ABSTRACT
While Darwinian theory has made inroads into the social sciences, mainstream political theory and in particular the analysis of welfare remains largely divorced from biology. For example, O'Brien and Penna I examine seven approaches to wdl~If(' theory without mentioning modern biological theory or the main disciplines that connect it with social phenomena: ethology, anthropology, and psychology.:? Altruism, kinship, fitness, and reciprocity are not indexed. Biology, including l'\'olutionary theOl)', is also conspicuously ahsent from the works of leading political theorists Bill Jordan, Michael '''alzer, and David l\liIler;:1 leading social theorists whose writings deal with state welfare. Yet evolutionary conet'pts are hegged by the last two scholars in their making of a common-sense analogy between family and welf~lre state, as discussed below. Due to lack or examples this chapter cannot discuss the use of modern evolutionary concepts in mainstream political theory. Rather, I discuss a few places in which that theory approaches the threshold of biology and the associated confusions in policy analysis that perhaps ine\'itably result when theorists a\'oid scientific concepts and data in fa\'our of vague analogy.
