Political Economy Students' Journal

According to the Cambridge dictionary, meritocracy is a “a social system, society, or organization in which people get success or power because of their abilities, not because of their money or social position”. The term appears first in an article in the journal Socialist Commentary, written by the British industrial-sociologist Alan Fox in 1956 and is often credited to have been introduced into mainstream thought by Michael Young in his 1958 book The Rise of Meritocracy (Allen, 2011). Interestingly, both authors use the term within a decidedly critical context, in the sense that they both wanted to reject the idea of a society where power and money is distributed based on individual ability. Nowadays this idea seems to be conceptualized differently compared to its origin, as it is seen as either existing or as a goal to achieve. In this context, this essay asks the question: Does meritocracy actually exist in a modern societies?

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Looking at just a few contemporary cases, one could already reject such a claim. For example, the war which broke out between Russia and Ukraine in 2021. Did the people who were devastated by the war, deserve it and its consequences? When we consider international events that can’t be controlled in any way shape or form by most individuals who suffer from the ramifications, but also the ones who do have power, it is difficult to argue this is in any way based on merit. The same logic applies if we're talking about natural events in relation to refugees. But what about stable countries that are usually not as badly affected by those types of externalities? Can talk about them as meritocracies? In order to examine this matter, we need to take into account that all people, even within one national economy, are not set up with the same conditions which are beneficial for success. For example, one can be born in poverty while another is born wealthy, therefore opportunities are different, because circumstances differ (cf. Sennet, 2007). Not many people make the argument for a society being meritocratic, the few who do usually tend to base on the idea of that society being characterized as a free-market economy and since that’s the case everyone gets what they deserve. Not only does this fall into the logically fallacious trap of circular reasoning, but also ignores that question of whether a free market exists, which is an issue of serious discussion, all be it not for this essay. But even this case represents a small fringe of people who defend the idea, while even people who relate positively to the free market-proposition, now make the case a meritocracy doesn’t exist (ibid.). Usually, both sides of the argument agree with the premise that it can potentially exist but disagree on the policies that would or could allow for it. The way this framed, is to either recognize equal opportunities as a goal to obtain, seen as the more left-leaning approach, or the ability to obtain an outcome related to your merit despite the opportunities you have (cf. Jin & Ball, 2019).

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Last year, author Michael Sandell who wrote the book The Tyranny of Merit (2020) was on a visit in Portugal and gave a talk at a conference about the arguments presented in the book. Some of these are helpful in understanding why perhaps meritocracy cannot exist. For instance, the fact that we have biological differences in capacity which result in some relative advantages, for which we certainly did not do anything to earn them. Another argument concerns how the time we live in influences the benefits we take from our activities. Sandell (2020) gives the example of how a pro football player today, may make millions with his activities, but if the same individual had been born during the time of the Renaissance, he would probably earn much less. Yet from what I personally remember from the conference, Sandell in my opinion, made a mistake when he gave the example of Cristiano Ronaldo talents as a professional football player as a way to discredit meritocracy. He argues, that because of Ronaldo having a greater advantage of being successful if trained hard, comparative to other people who could train as hard or harder than him but would still not have his talent. Coming from a prosports background myself, this argument seemed to fall extremely short for me. since Ronaldo, in my view, is a good case in where hard work beats talent if talent doesn’t work hard. But it also shows a problem with the criticisms made regarding meritocracy. Authors tend to not address the issue from the perspective of the individual, which is the perspective people who tend to defend meritocracy take. For a meritocracy to work, uninhibited competition needs to take place, but real competition is not value-neutral, meaning it benefits some characteristics disproportionally over others. A marathonist and a sprinter, for example are surely both experts in running, but if we judge a marathonist ability to sprint and a sprinter's ability to run a marathon we are going to conclude that they are both overrated in regards their ability to run. The reason is that a marathonist body is too light to produce the force needed to sprint, while the sprinter's body is too jacked and therefore heavy to run long distances competently. In the case presented above just changing the variable distance was enough to distort the judgment regarding results in a competition, how are we supposed to even consider having a fair competition if what we are considering is broader society itself? Another way competition is not neutral has to do with differences in individual personalities any psychology. If the goal is to win against an opponent some characteristics come into place as beneficial, such as ambition, determination, and confidence. But what if the person is caring? Should we judge a capacity to be caring as lesser than other characteristics, when Feminist economics has shown the importance of care-work as something which sustains the economy, being the largest sector of it (Liu, 2011)? All of this raises some important further issues. How do we judge merit? Should it be by effort, results, or a combination of both? All individuals are different and can have advantages that benefit them, without “deserving” them.

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On one hand, we could decide merit based on effort in order to deal with this problem. On the other hand, the effort that is made is to get results, therefore jeopardizing the whole idea of merit as a decisive variable in the process. To actually have a meritocracy we also need to take into account our ability to choose leaders competently when that position is not inherited. In his TED talk in 2019, organizational psychologist Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, points out three reasons why we tend to end up with incompetent men in positions of leadership, one being the conflation between confidence and competence, the love for charismatic individuals, and our inability to resist the allure of narcissistic individuals (cf. Chamorro-Premuzic, 2019). A similar argument regarding narcissistic people in power is made by political scientist Brian Klaas (2021). He describes in his work how narcissistic people tend to pursue power way more ambitiously, than those more competent for the position (Klaas, 2021).

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On a slightly different note, even when we can choose the most deserving ones and promote them, the so-called Peter Principle comes into play (Benson & Shue, 2018). The principle states that people are promoted to their level of incompetence. This means that even when performing well and getting rewarded a promotion because of it, this process will continue until they get promoted to something they don’t perform well. Many reasons can be put forward to explain this, like the different skills for the roles promoted or undervaluing the position (ibid.). Lastly, the complexity of identifying talent also shows the inability to confidently model meritocracy, since we cannot ever ensure we are choosing the individual who would perform the best, in the first place. In the NBA [National Basketball Association (USA)] where teams are in a competitive environment and therefore have all the incentives to choose the best players in a draft system, as a good pick can turn their entire business around, no one knows for sure if he or she watches a champion-contender. After all, the now all-star and arguably one of the best players in the game, Nikola Jokic was picked 41st place out of 60 originally. Teams were able to watch his games, talk to teammates, and have him do trials, but still failed to evaluate his value in a context where they had to judge his ability to play basketball at a certain level. Yet for some reason, meritocracy asserts that we can make the more complex judgment regarding people and their ability to perform a job, without this level of data. It seems to me people who spouse for meritocracy defend it from the fear of realizing how small we and our actions are in this world when taking into account everything that surrounds it. Admittedly, such realization could cause one to feel helpless and lead to a belief that nothing one does matters, because it is already decided beforehand by external factors. In this sense “fooling” oneself into believing in meritocracy can perhaps be a helpful mental tool to stay motivated and perform to the best of one’s abilities, however, unsustainable on a societal scale.

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I am definitely not in judgment or disagreement to use the concept for purposes of internal motivation or cognitive dissonance, if it works for any given someone. My problem is with the situation of when we escalate the idea into making it a political proposition, informing the policies for a working socioeconomic system. The end-goal, that we should aim for society where everyone deserves to decide whether the other should be able to provide for his family or have access to clean water, shelter and so on, appears to me, much crueler than whatever else this meritocracy is supposedly protecting us from.

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References (in order):

 

Camebridge Dictionary. Meaning of Meritocracy in English.  https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/meritocracy. (19.3.2014)

 

Fox, A. (1956). Class and equality. Socialist Commentary, 1113.

 

Allen, A. (2011). Michael Young's The Rise of the Meritocracy: A Philosophical Critique. British Journal of Educational Studies, 59, 367 - 382.

 

Young, M. (1958). The rise ofthe meritocracy. Penguin. Qualitative Research in Education, 1(2), 133.

 

Sennett, R. (2007). The culture of the new capitalism. Yale University Press.

 

Jin, J., & Ball, S. (2019). Meritocracy, social mobility and a new form of class domination. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 41, 64 - 79.

 

Sandel, M. J. (2020). The tyranny of merit: What's become of the common good?. Penguin UK.

 

Liu, A. (2011). Unraveling the myth of meritocracy within the context of US higher education. Higher Education, 62, 383-397.

 

IDEAS.TED.COM (9.1.2020). Chamorro-Premuzic, T.: Why do so many incompetent men become leaders? And what can we do about it?. https://ideas.ted.com/why-do-so-many incompetent-men-become-leaders-and-what-can-we-do-about-it/ (19.3.2024).

 

Chamorro-Premuzic, T. (2019). Why do so many incompetent men become leaders? (And how to fix it). Harvard Business Press.

 

Klaas, B. (2021). Corruptible: Who gets power and how it changes us. Simon and Schuster.

 

Benson, A., Li, D., & Shue, K. (2018). Promotions and the Peter Principle. Corporate Finance: Governance.

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