The application of Darwinism to ideological change, with a case study of food-safety regulation.

• Author: Yasuda, Tomohide
• Position: Essay

Consumers in the United States are frequently exposed to news about food poisoning outbreaks. The year 2009 featured a Salmonella outbreak caused by contaminated peanut butter (Blaney 2009). The previous year started with a massive recall of beef processed by a California meat packer who was caught mishandling cows (Blinch and Doering 2008). This event was followed by an outbreak of Salmonella poisoning that was initially and incorrectly blamed on contaminated tomatoes (Garber 2008). No sooner did this food scare taper off than we heard news of a substantial ground beef recall by Whole Foods Market (Garber 2008). The news reports of recalls and food-borne disease outbreaks are almost invariably accompartied by editorials advocating larger budgets for food-safety agencies and by politicians' demands for reforms of these agencies--demands that often include the establishment of a new agency to guarantee food safety (see, for example, "The Need for Regulation" 2007; Adelman 2008; "Beef Business" 2008; "Now It's Tomatoes" 2008; "Hazardous Peanut Butter" 2009; "Who's Watching What We Eat?" 2009). Responding to these demands faithfully, the federal food-safety authorities, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), have steadily increased their budgets in recent decades even though the effects of such efforts regarding food safety are not discernible in the number of food-borne illness outbreaks and cases reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Such calls for increased food-safety regulation also regularly come from the local (Shannon 2009) and state (Meyer 2009) levels. Nevertheless, foodsafety policy is still often criticized from both an economic (Antle 1995) and a theoretical (Yasuda 2008) point of view.

Iron triangle politics, involving industry lobbies, politicians, and bureaucrats, is often evoked to explain an expansion of government regulatory powers--powers that in fact do not promote the welfare of the entire population. A great deal of evidence shows that the drafting process for particular food-safety regulations is under the influence of various lobbying groups, such as the food industry (Nestle 2002) and the wellness industry (Luik, Basham, and Gori 2006). However, the iron triangle theory does not explain the whole picture. This theory rests on the assumption that individuals will not waste their tangible resources to act collectively when they cannot gain net benefits (Olson 1965). In reality, however, people do act collectively to promote food-safety policies that do not necessarily promote their health. For example, they form advocacy groups to lobby for stronger food-safety agencies (Bennett and DiLorenzo 1999). Also, the media's and politicians' demands for expanded government roles in food safety enjoy consumers' support. An Associated Press poll reported that 62 percent of the adults surveyed in 2007 had a favorable impression of the FDA ("A Poll Conducted" 2007). Food-safety agencies have enjoyed budget increases within this political environment favorable to their expansion. We cannot attribute all the budget and mandate increases for regulatory agencies to iron triangle politics.

We need to ask, then, how this political atmosphere favorable to government agencies has been created and maintained. Why do people form advocacy groups and donate money to such groups to promote policies that are not necessarily beneficial to them? Why do people continue to believe in government agencies even though these agencies have failed many times? We need to tackle the question of how this ideology has come into being and how it is maintained. The role of ideology in directing the course of government expansion has long been recognized (Higgs 1987, 35-74). However, the process of ideological change has defied systematic analysis so far (Higgs 2007, 66).

In this article, I explore the process of ideological change by applying evolutionary science to it. Ever since Richard Dawkins proposed the concept of a unit of cultural transmission ([1976] 1989, 192-93), evolutionary thinking has been applied to cultural change (see, for example, Dawkins 1982, 109-12, 2006, 222-34; Blackmore 1999)1 Because the word evolution has been used to describe ideological change (Higgs 1987, 71; North 2005, 167), an application of evolutionary thinking to such change seems to be a natural development. Although previous studies of cultural evolution mentioned ideology (see, for example, Dawkins 1982, 111; Balkin 1998), they have not examined the unique evolutionary characteristics of ideology, which can be separated from other ideas and beliefs. I apply here the logic of evolution to ideological change and develop a theory of ideological evolution. The theory redefines ideology simply and meaningfully based on how it emerges and evolves. The theory provides a systematic way of looking at familiar facts about ideologies and explains these facts, which so far have been only described. The theory produces empirically verifiable predictions, and I use food-safety regulations and their implementing agencies as a case study to test these predictions. Some elements of ideologies that are regarded as irrational and counterintuitive become understandable with the application of evolutionary science.

Application of Evolutionary Science to the Evolution of Ideologies

Charles Darwin summarized his theory of evolution by natural selection in one paragraph in the introduction to his seminal book On the Origin of Species (1859, 4-5). He stated three premises: (1) there is variation among individual organisms; (2) some of the variations are hereditary; and (3) there is a struggle for survival among individuals. If the validity of these premises cannot be challenged, the logical conclusion is that organisms that have a better chance of survival in a certain environment leave more offspring, and, therefore, organisms that are better adapted to the environment will evolve over a long period of time. It is possible to interpret the rest of Darwin's book as his effort to validate the three premises in the natural world.

The application of Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection does not need to be limited to biological entities. Any entities that satisfy these three premises--variation, heredity, and selection--follow the law of evolution (Dawldns [1976] 1989, 193). Thus, nonbiological entities can also be studied through the application of Darwinism. Ideologies, or more precisely their components, are such entities.

An ideology is composed of ideas--beliefs about the workings of society and certain theories of the social sciences. Robert Higgs provides the most succinct definition of an ideology as "a somewhat coherent, rather comprehensive belief system about social relations" (1987, 37). Ideologies have components other than ideas and beliefs. The application of evolutionary thinking in the following sections reveals that ideologies are complex systems by nature. Their emergence and evolution show that they usually consist of mutually supportive and compatible ideas, behavioral patterns, and political and social institutions. Behavioral patterns in this context include organizing and participating in political rallies, and institutions include publishers, academic and educational organizations, advocacy groups, political parties, government agencies, and regulations.

All three components of ideologies satisfy the previously mentioned three conditions for evolutionary entities: variation, heredity, and selection. There are always several ideologies in a society, even in a totalitarian one (Higgs 2007, 74). Varying ideas compose different ideologies. Even an ideology that is commonly treated as a single set of coherent ideas, such as communism, is usually conceived of as a varying set of ideas by its individual advocates. People working for different causes demonstrate different behavioral patterns. Some Communists choose to resort to violence, but others do not. Some ideologies depend on private organizations for their dissemination, whereas others enjoy the support of the state apparatus and tax money.

Ideas, behavioral patterns, and institutions are learned and copied. People absorb others' ideas and behaviors through listening to what they say, reading what they write, and observing what they do. Educational institutions and certifying organizations make sure that certain types of knowledge are faithfully passed on. Political activists are keen to copy successful fund-raising practices, organizational skills, and lobbying tactics. When people set up new institutions, they rarely do so from scratch. They copy an organizational structure and managerial practices from other institutions. People who have experience in other institutions are often invited to participate in setting up a new institution. Even the physical structures of successful institutions are copied, as indicated by the components of Greek and Roman architecture found in many buildings around the world. The components of ideologies, as these examples illustrate, are copied.

Different ideas, behaviors, and institutions are copied and spread at differential rates. People constantly engage in learning and communication, and these activities put selective pressure on the components of ideologies. Some ideas, behaviors, and institutions are copied more than others. These components are mindless entities, but we may say figuratively that they compete with one another (Higgs 2007, 74). Because they exhibit variation, heredity, and selection, they are always under the influence of dynamic evolutionary processes. Evolution logically must occur.

As long as biological entities are the products of evolutionary processes, it is necessary to understand these processes to comprehend why the current characteristics of biological entities came to be as they are now, and accordingly a great deal of research in...