Opinion formation and information processing are affected by unconscious affective responses to stimuli—particularly in politics. Yet we still know relatively little about such affective responses and how to measure them. In this study, we focus on emotional valence and examine facial electromyography (fEMG) measures. We demonstrate the validity of these measures, discuss ways to make measurement and analysis more robust, and consider validity trade-offs in experimental design. In doing so, we hope to support scholars in designing studies that will advance scholarship on political attitudes and behavior by incorporating unconscious affective responses to political stimuli—responses that have too often been neglected by political scientists.

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.

Sleep research presents an important frontier of discovery for political science. While sleep has largely been neglected by political scientists, human psychology is inextricably linked with sleep and so political cognition must be as well. Existing work shows that sleep is linked to political participation and ideology, and that contentious politics can disrupt sleep. I propose three directions for future research—on participatory democracy, on ideology, and on how context shapes sleep-politics links. I also note that sleep research intersects with the study of political institutions, of war and conflict, of elite decision-making, and of normative theory. In short, political scientists across subfields can and should consider whether and how sleep influences political life in their area of expertise and how to influence relevant policies. This new research agenda will enrich our theories of politics and enable us to identify pressing areas for policy interventions to revitalize our democracy.

Last fall, the Association for Politics and the Life Sciences (APLS) celebrated its 30th anniversary by holding the annual meeting on the picturesque campus of Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana. The event was highlighted not only by a keynote address from Nobel Prize Laureate Elinor Ostrom but also featured several roundtables comprised of those most responsible for the establishment and growth of APLS over the past three decades. This Founders' Forum likewise celebrates 30 years of the journal's publication and provides the opportunity to reflect on where the field and the association have been, and where they are headed.

In contrast to recent political, scholarly, and public misuse of the term, this essay articulates a more accurate definition of the hostage concept. This definition is not only consistent with a broad range of etymological sources, but is also in agreement with numerous examples from the historical and anthropological record. A possible application of the hostage idea to mid/late-twentieth-century superpower relationships, involving a distinctively different approach to nuclear deterrence, is also described. Attention is further called to the fact that the giving of hostages as confidence-building “emissaries of trust” incorporates several attributes that might be of interest to contemporary evolutionary theorists. A closer examination of the biological and behavioral underpinnings, the historical and anthropological precedents, and the political and psychological efficacy of this ancient idea might therefore prove to be a fruitful area for future empirical and theoretical research.

In a recent issue of Politics and the Life Sciences Mark Walker presented a compelling proposition for reducing evil in the world via an interdisciplinary program he calls the “Genetic Virtue Project” (GVP). As Walker explains, the purpose of the GVP is “to discover and enhance human ethics using biotechnology genetic correlates of virtuous behavior.” PLS subsequently published several critiques of this proposal. While most of these critiques focused on conventional doubts about the technical feasibility or the ethics of such interventions, the more fundamental concern revealed by both Walker's proposal and its critiques is in the largely unquestioned assumption that more morality is necessarily better. Human history is marked by a gradual if uneven extension of moral concern to increasingly distant others, which many take as evidence of the rationality of morality. There is substantial evidence, though, that this expansion is fundamentally biological in origin and therefore not ultimately limited by rationality. Because these expanding moral feelings feel so good to us, we are incapable of perceiving the danger from their ever-expanding focus, in particular from the sincere but increasingly maladaptive collective policies they will engender. Utilizing the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche as a platform, the feasibility of different natural and cultural responses to this impending crisis of caring are examined, none of which are found capable of counteracting this expanding morality. Instead, the best hope for a successful response to this dangerous expansion of caring is actually a sort of reverse GVP, in which the biological mechanisms for this unchecked moral expansion are manipulated via genetic engineering to dial back this expansion. However, the likelihood of actually implementing such an admittedly counterintuitive and controversial program within an increasingly democratized world is doubtful. Ultimately, if we are unable to overcome this betrayal by our best intentions, where does that leave us as a species?

The U.S. Army conducts the Biological Defense Research Program to provide medical protection for U.S. military personnel against the threat of biological weapons. The unclassified medical research program is consistent with the Biological Weapons Convention, which prohibits the production and stockpiling of biological and toxin weapons, and encourages the international exchange of scientific and medical information on the prevention and treatment of infectious diseases. The program is the source of secondary benefits to civilian public health in the form of vaccine and drug development, diagnostic capability, and contributions to the world body of knowledge on infectious diseases. As the executive agent for the program, the Army submits descriptions of the work conducted under the program to Congress as part of its budget request, and provides numerous other responses to Congressional scrutiny of the program. Internal monitoring of the program is conducted from the perspectives of safety, compliance with regulatory agencies, quality assurance, and close administrative and technical oversight of contracts.

The common assumption that female candidates on the campaign trail should not go on the attack, because such tactics contradict gender stereotypes, has not received consistent support. We argue that in some circumstances gender stereotypes will favor female politicians going negative. To test this proposition, this study examines how gender cues affect voter reactions to negative ads in the context of a political sex scandal, a context that should prime gender stereotypes that favor females. Using an online experiment involving a national sample of U.S. adults ($N=599$), we manipulate the gender and partisan affiliation of a politician who attacks a male opponent caught in a sex scandal involving sexually suggestive texting to a female intern. Results show that in the context of a sex scandal, a female candidate going on the attack is evaluated more positively than a male. Moreover, while female participants viewed the female sponsor more favorably, sponsor gender had no effect on male participants. Partisanship also influenced candidate evaluations: the Democratic female candidate was evaluated more favorably than her Republican female counterpart.

This research note addresses a gap in the public administration literature by arguing that a political Darwinism was present in the intellectual origins of American administrative theory. By examining the arguments of Woodrow Wilson, this article demonstrates that Darwinism complemented the German political thought that contributed to the establishment of America’s administrative state. The application of Darwinian evolutionary biology to politics was a vital element of Wilson’s reconceptualization of the state as a living organism. Darwinism was a key rhetorical tool employed by Wilson in his argument against the Constitution’s separation of powers. This note finds that Darwinism was present in the early stages of public administration theory in Wilson’s argumentation and persists today in the public administration literature. It concludes by sketching out an agenda for further research on Darwinism’s influence on public administration.

Teaching about the biological perspective on human behavior offers numerous benefits to the instructor. Students, however, are often plagued by numerous common misconceptions concerning genetic influences on behavior, political implications of sociobiology, and evolved sex differences. These are discussed in that order. Lastly, some books are recommended as texts and references.

In his article from the previous issue of the journal, “Enhancing genetic virtue: A project for twenty-first century humanity?” Mark Walker proposes an interdisciplinary effort between philosophers, psychologists, and geneticists called the Genetic Virtue Program (GVP), whose aim is to employ biotechnology some time into the future to identify genetic correlates of “virtuous” behavior, such as truthfulness, justice, and caring.

At the November 1998 general election, Michigan citizens were given the opportunity to vote on Proposal B, an initiative that would have legalized physician-assisted suicide (PAS). PAS initiatives also have been held in Washington State, California, Oregon, and Maine, with only Oregon's passing. We use exit poll data to analyze the vote on Proposal B. Attributes associated with social liberalism—Democratic Party identification, less frequent church attendance, more education, and greater household income—led to increased odds of a “yes” vote. Attributes associated with social conservatism—Republican Party identification and frequent church attendance—led to decreased odds of a “yes” vote. Similar to the abortion issue, PAS's supporters strongly value personal autonomy, whereas its opponents strongly value the sanctity of life. Voter alignments like those in Michigan will likely appear in other states with the initiative process if PAS reaches their ballots.

In April 1991, the United Nations Security Council adopted Resolution 687, which established the terms and conditions for a formal cease-fire between Iraq and the coalition of Member States. Resolution 687 states that Iraq shall unconditionally accept the destruction, removal, or rendering harmless—under international supervision—of all chemical and biological weapons; all stocks of agents, and all related subsystems and components; and all related research, development, support, and manufacturing facilities. The resolution further states that Iraq shall unconditionally undertake not to use, develop, construct, or acquire any of the items mentioned above, and it calls for the development of a plan for ongoing monitoring and verification of Iraq's compliance. To accomplish these objectives, Resolution 687 provided for the establishment of a Special Commission to carry out immediate on-site inspections of Iraq's capabilities, based on Iraq's declarations and the designation of any additional locations by the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) itself. Soon after it was established, the commission initiated a series of unprecedented inspections to eliminate Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.