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The 2005 APSR article by John Alford, Carolyn Funk, and John Hibbing presented data from the Virginia 30,000 Health & Lifestyle Questionnaire (VA30K), AARP twin studies, and an Australian twin study (ATR) to test their hypothesis that political attitudes are influenced by genetic as well as environmental factors. Political attitudes, they suggested, were expected to be highly heritable and particularly so on issues most correlated with personality. They employed survey responses from the Wilson–Patterson Attitude Inventory to measure political attitudes. To gauge heritability, they utilize the 2:1 genetic ratio between monozygotic (MZ) and dizygotic (DZ) twins. The authors argued that while previous studies in political attitudes had concentrated on measuring the influence of environmental variables, their test added explanatory power by considering heritability (Alford, Funk, & Hibbing, 2005).

Purpose – Acknowledging that the field of neuroscience is expanding rapidly and the implication of recent neuroscientific advances on the study of politics is equally vast, this chapter will focus primarily on three key areas of convergence that have influenced the direction of neuropolitics: first, decision-making (emotions, preferences, and voting behavior); second, research on in-group/out-group relations, such as coalitional groupings and discrimination and prejudice; and, third, the rise of neuroeconomics.

Approach – This chapter is concerned with the intersection of political science and neuroscience and discusses how recent technological and theoretical developments in the latter are greatly contributing to the field of neuropolitics.

Findings – The insights generated by neuroscience permit the study of politics to be anchored on a scientific foundation for the first time. In turn, this opens the door to a renaissance in the political psychology subfield of political science, as the scientific origins of political behavior are revealed.

Research implications – The ongoing revolution in neuroscience is producing insights into international political behavior that is largely unacknowledged by political scientists.

Value – The implications for domestic and international policy are major. Fundamentally, this is because neuroscience allows us to comprehend better the origins of human political behavior.

Artists operating under a studio model, such as Andy Warhol, have frequently been described as reducing their work to statements of authorship, indicated by the signature finally affixed to the work. By contrast, luxury goods manufacturers decry as inauthentic and counterfeit the handbags produced during off-shift hours using the same materials and craftsmanship as the authorized goods produced hours earlier. The distinction between authentic and inauthentic often turns on nothing more than a statement of authorship. Intellectual property law purports to value such statements of authenticity, but no statement has value unless it is accepted as valid by its audience, a determination that depends on shared notions of what authenticity means as well as a common understanding of what authenticity designates.

Biology and Politics (or Biopolitics) has been a part of the political science firmament since the 1960s. Over time, it has become less an odd outlier in the discipline and more a tolerated (and sometimes respected) part of the enterprise. After about 50 years of existence, this is a proper time to reflect on where biopolitics has been, where it is now, and where it might go as an academic endeavor. Indeed, some have said that the best step would for biopolitics to no longer be seen as a special, narrow part of political science – but a part of every field in the discipline, integrated into the larger world of the study of politics.

The purpose of this chapter is to develop the idea of enhancing collaboration within a public context. It does so by exploring the challenge of working with others across organisational boundaries, when addressing complex issues. It discusses research findings from a Scotland based public service study concerned with collaborative practice and presents an empirical analysis of what it means to work in a relational way. The existing literature is reviewed alongside the study findings, connecting with contemporary theories and debates in the fields of collaboration, leadership and public administration.

The empirical work detailed in this chapter drew from collective and relational leadership theories which influenced the study design and methodological approach. The data collection method took the form of semi-structured interviews and data were analysed using thematic analysis supported by data mapping exercises. Data were obtained through interviews of 20 participants from multiple public service roles and organisations who were involved in similar activities linked to collaboration.

This chapter promotes an approach where disrupting traditional collaborative practice offers new insights in terms of (1) understanding the group process and (2) recognising what processual and behavioural adjustments can be made to enrich collaborative work. This approach was found to offer a number of benefits linked to building trust, promoting meaningful dialogue and altered the conversations that people chose to have.

The reconceptualisation of collaboration specifically illustrates what it means to ‘work in a more relational way’ and how it is understood by those attempting to build collaborative capacity, sustain public services and improve outcomes for citizens and communities. As such, it is this focus on relationships that is considered innovative and important to creating the open collaborative culture required for addressing complex issues and working across organisational boundaries.

This paper sketches an alliance between Roger Friedland’s institutional theory and the author’s own account of social practices. In addition to taking up such general issues as what theory alliances and institutions are, this paper draws the two theories together by conceptualizing institutional orders as components of the practice plenum and exploring convergences between institutional logics and practice organizations. This paper also neutralizes apparent divergences between the two theories concerning levels of society and affirms Friedland’s thesis that institutional change is tied to politics in a particular French, post-Heideggerian sense of politics.