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Theoretical insights from evolutionary psychology and biology can help academics and policymakers better understand both deep and proximate causes of Islamic suicide terrorism. The life sciences can contribute explanations that probe the influence of the following forces on the phenomenon of Islamic suicide terrorism: high levels of gender differentiation, the prevalence of polygyny, and the obstruction of marriage markets delaying marriage for young adult men in the modern Middle East. The influence of these forces has been left virtually unexplored in the social sciences, despite their presumptive application in this case. Life science explanations should be integrated with more conventional social science explanations, which include international anarchy, U.S. hegemony and presence in the Middle East, and culturally molded discourse sanctioning suicide terrorism in the Islamic context. Such a consilient approach, melding the explanatory power of the social and life sciences, offers greater insight into the causal context of Islamic fundamentalist suicide terrorism, the motivation of suicide terrorists, and effective approaches to subvert this form of terrorism.

A prime focus for social scientists, and in particular political scientists, is on institutions. Institutions are stabilized sets of expectations that establish frameworks for social action that affect behavior because they affect calculations and inspire attachments. Institutions do change, but they change slower than life changes. This creates a paradoxical reality. On the one hand, the relative stability of institutions-the rules and procedures they establish for interaction and decision-compared to the fluctuations of circumstances and preferences is what makes it possible for human groups to take effective action. On the other hand, their very stability means that the decisions they enable are almost inevitably suboptimal. Accordingly, although most political scientists are committed to a general view that the interests and beliefs of human beings and human groups are the primary drivers of political behavior and political change, a good deal of attention by 'institutionalists' is directed to relishing the ironies or bemoaning the tragedies of rationality ignored and interests contradicted. Indeed you do not need a political scientist to point out numerous examples of institutional forms or collective beliefs or norms that are severely suboptimal for precisely those populations and communities that uphold and honor them. Political scientists, as well as pundits, are well aware of the obstacles sclerotic institutions pose to good policy, progress, and a general sense that our political communities work for us rather than against us. References abound to 'institutional inertia,' 'the stickiness of institutions,' or the institutionalization of answers to questions that current circumstances no longer pose.However, if it is well understood that institutions cannot change fluidly with changing needs and changing insights, it is also known that institutions do change, and sometimes they adapt. What is not well understood are the limits to the effectiveness and pace of institutional change and, specifically, why some institutions are exceedingly resistant to change, even when the deficiencies of the practices, policies, and predicaments associated with them

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