What is the relationship of biology and government?

Rousseau wrote that "man is born free but is everywhere in chains." That belief has become the stock and trade for idealists and revolutionaries ever since. These authors argue that Rousseau got it exactly backwards, that evolution has endowed us and all of the social primates "with a predisposition for social and political hierarchical structures." We are born with these "chains" and it is only through culture that we can find freedom. They note that the term "democracy" has been used "as a term of a approbation" throughout recorded history. No great philosopher, East or West, has supported democracy as a rational form of government. Yet in the 20^th Century, from Woodrow Wilson on, the Western world has been involved in numerous battles in order to "make the world safe for democracy." Why is this? What has changed?

Somit and Peterson argue that the evolutionary concept of "inclusive fitness" has been the driving force behind authoritarian hierarchical political and social systems throughout history and before. So why has the concept of democracy become so all-powerful in the 20^th Century? They note that even such unabashed dictatorships as North Korea, Red China and the USSR call themselves "peoples democracies." Addressing President Clinton’s military efforts in Haiti, supposedly on behalf of democracy, they write "When, we may wonder, have the unfortunate Haitians ever had a government that even remotely resembled a democracy?"

The authors argue that "homo-sapiens is the only species capable of creating and, under some circumstances, acting in accord with cultural beliefs that actually run counter to its innate behavioral tendencies." They term this indoctrinability. Thus the development and survival of democracy, an unnatural form, depends on the same thing that drives religion, snake handling, celibacy, and even monogamy (Richard Dawkins has called these gene-like, fitness enhancing, and culturally transmitted features "memes.")

But do not be misled, the authors are not anti-democratic. They believe that it is imperative to understand the dictates of our true biological nature; that democracy is more likely to thrive if it is approached in a realistic fashion. They address the racial/ethnic issue in terms of democracy only briefly, remarking that only primarily English speaking peoples were born and raised in democracies, and that in some cultures even the concept of freedom faces a difficult hurdle. For example, in China, the very character for freedom carries with it a connotation of something slippery and undesirable. The authors conclude that, by nature man, possesses an "inherent primate disposition for hierarchical social and authoritarian political systems." Hence the birth and survival of democracy " demands that nurture ... triumph over nature."

This may well be the most unusual study of politics and political and social theory that you will ever read.