Albert Somit

Political Socialization's Primacy Principle: A Biosocial Critique

The primacy principle of political socialization claims that those political orientations that are learned early persist and shape later political learning. A survey of literature produces little empirical support for the principle. Furthermore, both the Piagetian cognitive development framework and Kagans developmental perspective raise questions about the theoretical underpinnings of the primacy principle.

Birth Order and British Prime Ministers: a Second Look

In recent decades the study of the putative relationship between birth order (especially being first-born) and human behaviour has become a good-sized industry. The English, French and German language literature alone, almost doubling over the past dozen years, now numbers some two thousand plus articles, papers and books. In this literature, being first-born has been linked to a truly staggering range of attributes. Among the most familiar of these presumably dependent variables are intelligence, education, personality traits, and career achievement. But that is barely the beginning. Beyond this, birth order has been claimed to associate with (to offer a small sample) left-handedness, lesbianism, eccentricity, body weight, suicide, sports preferences, unwed motherhood, traffic tickets, personal popularity, sensory deprivation, virginity, depression and, as a last compelling instance, becoming a professional strip-teaser. As might be expected, being first-born has also been related to political behaviour, with some fifty items exploring that possibi1ity.l Of these, though, there is only one which bears directly on British politics; that, of course, is Stewart’s analysis of the birth order of British prime ministers.2 In his study, which dealt with both American presidents and British prime ministers, Stewart reported a definite birth order patterning for the former but none for the latter. Our own examination of the relationship between birth order and accession to the White House3 led us to question and ultimately to reject Stewart’s ‘presidential’ findings; it also suggested the desirability of a second look at the prime ministers. That suggestion was strengthened by the fact that Stewart (1) began with the younger Pitt rather than with Walpole; (2) ended with Macmillan in 1963 (there have since then been six other occupants of 10 Downing

The Failure To Teach Political Activity

The results of some research by the authors, members of the faculty at New York University, are unpleasant to the many who believe political activity can be engendered by one or another method of pedagogy.

From Human Nature to Public Policy: Evolutionary Theory Challenges the “Standard Model”

For some twenty-five centuries, the “nature of human nature” has been the central issue in Western political thought. Fully aware of that issue’s crucial importance, many of our greatest political philosophers (Plato, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, and Machiavelli immediately come to mind) made it their explicit point of departure.

Birth order as a factor in presidential selection and performance

Abstract Birth order has long been assumed to have an impact on peoples behavior, with first borns normally believed to differ from later borns in achievement motivation, and the like. This essay explores the relationship between birth order and presidential selection and performance. Generally, an analysis of American presidents suggests that birth order has rather little impact on the selection of a president and on the performance of a president once in office.

Punctuated equilibrium: the view from the elephant

Novelists and playwrights have often remarked that their characters and plots sometimes move in directions not always intended by their ostensible creators. So, in analogous fashion, has this issue. The final product, we must confess, is not quite what we had originally visualized. It is, we think, more interesting; it is probably better; but it is admittedly somewhat different. We accomplished both more and, as we will soon note, a bit less than we had intended. This issue is designed to accomplish three objectives or, more precisely, three sets of objectives: first, we want to trace the history, and to identify the key theoretical components, of the evolutionary doctrine currently called punctuated equilibrium (or ‘punctuationism’).t What are its basic tenets? From what sources did it draw? In short, what are its specific claims? Our second objective is to assess the current status of punctuated equilibrium among evolutionary theorists. Which punctuationist concepts have earned general acceptance? Which have been rejected? Which have been modified? Which are still being controverted? Third, we seek to weigh the scientific implications of punctuated equilibrium. This undertaking has two aspects: Most immediately and obviously, what are its implications for biology (i.e., evolutionary theory)? The Eldredge & Gould (1972) paper unleashed a controversy which still roils the scientific journals and which has divided evolutionary theorists into often angrily contesting camps. It seems only sensible, after a decade and a half, to attempt an assessment of its implications for the neo-Darwinian synthesis. We are also interested, however, in its implications for the social sciences. Over the past twenty some years, more and more social scientists have turned to biological theory (and to biologically-derived research techniques) to help them better understand and explain the phenomena with which they are concerned. As a result, biologically-oriented ‘sub-fields’ have emerged in sociology, economics, political science, archaeology (and, most recently, even law); there has long been, of course, a strong ‘biological’ component

Darwinism, dominance, and democracy: a reaffirmation.

Albert Somit is Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus at Southern Illinois University. He has taught at New York University, the State University of New York at Buffalo, and the Naval War College, and has held Senior Fellowships at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study and Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He has served as Executive Vice President at SUNY/Buffalo and as President at Southern Illinois University. Since the early 1960s, his major interest has been in the possible infl uence of biological factors (genetic and other) on political and social behavior. He was a founding member of the Association for Politics and the Life Sciences and founder (and Chair) of the International Political Science Associationʼs Research Committee #12 (Biology and Politics). Among his publications are The Development of American Political Science (Allyn and Bacon, 1967), Biology and Politics (Mouton, 1976), Hierarchy and Democracy (Southern Illinois University Press, 1991), The Victorious Incumbent (Dartmouth, 1994), and, with Steven A. Peterson, The Dynamics of Evolution (Cornell University Press, 1992), Birth Order and Political Behavior (University Press of America, 1996), Darwinism, Dominance, and Democracy (Praeger, 1997) and, most recently, Human Nature and Public Policy: An Evolutionary Approach (Palgrave Macmillan, 2003). Steven A. Peterson is Director of the School of Public Affairs at Penn State Harrisburg and Professor of Politics and Public Affairs. Before that, he taught at Alfred University. He is Chair of the Council of the Association for Politics and the Life Sciences and Vice President and Secretary of Research Committee #12 of the International Political Science Association. He has served as President of the New York State Political Science Association and the Northeastern Political Science Association. His research interests include biopolitics, American politics, public opinion and voting behavior, and public policy (AIDS policy and education policy). Among his authored or coauthored books (in addition to those noted above) are Political Behavior: Patterns in Everyday Life (Sage, 1990), The World of the Policy Analyst (Chatham House, 1997), and State and Local Politics (McGraw-Hill, 1994). Correspondence should be addressed to School of Public Affairs, Penn State Harrisburg, 777 W. Harrisburg Pike, Middletown, PA 17057, USA (e-mail: sap12@psu.edu). 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. But that is not our thesis in full. Obviously, despite this inherent bias, democracies do occasionally arise. To explain that happy reality, we immediately go on to say that two things make this possible. First (and here we trod familiar ground), there must be a “unique concatenation of economic, social, historical and political ʻfacilitating factors” (Somit and Peterson, 1997:4). For the second “necessary, though not suffi cient condition,” we turn to evolutionary theory—and given Corningʼs opening criticism, we think it important to cite the statement in full:

Birth order and political behavior: This time the female side

Abstract Birth order has long been discussed as an important influence on human behavior; some have even posited an evolutionary basis for this phenomenon. One common hypothesis is that first born people are more achievement oriented and successful in life. However, data compiled on male political leaders do not provide much support for this expectation. This paper expands the study of birth order on achievement by looking at women political leaders, to see if birth order has an effect on their success. Results are not generally supportive of a significant role for birth order in women political leaders success either.

What is biopolitics

This volume explores the many dimensions of biopolitics, or, as some prefer, biology and politics or some other designation (Liesen and Walsh, 2012). The focus of this field within political science is the multiple ways by which politics and the life sciences are interlinked. One approach might feature policy implications from the life sciences (a whole section in this volume explores “biopolicy”). Another approach would be the use of biological theory and principles and findings to explain political behavior and institutions (several chapters in the book examine this linkage). Biopolitics provides insights into many of the fields of political science, as the reader will see in later chapters. This chapter, though, steps back and speaks of the field of biopolitics as a whole. First issue: how has this field developed? A history is offered by Robert Hunt Sprinkle in a subsequent chapter in this work (see also Hines, 1982; Johnson, 2011; Founder’s Forum, 2011, a special issue of Politics and the Life Sciences, publishes essays about and by some of the “Founders” of biology and politics and also illuminates the field’s history). What is the promise of biology and politics? What contributions have been made? This chapter is designed to place the remainder of the Handbook of Biology and Politics in a larger context. As will be noted throughout this work, biological factors have become increasingly recognized within the discipline of political science. One index of this can be assessed using two successive versions of a handbook of political science. In A New Handbook of Political Science, published in 1996, there is no reference to biology as a relevant field for political science (Goodin and Klingemann, 1996). In the next version, The Oxford Handbook of Political Science, published in 2009, the lead essay speaks of one possible candidate for “the next big thing” in the study of political science as the use of evolutionary models (Goodin, 2009a: 25–7). And the index to this massive volume contains a number of references to evolutionary theory’s relevance in several other chapters. Relevant, too, is the reality that citations of the Alford et al. (2005) article on genetic influences on political behavior make it one of the most downloaded articles from the American Political Science Review.

Controversies in biology: implications for the study of biology and politics

There are new developments within biology and these have implications for political science generally and the study of biology and politics more narrowly. This paper will look at four case studies: (a) individual selection versus other models; (b); the roots of altruism and their political implications (c) the role of genes in politics; (d) neuroimaging and politics. There is considerable debate within each of these issues, and this paper will simply note the implications of such debates for the study of politics.