In this bibliographic essay, we continue our annual updating of the biopolitics literature (see Somit et al., 1980; Peterson, Somit, and Slagter, 1982; Peterson, Somit, and Brown, 1983). We have identified 81 items appearing in 1983 (down a bit from last year's total of 93): 2 books (Corning, 1983b; Flohr and Tbnnesmann, 1983a), 22 full articles published in journals, 18 chapters in books (excluding reprints of previously published materials), 25 conference presentations, 4 master's theses and doctoral dissertations, and 10 commentaries, review essays, etc. It seems worth noting that 12 of the 80 works appearing in 1983 were published in the journal of the Association for Politics and the Life Sciences, Politics and the Life Sciences.

Although some Finnish social scientists are interested in the biological aspects of human behavior and politics, biopolitics has not yet had much impact on political science in Finland. Most Finnish political scientists are in fact indifferent to biopolitics. They seem to think that it is just a fashionable scientific movement which will soon fade.

In Western Europe and especially West Germany, introducing a new approach in political science, biopolitics, is not an easy task. German political science has a very strong and effective philosophical tradition (Aristotle, Aquinas, Kant, Hegel, Marx, Weber), which separates it from the life sciences. Traditionally, political science is a theoretical branch of study, and politics is regarded principally as a rational process. Based on well-known historical experiences, German social scientists raise ideological objections to biology, and, with some exceptions (Flohr, 1979, 1983; Buhl, 1981, 1982), they neglect the findings of the life sciences. Political science mainly operates in a vacuum, adhering to the discipline's traditional monistic conceptions of what politics ought to be. Thus, in Germany the first problem is how to change monistic approaches and create a new kind of scientific conception of the world, one that is open and dynamic (Radnitzky, 1971) and able to integrate findings from the life sciences. Only then can biopolitical perspectives become anchored in the discipline. Thus, introducing biopolitics in Germany depends on a mental change, from traditional monistic conceptions to an open conception.