Meritocracy: Difference between revisions

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Meritocracy (merit, from

Meritocracy in its wider sense, may be any general act of judgment upon the basis of various demonstrated merits; such acts frequently are described in sociology and psychology. Supporters of meritocracy do not necessarily agree on the nature of "merit"; however, they do tend to agree that "merit" itself should be a primary consideration during evaluation. Thus, the merits may extend beyond intelligence and education to any mental or physical talent or to work ethic. As such meritocracy may be based on moral character or innate abilities such as intelligence.

In

The most common form of meritocratic screening found today is the college degree. Higher education is an imperfect meritocratic screening system for various reasons, such as lack of uniform standards worldwide,[10]^[11] lack of scope (not all occupations and processes are included), and lack of access (some talented people never have an opportunity to participate because of the expense, most especially in developing countries).^[12] Nonetheless, academic degrees serve some amount of meritocratic screening purpose in the absence of a more refined methodology. Education alone, however, does not constitute a complete system, as meritocracy must automatically confer power and authority, which a degree does not accomplish independently.^{[citation needed]}

Etymology

Although the concept has existed for centuries, the term "meritocracy" is relatively new. It was used pejoratively by British politician and sociologist Michael Dunlop Young in his 1958 satirical essay^{[13][14][15][16]} The Rise of the Meritocracy, which pictured the United Kingdom under the rule of a government favouring intelligence and aptitude (merit) above all else, being the combination of the root of Latin origin "merit" (from "mereō" meaning "earn") and the Ancient Greek suffix "-cracy" (meaning "power", "rule").^[17] (The purely Greek word is axiocracy (αξιοκρατία), from axios (αξιος, worthy) + "-cracy" (-κρατία, power).) In this book the term had distinctly negative connotations as Young questioned both the legitimacy of the selection process used to become a member of this elite and the outcomes of being ruled by such a narrowly defined group. The essay, written in the first person by a fictional historical narrator in 2034, interweaves history from the politics of pre- and post-war Britain with those of fictional future events in the short (1960 onward) and long term (2020 onward).^[18]

The essay was based upon the tendency of the then-current governments, in their striving toward intelligence, to ignore shortcomings and upon the failure of education systems to utilize correctly the gifted and talented members within their societies.^[19]

Young's fictional narrator explains that, on the one hand, the greatest contributor to society is not the "stolid mass" or majority, but the "creative minority" or members of the "restless elite".^[20] On the other hand, he claims that there are casualties of progress whose influence is underestimated and that, from such stolid adherence to natural science and intelligence, arises arrogance and complacency.^[20] This problem is encapsulated in the phrase "Every selection of one is a rejection of many".^[20]

It was also used by Hannah Arendt in her essay "Crisis in Education",^[21] which was written in 1958 and refers to the use of meritocracy in the English educational system. She too uses the term pejoratively. It was not until 1972 that Daniel Bell used the term positively.^[22]

History

Ancient times: China

According to scholarly consensus, the earliest example of an administrative meritocracy, based on civil service examinations, dates back to

According to the Princeton Encyclopedia on American History:^[29]

One of the oldest examples of a merit-based civil service system existed in the imperial bureaucracy of China. Tracing back to 200 B.C., the Han Dynasty adopted Confucianism as the basis of its political philosophy and structure, which included the revolutionary idea of replacing nobility of blood with one of virtue and honesty, and thereby calling for administrative appointments to be based solely on merit. This system allowed anyone who passed an examination to become a government officer, a position that would bring wealth and honor to the whole family. In part due to Chinese influence, the first European civil service did not originate in Europe, but rather in India by the British-run East India Company... company managers hired and promoted employees based on competitive examinations in order to prevent corruption and favoritism.

Both

The Mongol Empire was heavily based on meritocracy and Elective monarchy.^[31]

Those who were adept and brave fellows I have made military commanders. Those who were quick and nimble I have made herders of horses. Those who were not adept I have given a small whip and sent to be shepherds - Genghis Khan

Within the Mongol Empire, most Noyans and military commanders where elected and promoted on merit rather than nobility^[32].

Historians consider the prominent Mongol Generals like

After the Division of the Mongol Empire, meritocracy would eventually be replaced by Aristocracy and Hereditary monarchy before completely disappearing in Yuan Khanate and the Ilkhanate. It would remain in the other breakaway khanates ie the Golden Horde and the Chagatai Khanate.

Later empires like the Timurid Empire also practiced meritocracy^[35]. Eventually meritocracy would disappear in the Steppe as Nomadic empires and Khanates started collapsing. Ming China however, would continue to use meritocracy in its military organization.^[36][37]

17th century: Spread to Europe

The concept of meritocracy spread from China to British India during the seventeenth century, and then into continental Europe and the United States.

The first European power to implement a successful meritocratic civil service was the British Empire, in their administration of India: "company managers hired and promoted employees based on competitive examinations in order to prevent corruption and favoritism."^[29] British colonial administrators advocated the spread of the system to the rest of the commonwealth, the most "persistent" of which was Thomas Taylor Meadows, Britain's consul in Guangzhou, China. Meadows successfully argued in his Desultory Notes on the Government and People of China, published in 1847, that "the long duration of the Chinese empire is solely and altogether owing to the good government which consists in the advancement of men of talent and merit only," and that the British must reform their civil service by making the institution meritocratic.^[39] This practice later was adopted in the late nineteenth century by the British mainland, inspired by the "Chinese mandarin system".^[40]

The British philosopher and polymath

Mill's proposal of plural voting has two motives. One is to prevent one group or class of people from being able to control the political process even without having to give reasons in order to gain sufficient support. He calls this the problem of class legislation. Since the most numerous class is also at a lower level of education and social rank, this could be partly remedied by giving those at the higher ranks plural votes. A second, and equally prominent motive for plural voting is to avoid giving equal influence to each person without regard to their merit, intelligence, etc. He thinks that it is fundamentally important that political institutions embody, in their spirit, the recognition that some opinions are worth more than others. He does not say that this is a route to producing better political decisions, but it is hard to understand his argument, based on this second motive, in any other way.

So, if Aristotle is right that the deliberation is best if participants are numerous (and assuming for simplicity that the voters are the deliberators) then this is a reason for giving all or many citizens a vote, but this does not yet show that the wiser subset should not have, say, two or three; in that way something would be given both to the value of the diverse perspectives, and to the value of the greater wisdom of the few. This combination of the Platonic and Aristotelian points is part of what I think is so formidable about Mill's proposal of plural voting. It is also an advantage of his view that he proposes to privilege not the wise, but the educated. Even if we agreed that the wise should rule, there is a serious problem about how to identify them. This becomes especially important if a successful political justification must be generally acceptable to the ruled. In that case, privileging the wise would require not only their being so wise as to be better rulers, but also, and more demandingly, that their wisdom be something that can be agreed to by all reasonable citizens. I turn to this conception of justification below.

Mill's position has great plausibility: good education promotes the ability of citizens to rule more wisely. So, how can we deny that the educated subset would rule more wisely than others. But then why shouldn't they have more votes?

Estlund goes on to criticize Mill's education-based meritocracy on various grounds.

18th century; West Africa

The

To enforce the merit system and the judicial system, the law also created the United States Civil Service Commission.^[9] In the modern American meritocracy, the president may hand out only a certain number of jobs, which must be approved by the United States Senate.

Australia began establishing public universities in the 1850s with the goal of promoting meritocracy by providing advanced training and credentials. The educational system was set up to service urban males of middle-class background, but of diverse social and religious origins. It was increasingly extended to all graduates of the public school system, those of rural and regional background, and then to women and finally to ethnic minorities.^[42] Both the middle classes and the working classes have promoted the ideal of meritocracy within a strong commitment to "mate-ship" and political equality.^[43]

20th century to today

Singapore describes meritocracy as one of its official guiding principles for domestic public policy formulation, placing emphasis on academic credentials as objective measures of merit.^[44]

There is criticism that, under this system, Singaporean society is being increasingly stratified and that an elite class is being created from a narrow segment of the population.^[45] Singapore has a growing level of tutoring for children,^[46] and top tutors are often paid better than school teachers.^[46][47][48] Defendants^[who?] recall the ancient Chinese proverb "Wealth does not pass beyond three generations" (Chinese: 富不过三代), suggesting that the nepotism or cronyism of elitists eventually will be, and often are, replaced by those lower down the hierarchy.

Singaporean academics are continuously re-examining the application of meritocracy as an ideological tool and how it's stretched to encompass the ruling party's objectives. Professor Kenneth Paul Tan at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy asserts that "Meritocracy, in trying to 'isolate' merit by treating people with fundamentally unequal backgrounds as superficially the same, can be a practice that ignores and even conceals the real advantages and disadvantages that are unevenly distributed to different segments of an inherently unequal society, a practice that in fact perpetuates this fundamental inequality. In this way, those who are picked by meritocracy as having merit may already have enjoyed unfair advantages from the very beginning, ignored according to the principle of nondiscrimination."^[49]

Meritocracy in the Singaporean context relates to the application of pragmatism as an ideological device which combines strict adherence to market principles without any aversion to social engineering and little propensity for classical social welfarism,^[50] is further illustrated by Kenneth Paul Tan in subsequent articles:

There is a strong ideological quality in Singapore's pragmatism, and a strongly pragmatic quality in ideological negotiations within the dynamics of hegemony. In this complex relationship, the combination of ideological and pragmatic maneuvering over the decades has resulted in the historical dominance of government by the PAP in partnership with global capital whose interests have been advanced without much reservation.^[51]

Within the Ecuadorian Ministry of Labor, the Ecuadorian Meritocracy Institute^[52] was created under the technical advice of the Singaporean government.

John Rawls rejects the ideal of meritocracy.^[53]

Modern meritocratic movements

The Meritocracy Party

In 2007 an anonymous British group called The Meritocracy Party published its first manifesto, to which they have now added more than two million words on the subject (discussing

1. A world in which every child gets an equal chance to succeed in life.
2. The abolishment of party politics.
3. Only those with a relevant education and work experience should be allowed to vote, rather than just anyone who has reached the age of 18 or 21.
4. The introduction of 100% inheritance tax, so that the super-rich can no longer pass on their wealth to a select few (their privileged children). This would mean the end of the elite dynasties and hereditary monarchy.
5. A radically reformed educational system, based on the
   MBTI personality types, and insights from radical innovators such as Rudolf Steiner and Maria Montessori
   .
6. To replace
   social capitalism
   and to replace democracy with a fully transparent meritocratic republic, under a meritocratic constitution.
7. The end of nepotism, cronyism, discrimination, privilege and unequal chances.

On their website The Meritocracy Party lists five meritocratic principles^[54] and thirteen primary aims. The Meritocracy International is the host of all meritocratic political parties in the world and the place where these may be found by country of origin.^{[citation needed]}

Criticism

The term "meritocracy" was originally intended as a negative concept.^[2] One of the primary concerns with meritocracy is the unclear definition of "merit".^[55] What is considered as meritorious can differ with opinions as on which qualities are considered the most worthy, raising the question of which "merit" is the highest—or, in other words, which standard is the "best" standard. As the supposed effectiveness of a meritocracy is based on the supposed competence of its officials, this standard of merit cannot be arbitrary and has to also reflect the competencies required for their roles.

The reliability of the authority and system that assesses each individual's merit is another point of concern. As a meritocratic system relies on a standard of merit to measure and compare people against, the system by which this is done has to be reliable to ensure that their assessed merit accurately reflects their potential capabilities.

• Civil service entrance examination
• Differential Education Achievement
• Educational entrance examination
• Elitism
• Equality of opportunity
• Equality of outcome
• Merit (Buddhism)
• Merit (Christianity)
• Ownership society
• Social mobility
• Technocracy

Notes

References

1. ^ "meritocracy". Dictionary.com.
2. ^ ^{a b} Fox, Margalit (25 January 2002). "Michael Young, 86, Scholar; Coined, Mocked 'Meritocracy'". The New York Times.
3. ^ Levinson, David; Cookson, Peter W.; Sadovnik, Alan R. (2002). Education and Sociology: An Encyclopedia. Taylor & Francis. p. 436. most common definition of meritocracy conceptualizes merit in terms tested competency and power, and most likely as measured by IQ or standardized achievement tests
4. ^ Young (1958).
5. ^ "Definition of Meritocracy". Oxford Dictionary. Oxford University Press. Retrieved 12 September 2011.
6. ^ Fontana Dictionary of Modern Thought. Fontana Press. 1988. p. 521.
7. ^ Aristot. Pol. 2.1261b
8. ^ Aristotle, (351 BC) Politics. Book Three Part IV. (Jowett, B., Trans)
9. ^ ^{a b c} "Civil Service Reform". Digital History. University of Houston. Retrieved 19 February 2016.
10. ISBN 978-0-465-09152-2
11. ^ Journal of College Teaching & Learning – May 2008 Volume 5, Number 5 AACSB Accreditation
12. ISBN 978-0-335-22362-6
    .
13. ^ Young, Michael (29 June 2001). "Down with meritocracy: The man who coined the word four decades ago wishes Tony Blair would stop using it". The Guardian. London.
14. ISBN 978-0-521-42889-7
    .
15. ISBN 978-0-275-97922-5
    .
16. ISBN 978-0-7619-4296-2
    .
17. ^ ""meritocracy" in the Online Etymology Dictionary". Retrieved 3 July 2013.
18. OCLC 3943639. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help
    )
19. ^ Young (1958), p. 13.
20. ^ ^{a b c} Young (1958), p. 15.
21. ^ "Crisis in Education" Archived 14 October 2013 at the Wayback Machine (p. 4).
22. ^ Littler, Jo (20 March 2017). "Meritocracy: the great delusion that ingrains inequality". The Guardian. Retrieved 14 July 2017.
23. ^ Kazin, Edwards, and Rothman (2010), 142. One of the oldest examples of a merit-based civil service system existed in the imperial bureaucracy of China.
24. ^ Tan, Chung; Geng, Yinzheng (2005). India and China: twenty centuries of civilization interaction and vibrations. University of Michigan Press. p. 128. China not only produced the world's first "bureaucracy", but also the world's first "meritocracy"
25. ^ Konner, Melvin (2003). Unsettled: an anthropology of the Jews. Viking Compass. p. 217. China is the world's oldest meritocracy
26. ^ Tucker, Mary Evelyn (2009). "Touching the Depths of Things: Cultivating Nature in East Asia". Ecology and the Environment: Perspectives from the Humanities. Harvard Divinity School: 51. To staff these institutions, they created the oldest meritocracy in the world, in which government appointments were based on civil service examinations that drew on the values of the Confucian Classics
27. ^ Sienkewicz, Thomas J. (2003). Encyclopedia of the Ancient World. Salem Press. p. 434. Confucius invented the notion that those who govern should so because of merit and not inherited status, setting in motion the creation of the imperial examinations and bureaucracies open only to those who passed tests
28. ^ ^{a b} Burbank and Cooper (2010), 51.
29. ^ ^{a b c} Kazin, Edwards, and Rothman (2010), 142.
30. ^ See Estlund (2003) for a summary and discussion.
31. ^ "What was the government of the Mongol Empire like? - Quora". www.quora.com. Retrieved 15 September 2020.
32. ^ "Mongol military tactics and organization", Wikipedia, 4 September 2020, retrieved 15 September 2020
33. ^ "Cameron D. Akins's answer to Why was the Mongol empire so meritocratic? - Quora". qr.ae. Retrieved 15 September 2020.
34. ^ "Aaryavarta Dhungel's answer to If Genghis Khan is the best battle strategist of all time, who is the second best? - Quora". www.quora.com. Retrieved 15 September 2020.
35. ^ admin (26 November 2015). "Medieval Meritocracy". CaptivaTour. Retrieved 15 September 2020.
36. ISBN 978-0-674-72495-2
    .
37. ^ "The Ming Dynasty - Journey to China". sites.google.com. Retrieved 15 September 2020.
38. ^ ^{a b} Schwarz (1996), 229
39. ^ Bodde, Derke. "China: A Teaching Workbook". Columbia University.
40. ^ Huddleston, Mark W. Boyer, William W.The higher civil service in the United States: quest for reform. (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1996), 9-10.
41. ^ Shillington, p. 195.
42. ^ Julia Horne, and Geoffrey Sherington, "Extending the educational franchise: the social contract of Australia's public universities, 1850-1890," Paedagogica Historica (2010) 46#1 pp 207-227
43. ISBN 9780203135990
    .
44. ^ Speech by Singapore Ambassador to France, 28 August 2008. Archived 2 March 2012 at the Wayback Machine
45. ^ Ngiam Tong Dow (28 October 2006). "Singapore's elites". Little Speck. Archived from the original on 1 November 2006.
46. ^ ^{a b} "Growing trend of uplifting education business in Singapore". Free Library and Tuition. Retrieved 25 October 2016.
47. ^ "$1 billion spent on tuition in one year". AsiaOne. Retrieved 25 October 2016.
48. ^ "2015 Private Tuition Rates in Singapore | Epigami Blog". Epigami Blog. 21 January 2015. Retrieved 25 October 2016.
49. doi:10.1177/0192512107083445
    .
50. ^ "Opinion | How Singapore is fixing its meritocracy". Washington Post. Retrieved 14 September 2017.
51. doi:10.1080/00472336.2012.634644
    .
52. ^ Web page of "Instituto Nacional de Meritocracia de Ecuador" , 12 March 2013.
53. ^ Rawls, John (1999). A Theory of Justice. Harvard University Press. pp. 91–92.
54. ISBN 9781326642167
    .
55. ^ Arrow, Bowles and Durlauf. Meritocracy and Economic Inequality. Princeton, 1999.
56. ISBN 978-0-8077-3985-3
    , pg. 116
57. ^ "Death by Degrees". n+1. n+1 Foundation, Inc. Retrieved 20 January 2015.
58. ^ Laurie, Timothy; Stark, Hannah; Walker, Briohny (2019), "Critical Approaches to Continental Philosophy: Intellectual Community, Disciplinary Identity, and the Politics of Inclusion", Parrhesia: A Journal of Critical Philosophy, 30: 4
59. ISBN 978-0253331564
    .
60. ^ Novak, David (2005). The Jewish social contract: an essay in political theology. Princeton University Press. p. 134. The Sanhedrin were appointed by those who were members when there was a vacancy
61. ^ Levinson, David; Cookson, Peter W.; Sadovnik, lan R. (2002). Education and sociology: an encyclopedia. Taylor & Francis. p. 436.

Further reading

Library resources about
Meritocracy

---

• Resources in your library
• Resources in other libraries

• Burbank, Jane and Cooper, Frederick. (2010). Empires in World History: Power and the Politics of Difference. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
  ISBN 0-691-12708-5
  .
• Kazin, Michael, Edwards, Rebecca, and Rothman, Adam. (2010). The Princeton Encyclopedia of American Political History Volume 2. Princeton University Press.
  ISBN 0-691-12971-1
  .
• Kett, Joseph F. Merit: The History of a Founding Ideal From the American Revolution to the Twenty-First Century. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2012.
  ISBN 978-0801451225
• Lampert, Khen. Meritocratic Education and Social Worthlessness, Palgrave-Macmillan, UK, 24 December 2012,;
  ISBN 1137324880
• Mulligan, Thomas. Justice and the Meritocratic State. New York: Routledge Press.
  ISBN 9781138283800
  .
• Schwarz, Bill. (1996). The expansion of England: race, ethnicity and cultural history. Psychology Pres.
  ISBN 0-415-06025-7
  .
• Ieva, Lorenzo. (2018). Fondamenti di meritocrazia. Rome: Europa edizioni.
  ISBN 978-88-9384-875-6
  .

External links

Wikiquote has quotations related to Meritocracy.

Look up meritocracy in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• The Meritocracy Party: Equal Opportunity for Every Child, organizes volunteers to bootstrap meritocracies in communities across the world.
• Quinion, Michael (21 July 2001). "World Wide Words: Meritocracy". World Wide Words. Retrieved 17 February 2016.
• Bent, Nick. "Time for a more inclusive and progressive definition of meritocracy".
  Progress Online. Archived from the original
  on 5 June 2008. Retrieved 17 February 2016.
• Markovits, Daniel (19 August 2019). "How Life Became an Endless, Terrible Competition". The Atlantic. Retrieved 26 August 2019.