Journal of Institutional Economics (2012), 00: 0, 1–12 C  Millennium Economics Ltd 2012 doi:10.1017/S1744137412000203 Comment 1 Studying institutions in the context 2 of natural selection: limits or 3 opportunities? 4 PASCAL BOYER ∗ 5 Department of Psychology, Washington University, Saint Louis, MO 63130, USA 6 MICHAEL BANG PETERSEN ∗∗ 7 Department of Political Science, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark 8 Abstract: In this comment, we respond to comments raised by Eastwood (2010) in Q1 Q2, Q3 9 response to our article on the role of evolutionary psychology in understanding 10 institutions (Boyer and Petersen, 2011). We discuss how evolutionary 11 psychological models account for cultural variation and change in institutions, 12 how sociological institutionalism and evolutionary models can inform each other, 13 how evolutionary psychological models illuminate the role of power in 14 institutional design and the possibility of a ‘general theory’ of institutions. 15 16 We are grateful to Jonathan Eastwood for his thoughtful discussion (Eastwood, 17 2012) of our argument concerning the ‘naturalness’ of institutions (Boyer and 18 Petersen, 2011). We are particularly encouraged by the fact that he focuses on po- 19 tential benefits and limitations of the evolutionary perspective in terms of empiri- 20 cal value, in a most welcome contrast to the metaphysical tenor of many ‘paradig- 21 matic’ disputes. In this reply, we mostly focus on clarification of our proposal, 22 accepting like Eastwood that in the end only empirical studies can reveal the 23 potential benefits or limitations of particular perspectives. Roughly, we consider 24 that our original proposal is far closer to Eastwood’s own views than may appear 25 at first sight, and we suggest conceptual clarifications to evolutionary accounts. 26 A note on terminology: In our original contribution and Eastwood’s 27 comments, the term ‘evolutionary’ denotes an approach to institutions and 28 other social processes that give pride of place to the fact that human social and 29 cognitive capacities are the outcome of evolution by natural selection, which 30 altered the frequency of specific genotypes in human population. This must 31 be distinguished from ‘evolutionary’ approaches that focus on the dynamics of 32 change in institutions, suggesting in particular that some institutional forms may 33 ∗ Email: pboyer@artsci.wustl.edu ∗∗ Email: michael@ps.au.dk 1