The Epistemic Value of Democratic Meritocracy

ABSTRACT

This article examines, from an epistemic perspective, the ideal of democratic meritocracy that has been advocated by a group of scholars known as ‘Confucian meritocrats’ in East Asia for nearly two decades, but which has thus far only been treated by Western political theorists as a kind of wholesale epistocracy designed specifically for a non-Western cultural context. In particular, I focus on two aspects that help to institutionally distinguish democratic meritocracy from the kind of wholesale epistocracy most enthusiastically supported by epistocrats: the meritocratic selection process consisting of a set of non-electoral mechanisms and the combination of meritocratic institutions with democratic ones. I argue that each of them could be understood as having its distinct epistemic value which, taken together, may render some versions of democratic meritocracy epistemically superior to both epistocracy and democracy.

KEYWORDS:

• Meritocracy
• epistocracy
• democracy
• political epistemology

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank the anonymous reviewers and the editor of Social Epistemology for valuable comments. I am also grateful to Demin Duan for inviting me to present an earlier version of the paper to graduate students at the School of Government, Peking University.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Landa and Pevnick’s (2020) argument could be understood as taking a middle position, since it is mostly about how representative democracy should itself be viewed as a hybrid regime combining egalitarian and epistocratic principles. However, while such an approach may help to enhance the epistemic appeal of representative democracy, it comes at the cost of blurring the normative distinction between representative democracy and democratic meritocracy, especially if the latter takes the form of a bicameral structure incorporating a democratically elected lower house and a meritocratically selected upper house as advocated in this paper. Indeed, as Landa and Pevnick (2018) have elsewhere acknowledged, their conceptualization of representative democracy does not constitute a more egalitarian regime than Daniel Bell’s (2015) vertical model of democratic meritocracy that does not take the form of a bicameral structure, and which excludes a democratically elected lower house at the national level.

2. I follow Sungmoon Kim (2016) in characterizing political theorists who embrace the Confucian emphasis on the rule by an educated elite as ‘Confucian meritocrats’ (2016, 5).

3. I have excluded what Anne Jeffrey (2018) called ‘limited epistocracy’ from the consideration of this article, for that it is merely empowering a limited number of experts within narrowly subscribed domains and hence does not constitute a distinctive regime type. Indeed, when combined with a polycentric organizational structure, limited epistocracy may be viewed as a project of democratizing expertise that is much more democratic and participatory than many existing electoral representative democracies (Manor 2022).

4. Such a Confucian conception of political authority is not without its empirical basis in today’s East Asia. As Doh Chull Shin’s (2012) pointed out in his influential study regarding the effects of Confucianism on the process of democratization in East Asia, the Confucian notion of good government has led even democratic supporters in the region to have a more substantive, rather than a merely procedural, conception of democracy, in which ‘the outcomes of political decisions matter far more than the process of making those decisions’ (2012, 243).

5. Ziliotti seems to have confused the ideal of democratic meritocracy advocated by Confucian meritocrats with that of epistocracy in her epistemic critique of proposals made by Confucian meritocrats, something which this paper aims to precisely distinguish in the second section.

6. Broadly speaking, Bitton’s proposal fits with the historical use of random selection in both democratic and non-democratic regimes, which treats it as an effective tool to safeguard the integrity of public institutions (Dowlen 2008).

7. Here Bitton (2022) also argues that the incorporation of insular mini-publics does not ‘suffer from defects that political meritocrats associate with standard democratic processes’, both because it is directed toward a very specific and limited task and because it represents a refinement of popular preferences under good conditions for deliberation (2022, 11).

8. Such a parallel competition could generate another positive epistemic externality in the sense that the overall epistemic condition of the wider population may be further improved if most of them are encouraged by the government to take part in and prepare for such examinations. I thank an anonymous reviewer for raising this point.

9. Of course, it is debatable whether Metzger’s sweeping characterization of Chinese political thought, and especially of Confucianism is accurate. For a critique of his position, see Stalnaker (2019, 240).

10. In fact, one critique made by Confucian meritocrats against electoral representative democracy is that it may elevate charismatic political newcomers immediately to prominent national offices, where they are likely to make many ‘beginners’ mistakes’ because ‘they have not been properly trained to assume command at the highest levels of government’ (Bell 2015, 172).

11. Bell (2015) also includes ‘a model that combines democracy and meritocracy at the level of the voter’ in his discussions of three models of democratic meritocracy, of which the most prominent example would be John Stuart Mill’s proposal for a plural voting scheme that has inspired many of today’s epistocrats (2015, 152). Yet, not only does Bell (2015) himself find the proposal to be impractical, but he also could not mention any Confucian meritocrat who now supports such a scheme (2015, 156). I hence do not consider it as a form of democratic meritocracy favored by Confucian meritocrats.

12. Bell has expressed a similar view in his more recent co-authored work with Wang Pei, where the two claim that ‘political meritocracy can and should be complemented by such democratic practices as sortition, referenda and elections, consultation and deliberation, as well as the freedom of speech’ (Bell and Pei 2020, 75). I take this positive evaluation of randomly selected deliberative bodies by both Bai and Bell to be another reason why they should be able endorse the use of insular mini-publics in deciding further promotions of meritocratic officials as raised in the first section.

13. To be clear, Corrado Fumagalli (2023) also points out that meritocratic institutions proposed by Confucian meritocrats will be by themselves more stable than ones proposed by epistocrats. This is because they are further supported by the meritocratic worldview rooted in the Confucian political culture, which helps to instill a sense of respect for the rule by an educated elite among the general population (Fumagalli 2023, 104).

14. This assumption helps to further illustrate why the use of insular mini-publics to decide further promotions of meritocratic officials is consistent with the normative conception of political legitimacy subscribed by Confucian meritocrats, for that it is merely offering ordinary citizens an institutional mechanism to express their satisfactions or dissatisfactions with the service which a meritocratic official has already provided to their well-being. By contrast, the full adoption of electoral representative democracy generally assumes that ordinary citizens should be able to both express their levels of confidence in the incumbent government and set concrete policy directions for the future government via their participations in periodic competitive elections.

15. Given that both houses in a bicameral representative democracy are popularly elected, the additional layer of deliberation added by the second chamber is likely to be of the same kind as that found in the first chamber.

16. The other three conditions are (1) ‘the problem be difficult enough, since we do not need a group to solve easy problems’, (2) ‘all problem solvers are relatively smart (or not too dumb), and (3) the initial population from which the problem solvers are picked must be large and the collection of problem solvers working together must contain more than a handful of problem solvers’ (Landemore 2013, 102).

Additional information

Funding

The author disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research of this article. This work has received funding from the National Social Science Fund of China under Grant [No. 21CZZ010].

Notes on contributors

Zhichao Tong

Zhichao Tong is an assistant professor at the School of Government of Sun Yat-Sen University and a research fellow at the university’s Center for Chinese Public Administration. His research interests lie in democratic theory, political epistemology, comparative political theory and international political theory. His work has appeared in the journal American Political Thought, Philosophy and Social Criticism, the European Journal of Political Theory, Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy, International Relations and the Journal of International Political Theory.