Humans exhibit intense attachments to very large groups, sometimes numbering in the millions. The author addresses the question of how inclinations to attach to large groups might have evolved and identifies the problem of collective action and free riding as the central obstacles to overcome. He argues that the nonsubtractibility feature of public goods and the inclusive fitness theory of W. D. Hamilton are key elements in the evolution of sharing behavior in large groups: a source of group attachments. The argument implies that the mix of goods available and produced in past and present environments impacts the configuration of different-sized groups found in human society.

This article explores long-term issues and problems that have seriously undermined the U.S. Chemical Testing Program established by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) under the Toxic Substances Control Act. This program is meant to gather information needed to protect human health and the environment from damaging exposure to toxic chemicals. Despite seemingly broad and impressive authority under the statute, there are a number of inherent difficulties, as well as substantial political constraints, that impede comprehensive oversight of chemicals in U.S. commerce. The article discusses several approaches that EPA has adopted to overcome statutory and political limitations and increase chemical testing information. The most recent and promising of these efforts has involved international negotiations to harmonize testing approaches with OECD nations and to cooperate on an agenda that will better share the testing burden on an international level.

Among the founders of our interdisciplinary field of inquiry, Tom Wiegele was preeminent. He was the catalyst in drawing together in a collegial association the many of us who, from different backgrounds, had come to see the unfolding social implications of advances in the life sciences for both public policy and the study of politics. He possessed a combination of leadership skills in both concepts and organization that is rarely found in academia.

Salmon farming is a key industry in Norway, with firsthand value of more than 60 billion Norwegian crowns in 2017. The salmon industry is a driving force for biotechnological applications in the marine sector. The recent release of the Atlantic salmon reference genome offers new opportunities to solve major aquaculture bottlenecks that currently limit expansion of the industry. One major bottleneck is the genetic impact of escaped farmed salmon on wild populations. To solve this problem, the industry can use sterile salmon in production. As shown by Wargelius et al., sterile salmon can be made by preventing the formation of germ cells through genome editing using the CRISPR-Cas9 method. This approach solves problems of genetic introgression and precocious maturation. However, genome editing of animals, especially for human consumption, raises ethical as well as safety and legal questions. These social and ethical aspects can have tremendous impact in analyzing the final result of salmon farming (e.g., consumer acceptability of a fresh or frozen filet or similar salmon product) but also can be examined “upstream” by describing and assessing the research communities that promote and carry out the science that underpins the salmon industry. Who produces the scientific “facts” that govern the Norwegian aquaculture industry? How do these scientific communities work together? What are the societal impacts of this science? This article uses ethnographical observation and interviews to describe the state-of-the-art of CRISPR gene-editing procedures currently employed in the science and industry collaboration in Norway.

The plea of Corning and Hines to replace the concept of political development with that of political evolution addresses the conceptual obfuscation engendered by the plethora of definitions that pervade the literature on development. In a cogently argued paper they review the mainstream literature and briefly refer to alternative perspectives now wellentrenched in the mainstream of social science. They recast these perspectives through synthesis of abstract ideas and set forth the parameters in which a theory of political evolution might be utilized. Their push for interdisciplinary inquiry attempts to undermine ethnocentric and value-laden notions of political science. All these advances, however, merit critical assessment.

Biopolitics should be offered as a separate, independent course in the undergraduate curriculum, and graduate training should be offered within the rubric of political science. The primary reason that biopolitical materials should be covered in the undergraduate, liberal arts curriculum is that there is a need to train students to be vigilant, i.e., to have a critical capacity to confront ideas. Since so much of their lives will be intertwined with the political and so much of the political is better explained by considering biopolitical variables than by not considering them, students need exposure and academic coverage of biopolitical concepts and findings. Biopolitics represents only minor change in the general behavioralistic framework of explaining political phenomena, but represents the introduction into political science of some concepts and variables more widely used in the life sciences. Because biopolitical materials are high in quantity and because they are per se important and increase the explanatory power of traditional behavioralism, a biopolitics course belongs in the political science curriculum. The preparation of qualified teachers and researchers argues for graduate training in biopolitics. Without such graduate training in political science departments, the biopolitical inquiry will primarily be undertaken in disciplines other than political science.

We examine the likely acceptance of the COVID-19 vaccine in the period prior to political polarization around vaccine mandates. Two representative cross-sectional surveys of 1,000 respondents were fielded in August and December 2020. The surveys included items about the COVID-19 vaccine and vaccine mandates. Respondents self-identifying as liberal were the least likely to believe the vaccine had undisclosed harmful effects (p< .001), conservatives were the most likely (p < .001), and moderates fell in between. Individuals with a bachelor’s degree were less likely to think the vaccine had undisclosed harmful effects than individuals without a bachelor’s degree (p < .001), and 60.5% of those individuals did not support a government vaccine mandate. Political ideology was more often strongly associated with avoiding government involvement compared to education level. In summary, both liberal political ideology and higher education were significantly associated with endorsing intended vaccine uptake. We discuss these results in terms of positive versus negative rights.

Researchers in the twenty-first century face a set of challenges unknown to researchers a half century ago—the need to justify the moral acceptability of their research methods through formal review processes. However, the role that moral constraints play in the development and demise of scientific theories has largely gone unappreciated. The rise of Institutional Review Boards (IRB) in the 1960s compounded the impact of moral constraints on scientific research and on the theories that develop out of such highly monitored research. To demonstrate the effects of moral constraints on scientific theory and research, this paper offers a history and analysis of the interaction between evolving moral standards and twentieth century emotion theory. Recommendations regarding IRB reform are also reviewed. The paper concludes by arguing that, while appropriate IRB reform is important, it cannot eliminate the need for careful reflection on the broader forces that shape scientific practice and understanding.

This article offers a new perspective on when and why individual-level authoritarian perceptions of security threats change. We reexamine claims that authoritarian members of the public responded to the COVID-19 pandemic in a counterintuitive fashion. The response was counterintuitive in that, rather than a desire for a stronger government with the ability to impose measures to address the pandemic and its consequences, authoritarian individuals rejected a stronger government response and embraced individual autonomy. The article draws on perceptions of security threats—issues that directly or indirectly harm personal or collective safety and welfare—from surveys in two different contexts in England: 2012, when perceptions of the threat from infectious disease was low relative to most other security threats, and 2020, when perceptions of the personal and collective threat of COVID-19 superseded all other security threats. We argue that the authoritarian response was not counterintuitive once we account for the type of threat it represented.

This article describes some aspects of an Italian didactic-pedagogic experiment about interaction between “town” pupils and natural environments. The project's general philosophy is to try to make pupils aware of our condition as “biocultural beings,” as results of biological, technological, and cultural co-evolution. The presence of extensive natural, cultural, and technological resources at the site where the experiment takes place favors such an awareness.

Some examples of teaching techniques designed especially to introduce pupils to the difficult but necessary subject matter of co-evolution are also described. Such teaching techniques have as their main goal to make the pupils themselves able to construct a logical network of questions, rather than in teachers giving them already prepared answers.

The as yet unresolved problems, which concern the training of teachers steeped in traditional methods, are also briefly described.