Abstract:
Political science, as a discipline, has been reluctant to adopt theories and methodologies developed
in fields studying human behavior from an evolutionary standpoint. I ask whether evolutionary concepts are
reconcilable with standard political-science theories and whether those concepts help solve puzzles to which
these theories classically are applied. I find that evolutionary concepts readily and simultaneously accommodate
theories of rational choice, symbolism, interpretation, and acculturation. Moreover, phenomena
perennially hard to explain in standard political science become clearer when human interactions are
understood in light of natural selection and evolutionary psychology. These phenomena include the political
and economic effects of emotion, status, personal attractiveness, and variations in information-processing and
decision-making under uncertainty; exemplary is the use of ‘‘focal points’’ in multiple-equilibrium games. I
conclude with an overview of recent research by, and ongoing debates among, scholars analyzing politics in
evolutionarily sophisticated terms.