The study of biology and politics examines the linkage between the life sciences (broadly defined) and politics. Among biological areas from which these linkages are drawn include: human ethology; socio-biology; ethology; genetics; evolutionary theory; neurosciences; biotechnology; and, bioethics, amongst others. These knowledge arenas are used to illuminate policy choices (biopolicy), political behaviour, leadership behaviour, international politics, and political philosophy, amongst others.

Arguing for an evolutionary perspective, this book directly challenges the Standard Social Science Model (SSSM) on which public policy has often been based. The SSSM maintains that human behavior is solely the product of culture and learning. In sharp contrast, the Evolutionary Model (EM) holds that our behavior flows from the interaction between learning and culture, on the one hand, and biological factors-especially our evolutionary legacy-on the other. These different approaches to human behavior understandably lead to divergent conceptions of sound domestic and foreign policy. The SSSM...

Throughout history authoritarian governments have outnumbered democratic ones to an overwhelming degree. Even today, true democracies are an exception. In this book, Somit and Peterson argue that the main reason for this pattern is that humans are social primates with an innate tendency for hierarchical and authoritarian social and political structures. Democracy requires very special 'enabling conditions' before it can be supported by a state, conditions that require decades to evolve. As a result, attempts to export democracy through nation-building to states without these enabling...

Throughout history authoritarian governments have outnumbered democratic ones to an overwhelming degree. Even today, true democracies are an exception. In this book, Somit and Peterson argue that the main reason for this pattern is that humans are social primates with an innate tendency for hierarchical and authoritarian social and political structures. Democracy requires very special 'enabling conditions' before it can be supported by a state, conditions that require decades to evolve. As a result, attempts to export democracy through nation-building to states without these enabling...

This book provides a careful examination of the possible influence of birth order on political achievement and behavior. The authors look at American presidents, Supreme Court justices, United States senators and representatives, and the careers of an entire West Point class. For a comparative dimension, they also study British Prime Ministers, U.N. Secretaries General, post-Renaissance popes, leaders of the U.S.S.R., and great generals through the ages. What the authors find is that there is no measurable relationship between birth order (and being first born) and political achievement and...