So that the reader can better adjudge possible disagreements, we would like to begin by stating, at the very outset, the thesis argued in our book, Darwinism, Dominance, and Democracy (Somit and Peterson, 1997). As Peter Corning correctly reports in his commentary (2000), we contend that “the most important reason for the rarity of democracy is that evolution has endowed our species, as it has other primates, with a predisposition for hierarchically structured social and political systems” (1997: 1). In short, we argue that Homo sapiens has a “genetic bias” toward authoritarian political societies characterized by hierarchy, dominance, and submission.

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.