Sacrifice for the mandate of heaven? Regression discontinuity of death penalty execution in Taiwan

ABSTRACT

The death penalty enjoys overwhelmingly cross-partisan support among Taiwanese citizens. Politicians, mass media actors, and anti-death-penalty activists all believe that death penalty executions boost the president’s approval. As a result, Taiwanese presidents are motivated to strategically execute prisoners, trying to improve their approval rate. To examine this myth, we exploit data from a nationally representative survey conducted in 2012; six inmates were unexpectedly executed during the survey period. This unique opportunity enables us to examine the causal relationship between implementing a welcoming policy and its effect on public opinion. Contrary to popular belief, however, the results of the regression discontinuity design indicate that death penalty executions in Taiwan did not boost the president’s approval rate at all. This non-finding holds after several robustness checks and difference-in-differences analyses. This result yields implications for the study of judicial politics and presidential approval.

KEYWORDS:

• Regression discontinuity design
• death penalty
• public opinion
• presidential approval
• taiwan politics

Acknowledgements

We would like to appreciate the constructive comments from the reviewers. We are also thankful to feedbacks from participants of the Comparative Politics Workshop at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign during the in Spring 2019. We are also thankful to National Chengchi University to collect and maintain the Taiwan’s Election and Democratization Study (TEDS) archives since 2001.

Availability of data and material

All codes for replication can be provided during the reviewing process and after acceptance. Data can be found here: http://teds.nccu.edu.tw/intro2/super_pages.php?ID=intro11&Sn=25

Code availability: All codes for replication can be provided during the reviewing process and after acceptance. Data can be found here: http://teds.nccu.edu.tw/intro2/super_pages.php?ID=intro11&Sn=25

Notes

¹ News Center. (17 August 2018). Poll: 86% hope all death row inmates should be executed as soon as possible. Apple Daily. https://tw.news.appledaily.com/local/realtime/20180717/1392846.

² Three surveys in 2002, 2004, and 2016 are available from https://www.ndc.gov.tw.

First Social Image Survey in 2006 (No. C00147). Survey Research Data Archive. Taipei: Center for Survey Research, RCHSS, Academia Sinica. doi: 10.6141/TW-SRDA-C00147-1.;

2014 Social Image Survey I (No. C00302). Survey Research Data Archive. Taipei: Center for Survey Research, RCHSS, Academia Sinica. doi: 10.6141/TW-SRDA-C00302-1.;

Hei-yuan Chiu (2015). Survey Research on Attitudes toward Death Penalty and Related Values in Taiwan (C00292). Available from Survey Research Data Archive, Academia Sinica. doi:10.6141/TW-SRDA-C00292-1.

³ See the Annual Surveys of people’s satisfaction of the judicial system and crime prevention at the Criminology Center of National Chung Cheng University. http://deptcrc.ccu.edu.tw/index.php

⁴ Chan, J. (2018, Ausust 7). Killing for Saving the Approval Rates? Both Tsai and Ma had done it. United Daily News. https://theme.udn.com/theme/story/6773/3343908.

⁵ Presidential Office of Republic of China, Taiwan. (14 June 2006). The President meets with Madam Siobhan Ni Chulachain. https://www.president.gov.tw/NEWS/10502.

⁶ News Center. (27 February 2008). Candidate Mr. Ma’s opinion on death penalty. Peepo: Citizen Journalism. https://www.peopo.org/news/11551.

⁷ Chan, J. (9 September 2018). President Ma and President Tsai’s acts about abolishing death penalty. United Daily News. https://theme.udn.com/theme/story/6773/3343908.

⁸ News Center. (2021. December 21). MOJ acknowledged six prisoners were executed at 18:00. Liberty Times. http://news.ltn.com.tw/news/society/breakingnews/741190.

⁹ Lin, C. (21 December 2012). MOJ poll shows that over 70% opposed the abolishment of death penalty. Yahoo News. https://bit.ly/2NIsmAr.

¹⁰ Xiang, C. (7 December 2012). Albeit criticism, MOJ says no timetable for execution. Liberty Times. http://news.ltn.com.tw/news/society/paper/636394.

¹¹ Su, W. and Chen, N. (20 December 2012). Execution is possible before the Lunar New year. United Daily News, A6.

¹² Yuan, C. and Chang, H. (22 December 2012). TAEDP: signing Human Rights Conventions but pulling the trigger. United Daily News, A3.

¹³ Su, W. and Liu, J. (22 December 2012). Doomsday for 6. United Daily News, A1.

¹⁴ Su, W. (22 December 2012). Public opinion supports MOJ. United Daily News, A2.

¹⁵ For example, Gao, W. (22 December 2012). Villains Kill themselves. United Daily News, A15.

¹⁶ Huang, Y. (24 December 2012). Talking about abolishing death penalty, Chairperson Su. United Daily News, A11.

¹⁷ See Footnote 7.

¹⁸ See the datasets at Taiwan’s Election and Democratization Study archives. http://teds.nccu.edu.tw/intro2/super_pages.php?ID=intro11&Sn=25.

¹⁹ In Taiwan, unification-independence preference is the most important political cleavage, which has dominated voters’ decisions for decades. See Achen and Wang (2017).

²⁰ For example, the Taiwan Alliance to End the Death Penalty (TAEDP) accused the Ma administration of violating human rights conventions. See footnote 12.

²¹ United Daily News is the third most-read newspaper in Taiwan (See the 2018 Media Book published by the Media Agency Association in Taipei. https://maataipei.org/download). Other important news stories that week included the following: On the 18th, the 7 millionth international tourist arrived in Taiwan. On the 19th, the Mainland Affairs Council announced that Taiwanese businesspersons are not allowed to serve as members in the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference. On the 20th, another sentence was handing down for Chen Shui-bian. On the 21st, the 6 capital punishment executions took place. The database is available at https://udndata.com/ndapp/Index.

²² If this concurrent event really impacts our estimation, it would cause an over-estimation on the effect of death penalty to the approval rate. However, our result, as is shown later, is already a null finding.

²³ The report is available at https://trends.google.com.tw/trends/topcharts#geo=TW&date=2012.

²⁴ This figure was directly generated from Google Trends using the link below: https://trends.google.com.tw/trends/explore?date=2012-12-07%202013-01-04&geo=TW&q=%E6%AD%BB%E5%88%91,%E6%9E%97%E6%9B%B8%E8%B1%AA,%E6%9D%8E%E5%AE%97%E7%91%9E. Access: 24 September 2018

²⁵ The average time for telephone interview in TEDS2012 was 11 minutes.

²⁶ In an indicative example, in 2010, Minister of Justice Wang Ching-feng of the Ma administration publicly announced her opposition to the death penalty and declared that she would not sign any execution orders during her tenure (under Taiwanese law, death row inmates can be executed only after the Justice Minister signs their execution orders). This statement caused public backlash and was attacked by representatives of both the ruling party and the opposition parties. Wang was forced to resign one day later. See Chang, R. and Loa, I. (11 March 2010). Justice chief defends stay of executions. Taipei Times. http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2010/03/11/2003467758.