ABSTRACT
It would seem appropriate to start the quest for an explanation of the death penalty by looking at those factors that are most likely to remain unaltered over time. In most cases, physical factors precede other plausible explanatory variables in time. The physical variables of countries often go very far back in time. Another characteristic of such variables is that they generally do not change much over time. This, however, is not a rule without exception. It applies well to such physical conditions as climate and area. Arguably, the population size of countries is more sensitive to the ravages of time. The population size could at first be thought to vary a lot from year to year. This is certainly true if we look at the phenomenon asynchronically and within one single country. However, if we consider the relative differences in population size between countries, these differences over time are much less dramatic. The other size dimension, area, is even more stable than population size. However, this does not mean that area is totally static. The borders of many countries have changed throughout the past decades and centuries, mostly as a consequence of wars. In such cases, of course, the area (as well as the population size) of a country can change dramatically from one year to another. Austria of today, for instance, is comprised of only a fraction of the territory ruled from Vienna prior to the Treaty of Versailles in 1919.
