H-Diplo | ISSF

his roundtable broadly addresses the application of recent developments in biology, behavior genetics and neuroscience to topics in international relations and security studies. Advances in the life sciences have been applied to topics in political science; most of those applications have been restricted to the realm of voting behavior and public opinion broadly construed 1. However, several are directly related to topics of greater interest to International Relations scholars, such as strategic decision-making and morality. These contributions have proven enormously provocative and interesting, and have spawned entire new research agendas into the myriad ways in which biology may contribute to human political and social development and behavior. However, up until now, very little of this work has explicitly taken on problems and issues related to the topics that typically preoccupy IR scholars and done so in manner engaging those scholars. Such topics include conflict processes, the formation and maintenance of alliances, the dynamics of intra-group and inter-group aggression, the emergence of status hierarchies, and prospects for trade and cooperation. The reasons for this lack of integration seem obvious. Biological processes take place at a micro level, in the past, often too difficult to even be observed by the naked eye, while international relations topically occur on a much larger scale. Many find it too difficult to imagine, much less trace, the chain of cause and effect between then. But macro-level outcomes are due in part to micro-level activity. The implications of individual difference, founded in biological and genetic reality, exert their influence on behavior that in sum dramatically affects aggregate level international outcomes. Anyone who believes that Hitler provided a critical and unique catalyst to the cataclysm that became World War II cannot argue otherwise. But the processes by which biological differences can manifest effects on international relations have not been well, or systematically, thought out previously. This roundtable is designed to begin thinking about these issues in a more systematic way. In part, our goal is to provide a forum for discussion that departs a bit from the more traditional causal variables explored in international relations research, but still engages the central issues of concern. 3 | P a g e Many people argue that the world has changed since the terrorist attacks of 9/11. This may or may not be true from the perspective of international relations, but it is certainly true in terms of how we understand …