Despotism, Replicators, and Social Design: Betzig's Evidence as Empirical Foundation of the Extended Phenotype Theory of Law

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.