly countries from the African continent with authoritarian or hybrid regimes that have moved to abolish the death penalty, but the 2020s have been stagnant.
As nations continue to drift into authoritarianism, progress towards a world that is liberated from the death penalty will remain scarce. The people who fight against this injustice, from the activists of Amnesty International to the Pope, will face an uphill battle, perhaps for years to come.