Girling, Evi --- "Regional institutions and death penalty abolition: comparative perspectives and their discontents" [2019] ELECD 2540; in Steiker, S. Carol; Steiker, M. Jordan (eds), "Comparative Capital Punishment" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2019) 247

Book Title: Comparative Capital Punishment

Editor(s): Steiker, S. Carol; Steiker, M. Jordan

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

Section: Chapter 13

Section Title: Regional institutions and death penalty abolition: comparative perspectives and their discontents

Author(s): Girling, Evi

Number of pages: 25

Abstract/Description:

This chapter considers the scope and challenges of comparative reflection on the efficacy of regional repertoires of death penalty regulation and abolition. It proceeds by setting out the appeal to region in death penalty abolitionist narratives. It then goes on to consider by way of example regional human rights and specifically death penalty abolition arrangements in two regions with vignettes from the European Union (EU)/Council of Europe (CoE) area and the Organization of American States (OAS). The chapter explores the limits of transnational influence and the role of regional institutions in each of these regions and specifically in Belarus and Guatemala. The two regions have similar traditions of longevity in terms of the history of abolition of the death penalty and regionalization, morphological features in common but different levels and reach of transnational institutionalization and different regional institutional habitus. The chapter argues that the contested ending(s) of the death penalty in Belarus and Guatemala illuminate the limits of regional institutional logic of abolition and cast the methodological gauntlet for comparative death penalty research.