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"Evolution and Political Decision Making" published on by Oxford University Press.

The use of evolutionary theory for explaining human warfare is an expanding area of inquiry, but it remains obstructed by two important hurdles. One is that there is ambiguity abouthow to build an evolutionary theoryof human warfare. The second is that there is ambiguity abouthow to interpret existing evidencerelating to the evolution of warfare. This paper addresses these problems, first by outlining an evolutionary theory of human warfare, and second by investigating the veracity of four common claims made against the use of evolutionary theory for explaining warfare. These claims are: (1) ancestral warfare was not frequent or intense enough to have selected for psychological adaptations in humans for warfare; (2) the existence of peaceful societies falsifies the claim that humans possess adaptations for fighting; (3) if psychological adaptations for warfare exist, then war is an inevitable and universal component of the human condition; (4) modern warfare and international politics is so qualitatively different from ancestral politics that any adaptations for the latter are inoperative or irrelevant today. By outlining an evolutionary theory of war and clarifying key misunderstandings regarding this approach, international relations scholars are better positioned to understand, engage, and contribute to emerging scholarship on human warfare across the social and evolutionary sciences.

In a previous issue of this journal, Adam Goodwin (2010) argued that applications of 'orthodox' evolutionary theory in international relations are reductionist, necessarily privilege an individualist ontology, and doom social theorising to the false assumption that humans are by nature selfish and competitive. As an alternative, Goodwin presents Kropotkin's Mutual Aid framework both for overcoming the reductionism of 'orthodox' evolutionary theory and for establishing a holist ontology cantered around the autonomy of social forms. I argue that Goodwin's representation of 'orthodox' evolutionary theory is in fact far from orthodoxy and instead rests on misunderstandings both of how natural selection operates and what it operates to produce – adaptations. I show that modern evolutionary theory rests on neither individualist nor holist ontologies, and instead demonstrates that humans are by nature neither hawkish nor dovish. I provide examples on the evolution of cooperation and war to demonstrate that modern evolutionary theory can explain a range of pro- and anti-social behaviours and that fears of biological reductionism in international relations are misplaced.

Biological approaches to politics have witnessed the emergence of two major strands of research that are related but quite distinct: an "Adaptationist" approach and a "Heritability" approach. The former explains behavior as the product of complex psychological adaptations designed by natural selection that all humans share, while the latter explains behavior as a consequence of heritable genetic differences between individuals. Importantly, neither approach excludes environmental factors from a causal role in generating behavior. Heritability approaches are more familiar to political scientists, and one well‐known example is behavior genetics, as exemplified in twin study research. However, Adaptationist approaches, such as evolutionary psychology, remain theoretically underdeveloped in political science. We therefore provide a detailed outline of the theoretical framework of evolutionary psychology, and we explore its application toward the study of political behavior—an endeavor we label Evolutionary Political Science.

The use of evolutionary models to examine political behavior in international relations has been the subject of much debate, but serious scholarly work has generally been lacking, in part because the causal mechanisms have not always been clearly explicated. An evolutionary psychological framework can correct this deficit and benefit research in at least three major areas of international relations: (1) how political groups such as states are perceived and represented by individuals and groups; (2) how coalitional action is facilitated among states; and (3) sex differences in coalitional behavior. Hypotheses are offered in each of these areas to more clearly demonstrate the psychological mechanisms that are the bridge between evolutionary theory and political behavior in the international system. The social and political landscape of the ancestral environments in which humans evolved strongly suggests that the psychological architecture of humans possesses specialized design for coalitional living that continues to guide behavior in the modern political world. These evolved mechanisms structure human motivation and engagement in areas including leadership and war.