The Democratic Meritocracy

Ambient Occlusion

Democratic Meritocracy, what is that?

This thread proposes the governmental system of a meritocracy which is appointed democratically. A democratic, meritocratic government would consist of members that before having been elected, were screened and declared to possess the merit required for their position.

See here for the Wiki page, in case I haven't explained it well enough.

Merit in this case would obviously be defined by such things as intelligence, experience, competence, work ethic and various other things. Merit would be defined by an independent committee of civilian experts and would, to say the least, be difficult to define or examine. Even the process of establish guidelines for assessing candidate, selecting those to lay them out and selecting those to assess the candidates would be laborious work. Merit is obviously a subjective term and would definitely alter for different governmental positions, but that is not the main issue here.


What's the point though?

The point of this system is to ensure that those in office make the best effort possible. This wouldn't solve any problems really, however it would facilitate the environment in which the most meritorious people can come up with improved decisions and solutions to issues. (Meritocracy should only be encouraged at an governmental, administrative level as its importance to the nation is paramount. If the country was to become meritocratic in every respect, the those less well educated or in poor social conditions would be discriminated against.)

In addition, I would like to point out that this would not be a strict meritocracy in the sense that inheritance would be abolished, a view taken by the rather shifty-looking Meritocracy Party. Contrary to their beliefs, I don not think inheritance should be eliminated. This decision was made because I believe that people should not be expected to work for their entire lives to see what they've worked for handed away to the highest bidder. No one would accept it anyway.

For the moment I'd also like to avoid the fact that this would be best accomplished in a utopian, flawless society. I acknowledge that it is open to corruption and could be taken advantage of though with the right measures this could be decisively dealt with.


So what's your problem then?

Now, for the point I'd like to discuss.
Implementing it is the biggest issue I can see right now, ignoring the rest. It would simply be impossible to achieve with the system of election right now in Ireland. People of merit should be elected directly to positions of governance rather than being appointed there once their party/coalition has achieved a majority vote.
This is because people of a specific merit need to be elected for specific positions and the electorate have to know this and vote to achieve it also.
For example, a Minister for Agriculture should be directly elected based on his agricultural merit, whatever it may be.
Another issue is that of the constituencies. This ties in with the last in the regard that everyone should be able to decide on one person that is best for the position they can't do that with localised elections though. (Local representation should still be retained)
The Dáil comprises of 166 members, but not all of these members have ministerial responsibilities, but act as the opposition etc. Unless we can directly elect a government and then the others I don't see how this could work.

In my many ponderings on the issue, I have deemed partisan politics the absolute enemy of meritocracy in at least one respect. The electorate must vote for candidates not because they like them, not because they always vote for the specific party, not because they know them, not because the candidate has promised them a new road and not for their charisma. The electorate should be informed of the qualities of the candidates and must be informed so that they can make the decision that they decide is best.
I have purposefully omitted another popular ideal of meritocracy, which is restricting who can vote because that would neither be accepted nor would be in any way effective at defeating extreme abuse.

So, here's the question: How could it be implemented?

Here's my suggestion, though it's not great, it's something to start you thinking:

I have already suggested the No-Party State on these boards. This is a system which may facilitate Meritocracy because it forces all candidates to be independent. Political Parties are abolished and everyone must run on their own and so a government can be directly elected.

Let me go into more detail.
(This may require the introduction of that E-voting sham purely to simplify this ordeal.)
First and foremost the government is elected. Each position of governance must be voted for individually and is done on a national, rather than a constituent scale.
Following this, constituent representatives are elected purely to put forward the interests of the constituency.
After that Local candidates are elected based on their merit again, though these are the less preferred candidates. While less preferred, they should be almost on-par with the elected government and act as the opposition.

An afterthought: (For local government, the county councils are abolished. Three Regional Administrative Boards Are then established to replace them also done mertitocratically. These would be (i) Leinster, (ii)Munster (iii) Connaught and Ulster.)

Party affiliation would be discouraged hopefully and the government should work well. Though, as per the replies in the thread linked above, it probably wouldn't work.

Thanks for reading all of that if you did, sorry.
Please don't be too hard on me, I'm only 17 and I'm still trying to work my way around the political spectrum. I hope to enter politic someday, God help me.
I've left a lot out of the whole Democratic Meritocracy thing, but maybe I'll add them in with time and organise the OP better. I'd love help with my main issue, but if you could help me with any other relevant bits, I'd be elated.
Thanks again,
A guy trying to help.

ryank3nny

Hi there,

First of all, fair play to you for thinking about all this stuff, I'm new on these boards but it sems like an interesting place to discuss this sort of stuff. I presume there's a politics degree somewhere on the horizon for you? I've just finished mine a few weeks ago so here's a couple of thoughts on what you're talking about.

First off, abolishing political parties is one of those things that often pops up in these sorts of discussions but it's not clear that it's a real option in any practical sense, at least in a modern democracy. Parties aren't really artificial constructs like governmental bodies - they can't necessarily be abolished with a stroke of a legislative pen - they are generally agreed to be more like emergent properties, which developed largely organically as a byproduct of representative government and electoral systems.

So, what I'm saying is this: Suppose you somehow make a law saying that no one can explicitly name themselves as affiliated with any external body, and must run for office purely on their own policy positions, which is, I think, probably something along the lines of what you might suggest. What is to prevent a group of candidates from colluding, explicitly or implicitly, and agreeing to all identify with an identical policy position - or worse, what if they actually all agree? And what if, furthermore, one of these candidates thinks that he will have a better chance of instituting the policies he favours if there is someone else in the government who also favours those policies, he might think that the best way to pursue the policy positions he, and those he represents, advocate would be to help another candidate for a different office who shares his positions. It's easy to see how this process could occur for lots of different policy bundles, and all of sudden you're back where you started. Of course, you also have all the usual selfish motives for those in control of the party having an interest in maintaining their control, and so nothing has really changed.
I'm not entirely fatalistic about the possibility of getting rid of parties, but it's very hard to see how it could ever be accomplished.

Besides the question of whether or not it could be done, there's also a huge question of whether a No-Party state would be a good thing. The idea that partisan politics is the ultimate evil is often taken for granted, but the reality is a lot more complicated. In the 1950s the American Political Science Association complained that the Republican and Democratic parties weren'y partisan enough, and so there was no real choice available to voters and elections were therefore effectively meaningless in terms of letting the electorate choose between policy positions. Some of the early theories of voting suggested that partisan divisions in political parties would simply reflect partisan divisions in the electorate, and you can hardly blame the parties for decoratically representing the positions of the people. A lot of the debate has moved on since then of course, but you can see the basic point that partisan political parties are not necessarily a bad thing, or, even if they are, aren't necessarily the root of the problem.

In terms of the related questions of why people vote for the candidates they do, that's a pretty fundamental mystery of political science. You can complain that it's only because they identify with certain parties (and a lot of political scientists would agree with you - but again, it's still far from a closed question). But really there are a whole host of possibile reasons to chose between candidates, and once you start discriminating between those reasons you start to get into pretty serious philosophical trouble pretty quickly.

I can completley see the intuition behind the argument. You could say that, by failing to vote for the most deserving candidate, people therefore ultimately fail to vote in their own interest, but now you're in dangerously dictatorial waters. If you are insisting that people only use one criteria (objective merit) in chosing a candidate, then why stop there? If we are talking about making a decision between candidates purely on objective merit, then surely there must be one objectively best candidate, the one who has the most merit? In that case, the only objection to just ditching the election all together is that we can't be sure who it is - but if we could be sure, we would ideally like to forget about elections entirely, and are only prevented from doing so because those pesky voters wouldn't allow it.

I haven't read to much into democratic meritorcracy but I get the feeling that, much like many other things that stick "democratic" on to their names somewhere (think Democratic Republic of Congo, German Democratic Republic, Democratic People's Republic of Korea, etc.) it's mainly there for show, and not through any underlying fidelity to the real, basic principles of democracy.

Ambient Occlusion

Ah! Thanks for the reply, I had thought my effort was in vain. I'd like to know what you thought of your course because you're right, I am planning on heading that direction.

ryank3nny wrote:

First off, abolishing political parties is one of those things that often pops up in these sorts of discussions but it's not clear that it's a real option in any practical sense, at least in a modern democracy.

Big thanks for the input on that, I had been advised that such an idea was impractical, but you've gone into real detail. To be honest I have always been skeptical of the idea though seeing it in context, you're right it could never work. It's the stuff going on behind the scenes that is the problem and I suppose that can't be rectified. To be honest I just couldn't see any other way to elect a functioning, solely meritocratic government.

I can completley see the intuition behind the argument. You could say that, by failing to vote for the most deserving candidate, people therefore ultimately fail to vote in their own interest, but now you're in dangerously dictatorial waters. If you are insisting that people only use one criteria (objective merit) in chosing a candidate, then why stop there? If we are talking about making a decision between candidates purely on objective merit, then surely there must be one objectively best candidate, the one who has the most merit? In that case, the only objection to just ditching the election all together is that we can't be sure who it is - but if we could be sure, we would ideally like to forget about elections entirely, and are only prevented from doing so because those pesky voters wouldn't allow it.

When you look at in that light, I would suppose yes, it does seem wrong to force people to vote with specific criteria. Ideally, merit would be the primary quality desired however I imagined that the electorate would vote having evaluated the candidates' competence and various other factors. That's because one person that might be the most intellectually suitable though may not be the most practically suitable as they might lack the necessary talent and skill for the post.
I know you understand what I'm trying to say, but I left out one specific idea surrounding this in my last post. The government is the single most important body in the state and the selection of candidates for it should be dealt with to a degree proportional to it's importance. This means extending certain ideals beyond those that would apply to society such as meritocracy. Meritocracy, in my opinion, should not really be used outside of a governmental context because if it were, there would be lots of problems with discrimination.

I haven't read to much into democratic meritorcracy but I get the feeling that, much like many other things that stick "democratic" on to their names somewhere (think Democratic Republic of Congo, German Democratic Republic, Democratic People's Republic of Korea, etc.) it's mainly there for show, and not through any underlying fidelity to the real, basic principles of democracy.

I have thought about it and it has occurred to me that an Authoritarian Meritocracy would definitely function better than a democratic one but only under those perfect benevolent conditions that we could never hope to achieve in reality. That's why I called it a Democratic Meritocracy, because realistically it wouldn't work in any other way - it'd be too open to corruption. At the very least with a democracy you can replace the government every so often in the event that it oversteps itself. The No-Party State and the ideas I've presented in the OP are simply fleeting fabrications of my mind and I am certain that there are much better ideas out there than mine. The main idea here is Meritocracy, but like the Libertarian thread going at the moment, the purpose of this thread is to see how it would work in an Irish context.
Thank you very much for your post though, it feels nice to be replied to by someone with a degree in politics! As you have that level of expertise, do you have any suggestions? I'd really appreciate it because, if I really do opt for a political career, I'd like to do so based on the ideal of meritocracy. The ideas presented in the OP are childish and incomplete though and any assistance would really be welcomed. Thanks.

ryank3nny

Ah I'd hardly call it expertise! If there's one thing you learn from reading a bit about any of this stuff, it's how much there is to know. Also, I wouldn't go denigrating your thoughts as childish - there's nothing childish about trying to figure out where you stand.

Right, so first of all, as regards the possibility or otherwise of actually implementing these things, I wouldn't let that influence your thinking too much. I've always thought that the best approach is to decide whether or not something is a good idea, and then ask whether or not it's possible to achieve. If abolishing political parties is a bad idea, then it doesn't matter whether it's possible or not. If it's a good idea, then maybe it's worth thinking about why it seems impossible, and trying to imagine how those constraints might be overcome. So, really the first step is to decide for sure whether or not the problems we all identify in party politics are inherent consequences of the existence of political parties, or are they just unfortunate side-effects of the current political system. If the problems aren't inherent in parties themselves, then you need to look elsewhere to solve them. I realise that the substance of your post is about the viability of meritocracy (which I'll get on to in a minute) but I think it's important to ask whether the thing you blame for the problems your identify is really the culprit you're looking for.

As far as the merit argument goes, I'm still not sure it's clear what you consider merit to be. You concede in the OP that merit is clearly subjective. As far as I can see that's the end of the road for your argument. Why can't my subjective idea of a quality that merits being Minister for Finance be the quality of being able to fix the street light outside my house? Or the quality of being friends with my uncle? Or any other quality at all? The basic thing that you have to decide is whether merit is objective or subjective. If, as you seem to concede, it is subjective, then what makes one subjective idea of what merits a role in the government more valid than another?

On the other hand, there is a long tradition of argument for the objective merit side of the argument. One of the most famous (and most routinely disagreed with by good liberal-democratic political science undergrads) ideas in political philosophy is Plato's idea of "philosopher kings" - the people that Plato believed were the most perfectly, objectively qualified to run the government. The Republic is basically a book-length argument for the ideal state run by the philosopher kings, and an account of how such an ideal might be achieved - it's basically a prototype of your authoritarian meritocracy. You could do a lot worse than reading a copy, and it's actually quite manageable (if you do, get an unabridged version and one of the companion guides, which will explain a lot of the arguments in it, as well and introducing some of the basic criticisms). Plato was an avowed opponent of democracy, precisely because he believed that merit should determine who runs the government.

As I mentioned, I'm new here, so I haven't headed over to the Libertarianism thread yet (although I'm sure I'll find plenty to disagree with when I do) but I think before you start thinking about implementation in an Irish context or any other the first thing to establish is whether the merit you're talking about is objective or subjective. If it's subjective, then how do you know that this isn't effectively the same criteria already being applied by people in elections who just have different subjective ideas of merit than you do; or if it's objective, then how can it be democratic?

Ambient Occlusion

I should have explained this a little better, sorry. Partisan politics in it's purest form is the absolute enemy of meritocracy, meritocracy depends on objective, well-informed voters as much as it depends on the most suitable candidates for governmental roles. Partisan politics while an enemy of meritocracy does not mean that parties are an enemy, really it means that the electorate voting for parties due to specific allegiances or issues other than those relevant to governance is a problem. I can't see why political parties couldn't continue to function under a meritocratic state. The No-Party State idea was largely an effort to destroy the partisan electorate and to also make implementing meritocracy possible. The No-Party State as you pointed out is not really feasible and as you said, should not really be given the time to think about.

However, I truly believe that meritocracy is the way forward in regards to national government at the very least. I will emphasise that such is the importance of this matter with respect to the entire country that exceptional steps should be taken to ensure that the government in power is the best one that we can possibly have. This should in theory eliminate the incompetencies that plague all democracies.

Meritocracy in name alone would imply a form of democracy and as I said, it should incorporate democracy to a degree. When you made the point that essentially then the electorate would be forced into voting for particular candidates because they "can't vote in their own interest" this definitely would have authoritarian elements. Again though, democracy is important as it would hopefully (given that the correct, well though-out measures are put in place also) prevent tyrannical leadership.

To address this problem with the subjectivity of the merit which is necessary for candidacy, objective merit can be isolated but of course not without a great deal of effort. Huge amounts of time and work would have to be spent at the cost of discovering what is defined as merit, and this would have to be done for each individual position of governance. To ensure that what is determined as the necessary merit is done as accurately as possible, this must be done by a team of experts relevant to the particular field. Obviously a democratic government would have to put this all in place, but it must be possible to define merit. Of course there are uncountable other intricacies that would have to be added over time as they become relevant but the main point is that if the effort is out in, merit can be defined to a degree of accuracy that would satiate the population. Until such a time, we cannot know if these are the criteria that the electorate already use. However, even if the electorate votes given the yet undefined criteria, what difference does it make if the candidates they vote for are not made eligible using these criteria in the first place? (Why not just skip the whole election part? For one the electorate would better able to evaluate the motivations of a candidate than a team of experts. It also ensures that the government can't keep itself in power as well as a whole host of other reasons that make democracy a good idea)

I am going to acknowledge that this idea is not infallible though it should really be given a try. Perhaps a provisional meritocratic government should be allowed a trial run and if it is deemed to be impossible to achieve or impractical, well we can just fall back on good old democracy. (I realise that no government would ever concede to this unless, a democratically elected Meritocracy Party acceded power.) I don't know about you but it makes so much sense in my mind especially when you see things like cabinet reshuffles, which make absolutely no sense.

The next time I'm near Hodges Figgis I'll have a look for The Republic, thanks for the suggestion. That should help me a little bit, I'm writing a manifesto now but the implementation of meritocracy has me baffled. Thanks again for all this insight though, you've really got me thinking about it.

ryank3nny

Ambient Occlusion wrote: »

Partisan politics while an enemy of meritocracy does not mean that parties are an enemy, really it means that the electorate voting for parties due to specific allegiances or issues other than those relevant to governance is a problem.

I think this is the crux of the problem. How do you determine what those issues that are relevant to governance are? You said in the OP that merit is obviously a subjective term, so how can you say definitively that party allegiance, or any other quality (having red hair, wearing odd socks, being a good lad) doesn't count as a merit. If it's subjective, then your idea of what constitutes a merit is no more correct that mine, or anyone else's.

The idea of using an independent committee of civilian experts making this decision is effectively the same thing as restricting voting rights in elections to that panel of experts, since their idea of what constitutes eligibility for office is the only one you have decided is acceptable.

I don't mean to sound like I'm just pedantically picking holes here, but I think if you're going to try to have some sort of philosophical basis for your political views that it's important to argue about them and defend them to people who disagree. My problem with Democratic Meritocracy isn't just that it's not implementable, I think it is more deeply flawed than that.

Ambient Occlusion

ryank3nny wrote: »

I don't mean to sound like I'm just pedantically picking holes here, but I think if you're going to try to have some sort of philosophical basis for your political views that it's important to argue about them and defend them to people who disagree. My problem with Democratic Meritocracy isn't just that it's not implementable, I think it is more deeply flawed than that.

On the contrary, I find your arguments to be very helpful and well reasoned. I posted this thread exactly so that this could happen. In regards to the question of eliminating undesirable voting patterns, that simply doesn't have to be done by forcing people to vote in a certain way. I suppose it could be prevented by promoting intelligent voting because realistically the better informed the electorate is and the better the attempt they make to elect the most deserving candidates, the better the resulting government should be. Surely that is incentive enough to vote meritocractically? While again this idea of who is the best is up to the electorate this way they have a better chance of knowing. Partisan voting is a problem and while it can't be proven and it can't be definitively isolated as a problem, it makes sense that it should be eliminated, at the very least by discouraging it in a subtle manner.

I understand your problem with this committee as well. Yes they would produce guidelines and criteria for the eligibility of candidates, these criteria would be very basic and there would also be quite a number of requirements. Perhaps these requirements could be ranked according to importance (Of course there'd be a whole host of problems again there due to the subjectiveness of that also) and the candidate would have to achieve a certain score or something similar to that. These criteria are are established and implemented by that expert committee but it would perhaps be up to a lottery-chosen jury to decide after that what score a candidate would get.

Your criticism is extremely helpful to me, don't think that I think you're being annoying. Are you saying that in your opinion there is absolutely no way that this could be implemented solely due to the fundamental issues associated with it? Do you truly believe that these issues are insurmountable, that this can never become a reality? I just really, really think that there must be some way, a previously unimagined way for this to work. There must be mustn't there? I'm still open to being convinced, but I'm clinging hard to this idea. Are there any compromises out there? I just don't know.

ryank3nny

First of all, to answer your question, it's not that I'm a fatalist about electoral systems - I think if you think hard enough about it you can design a system that makes people vote in almost any way you like (at least in theory). My problem with this is not that it can't be done, it's that it shouldn't be done.

When we elect someone we aren't making a decision about a particular issue as we would in a referendum, for which there could arguably be an objectively better choice (although, as a good liberal I happen to believe that that isn't true either, but that's a different conversation), we are selecting someone to represent us. Although I disagree with a lot of the Libertarian leanings on these boards, I do agree with the basic principle that individuals have a natural right to freedom. The state has power over the individual, and therefore, by agreeing to be part of the state the individual surrenders some of their freedom (whether this is legitimate, and why people do it is again, another conversation). The motivation behind a democratic system of elections is that, by allowing the individual to choose a representative to act on their behalf in the government which has power over them, that power is legitimated. When you try to dictate how people make that decision of who will represent them, then you undermine that process of legitimating. The decision has to be a completely free one for the legitimacy granted by democracy to work.

digital1234

This is very nice sharing .

Ambient Occlusion

If Meritocracy was introduced through a party of it's own, elected for it's own merit without having forced it's ideals on others, perhaps it has a chance of working. Rather than a party of politicians, a party of intellectuals could be formed to run for election. In this situation, do you believe that Democratic Meritocracy could work? Would it be a desirable form of government then?
(Of course this would never work, the electorate would never vote for those "nerds" and "high-minded individuals".)
The thing about Democracy is; (in my opinion) while it is stable and proven to function well surely we must seek better. Democracy has it's limits too and wouldn't losing that tiny fragment of liberty really be worth it if it was for the greater good? If I were to think of Meritocracy in the most basic sense, it would mean 'Quality Control'. Is this not the purpose of the general election? It means finding the best and eliminating the worst and surely it can't be quite as difficult as it's made out to be. Sure, no one can possibly define relevant merit to absolute perfection but we can get reasonably close. The primarily desired criteria would in fact be fairly obvious it is just working out exactly what the criteria are that would be an issue.
Can you not compare the debate whether democracy truly is the best form of governance to the debate on what is defined as merit? Neither can be conclusively established as 100% correct but in any case people are happy to go along with democracy. In truth this system would not be a Democratic Meritocracy, but a Semi-Democratic Meritocracy.

**On the wiki page, someone has edited the introductory segment. It explains some sort of Democratic Meritocracy more akin to what you desire though I don't quite get it. Would you be able to explain it a little? Is it possible?**