Book review

Darwinian Politics: The Evolutionary Origins of Freedom; Paul Rubin, RutgersUniversity Press, New Brunswick, NJ. 2002, ISBN 0813530954 (hardcover, $60.00,

50.50 Pounds Sterling) 0813530962 (paperback, $25.00, 20.50 Pounds Sterling)

The premise of this book is that political theory is in trouble, and only Darwin can

save it. The plot involves constitutional microeconomics (on preferences) and evolu-

tionary psychology (on where preferences came from) joining forces to sweep into

�the menu of issues discussed in the political arena� (p. ix) and to emerge with some

newly annexed territory. Rubin achieves this via a style of argument that involves alot of riding madly in all directions. It reminded me of Rosencrantz and Guilden-

stern. At no point is it ever established that political theory is actually in trouble,

and nor does it ever quite seem that a rescue has been entirely made. The only thing

abundantly clear is that an adventure has been had. This is a great book, and more

than worthy of serious attention by the readers of this journal.

The central idea is that human preferences have evolved as atavistic solutions to

games of social coordination in the ancestral environment, and that these deeply

evolved preferences potentially explain a great deal about modern political behav-iour and modern political institutions. But something stands in the way, namely

pre-Darwinian political theory, which unfortunately accounts for most extant polit-

ical theory. Within the first few pages, Hobbes, Locke, Marx, Buchanan, Tullock

and Rawls, et al., are all dismissed on the charge of being entirely irrelevant to mod-

ern thinking, because the central concept of optimality – namely, the rational design

of society from behind the veil of ignorance – is utterly and demonstrably meaning-

less in evolutionary terms. Societies cannot be engineered like machines because their

elementary particles are not as malleable. The mind is an evolved �rule-system� ofpreferences, and these are not arbitrary preferences, but rather directly related to

the selection environment of small socially coordinated hunter-gatherer societies.

Modern political institutions retain many of these atavistic features Rubin argues,

and so a reconception of political theory along evolutionary lines is due.

So, instead of thinking about utopias and theoretical optimas and then later wor-

rying about how to bend minds to fit these, Rubin, ever the economist, suggests we

first think about what preferences we actually have and then worry about how to de-

sign societies to fit these. Before we theorize about political outcomes and institu-tions, we should first uncover the underlying behavioural mechanisms involved.

And to reveal these �deep preferences� (see also Earl & Potts, forthcoming; Potts,

2003), we should look to the environment of evolutionary adaptedness (EEA) as

the ancestral conditions that shaped the evolution of the human mind.

doi:10.1016/S0167-4870(03)00017-5

Journal of Economic Psychology 24 (2003) 414–417

www.elsevier.com/locate/joep

And this, of course, is how evolutionary psychologists think: behaviour is a cog-

nitive product compiled on an operating system last modified a very long time ago.

According to Rubin, this is �why� we have politics. Political behaviour is a natural

human behaviour that arises as a kind of disequilibria between psychology and eco-

nomics in evolutionary time. Political preferences are not artificial, they are not en-tirely the product of reason, and, although they can be altered by learning and

experience, they can only be bent so far from their natural state; they are certainly

not subject to infinite manipulation. Rubin explains it this way: �some political issues

have been relevant to humans even before they were human, and we have evolved

certain behaviours and preferences or ways of looking at these questions. . . By the

time our ancestors became human, they already had many rules in place� (p. 3).Which is to say, pace von Neumann, that political games came long before economic

games.The basic problem with the book is the basic problem with evolutionary psycho-

logy: it all too easily lapses into the kind of reasoning that David Hume warned

about. There are many long sets of arguments stitched together in a manner that,

as Rubin himself admits, might seem all too convenient. It is suggestive rather than

demonstrative. But never mind. So long as we understand all that we are dealing

with here are interesting conjectures, then what really matters is whether or not they

are interesting. All proto-science features long chains of just-so stories that are in a

sense strictly necessary to bridge between disciplines, to generate hypotheses, toflesh-out a research program, to motivate the self-same investigation of those very

hypotheses.

It goes something like this. One big idea (evolved political preferences) is dis-

jointed into a series of refrains on problems with young males; individuality and so-

cial integration; bargaining and coalition formation; sexual competition and ethnic

violence; property rights and the problems of old males; the division of labour, mo-

nogamy, envy and other male problems; the gains from trade, the rule of law, errors

made by Marx and other dead male thinkers; productive specialization and integra-tion in hierarchies; religion and risk aversion (�more risk adverse people are more re-

ligious�), as well as implications for the processes of political decision-making. This is

a wide-ranging book about what political theory looks like from the evolutionary-

economic-psychology perspective, and, curiously, what it mostly seems to be about

is the �economics of men�. That may annoy some.

But not me. I think Rubin is on to something here. He suggests an evolutionary

reason for why politics is largely about the manufacture of institutions that solve

male problems – or, equivalently, the problem of males. Homo Economicus andHomo Politicus are both, according to Rubin, evolved from species that were polit-

ical in action. Humans are and always have been political animals. What, then, were

the conditions of the EEA and what preferences did they shape? He reasons that

there should exist preferences for: (1) redistribution, (2) in-group–out-group distinc-

tion, (3) resistance to hierarchy, (4) monogamy, (5) religiousness in proportion to risk

aversion, and some other things as well. Rubin weaves many implications from these:

such as why all humans have such a hard time understanding the concept of gains

from trade; and why young males often take drugs and sometimes become terrorists.

Book review / Journal of Economic Psychology 24 (2003) 414–417 415

The basic theoretical idea in this book, it seemed to me, was about the nature of

preference endogeneity from an evolutionary consistent interpretation of both eco-

nomics and psychology. Economic behaviour is behaviour governed by preferences,

but this is different from the concept of rational behaviour because with rational be-

haviour you never ask why. What is rational is what is optimal, given preferences.What is optimal depends on these preferences, but the populations of these prefer-

ences depend upon the selection environment of the EEA. In short, economic behav-

iour¼ rational behaviour + evolutionary behaviour. The accommodation of the

stone-age society to the stone-age mind to the modern global economy is broadly

what Rubin means by the evolutionary psychology of politics. And, to paraphrase

massively, male-bonding and out-group conflict were important then, and are still

important now. Instead of starting with utopia and then wondering how to get there,

Rubin starts with the adapted political mind and then wonders what might be uto-pia.

Political institutions emerge from political preferences. The elements of politics

are deep preferences, as the behavioural rules laid-down by evolutionary adaptations

of the human mind. The processes of politics are the actions that define the institu-

tions of the economic system, as the rules of the game, and upon which other and

more conventionally �economic� preferences then take purchase. From the evolution-

ary economic perspective, this begs the interesting question of the �appropriateness�of the evolutionary endogenous preferences of Homo Economicus. If preferences areadapted, and if we can theorize about what they rationally should be, then, strictly

speaking, we are talking about the efficiency of preferences. But efficiency of prefer-

ences makes no theoretical sense from within standard game-theoretic or welfare-

theoretic microeconomics. Perhaps Rubin should be called somewhat to account

for this. Or perhaps he pulls his punches. Or perhaps he has not seen the full theo-

retical significance of his argument.

If Rubin is right, then this means that preferences are not an ordered set, but

rather modular and hierarchical rule system that can be partially reprogrammed,but not entirely so. Instead, institutions must be designed to fit around this. Rubin

argues that democratic variants of market-capitalism are very effective systems for

doing this, and I agree. The deep-seated adapted preferences of the human mind

were selected for in ancestral social situations that are, in some cases, utterly different

from those we now inhabit. This poses some hazards to watch for, especially when

one is trying to understand the management of organizations, legal systems, political

systems, ethnic violence, crime, and generally any male-dominated economic behav-

iour you care to name. So read this book and learn about the adaptedness of envy tosmall hunter-gatherer societies and its maladaptation to the global economy (learn

how to trust your wife and your neighbours). Learn how dislike of hierarchies is ra-

tional when all hierarchies are dominance hierarchies, but how this does not apply

when those hierarchies are productive hierarchies (learn how to get along with your

boss and your family). Learn about the ease at which human minds are seduced by a

provocative story, why economists have persistently ignored the process of mar-

keting, and why no one likes listening to experts (learn how to be cunning). Rubin

offers many such insights, all of which tend toward the view that an institutionally

416 Book review / Journal of Economic Psychology 24 (2003) 414–417

male-dominated US society – or any society similarly principled about monogamous

constitutional democracy, tightly regulated but essentially free-market capitalism, re-

ligions open to new ideas, no dominant ethnic culture, and so forth – is the best of all

possible worlds that evolution has carved for us, if our goal is to satisfy our (male)

preferences. And I think he is right about that, so long as we only take half of thehuman population into account. But that is not quite a democracy of reasoning.

In the final paragraph Rubin lays down his cards: �the most significant policy rel-

evant point of the analysis is the advantage of western, and particularly US, society

in satisfying human wants. . . We in the West should not be shy in publicizing this

advantage and in assisting others to try to emulate our successes�. And so we go from

apes fighting about access to females and problems of territorial ambush, to nations

fighting about access to oil and problems of terrorist ambush. Rubin argues that

from the evolutionary perspective, and subject to certain conditions relating to co-hort and ethnic balance, a US-style democratic market-capitalist society is the best

of all current alternatives. This posture is not without Panglossian sentimentality,

and it is a relatively trivial exercise to shoot it down methodologically (it is based

upon the marshalling of selective argument, contains no systematic empirical sup-

port, and its main propositions are massively inductive). But perhaps the time is right

for an evolutionary re-examination of the value of wholesale political institutions.

This is an interesting and imaginative book based about a compelling observa-

tion: economics and psychology have recently adopted evolutionary ways of think-ing, but, as yet, with exceptions such as Robert Axelrod, political theory has not.

Political theory, then, needs to get with the evolutionary program if not to be out-

flanked by psychology and economics. This book explains in a wonderfully engaging

manner just how that might happen.

References

Earl, P.E., Potts, J. (forthcoming). The market for preferences. Cambridge Journal of Economics.

Potts, J. (2003). Toward an evolutionary theory of Homo Economicus. In J. Laurent (Ed.), Evolutionary

Economics and Human Nature. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.

Jason Potts

School of Economics

University of Queensland

QLD 4072, Australia

E-mail address: j.potts@economics.uq.edu.au

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