ideologically polarized determines the extent to which party leaders can influence legislators to vote
beyond their own personal preferences; consequently, they argue that the majority party passes more
of its bills than the individual legislators‟ preferences could predict alone (Smith 2007, 120). Cox
and McCubbins contend that the majority party wields power through negative agenda control by
blocking legislation that is unfavorable to its partisans; the degree to which the majority party can
expand its own agenda is proportional to the degree of party polarization. The proposed outcome
of their theory is that no bills favorable to the majority party will be defeated (Smith 2007, 129).
Despite this theoretical debate, the extant capital punishment literature has virtually ignored
the impact of political parties on the passage of death penalty legislation. I found only one study
that included a variable for unified government in its analysis of the likelihood of a state enacting
death penalty legislation. Utilizing a Cox hazard model, Langer and Brace (2005) found that unified
government increased the rate at which a state would enact death penalty legislation. While the
current study examines the opposite policy outcome, I can think of no theoretical reason why
unified government would not facilitate the passage of abolition legislation, as well. Somewhat
similarly, Galliher, Ray, and Cook (1992) did note that the governor‟s support is necessary to enact
abolition legislation, although this variable is merely a component of unified government and has
little to do with party effects.
The question of whether or not political parties affect the enactment of death penalty
legislation differently than other types of legislation requires far more research to answer; at present
I will assume that the party effects (if any) are comparable.
9
Thus, theory indicates that majority
party support and unified government will facilitate abolition. My data supports this theory. During
the 2006-2007 legislative session, Democrats controlled both the executive and the legislature. As
previously noted, Governor Corzine was strongly in favor of abolition. Additionally, both Senate
President Richard Codey and Assembly Speaker Joseph Roberts supported the abolition bill and
worked to facilitate its passage (Lu, 2007a; Schwaneberg, 2007c). Analyzing the final vote tallies in
which overwhelming majorities of the Democrats in both chambers voted for the abolition bill, it is
clear that abolition was the preference of the median Democratic legislator; because the Democrats
controlled a unified government, their party preference was also the preference of the median voter
in each chamber.
The current data set only contains evidence of the legislators‟ “public” actions, such as floor
statements, votes, and statements to the press. As such, it is an inadequate data source with which
to evaluate conditional party governance or cartel theory, both of which rest more heavily upon the
actions of party leaders “behind the scenes” in agenda setting. Consequently, I shall restrict my
present analysis to Krehbiel‟s (1998) spatial theory. In his theory, Krehbiel argues that four key
“pivots” determine the outcome of the legislative process. In layman‟s terms, these pivots are 1) the
median voter in the chamber who forms a majority coalition, 2) the N
th
legislator who forms a
coalition large enough to stop a filibuster, 3) the chief executive who can veto legislation, and 4) the
N
th
legislator who forms a coalition large enough to overturn a veto. These pivots allow you to
calculate the number of legislators needed to successfully pass a bill if a) no opposition is organized,
b) a filibuster is blocking progress, or c) a veto is threatened.
Krehbiel‟s theory provides a parsimonious explanation as to why the abolition bill in New
Jersey was signed into law. First, I re-emphasize the facts that a) the median preference of the
Democratic Party was to abolish the death penalty and b) the Democrats controlled a unified
government. These two facts mean that three of the four pivots in Krehbiel‟s model (the median
voter, the chief executive pivot, and the veto pivot) all favored passage of the bill. Thus, the only
9 Mooney and Lee (1999a, 1999b) demonstrate that morality policies are adopted across states at different rates than non-morality policy. However,
their analyses do not take into account specific characteristics of the individual legislatures such as party composition.