At any given time in the history of a society, its preferred policy on a given controversial issue can be understood to be a function of the attitudes of a wide variety of different (but overlapping) constituencies – governmental and non-governmental organisations as well as interest groups and professional associations, both local and national. The power to make and alter policy is not equally distributed among these constituencies. Anyone who hopes to change current policy needs to be able to identify exactly where each of these distinguishable constituencies stands, in the hope of finding a lever to influence that constituency in favour of the reformer's preferred policy. I propose to exploit this general idea in examining the recent history, current status and possible future developments of death penalty policy in the United States, as seen from the perspective of those who (like me) want to see the death penalty entirely abolished.

Let us begin by identifying the several constituencies whose views and behaviour are relevant to the present task; I make no claim that the following list is exhaustive, but the order in which I discuss them is designed to take us from those most intimately involved in administering the death penalty to those whose involvement is more remote. My survey concludes with a brief examination of the most current abolition strategy: a national moratorium on executions.