Despotism, Replicators, and Social Design: Betzig's Evidence as Empirical Foundation of the Extended Phenotype Theory of Law
Key Points
The aim is to test theoretical predictions about legal institutions using empirical evidence from political anthropology.
Integrates Betzig's findings on despotism and differential reproduction with Extended Phenotype Theory and multilevel Evolutionary Game Theory.
Distinguishes between ultimate-cause and proximate-cause analyses regarding normative systems.
Analyzes identity claims as coalitional signaling strategies in a twenty-first century context.
Establishes a two-level explanatory architecture for the evolution of normative systems.
Identifies the Dennett-Nash Gap as a mechanism connecting institutional failures to Parasitic Spontaneous Order.
Formalizes the Gendarme-to-Welfare transition within a morphospace mutation framework.
Abstract
Evolutionary accounts of legal institutions have largely treated empirical evidence from political anthropology as background context rather than as a direct test of theoretical predictions. This paper integrates Laura L. Betzig's cross-cultural findings on despotism and differential reproduction (1986) with Extended Phenotype Theory (EPT) and multilevel Evolutionary Game Theory (EGT) to establish a two-level explanatory architecture for the origin and transformation of normative systems. The paper distinguishes ultimate-cause analysis from proximate-cause analysis, formalizes the Gendarme-to-Welfare transition as a morphospace mutation, identifies the Dennett-Nash Gap as a micro-mechanism linking institutional design failure to Parasitic Spontaneous Order, and analyzes twenty-first century identity claims as high-efficiency coalitional signaling strategies.