Political Meritocracy and Populism

Cure or Curse?

Mark Chou, Benjamin Moffitt, Octavia Bryant

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN: 9781000760576
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: International Relations
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Offering the first in-depth analysis of the relationship between populism and political meritocracy, this book asks why states with meritocratic systems such as Singapore and China have not faced the populist challenge to the extent that liberal-democratic states have. Is political meritocracy immune to populism? Or does it fan its flames?

Exploring this puzzle, the authors argue that political meritocracies are simultaneously immune and susceptible to populism. The book maintains that political meritocracy's focus on the intellect, social skills, and most importantly virtue of political leaders can reduce the likelihood of populist actors rising to power; that meritocracy's promise of upward mobility for the masses can work against elitism; and that rule by the 'meritorious' can help avoid crises, diminishing the political opening for populism. However, it also shows that meritocracy does little to eliminate grievances around political, cultural, and social inequality, instead entrenching a hierarchy – an allegedly 'just' one. The book ultimately argues that the more established the system of political meritocracy becomes, the more it opens the door to populist resentment and revolt.

Pitched primarily to scholars and postgraduate students in political theory, comparative politics, Asian studies, and political sociology, this book fills an important scholarly gap.

1 Political meritocracy and populism

According to Daniel A. Bell (2016, p. 2), China’s long history with political meritocracy, which has its origins in the centuries-old imperial examination system whereby leaders were selected by means of examination and performance evaluations, was only halted at the start of the twentieth century, with the Qing dynasty’s fall. What followed – the rise of Maoism and the disastrous Cultural Revolution that ‘valued the political contributions of warriors, workers, and farmers over those of intellectuals and educators’ – systematically undid any of the meritocratic ideals that the country had revered in generations past. When debates over political meritocracy finally re-emerged in the 1960s, it was not China, which was still under Mao’s firm grip, but the tiny city-state of Singapore that best demonstrated how political institutions and procedures could be structured around an ideology that ensured leaders perceived as best equipped to make difficult decisions and take the long view were the ones selected for positions of power. It was only during the 1990s that the ideal of political meritocracy returned to China. Imperfect and piecemeal as its contemporary experimentation has been, it is clear that the country now aspires to establish a more comprehensive system for selecting and promoting political leaders based on their merits instead of their popularity or power alone.

While Bell argues that the discourse on political meritocracy failed to achieve greater international appeal due to it never having been presented as a universal ideal in the same way that democracy has been, it is his implication that political meritocracy is structured to prevent the rise of populism that interests us here. Indeed, what lies implicit in Bell’s historical overview of this ideal is a simple, but important claim: where political meritocracies have thrived, populism has not. The aim of this book is to examine this claim, both in theory and through empirical examples.

However, in order to scrutinize how political meritocracy supposedly acts as a bulwark against populist forces, we need to first define political meritocracy and populism before examining how the former might potentially prevent the rise of the latter. In this chapter, we differentiate political meritocracy from a purely technocratic style of governance in the sense that a political meritocratic system is not only underpinned by expertise and intellectual ability, but more importantly by attributes such as virtue and social skills as well. In this way, political leaders will need to demonstrate more than their technical expertise and capacity for rational decision-making. They will have to exhibit virtue along with a respect for common people. As for populism, we outline the three central approaches to the phenomenon in the academic literature – the ideational approach, the strategic approach, and the discursive-performative approach – and consider their suitability and applicability to understanding populism in political meritocracies such as China and Singapore. We ultimately argue that the discursive-performative approach is most useful for our purposes, and draw on Moffitt’s (2016) definition within this approach of populism as a political style as a basis for our argument.

Following this, we go on to demonstrate the ways in which political meritocracy might help thwart the forces of populism. This analysis fills an important gap because, despite the various claims that have been made about political meritocracy’s capacity to weather populism’s challenge, very little systematic scholarship has been produced about why or how this is the case. Yet this is an essential task if such claims are to be methodically validated and scrutinized.

Defining political meritocracy

When it comes to the idea of meritocracy today, especially in the West, the likelihood that such a notion will be defined in strictly political terms is slim. Indeed, according to many Western accounts, the most common understanding of meritocracy is as an economic ideology and system that distributes wealth and resources on the basis of individual ability and effort rather than class and connections (Frank 2016; Saunders 2006; Lister 2006; Bell 1972). It is the idea that one’s pedigree should present no permanent barrier to economic and social mobility. Unlike in times past, privilege and power should therefore not be determined by birth but by achievement. Given this, economic meritocracy is now sometimes considered as a harbinger of order and equality in capitalist economies (Lipsey 2014). It is considered a social positive that is both commensurate with the ideals espoused by neoliberal capitalism and liberal democracy. As Chang-Hee Kim and Yong-Beom Choi (2017, p. 112) have made clear, this economic variant of meritocracy ‘has increasingly been recognized as a positive system in Western societies, and the ideology has been tightly coupled with the notions of capitalism and egalitarian values, which are fundamental to the concept of the “American Dream”’.

But while the idea of economic meritocracy is now long-established and entrenched in many Western democracies, the notion that political leaders should be selected and promoted not by popular vote but by their political abilities and efforts tends to be a practice found primarily in a select number of non-democratic regimes. In other words, whereas the idea of economic meritocracy has become widely associated with Western political and economic ideals, the idea of political meritocracy remains a largely puzzling – if not completely distasteful – notion to many in the democratic West. But what does the idea of political meritocracy entail at its core? Simply put, the central characteristic of political meritocracy is that the principle of merit stands above all else in governing how politics, political actors, and political institutions are selected, structured, and promoted (Tan 2008). In such political systems, merit – and not popularity – is what confers political authority and thus legitimacy (Bell 1972). Though the principle of merit can be broadly understood as ‘IQ plus effort’ (Young 1958), the notion of political meritocracy seeks to ensure government is comprised of those who are sufficiently qualified and experienced based on meritocratic considerations such as intellect, credentials, education, virtue, and past performance (Hui and Gore 2017). This may sound relatively straightforward an endeavour. Yet in practice, how merit is defined, in what context, and by whom are highly contested matters (Zeng 2013). For instance, while merit can simply entail ‘employing the “expert and experienced”’ in some political positions, it will require those who can ‘competently manage the systemic links of our integrated societies’ and ‘yield “knowledge-based choices” on tough issues’ in other positions (Gardels 2013, p. 6). In political meritocracies where periodic elections are held, the question of merit and which political ruler is deemed to possess it is also (at least partly) given over to the will of the people, which can make pinpointing the attributes of merit even more difficult (Tan 2008). This is why Bell (2013, p. 13) notes that it is important, when thinking about political meritocracy, to question ‘which abilities matter? Which virtues matter? How do we measure politically relevant abilities and virtues? And how does context shape the need for different sorts of rulers?’

Political meritocracy is an idea with both Western and Eastern heritages and meanings. It would probably not surprise many to learn that philosophers such as Plato believed that leadership should be reserved for those with the ‘capacity to grasp the eternal and immutable’ rather than ‘the mob’ (Plato 2007, p. 204; Wolff 2006, p. 67). This is essentially a meritocratic argument. Today, as Tan (2008, p. 13) has demonstrated, there are clear parallels between how Singapore’s PAP is structured – with its upper echelon comprised of party’s Central Executive Committee, cabinet ministers, and parliamentarians – and the philosopher-kings of Plato’s Republic and the nocturnal council of his Laws. Yet where the idea truly flourished in practice was arguably not in the West, but through the ideas of Confucius and Imperial China’s civil service examination system (Keju), which existed from the Warring States Period (453–221 bc) to the early twentieth-century. With its origins in Confucianism and Daoism during the fifth and six centuries bc, it was later taken up and developed by the Legalists (Liu 2016). Replacing the pedigree-oriented system of the Spring and Autumn period (770–453 bc), the examination system, first established in 608 bc during the Sui Dynasty, put a premium on ‘evaluating the worthy’ in determining the suitability of individuals to serve the Emperor and hold positions of political significance (Bell 2016, p. 65). As Confucius (cited in Shin 2013, p. 264) once put it, ‘If good men were put in charge of governing for a hundred years, they would be able to overcome violence and dispense with killing altogether.’ So firm was the ancient Chinese philosopher’s conviction in this principle that he even insisted the sons of kings should be demoted to the standing of common people if they fail to demonstrate the required merits for ruling – and vice versa. Yet like Plato, Confucius did not believe that governance should be left to the masses; rather, it should be reserved for junzi or exemplary people skilled in the Way (ethical living) (Shin 2013, p. 266).

Despite the vast differences and contrasting schools of thought that emerged with respect to Imperial China’s examination system, it is widely regarded as the world’s first standardized tests for assessing potential candidates’ merits for taking political office (Bell 2016, p. 82). As the system became more rigorous and established, it thus challenged previous practices of selection based on sex, ethnicity, stock, and connections. And though social mobility was never its main purpose, the examination system did undermine the political domination of established aristocratic families. Another consequence of the examination system was providing implicit checks on the sovereign’s incompetence and abuse of power. For example, a proposal put forward by Xunzi advocated that the monarch should increasingly delegate routine matters to aides who were meritocratically selected to carry out such tasks (Bell 2016, p. 86) – a piece of advice that might prove prescient for the current rule of Xi. Overall, the entire examination system was responsible for instituting an ideal of political merit underpinned by qualities such as ‘learning, administrative skills, moral quality, righteousness, uprightness and conscientiousness’ (Chu 1957, p. 237).

When it comes to its exact meaning, Zhang Yongle (2018) argues that the term meritocracy also has different connotations in English compared to Mandarin. In the former, according to the Peking University legal scholar, merit merely implies a ‘praiseworthy quality’ that is underpinned by one’s talent and achievement (Zhang 2018, p. 52). It is a social good that is grounded in individual attributes and toil. But when it comes to Mandarin, meritocracy is comprised of the:

characters for ‘ability’ [neng 能] and ‘virtue’ [xian 賢]. Ability is usually defined in terms of a functional relationship, but virtue can transcend practicality and efficiency, even coming to represent a political community or a civilization’s idealization of the model human.

(Zhang 2018, p. 52)

Why this is politically significant is that the Chinese understanding of meritocracy exceeds ability, which is typically an individual attribute, to encompass virtue, which encapsulates the highest aspirations of an entire community and even a civilization. Given this, the meritorious were not simply hard-working technocratic experts who could make hard decisions and take the long view. They were, in the Confucian understanding, junzi who would be virtuous elites driven by the collective good.

Many of these ideals and meanings have filtered into, and now underpin albeit in highly imperfect form, actual political meritocracies today. Take modern-day China for instance. Even with its many political problems, China’s political bureaucracy now ranks among the most competitive in the world. Yet it is not competitive in the democratic, electoral sense. Rather, since the Reform era aspiring governmental officials have been required to pass a gauntlet of public service examinations and to demonstrate their achievements and worthiness not simply at the beginning of their careers but throughout. Particularly since the turn of the century, Chinese leaders have been primarily selected and promoted based on academic, technocratic, or virtue-based merit (Osnos 2015). Though some Western scholars have labelled him a scholarly apologist for the Chinese Communist Party (Chan 2015), the noted Chinese intellectual Zhang Weiwei (2012) firmly believes that the CPC ‘may arguably be one of the world’s most meritocratic institutions’ where ‘performance in poverty eradication, job creation, local economic and social development, and, increasingly, cleaner environment are key factors in the promotion of local officials’. Indeed, it is hard to deny that many at the top of the CPC leadership ‘have served at least twice as party secretary of a Chinese province or at similar managerial positions’, some of which are ‘on average the size of four to five European states’ (Zhang 2012). While sceptical observers might want to simply discard Zhang’s statement in its entirety, a more nuanced take may be to question whether it is meritocratic considerations alone that drive the CPC’s decisions to select and promote the candidates that it does, or whether such promotions are ultimately due to Party allegiance or family connections. But Zhang’s boosterism aside, there is now sufficient academic scholarship on Chinese public administration, human resource management, and civil service to suggest that the ideal of meritocracy – though far from perfect in practice – has increasingly become institutionalized throughout the country’s bureaucratic system (Burns and Wang 2010; Chan 2010).

But the question still remains: what specifically amounts to, or constitutes, political meritocracy today as understood, if not always practiced in its entirety, in contexts such as China and Singapore? To answer this question, we draw primarily from the scholarship of Bell, who has most systematically set out the key tenets of political meritocracy. Writing primarily about China – and the meritocratic model Singapore offers to the fledgling world power (Ortmann and Thompson 2016; Wong and Huang 2010) – Bell’s argument is that political merit is today principally determined through a set of three key attributes. These are the attributes that aspiring civil servants and public officials must demonstrate when seeking selection or promotion for political posts.

The first of these attributes is a civil servant’s or political leader’s intellectual ability. Indeed, what is often said to distinguish a meritocracy from a democracy at the broadest level is that the intellect and expertise of political leaders will be valued to a far greater extent in the former compared to the latter. The key justification for this is simple. In recognition of the rather uncontroversial reality that modern-day governance is becoming increasingly complex, polycentric, technical, fast-paced, and globalized, political leaders and policy makers have to possess competency across a range of disciplines and pursuits, including economics, science, and international relations at the very least (Bell 2016, pp. 79–80). In China, aspiring government officials and political leaders must endure a battery of public service examinations that test their knowledge of CPC policies and issues facing China, and perform well in each post and level of government before being moved up the chain of command (Zhang 2012). Beginning with the 1993 Provisional Regulations on State Civil Servants, explicit meritocratic measures were established for recruitment, performance appraisal, recognition and award, and finally promotion (Zhang 2015). These practices were further cemented with the Civil Servant Law of the PRC, which came into effect in 2006, which has ensured cadres are appointed only after successfully progressing through six selection stages: democratic nomination, democratic assessment, public opinion poll, analysis of actual achievements, interviews, and comprehensive deliberation (Hui and Gore 2017, p. 5). With often thousands of prospective candidates competing for a single government post, political aspirants thus understand that to succeed means improving their knowledge and performance (Bell and Li 2013). Similarly, Singapore’s meritocratic system places a premium on political candidates’ academic credentials and job accomplishments; before the PAP allows candidates to run for office or enter the public sector, they must prove themselves capable and worthy (Bellows 2009, p. 27). Once there, as Michael Barr (2016, p. 7) observes, ‘the ruling elite creams off those it considers best suited to senior leadership positions in the public sector or in politics’. Though citizens do have the ability to choose which representatives they ultimately want through the country’s periodic elections, the reality is that their choice is for all intents and purposes limited to a pool of candidates predetermined by the PAP to be intellectually superior (Ortmann and Thompson 2014, p. 447). What this means is that there is an intensely competitive intra-party process to identify and nurture the most intellectually capable candidates before Singaporeans even have the opportunity to appraise them.

Intrinsic to this attribute is the equally important considerations of experience and expertise. Unlike elected officials in the West, who can come to office with very little previous relevant political or professional experience, civil servants and leaders in political meritocracies typically have to rise through the ranks, a long and arduous process whereby they have to demonstrate that they have gained the necessary experience and expertise for promotion (The Economist 2015). Given this, even when new leaders take the helm, rarely will they be as politically inexperienced as a Donald Trump or even a Barack Obama when they first assumed the presidency in the United States. Emphasizing intellect, experience, and leaders’ capacity to engage in informed decision-making can be a stark contrast from Western democracies such as the US, where research frequently underscores how little elected representatives know about politics – which, in some instances, is precisely what makes them so appealing to the masses (Chou 2017; Brennan 2016; Achen and Bartels 2016; Somin 2013). Indeed, as the American political scientist Tom Nichols (2017) recently demonstrated in his book, The Death of Expertise, Americans now openly celebrate ignorance, especially when it comes to matters of politics and public policy. For Nichols (2017, p. 210), Trump’s electoral victory in 2016 was ‘one of the most recent – and one of the loudest – trumpets sounding the impending death of expertise’.

Bell’s second attribute of political merit is social skills. Recalling a 2012 discussion with Li Yuanchao, who was then Minister of the Organization Department of the CPC Central Committee, Bell (2016, p. 170) notes that as important as intellectual ability is, political merit must also take into account a leader’s capacity to engage with those under their rule. ‘At the higher levels [of government]’, he writes, paraphrasing Li, ‘more emphasis is placed on rationality since cadres need to take multiple factors into account and decision making involves a much broader area of governance’, but this does not mean that ‘concern for the people’ and ‘a practical attitude’ become irrelevant. In other words, book smarts on their own are insufficient for good leadership – IQ must be supplemented with EQ or emotional intelligence. Unfortunately, given the importance that the CPC has placed on intellectual merit over the years, political leaders have often taken the mould of distant and stony-fa...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Political meritocracy and populism
• 2 Populism’s cure?
• 3 The populist teleology of meritocracy
• Conclusion
• References
• Index