Chapter i lays out four goals for this book: to understand the development and evolution of the death penalty in America, how it has changed and why; to understand the nature of policy change more generally, in particular the role of framing; to learn about the power of various social groups in American democracy, who can create policy changes and who cannot; and finally to develop and explain some new methodologies for the study of framing, policy change, public opinion, and the linkages among these factors. We have reviewed a tremendous number of facts and figures in the previous pages. What does it all add up to? The most important substantive and theoretical finding of our book is how ideas matter.

A small group of students and activists defending the rights of a reviled population in the face of active hostility from large segments of the population and the political leadership set in motion a positive-feedback system. The social cascade reverberated through the system not on the basis of money and power, but simply by bringing attention to an aspect of the criminal justice system that has been known for hundreds of years: It is not perfect. This is completely uncontroversial in that no one has claimed that it is perfect, totally immune from error. (People certainly argue that it is fair, in that each side has an equal opportunity to present their case, but fair is different from perfect.