Over the past 25 years, my academic and work experiences have involved and intersected with biopolitics, particularly environmental policy, international relations, and ethics. My academic and teaching experience was in political theory and ethics, and my early research interests turned to emerging recombinant DNA issues, involving the complex interaction of biological science, technology and public policy processes. My scholarly contacts included those with similar concerns, and so I joined with a group of scholars creating the Association for Politics and the Life Sciences. Several years later, my interests brought me to work in a federal agency where public policy decisions often raise important ethical choices, and the political and behavioral aspects of the policy process became more evident. My research centered on issues related to environmental protection. This work was also influenced by my professional friendship with Lynton Caldwell, another APLS founder and a remarkable scholar, whose work on environmental politics was internationally recognized. After the implosion of the Soviet Union, teaching environmental policy for the Agency in Eastern Europe renewed my interest in international relations, which had been my undergraduate focus. The topic of environmental security combined all of these interests. This topic gained substantial attention in policy circles, then declined, but is now being discussed again.

This study compares stem cell research policymaking by legislators and citizens in the United States. First, using exit poll results from a 2006 stem cell research initiative in Missouri, the study finds that deeply held personal values such as religious beliefs and views of abortion predominate in an individual’s voting decision on this issue; second, an analysis of voting behavior by senators on the Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act of 2005 finds that senators make their voting decisions based on their personal policy preferences rather than their constituents’ preferences; and third, the complexity of the Missouri citizen initiative is compared with that of the legislation in the U.S. Senate, finding that the language of the citizen initiative is more sophisticated than the language of the legislative act. These findings provide the context for a broader discussion of the role of citizens and legislators in making policy for science.

This article reviews biotechnology legislation in the 50 states for 11 policy areas spanning 1990–2010, an era of immense growth in biotechnology, genetic knowledge, and significant policy development. Policies regarding health insurance, life insurance, long-term care insurance, DNA data bank collection, biotech research protection, biotech promotion and support, employment discrimination, genetic counselor licensing, human cloning, and genetic privacy each represent major policy responses arising from biotechnology and coinciding with key areas of state regulation (insurance, criminal justice, economic development, labor law, health and safety, privacy, and property rights). This analysis seeks to answer three questions regarding biotechnology legislation at the state level: who is acting (policy adoption), when is policy adopted (policy timing), and what is policy doing (policy content). Theoretical concerns examine state ideology (conservative or liberal), policy type (economic or moral), and the role of external events (federal law, news events, etc.) on state policy adoption. Findings suggest ideological patterns in adoption, timing, and content of biotech policy. Findings also suggest economic policies tend to be more uniform in content than moral policies, and findings also document a clear link between federal policy development, external events, and state policy response.

This article proposes equating policies as species to develop a better understanding of how policies emerge, change, and diffuse across policymaking environments. Scholars have long shown an interest in understanding policy change and reinvention, whether incremental or nonincremental. The two subfields of public policy that can answer how and why policies change are not unified, leading to difficulty in comprehensively assessing policy emergence and change. The policy species concept bridges knowledge of the policy process and knowledge in the policy process by creating an operationalized definition of public policy and suggesting a process for classifying policies to observe subsequent behavior. Drawing from the field of biology, the policy species framework outlines how policies possess genotypes and phenotypes, which dictate what a policy is and how it can change. In tracing genotypic and phenetic change over time, policy evolution and change is more easily discernible. In turn, a more precise picture of how policies function is painted.

Thirty years ago there were at most only a handful of political scientists who were interested in or publishing about policy issues in the life sciences, concentrated primarily in the health or environmental policy areas. As a result, political science was notably absent as a discipline either in the literature, at conferences, or as members of state or national commissions, advisory bodies, or institutional review boards involving the life sciences.

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.

As a result of the initiative, ingenuity, and dedicated efforts of Steven Peterson and James Schubert, and the generous support of Alfred University, the Conference on Empirical Biopolitics was held from July 18 to July 22, 1990, on the campus of Alfred University. Six empirical studies were presented and extensively discussed at this small and intimate conference, with two or more hours devoted to each. Discussion focused not only on the specific research questions under investigation, but also on the ramifications for inquiry in the entire field of biopolitics. Odelia Funke and Fred Kort were the designated discussants, but all presenters took part in the stimulating discussions of each paper.

As our title indicates, by almost every measure, 1986 was a good year for biopolitics. First, the total number of items which appeared, 116, set an all-time record (the previous high was 92 in 1985). Second, there continued to be an influx of new entrants, with 22 first-time contributors emerging from our literature search. Third, 15 percent of the items were written by non-American political scientists, up from last year's 10 percent and an indication, we believe, of the healthy growth in international interest. Fourth, and perhaps best of all, five biopolitical dissertations-in-progress, or actually completed, were listed in the annual PS compilation, a nice upturn from 1984's low.

Due to the prevailing paradigms in the social sciences and humanities and due to some traditional reservations against biology in Germany, biopolitics is facing particular difficulties in German political science. At the University of Düsseldorf, the only place where biopolitics is taught in Germany, students take courses which deal explicitly with biopolitical topics or learn about biopolitics in seminars and lectures devoted to other aspects of political behavior. There are difficulties in teaching biopolitics; some will arise wherever biopolitics is taught, while some may be specific for Germany. These difficulties require special teching efforts in order to motivate the students; some experience in dealing with these problems has already been gained. As far as the desirable participation in research projects and the practical application of biopolitical knowledge in particular professions is concerned, there are some possibilities, but still too few. Besides working with students on biopolitical questions, there are useful opportunities of teaching biopolitics outside the university, especially in adult political education and in political consulting.

Arguably, no curve in the world increases indefinitely—certainly no growth curve of human society. The quest for sustainable use of the planet involves estimating levels of activity, particularly resource use, that can continue indefinitely. Since the biosphere is dynamic, this continuation is not a stagnant, steady-state situation but rather a mutualistic interactive relationship between human society and the planet's ecological life support system. Human technology, creativity, and ingenuity may modify natural laws, but cannot be used to repeal them. Attempts to maintain the recent exponential growth of the human population, affluence, and artifacts cannot continue forever, or probably even for another century. At best, quality of life will be diminished, and, at worst, a substantial loss of human life will occur if both ethical and ecological issues are not freely and openly discussed. Sustainability may be visionary and unattainable, but it does offer an opportunity to improve the quality of life for future generations of humans and the other life forms, an opportunity that is far greater than possible with present unsustainable practices.