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of discrimination in the criminal-justice sys-
tem. In essence, that context makes it impos-
sible to separate the effect of being in a cultur-
ally distinct group from the simple fact of being
a numerical minority. The pattern of studying
people’s attitudes toward capital punishment
within national boundaries dominates research
on this topic across the globe. While bringing
about important answers about the role of so-
cioeconomic aggregates, such literature cannot
establish an appropriate research design to an-
swer the question.
In moving our research to the Balkans,
we parsed two traits. We studied attitudes of
the same ethnic group toward the death pen-
alty—Albanians, in Albania, Macedonia and
Does ethnic culture play a role in people’s at-
titudes toward the death penalty, or are those
attitudes determined by rationales such as po-
sition in society and social status? Most of the
research centered in the U.S. emphasizes the
unique character of race, with capital punish-
ment viewed as inherently related to a history
Journal of Behavioral and Social Sciences
2016, Vol. 3, 29–40 ISSN: 2375-8899
Attitudes towArd the deAth PenAlty in ethnicAlly
divided societies: AlbAniA, MAcedoniA,
And Montenegro
The purpose of this research was to examine how personal traits corre-
spond to death-penalty attitudes in Eastern Europe in survey respondents,
specifically in three Balkan countries: Macedonia (N = 886), Montenegro
(N = 252), and Albania (N = 769). Our predictive model looked at a
variety of possible explanations, including how ethnic, gender, socioeco-
nomic, and cultural traits predict survey responses. However, knowing
that ethnic divisions are deepest in the Balkans, our primary focus was
on ethnicity. Our research findings correspond with research on death-
penalty attitudes conducted in the United States in that minority-group
members oppose the death penalty more than members of the majority.
However, our research design overcame limitations experienced in the
U.S., giving results that could not be reached about U.S. minority groups’
opposition to capital punishment.
Ridvan Peshkopia, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor of Po-
litical Science at University for Business and Technology in
Prishtina, Kosovo.
D. Stephen Voss, Ph.D., is Associate Professor of Po-
litical Science at University of Kentucky in Lexington,
Kentucky.
Correspondence regarding this article should be sent
to Ridvan.peshkopia@ubt-uni.net.
Ridvan Peshkopia
University for Business and Technology
D. Stephen Voss
University of Kentucky
Whitehead & Blankenship, 2000; Hurwitz &
Smithey, 1998).
Research developed outside the U.S. focus-
es on the role of national traditions on attitudes
toward the death penalty (Lambert et al., 2008;
Lu & Zhang, 2005). This literature suggests that
people with certain social traditions are more
inclined to support the death penalty. Howev-
er, research that examines the role of national
traditions on attitudes toward the death penalty
takes a very broad view of such traditions, and
fails to specify elements such as ethnicity and
regionalism. Moreover, this literature has most-
ly overlooked potential differences of opinion in
relation to urban versus rural culture. For the
purpose of our research, we use Smith’s (2001)
definition of the ethnie as a community shar-
ing a proper name, common myths of ancestry,
historical memories and culture, and an attach-
ment to a homeland. Esman (2004, p. 27) tries
to limit ethnicity mainly to an “expression of
who I am, how I identify myself, to what group
of people I belong,” thus connecting ethnicity
to the collective identity and the in-group soli-
darity sentiment that it generates. Such an as-
sertive ethnicity falls short of being nationalism
due to the lack of existing or claimed political
boundaries.
Nationalism expands beyond ethnicity
mainly in the latter point: nationalism claims
the political rule of a certain ethnic group with-
in a territory which is in close proximity to the
motherland, either through historical accounts
or mythology and folklore (Hearn, 2006; Smith,
2001). In their quest for national self-determi-
nation, national groups might encounter the
resistance of other groups who have similar
claims over that territory. An ethnic conflict
emerges. Ethnic conflicts are different from
other types of conflict because of the aspect of
ascriptive identity that defines ethnicity (Jesse
& Williams, 2011). That is, as opposed to ideo-
logical affiliation, ethnic identity is not individ-
ually chosen but instead a socially assigned fea-
ture. The difficulty in changing these identities,
which are built on common ancestry, can lead
to ethnic group identification as seeming loy-
al or disloyal within a country’s population in
a way that ideology conflicts cannot (Johnson,
2008). This perception of disloyalty by other
ethnic/national groups and the group’s own
perception of other groups, either as oppressors
Montenegro. In Albania, ethnic Albanians rep-
resent an overwhelming majority; in Macedo-
nia they are a large minority; while in Monte-
negro they are a small minority. Therefore, by
having their relationship toward power varied,
we managed to remove it from the collective
psychology related to certain cultural features
of an ethnic group. Results allow us to con-
clude that minority status itself is a good pre-
dictor of opposition to the reinstatement of the
death penalty. Being an ethnic minority in the
Balkans is often associated with incurrence of
discrimination. Members of minority groups
view the state power structure, which is usual-
ly controlled by the dominant ethnic group, as
a threat, thus perceiving capital punishment as
tool to be used against ethnic minorities.
Social Divisions in Literature on Attitudes
toward the Death Penalty
The existing literature on the role of social
divisions in people’s attitudes toward the death
penalty is well developed, though empirically
tested only in some areas. Such literature con-
tinues to bring evidence in favor of racial bias in
policies regarding the death penalty, as well as
people’s perception of those policies in the U.S.
(Peffley & Hurwitz 2007; Cochran & Chamlinb,
2006; Soss, Langbein, & Metelko. 2003; Halim
& Stiles, 2001). Other authors examine the role
that prejudice plays in shaping attitudes toward
capital punishment (Peffley & Hurwitz, 2002;
Gilliam & Iyengar, 2000). The aforementioned
research has generated solid evidence in sup-
port of the role that racial/ethnic divisions play
in such attitudes, mainly in the U.S.
Within the same social setting, Schroeder
(2006) has analyzed the relationship between
race, class, and income regarding attitudes to-
ward the death penalty, suggesting a narrowing
of the gap between rich and poor white Ameri-
cans. Bohm (1991) has provided a literature re-
view related to the relationship between edu-
cation and support for the death penalty, with
high school graduates more supportive of the
death penalty than those with less or more ed-
ucation. Other research supports the gender
gap in attitudes toward the death penalty (Co-
chran & Sanders 2009; Bohm 1998), but re-
sults on such a subject continue to be incon-
clusive (Lambert, Jiang, Jin, & Tucker, 2007;
PeshkoPia & Voss
30
or irredentists, creates feelings of distrust. Eth-
nonationalism, as Connor (1994) would call it
to distinguish it from other forms of national-
ism, cultivates such distrust out of its often to-
talitarian nature (Djilas, 1995). Mutual fear and
distrust characterizes the relationships of ethnic
groups who claim the same territory. Yet the
existing literature on death penalty attitudes of-
fers only inconclusive and unclear clues on the
role of ethnic divisions in those attitudes.
Balkan Ethnic Minorities and the
Death Penalty
In their campaign to abolish the death pen-
alty in Eastern Europe, the abolitionists have
recognized the strong support for capital pun-
ishment among the public in most of those coun-
tries (Krüger, 1999; Tarschys, 1999). This view
might offer only a very general picture, how-
ever. The public attitude toward capital pun-
ishment might vary from country to country,
and the ethnic composition and power distribu-
tion along ethnic lines in each society might ex-
plain some of those differences. Eastern Euro-
pean societies are often ethnically fragmented
and, as we have seen above, ethnic differences,
even in its American version, impact attitudes
toward the death penalty. “Fear-thy-neighbor”
is a constant state of mind in the contemporary
Balkans. Literature on nationalism and ethnic
conflict generally agrees on the pivotal role of
elites in employing or forging myths as an in-
strument to instill fears upon their own ethnic
groups (Evera, 2001; Kaufman, 2001). As such,
even though capital punishment doesn’t seem
to be a viable tool of ethnic warfare, political
leaders forge fears that lead to ethnic conflicts
(Kaufman, 2001). Lake and Rothchild (1998)
argue that political entrepreneurs need not be
extremists in order to fuel ethnic hostilities.
A political debate replete with nationalis-
tic hatred may reflect the polarization of soci-
eties, and the actions of leaders propel this pro-
cess further. This political environment leaves
no room for moderation, even in the presence
of moderate leaders. The latter face two choic-
es: they either leave the stage as weak and in-
capable of defending their own people, or join
the bandwagon of nationalistic rhetoric. This
vicious cycle would inescapably lead to eth-
nic conflict. However, even without resorting
to violence, spreading fear remains a rational
behavior of leaders in ethnically divided soci-
eties. Therefore, when we develop our predic-
tive models to examine the effect of ethnicity
and minority status on death penalty attitudes,
we will employ a number of control variables.
That said, we argue that ethnic divisions in
the Balkans overshadow other social divisions,
hence our key independent variable. Indeed,
ethnonationalists dream of building homoge-
neous ethnic communities, underplaying roles
of in-group social divisions (Djilas, 1995).
Method
Albania, Macedonia, and Montenegro rep-
resent particularly fertile ground for studying
death penalty attitudes because they cover a rel-
atively small geographical area, which is unit-
ed by the presence of ethnic Albanians, but di-
versified by the different political contexts in
which those Albanians find themselves. Alba-
nia, Macedonia, and Montenegro have already
abolished the death penalty for all crimes. Al-
bania has long been a concern for the Coun-
cil of Europe (CoE) because of its reluctance to
abolish the death penalty. In 2000, due to in-
creasing pressure from the CoE and European
Union (EU) membership conditionality, Alba-
nia reluctantly ratified in 2000 Protocol No. 6
to the European Convention on Human Rights,
abolishing the death penalty for peacetime of-
fences (Peshkopia & Imami, 2008). In 2007, Al-
bania ratified Protocol No. 13 to the European
Convention on Human Rights, abolishing the
death penalty in all circumstances. The other
two countries have gone through much smooth-
er processes of death penalty abolition. Post-
Yugoslav Macedonia has been quick to pro-
mulgate the abolition of the death penalty with
Article 10 of its 1991 Constitution. Montene-
gro had already abolished the death penalty in
2002, when it was part of the Federal Republic
of Yugoslavia, and Protocol No. 13 to the Euro-
pean Convention on Human Rights, abolishing
the death penalty in all circumstances, entered
into force on June 6, 2006, only three days af-
ter Montenegro’s declaration of independence.
These three small countries allow us to ob-
serve the variance of the key independent vari-
able in three different sociopolitical settings.
In Albania proper, ethnic Albanians represent
83% (2011 census) of the resident population
of 2,821,977 (2011 census) with the 1% ethnic
Greek minority as the largest ethnic minority in
Attitudes towArd the deAth PenAlty 31
conventional sampling methods are inappropri-
ate for this specific research question. Ethnic
minorities living in the Balkans are geographi-
cally and culturally isolated to a greater degree
than found in even the most segregated indus-
trialized societies. Ethnic minority groups tend
to be highly concentrated in certain regions of
each country, usually the result of historical set-
tlement patterns that existed before those bor-
ders were drawn in 1913.
A random national sample, therefore,
would not provide adequate ethnic variation,
and some kind of stratification is necessary, nor
are conventional solutions for respondent selec-
tion appropriate. Telephone and Internet are
not systematically distributed across the popu-
lation, so random-digit -dialing methods are not
viable. Door-to-door sampling methods might
not be feasible, partly because residential pat-
terns are complicated by the close proximi-
ty of single-family and multi-family dwellings,
and partly because in most communities either
the norms, the family structure, or suspicion of
the state, rules out approaching people in their
homes. Conventional methods might create
strong and systematic biases in the sample.
For these reasons, we designed the Three-
Country Survey of Death Penalty Attitudes using
trained student interviewers. The survey com-
bines a stratified design for selecting commu-
nities with non-probability methods for identi-
fying individual respondents that were tailored
to suit the living patterns found in each com-
munity. The stratification approach maximiz-
es sample variation across the main explanato-
ry variables: country of residence and ethnicity
of respondent. The non-probability sampling
within each community, on the other hand, at-
tempts to approach, as closely as possible, the
ideal of randomization.
The survey went into the field in the sum-
mer of 2009. Within Albania, teams went into
two regions: Sarandë and Gjirokastër. Albanian
ethnics dominate the population center of each
region, while members of ethnic Greek minor-
ity cluster in a sprinkling of towns and villag-
es around each hub. By drawing our Albanian
sample entirely from the regions containing the
Greek minority, we controlled for various en-
vironmental conditions, most important, per-
haps, is proximity to Greece itself. If anything,
our estimates of ethnic differences should be
the country (but with 14% who do not prefer
to respond and 2% invalid/undecided/not rel-
evant/not stated). History witnesses no ma-
jor conflicts between the Albanian majority and
ethnic Greek minority in Albania. In Macedo-
nia, ethnic Albanians represent 25% (2002 cen-
sus) of the population of 2,066,718 (July 2009
estimate), the second largest ethnic group af-
ter the Macedonians with 64% of the popula-
tion. Tense interethnic relations in this country
took a dramatic turn in the spring of 2001 when
a low intensity armed conflict caused a vivid
international diplomatic intervention, which
forced both the Macedonian dominated govern-
ment and the ethnic Albanian guerrillas into ne-
gotiations resulting in the Ohrid Agreement, Au-
gust 2001.
However, ethnic Albanians’ accusations
that Macedonians are procrastinating in imple-
menting the agreement, and Macedonians’ sus-
picions that the ultimate goal of ethnic Alba-
nians in Macedonia is secession and unification
with Albania and Kosova in a Greater Albania,
have continued to fuel simmering ethnic ten-
sions. In Montenegro, ethnic Albanians repre-
sent only 5% (2003 census) of the population
of 672,180 (July 2009 estimate). The country
hosts a large ethnic Serbian minority (32%),
and the embattled dominant Montenegrin eth-
nic group represents only 43% of the popula-
tion, while 8% of the citizens of this mountain-
ous country report themselves as Bosniaks and
5% as Montenegrin Muslims. The ethnic con-
flict in the newly independent Montenegro rests
between ethnic Montenegrins and ethnic Serbs
and encompasses both ethnic identity and po-
litical issues. Ethnic Albanians have sided with
Montenegrins in this conflict and, consequen-
tially, have been rewarded with political roles
that outweigh their population size.
Focusing on these three countries allows
us to disaggregate the effect of ethnicity from
the effect of numerical minority within a coun-
try’s borders. While these Balkan nations rep-
resent a valuable opportunity for extending re-
search on attitudes toward capital punishment,
however, they do make gathering data harder.
The region does not contain established sur-
vey institutes and private polling organizations
of the size and variety of those found in the
West, nor do external organizations conduct pe-
riodical surveys in the Balkans. Furthermore,
PeshkoPia & Voss
32
conservative compared to what a national sam-
ple of Albanians would generate.
In Macedonia and Montenegro, we drew
our sample of the national majority primarily
from the capital cities, Skopje and Podgorica,
respectively. We surveyed members of ethnic
Albanian minorities in their population hubs:
the town of Tuzi in Montenegro, the city of Teto-
vo, and environs within Macedonia. Selecting
the towns dominated by ethnic minorities there-
fore prevented the survey from offering repre-
sentative national samples of the same way a
nationally stratified sample would offer. Such
a design required that we control for country
of respondent in every model, thereby estimat-
ing fixed-effects coefficients that captured typi-
cal within-country variation while stripping out
cross-country differences. The design delivered
a concomitant virtue, though—by oversampling
ethnic minorities, we maximized variation in
ethnicity and thereby increase confidence in
comparisons made across that variable.
Although the specific approach to selecting
respondents varied from community to com-
munity, according to the social patterns en-
countered in each place, certain traits of the
interviewing remained constant. Every ques-
tionnaire was delivered in a face-to-face inter-
view, with questions posed in the respondent’s
primary language by a trained interviewer of
the same ethnic background. Interviewers
traveled to a public place and, after taking up
their posts, identified potential respondents us-
ing what in the American context is casually
called “man-on-the-street” interviewing. The
standard dismissal of this research design is so
widespread that it is worth explaining why we
view the approach as the superior option given
our research goals.
We do not question the skepticism for such
methods when applied in the American context.
However, the research environment in the Bal-
kans strongly favors conducting surveys in pub-
lic spaces. This is not simply due to the ineffica-
cy of rival approaches, but rather because much
of Balkan social life takes place in the bazaar—
from village squares to town fountains to city
parks or gardens, from highly trafficked down-
town sidewalks to smaller shops or cafes. A
potential respondent will thus view a stranger’s
approach in public places as acceptable if not
natural. In many of the communities selected
for our survey, the common practice is for fam-
ilies to promenade at dusk, unwinding after a
busy day in anticipation of their nightly meal.
Much of the population will be out and about
during prime time. Far from resisting taking a
survey during such times of relaxation, poten-
tial respondents typically enjoyed the diversion
represented by a discussion of public affairs
with young students from the nearby university.
A public approach also obviates the anxiety
that respondents might feel when approached
by an educated stranger at their homes. Ironi-
cally, approaching respondents in their homes
posed quite a different research burden. In-
terview subjects had to build a trust with the
members of our student team. This approach
became necessary among Albanians in Mace-
donia because the patriarchal family structure
led women to refuse interviews unless their
husbands gave approval. At other times, inter-
viewers could not conduct interviews efficiently
because the expectations of Balkan hospitality
required that respondents invite the student in-
side, offer them refreshment, and otherwise ex-
tend the conversation beyond sustainable lim-
its. Simply put, awareness of the rhythms of
Balkan life cautions a researcher against try-
ing to transplant Western survey mechanisms
to the region.
While participation in this public sphere
is so widespread that man-on-the-street inter-
viewing does not bring the sort of selection bias
that it would in other industrialized countries,
that does not mean we can dismiss other forms
of bias that will typically will emerge from a
sample of convenience. Specifically, we had to
train interviewers against selecting for the most
cooperative potential respondents and toward
selecting a more representative sample. Yet in
some small villages, they had to interview every
person they encountered.
The overall design of the Three-Country
Survey of Death Penalty Attitudes therefore is,
without a doubt, a non-probability sample that
permits no straightforward analytical derivation
of sampling error (Lukas, 2013). At root, con-
fidence in the results cannot be reduced to a
simple number, and must derive from the com-
bination of scientific principles and sensitivi-
ty to research context that informed the over-
all design. Our hope is that other scholars will
appreciate the theoretical leverage provided by
Attitudes towArd the deAth PenAlty 33
Table 1
Support for the Reinstatement of the Death Penalty
Would the Respondent Support the Reinstatement of the Death Penalty?
Not at all
Little
Indif-
ferent
Somewhat
Very
much
Total
Albania
Respondents
205
36
43
72
413
769
Country %
26.66
4.68
5.59
9.36
53.71
100
Total %
10.75
1.89
2.25
3.78
21.66
40.33
Respondents
373
103
142
82
186
886
Macedonia
Country %
42.10
11.63
16.03
9.26
20.99
100
Total %
19.56
5.40
7.45
4.30
9.75
46.46
Respondents
93
30
43
27
59
252
Montenegro
Country %
36.90
11.90
17.06
10.71
23.41
100
Total %
4.88
1.57
2.25
1.42
3.09
13.21
Respondents
671
169
228
181
658
1,907
Total
Country %
35.19
8.86
11.96
9.49
34.50
100
Total %
35.19
8.86
11.96
9.49
34.50
100
Pearson chi2(8) = 235.9024 Pr = 0.000
Kendall's tau-b = -0.2198 ASE = 0.020
greater support for the death penalty than do
people in Macedonia or Montenegro, which is
true regardless of whether they appear in the
majority or the minority. Second, it shows
that the minority group in each country reports
less support for capital punishment than does
the majority. The pattern is especially notable
among Albanians, who vary widely in their at-
titudes toward capital punishment. A majority
of 56% of ethnic Albanians strongly support it
in Albania itself, but only 21% in Montenegro
and 14% in Macedonia. The raw numbers sus-
tain the belief that ethnic control of the mecha-
nisms of punishment might play a major role in
shaping opinions on utilization the death penal-
ty. On the other hand, these patterns are hardly
dramatic, in that within each country the tau-b
directional statistic between ethnicity and atti-
tude is consistently small, and the relationship
only exceeds the minimal 90% level of confi-
dence in Macedonia. We use the tau-b statistic
because, in our case, our variables satisfy both
the ordinal variable assumption and the mono-
tonicity assumption. We must see how expla-
nations based on ethnicity and minority status
hold up in a multiple regression framework.
The nature of our policy measurement ar-
gues for a model to be developed to explain cat-
egorical variables of an ordinal nature. We se-
lected the ordered probit, as it seems reasonable
that lurking under our simple survey question is
this survey, which sits at the border between
the responsiveness of ethnographic research
and the generality of large-n statistical research.
It is as close to a stratified representative sam-
ple as we can imagine one collecting from these
countries, certainly without the sort of exorbi-
tant expenditure that few research questions
could justify. Indeed, it does not fall into any of
the convenient sampling methods listed in the
AAPOR Report of the Task Force on Non-Prob-
ability Sampling (2013). Our approach allows
us to expand the study of important substantive
topics to places often missed because of their
imperviousness to more comfortable and famil-
iar research methods. Specifically, it gives us
the valuable theoretical leverage provided by
Albania, Macedonia, and Montenegro as a so-
cial setting that allows for the disaggregation of
nationality from people’s position in their coun-
try’s structure (the effect of numerical minority
within a country’s borders) for the understand-
ing of public attitudes toward the death penalty.
Results
Table 1 provides a starting point for our
analysis of the survey data. It demonstrates
statistical support for restoration of the death
penalty, broken down by country and by Al-
banian ethnicity. The table reveals two feats.
First, consistent with the claims of Albanian
politicians, the people of Albania express much
PeshkoPia & Voss
34
a continuous range of unobserved policy prefer-
ences (with real values of attitude presumably
ranging from -∞ to +∞), normally distributed
around the typical (presumably mixed) percep-
tion of the policy and tapering off such that only
minuscule numbers of people greatly abhor or
truly lust for reinstatement of the death penalty.
We begin building toward a fully specified or-
dered probit model in Table 2. The first column
simply provides the starting point, a descrip-
tive model separating cases by country using
two dummy variables. It establishes the base-
line for our fixed-effects model, showing in raw
terms that respondents in Albania (the baseline
country) reveal significantly higher support for
the death penalty.
Model 2 adds our three economic variables,
thereby allowing us to eliminate the possibil-
ity that economic interests affect the country-
by-country differences. The variables are not
statistically significant on their own, and as a
package they do not improve the fit of the mod-
el. The demographic traits considered in Mod-
els 3 and 4A seem much more helpful. Males,
older respondents, and (seemingly) the educat-
ed all favor the return of capital punishment
significantly more than do respondents without
those traits, and the fit of the model improves
with the addition of these considerations. Fur-
thermore, education itself likely does not ac-
count for why respondents with high educa-
tional status tend to support the death penalty.
Rather, the effect of educational status drops
Table 2
Explaining People’s Attitudes toward the Reinstatement of the Death Penalty in Albania, Macedonia,
and Montenegro
Ordered
Probit
MODEL 1
MODEL 2
MODEL 3
MODEL 4A
MODEL 4B
Descriptive
Model
Predictive
Model
Predictive
Model
Predictive
Model
Predictive
Model
Macedonia
-0.692
(0.056)
***
-0.694
(0.057)
***
-0.593
(0.060)
***
-0.591
(0.060)
***
-0.556
(0.109)
***
Montenegro
-0.584
(0.812)
***
-0.591
(0.082)
***
-0.48
(0.085)
***
-0.472
(0.085)
***
-0.153
(0.152)
Jobless
-0.087
(0.066)
-0.032
(0.068)
-0.015
(0.068)
-0.029
(0.068)
Public employee
0.022
(0.078)
-0.068
(0.081)
-0.07
(0.081)
-0.074
(0.081)
Self employed
-0.045
(0.072)
-0.024
(0.073)
-0.018
(0.073)
-0.027
(0.073)
Education
0.018
(0.009)
**
0.011
(0.009)
0.012
(0.009)
Age
0.013
(0.002)
***
0.014
(0.002)
***
0.014
(0.002)
***
Male
0.105
(0.056)
**
0.126
(0.056)
**
0.124
(0.056)
**
Residence
(city/village)
0.278
(0.059)
***
0.365
(0.093)
***
Resident of
Macedonia
-0.055
(0.126)
Resident of
Montenegro
-0.458
(0.181)
Cutpoint 1
-0.81
-0.84
0.042
0.185
0.249
Cutpoint 2
-0.574
-0.602
0.283
0.428
0.493
Cutpoint 3
-0.255
-0.29
0.607
0.755
0.82
Cutpoint 4
0.014
-0.014
0.885
1.035
1.102
Observations
1907
1902
1884
1883
1883
Pseudo-R2
0.029
0.0294
0.0415
0.0456
0.0469
NOTE: All models use the post-stratification weights provided with the survey data. Standard errors reported
in parentheses. *** p< .01 ** p< .05 * p< .10
Attitudes towArd the deAth PenAlty 35
Table 3
Explaining People’s Attitudes toward the Reinstatement of the Death Penalty in Albania, Macedonia, and
Montenegro
Ordered
Probit
MODEL 5
MODEL 6A
MODEL 6B
MODEL 6C
Predictive Model
Predictive Model
Predictive Model
Predictive Model
Residents of
Macedonia
-0.618
(0.068)
***
-0.508
(0.066)
***
-0.312
(0.184)
*
-0.17
(0.113)
Residents of
Montenegro
-0.521
(0.090)
***
-0.399
(0.094)
***
-0.241
(0.167)
-0.13
(0.122)
Jobless
-0.015
(0.068)
-0.04
(0.068)
-0.041
(0.068)
-0.04
(0.068)
Public employee
-0.07
(0.081)
-0.099
(0.081)
-0.097
(0.081)
-0.094
(0.081)
Self employed
-0.018
(0.073)
-0.016
(0.073)
-0.014
(0.073)
-0.014
(0.073)
Education
0.01
(0.009)
0.01
(0.009)
0.01
(0.009)
0.01
(0.009)
Age
0.014
(0.002)
***
0.014
(0.002)
***
0.014
(0.002)
***
0.014
(0.002)
***
Male
0.129
(0.056)
**
0.148
(0.056)
***
0.143
(0.057)
**
0.138
(0.056)
**
Residence
(city/village)
0.271
(0.060)
***
0.124
(0.067)
*
0.109
(0.069)
0.11
(0.069)
Ethnic Albanian
-0.095
(0.057)
*
-0.017
(0.059)
0.186
(0.186)
0.335
(0.107)
***
Ethnic minority
-0.311
(0.066)
***
-0.151
(0.154)
Albanians as
ethnic minority
-0.373
(0.325)
-0.661
(0.139)
***
Cutpoint 1
0.087
-0.014
0.17
0.321
Cutpoint 2
0.33
0.231
0.415
0.566
Cutpoint 3
0.657
0.558
0.743
0.893
Cutpoint 4
0.937
0.840
1.025
1.176
Observations
1883
1874
1874
1874
Pseudo-R2
0.0461
0.0507
0.0509
0.0507
NOTE: All models use the post-stratification weights provided with the survey data. Standard errors
reported in parentheses. *** p< .01 ** p< .05 * p< .10
PeshkoPia & Voss
36
who fall within a country’s minority. Similar-
ly, we have a large number of minorities who
are ethnic Albanians, as well as a healthy sam-
ple of minorities who do not reflect the norms
or values dominant among ethnic Albanians
within this small geographical area. In other
words, the two variables exhibit sufficient in-
dependent variation to parse the effect of eth-
nicity from the effect of minority status within
state borders.
Model 5 establishes the overall pattern in
our survey. Looking across the three coun-
tries, Albanians on average oppose reinstating
capital punishment at higher rates than do oth-
er respondents. The effect appears to have no
in magnitude and loses statistical significance
when we take into account that residents of ur-
ban areas reveal greater support for reinstating
capital punishment. These socioeconomic and
demographic variables do not account for the
differences across countries though, as they re-
main strong even after the addition of such con-
trols in Model 4B.
Table 3 represents the heart of our analysis,
however. Having established a set of controls,
we now can look to see the effects of Albanian
ethnicity and the effects of minority status. We
know that we have a large sample of ethnic Al-
banians who fall within a country’s majority,
as well as a large sample of ethnic Albanians
particular connection to ethnic values or norms,
though. When we statistically adjust for minor-
ity status in Model 6A, we see that ethnic Al-
banians do not differ from others in the direc-
tion of the correlation, but the β factor loses
statistical significance (p = 0.770). The signifi-
cant coefficient for Model 5 simply reflected the
fact that Albanians fall in the minority in two of
the three countries, places that tended to have
low support for the death penalty anyway. The
true powerhouse in the model is minority sta-
tus. Minorities significantly oppose reinstate-
ment of the death penalty and, other things be-
ing equal, the effect of minority status achieves
greater magnitude than any other dummy vari-
able in the model. The measure of fit (pseudo
R2), an analogue to the R2 statistic computed
for maximum likelihood models, crosses .05 for
the first time with the addition of this variable.
Model 6B directly illustrates the pattern
by introducing an interaction between Alba-
nian ethnicity and minority status. The mul-
ticollinearity between the interaction term and
the other variables prevents any of them from
achieving statistical significance independent-
ly, but presents the best guess for how the two
variables are working in our survey data. Alba-
nians tend to support reinstatement of the death
penalty disproportionately in Albania, where
they control the state (coefficient of .186 and
p = 0.319). In countries where they number
among the minority, on the other hand, they
tend to oppose reinstatement of the death pen-
alty to a disproportionate extent. Indeed, the
coefficient estimate of .186 for Albanians in Al-
bania directly reverses outside the country to
.186 – .373 = –.187. That is, the effect of be-
ing Albanian on our estimated underlying, nor-
mally distributed but unmeasured, variable of
warmth toward death-penalty reinstatement
is directly the opposite in the two contexts. It
is really the Albanian minority in Macedonia
and Montenegro that stands out. As Model 6B
shows, we do not see minority status having
nearly as much effect on the Greeks in Alba-
nia, and we cannot actually be confident that it
even has an effect at all. For that reason, Model
6C may offer a more accurate analysis by not re-
quiring estimation of an effect for minority sta-
tus except for those of Albanian ethnicity. Note
that, once we take into account the contradic-
tory social characteristics of ethnic Albanians in
these two contexts, the inexplicable differenc-
es across countries go away. Respondents in
Macedonia and Montenegro are no longer sig-
nificantly different from those in Albania once
we consider the pattern found within the Alba-
nian ethnic group.
So far we’ve been analyzing a dependent
variable asking specifically about reinstatement
of the death penalty. The question was stated
abstractly, so it may not be capturing intent in a
concrete fashion. Therefore, Table 4 repeats the
later stages of our model development, but with
a three-point scale that connects attitudes to the
willingness to actually engage in concrete ac-
tion. Specifically, we asked respondents wheth-
er they would vote in a referendum on the death
penalty and if so, how they would vote. The
middle value therefore more clearly captures a
functional indifference. There is no need to be-
labor these new results. In broad brush strokes,
we find similar results to our previous conclu-
sions. Ethnic Albanians support the death pen-
alty less than do others (Model 7A), but that
effect washes out when we consider the dif-
ferences between ethnic minority and majori-
ty respondents (Model 7B). Allowing the ef-
fect of Albanian ethnicity to depend on whether
they fall in the majority shows that it flips be-
tween the two contexts—with the effect on the
unmeasured but estimated underlying orienta-
tion toward capital punishment (which we pre-
sumed to be normally distributed) going in ex-
actly the opposite direction from one context to
the other. It is a result that appears regardless
of whether we leave out the constituent minor-
ity status dummy (Model 7C) or put it in just to
be safe (Model 7D). In either case, inexplicable
differences across countries are no longer inex-
plicable once we take this pattern into account.
Discussion
It may seem quite sensible that support for
capital punishment would depend on who con-
trols its use. If the group with which one iden-
tifies will be doing the killing, then the death
penalty as a public policy may seem to pose lit-
tle threat. On the other hand, capital punish-
ment was imposed rarely as a weapon of eth-
nic warfare within these countries even during
the time it was legal. It also would make per-
fect sense if one’s orientation toward the poli-
cy reflected not self-interested concerns, but in-
stead merely abstract attitudes or ideological
Attitudes towArd the deAth PenAlty 37
dispositions that, particularly in the Balkans,
tend to travel within ethnic networks. An anal-
ysis that looked at the Albanian minority in
Macedonia and Montenegro would have not-
ed disproportionate Albanian opposition to re-
instating the death penalty, but could not have
concluded definitively that self-interested group
concerns, rather than something symbolic or
cultural, lay at the root of these feelings. Our
analysis makes the role of numerical weakness
much clearer by deriving from a sample select-
ed to lessen multicollinearity.
We posited that attitudes toward the death
penalty represented more than just cultural feel-
ings toward violence or law and order of the sort
transmitted through ethnicity, but instead grew
out of the fears connected to numerical weak-
ness within a society. This idea normally would
be difficult to test, as minority group status in
a given country usually conflates group mem-
bership with minority status. We solved this
multicollinearity problem by conducting a sur-
vey that includes ethnic Albanians from a rela-
tively small geographical area who nonetheless
reside within sharply varying political con-
texts. The survey used a stratified method of
community selection that oversampled for eth-
nic minorities in each of those countries, add-
ing further to the independent variation in eth-
nicity and minority status, and otherwise used
respondent selection methods tailored to suit
Table 4
Explaining Functional Support for the Death Penalty
Ordered
Probit
MODEL 7A
MODEL 7B
MODEL 7C
MODEL 7D
Predictive Model
Predictive Model
Predictive Model
Predictive Model
Resident of
Macedonia
-0.461
(0.063)
***
-0.025
(0.116)
-0.355
(0.068)
***
-0.112
(0.187)
Resident of
Montenegro
-0.384
(0.092)
***
-0.005
(0.125)
-0.271
(0.096)
***
-0.075
(0.171)
Jobless
-0.013
(0.069)
-0.036
(0.070)
-0.034
(0.070)
-0.036
(0.070)
Public employee
0.039
(0.084)
0.019
(0.084)
0.016
(0.084)
0.017
(0.084)
Self employed
-0.033
(0.075)
-0.029
(0.075)
-0.029
(0.075)
-0.028
(0.075)
Education
0.019
(0.010)
*
0.018
(0.010)
*
0.018
(0.010)
*
0.018
(0.010)
Age
0.015
(0.002)
***
0.015
(0.002)
***
0.015
(0.002)
***
0.015
(0.002)
***
Male
0.089
(0.057)
0.096
(0.058)
*
0.105
(0.058)
*
0.099
(0.058)
Residence
(city/village)
0.309
(0.061)
***
0.152
(0.070)
0.169
(0.069)
**
0.151
(0.070)
Ethnic Albanian
-0.11
(0.058)
0.312
(0.110)
***
-0.033
(0.060)
0.218
(0.191)
Albanian minority
-0.64
(0.143)
***
-0.461
(0.332)
Ethnic minority
-0.291
(0.068)
***
-0.094
(0.158)
Cutpoint 1
0.276
0.503
0.181
0.409
Cutpoint 2
0.927
1.159
0.836
1.064
Observations
1883
1874
1874
1874
Pseudo-R2
0.0472
0.0528
0.0524
0.0529
NOTE: All models use the post-stratification weights provided with the survey data. Standard errors
reported in parentheses. *** p < .01 ** p < .05 * p < .10
PeshkoPia & Voss
38
each community context so that we could col-
lect as representative a sample as possible with-
in each stratification.
Our results are consistent, regardless of
whether we use an abstract question about rein-
statement of the death penalty or a more direct
question of how respondents would vote on a
referendum to bring back capital punishment.
Minority status is a significant and strong de-
terminant of attitude toward the death penal-
ty. This pattern shows up most clearly among
the Albanians in the region, who share many
ethnic features across country borders. Alba-
nians in the eponymous country show signif-
icant support for reinstating the death penal-
ty while minority Albanians in Macedonia and
Montenegro reveal a relative opposition to that
same policy. Attitudes toward the death penalty
do not represent abstract norms and values, de-
spite the infrequent and sporadic use to which
capital punishment has been put in the Balkans
in the recent past. Rather, attitudes toward the
death penalty depend on the extent to which
one identifies with the rulers who would con-
trol the instruments of death.
Limitations and Future Research
While our research design manages to dis-
sect national culture from the sociopolitical set-
ting where it exists, thus enabling us to look
for variances in both them, we focused only on
the effects of varying sociopolitical settings on
people’s attitudes toward the capital punish-
ment. While responses that we received seem
conclusive for the purpose of our research de-
sign, they still leave much to explain (the pseu-
do R2 values of our models range from 0.0415
to 0.0509). For instance, we did not control
for cultural variances in the same way we did
for sociopolitical variances, hence the strength
of our explanation rests within a single nation-
al culture. However, while we found strong evi-
dence in support of our argument, we still could
not know whether such a finding fits other na-
tional cultures. We can overcome such a task
by transferring our research design to other sim-
ilar sociopolitical settings where ethnic groups
other than Albanians live. It could even be im-
proved upon by establishing a more complex re-
search design that would allow for variance of
both national culture and sociopolitical setting
independently of each other. In the Balkans
this can be performed by expanding our survey
over other ethnic groups which are spread
across multiple countries and are simultaneous-
ly found as an ethnic majority or minority. Sev-
eral Balkan ethnic groups satisfy this condition.
Second, our research assumes national cul-
ture as homogeneous, thus underscoring possi-
ble differences incurred by being spread across
several countries and political climates. In our
case, those differences might have caused one
part of the ethnic group living in Albania prop-
er to be more confident, while their brethren
living in countries dominated by other ethnic
groups were more diffident. Under such con-
ditions, we should expect differences in peo-
ple’s behavior toward the death penalty that our
model could not dissect. In such a situation,
we can improve our research design by adding
more cases. For instance, adding the Albanian
dominated, newly independent Kosovo may en-
lighten us as to possible differences in people’s
attitudes toward the death penalty when the
same ethnic group lives in two separate coun-
tries and dominates the sociopolitical structure
in each case.
Third, while we stand behind our survey
methodology as one that works in the context
of the Balkans, Balkan urbanization may soon
make it obsolete. Moreover, with the rapid
spread of cellphone service and digital technol-
ogy, conditions to establish probability samples
via random digit dialing (RDD) are emerging in
the Balkans as well. Probability samples estab-
lished through RDD would help not only our
calculation of confidence interval and standard
error in our own sample, but would also facili-
tate the research design transfer in other social
settings where the application of survey meth-
odology applied for this research might be diffi-
cult or even impossible.
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