Frank Sulloway (1996) has stirred up great debate with his thesis that birth order explains and predicts people's proclivity to rebel. Scientists, scholars, business writers, and the broad reading and talk-television public alike all have weighed in to discuss the value and veridicality of Sulloway's thesis. Though many think he may be on to something, certain voices—Frederic Townsend's included—argue that his opus is simply bunk.

“Ethical and Value Choices in the Selection of National Agricultural Research Goals” is a research project funded under an NSFJNEH grant. It involves bringing together a team of twelve nationally known experts to try to build a broadened base from which to evaluate agriculture and agricultural research. The team will meet twice in Washington, D.C., the first time to work out the full range of problems and interrelationships to be addressed and the second time to hear the papers presented by each of the team members. The meetings in Washington will be hosted by the General Accounting Office and will include various agency representatives and analysts, Congressional staff members, and representatives of interested groups. After being reviewed, the papers will be revised by the authors and edited into a book. The editing will be done by Kenneth A. Dahlberg, Western Michigan University, who is the principal investigator for the project.

We model mates' interdependent parental investment decisions as a game of Chicken. An individual is better off (in terms of reproductive success) deserting one's offspring to start a new union if one's mate stays to raise the offspring, but better off not deserting if one's mate would in turn desert the offspring. Modelling the parental investment decisions as a game of Chicken leads to four hypotheses: An individual is more likely to desert if (1) the mate is more committed to the offspring, (2) the mate has more resources to invest in children, (3) the former mate is currently unmarried, and (4) the children are older (in sharp contrast to the prediction by both Trivers [1972] and Dawkins and Carlisle [1976]). Data from the 1992 U.S. Current Population Survey provide at least partial support for all hypotheses except Hypothesis 2. In particular, the data analysis strongly supports our prediction that individuals are more likely to desert older children than younger children even when time since separation is controlled for, and rejects the earlier prediction by Trivers (1972) and Dawkins and Carlisle (1976).

I strongly agree with what I take to be Arnhart's basic claims: that Aristotle's teleological biology is plausible in the light of what we now think about good scientific practice, and that it provides a kind of basis or vocabulary for moral and practical deliberation that is lacking in nonteleological or reductionist biology. Arnhart's defense of these claims is important both because he suggests a more expansive notion of what counts as biological science and because he in effect challenges Macintyre's (1981) claim that Aristotle's biology is “metaphysical” and so cannot serve as a basis for theorizing about moral and political matters. Arnhart makes his case well, and I was especially instructed by his discussion of Sacks' work as an example of a teleological vocabulary applied to moral and psychiatric questions.

The response by Somit and Peterson to my earlier commentary in this journal (Corning, 2000), which sharply criticized their little-noticed 1997 book (by their own admission), must seem like old news that should be relegated to the obituary pages. On the contrary, it concerns one of the central political issues of our time—what sustains modern democracy, and what are its future prospects. Somit and Peterson in their modest book offered both a diagnosis and a prescription. I concluded in my essay that the result was disappointing—more for what was omitted than for any commissions. My critique involved a rather subtle argument, and, judging by the authors' response (Somit and Peterson, 2001), it seems to have been lost on them as well.

Corning and Hines' assertions at the beginning of their article are correct. The political development literature is in “disarray.” There is dissensus on definitions and measures. The term ‘political evolution’ is seldom used in any technical or precise sense. Political scientists are mostly “unaware of the burgeoning literature… on the causal dynamics underlying the evolution of society in general and of politics and the state in particular,” and their “knowledge of pre-modern politics” does tend to be “sketchy.” The time is “ripe” (as always?) for “fresh approaches.” The introduction or reintroduction of “an evolutionary perspective” could be, depending on how it is defined, a “radical departure” from dominant frames of reference in political science.

Robin and Markle's “Let No One Split Asunder: Controversy in Human Genetic Engineering” is a notable contribution to the sociology of science and a clarification of some important social and political issues in the current controversy around the new recombinant DNA technologies. Their four-fold taxonomy of levels of inquiry and analysis is a theoretical advance. It is also a device for illuminating, decoding, deciphering, and finally for bettering our understanding of what happened structurally in the Cline case. Much of the contemporary work in the sociology of science touches on a few, or even several of these dimensions, but because the analytic categories are frequently (if inadvertently) run together, one is often burdened with a confusing vault between levels. (Few authors make the analytic distinctions of different levels as do Robin and Markle, so it is hardly surprising that they would “run them together.”)

The Ad Hoc Group established in 1994 to draft proposals to strengthen the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention through a legally binding instrument has now met twelve times. Its negotiations successfully transitioned in July 1997 to consideration of a draft protocol, the sixth version of which has now been produced. Five meetings totalling sixteen weeks are agreed for 1999, and there is clear global political will to complete the negotiations. All the essential elements for the protocol are now in the rolling text—mandatory declarations, visits (both focused and random), and compliance concern investigations, together with measures to strengthen the implementation of Article X (cooperation for peaceful purposes) and other articles of the BTWC. This article examines how the integrated regime has a considerable synergistic effect that will, over time, build confidence in compliance with the convention; ensure that uncertainties, anomalies, and concerns are swiftly investigated; and improve the implementation of the convention.

Corning and Hines make a useful contribution to the study of politics by distinguishing sharply between “political development” and “political evolution.” Their emphasis on the multidisciplinary dimensions of real life changes as they occur (and have occurred) throughout the world is also needed. We must, assuredly, go beyond political science, both to the other social sciences (including economics) and also, notably, to the life sciences.

“In the theatre,” Giuseppe Verdi once explained, “long is synonymous with boring. And boring is the worst of all styles.” Those who read scholarly journals must be more patient than opera audiences, and this surely must be true of those who have just read my long article and the nine commentaries. I will not test the limits of that patience, however, by responding at length to all the comments. I am grateful to all the commentators for their instructive remarks, which I will be pondering for a long time. But now I can only answer briefly some of the most prominent objections.

On June 29, 2002, President George W. Bush invoked the United States Constitution's Twenty-Fifth Amendment, ratified in 1967. By so doing, he helped focus attention on the amendment's two disability provisions, Sections 3 and 4. Section 3 provides for voluntary transfer of power from the president to the vice president and is wholly dependent on the president's wishes. Section 4 provides for involuntary transfers of power, possibly over the president's objection. This controversial provision allows a vice president, with the assent of a majority of the cabinet, to become acting president. Critics have long argued that the vice president and cabinet officers, since they all owe their positions to the president, may be excessively reluctant to act even when action clearly is warranted. Therefore, some of these critics have proposed that a presidential disability commission be established at the beginning of every administration either to act under Section 4 in place of the cabinet or to provide formal and regular medical assessments so as to press for action in the event of presidential inability. I argue that such proposals are unwise and that their implementation would be counterproductive and even dangerous, both to the presidency and to the nation.

Partisan identification is a fundamental force in individual and mass political behavior around the world. Informed by scholarship on human sociality, coalitional psychology, and group behavior, this research argues that partisan identification, like many other group-based behaviors, is influenced by forces of evolution. If correct, then party identifiers should exhibit adaptive behaviors when making group-related political decisions. The authors test this assertion with citizen assessments of the relative physical formidability of competing leaders, an important adaptive factor in leader evaluations. Using original and novel data collected during the contextually different 2008 and 2012 U.S. presidential elections, as well as two distinct measures obtained during both elections, this article presents evidence that partisans overestimate the physical stature of the presidential candidate of their own party compared with the stature of the candidate of the opposition party. These findings suggest that the power of party identification on political behavior may be attributable to the fact that modern political parties address problems similar to the problems groups faced in human ancestral times.