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Darwinism, Dominance, and Democracy: a Reaffirmation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 May 2016

Albert Somit  and
Steven A. Peterson
Albert Somit
Affiliation:
Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, USA
Steven A. Peterson*
Affiliation:
Penn State Harrisburg, USA
*
Correspondence should be addressed to School of Public Affairs, Penn State Harrisburg, 777 W. Harrisburg Pike, Middletown, PA 17057, USA (e-mail: [email protected]).
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Extract

So that the reader can better adjudge possible disagreements, we would like to begin by stating, at the very outset, the thesis argued in our book, Darwinism, Dominance, and Democracy (Somit and Peterson, 1997). As Peter Corning correctly reports in his commentary (2000), we contend that “the most important reason for the rarity of democracy is that evolution has endowed our species, as it has other primates, with a predisposition for hierarchically structured social and political systems” (1997: 1). In short, we argue that Homo sapiens has a “genetic bias” toward authoritarian political societies characterized by hierarchy, dominance, and submission.

Type
Continuing Dialogue
Information
Politics and the Life Sciences , Volume 20 , Issue 2 , September 2001 , pp. 227 - 230
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Politics and the Life Sciences 

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References

Corning, P.A. (2000). “The Sociobiology of Democracy: Is Authoritarianism in Our Genes?” Politics and the Life Sciences 19:103–8.Google Scholar
Kingdon, J. (1993). Self-Made Man: Evolution from Eden. New York: Wiley.Google Scholar
Somit, A. and Peterson, S.A. (1997). Darwinism, Dominance, and Democracy: The Biological Bases of Authoritarianism. Westport, CT: Praeger.Google Scholar
Wilson, E.O. (1998) Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.Google Scholar