The East Asian challenge for democracy: political meritocracy in comparative perspective 9781107038394, 9781107623774, 1107038391, 1107623774

Table of contents :
Contents......Page 9
Contributing Authors......Page 11
Acknowledgments......Page 17
Introduction......Page 19
The Theory of Political Meritocracy......Page 25
The History of Political Meritocracy......Page 31
Political Meritocracy Today......Page 35
Concluding Words......Page 42
Section I The Theory of Political Meritocracy......Page 47
I. Political Meritocracy and Meritorious Rule......Page 49
II. Abdication and Heredity......Page 50
III. Meritorious Rule and Democratic Elections: Ideal and Nonideal Situations......Page 55
IV. Mixing Meritocracy and Democracy......Page 59
A. Reliability......Page 60
B. Selection by Competitive Examinations......Page 61
C. Selection by Close Acquaintance......Page 63
D. Selection by Colleagues: A Proposal......Page 64
E. The Fact of Disagreement......Page 67
I. Four Problems with Democracy......Page 73
II. Nonmeritocratic Solutions and Their Fundamental Limit......Page 75
III. The Hybrid Regime of Confu-China and Its Superiority......Page 83
IV. Answers to Challenges to the Superiority of the Confucian Hybrid Regime......Page 91
V. Confu-China: Incompatible with Liberal Democracy?......Page 97
I. Introduction......Page 106
II. Question 3 Is Conceptually Fundamental......Page 108
III. Question 3 Is Practically Important......Page 109
IV. Problems with Each Side......Page 112
V. A Reconstructionist Confucian Meritocracy for China......Page 113
VI. A Confucian Constitutional Essential for People’s Well-Being......Page 118
VII. Institutional Implications......Page 125
VIII. Concluding Remarks......Page 127
I. Democracy, Meritocracy and Meritarchy......Page 134
II. Liberal Order and Liberal Philosophy......Page 137
A. The Argument from Personal Development......Page 141
B. The Argument from Sinister Interests......Page 142
C. The Moral Right to a Say in Matters That Affect You......Page 143
A. Is Democracy Stable?......Page 146
B. Can Liberal Order Command Sufficient Allegiance in a Democracy?......Page 149
C. Does Democracy Produce a Moral and Spiritual Leveling Down?......Page 150
5 Meritocratic Representation......Page 156
I. Representation, Responsive and Indicative......Page 158
II. Indicative Representation in Traditional and Existing Practice......Page 160
III. Indicative Representation at the Individual Level......Page 162
IV. Indicative Representation and Meritocracy......Page 164
V. The Attractions of Meritocratic Representation within Electoral Democracy......Page 168
VI. The Problems with Meritocratic Representation without Electoral Democracy......Page 171
Section II The History of Political Meritocracy......Page 177
6 Between Merit and Pedigree......Page 179
I. Background: The End of the Aristocratic Age......Page 180
II. The Rise of the Shi: Background......Page 183
III. “Elevating the Worthy”: The Beginnings......Page 185
IV. The Discourse of Worthiness and the Shi Pride......Page 190
V. “Worthiness” Reconsidered......Page 197
VI. Qin and Beyond: Merit versus Worthiness......Page 202
1. Fairness......Page 206
2. Morality and Efficiency......Page 207
3. Flexibility......Page 209
Acknowledgment......Page 210
I. Introduction......Page 221
II. A Brief History of Classical Education and Civil Examinations......Page 226
III. Meritocracy and Examinations......Page 230
A. Social Reproduction......Page 232
B. Political Reproduction......Page 233
C. Overlaps between Economic and Cultural Reproduction......Page 235
IV. Power, Politics, and Examinations......Page 237
A. Literacy and Social Dimensions......Page 239
V. Delegitimation and Decanonization......Page 241
VI. Reform and Revolution......Page 242
8 Meritocratic Democracy......Page 250
I. Democracy versus Meritocracy?......Page 251
II. The Constitutional Conception of Democracy......Page 255
III. Constitutional Democracy’s Accountability Spectrum: from Responsiveness to Responsibility......Page 258
IV. American Constitutional Democracy: Responsive and Responsible Representation......Page 260
V. Popular Sovereignty and Competence?......Page 267
VI. Democracy and Meritocracy Today......Page 269
Section III Realizing Political Meritocracy Today......Page 275
How East Asians View Meritocracy: A Confucian Perspective......Page 277
The Confucian Asian Values Debate......Page 278
Good Government......Page 280
Virtuous Leadership......Page 282
Politically Passive Citizenry......Page 284
Virtuous and Capable Leadership......Page 285
Politically Passive Citizenry......Page 289
Citizen Welfare......Page 291
Overall Level of Support for Confucian Meritocracy......Page 293
Popular Support for Democracy......Page 294
Confucian Meritocracy and Cultural Democratization......Page 297
Summary and Conclusion......Page 300
10 Political Meritocracy in Singapore......Page 306
I. Scholars and the Selection of the Political Elite......Page 307
II. Rewarding Meritocratic Elites: The Market-Based System of Ministerial Pay......Page 311
III. New Authoritarianism and Meritocratic Elitism......Page 314
A. Darwinian Economic Warriors......Page 317
B. The Denigration of Honour and Sacrifice......Page 320
V. Democratic Reaction to Meritocratic Elites......Page 323
VI. Conclusion......Page 325
11 Meritocracy and Political Liberalization in Singapore......Page 332
I. Meritocracy and Ideological Hegemony: From Survivalism to Developmentalism......Page 335
II. The Institutionalization of Political Meritocracy......Page 340
III. Neoliberal Globalization: Meritocracy Hardens and Begins to Crack......Page 342
IV. Counter-Hegemonic Leadership and Alternative Ideological Formations......Page 346
V. Challenging Meritocracy: What Is at Stake?......Page 351
I. A Brief History of China’s Civil Service Examinations......Page 358
II. Current Civil Service Examinations......Page 366
III. Recent Reform Toward “Scientific and Democratic” Selections......Page 370
IV. Connections with Individual Corruption?......Page 375
13 Reflections on Political Meritocracy......Page 381
I. Some Doubts about Political Meritocracy in General......Page 382
II. Political Merit in Real-Existing Democracies (REDs)......Page 383
III. The Centrality of Representation in REDs......Page 384
IV. Two Key Compromises with Regard to Political Merit......Page 385
V. Some Queries about Nonelected Representation......Page 387
VI. Toward an Institutional Redesign of REDs?......Page 388
VII. Concluding with a Question......Page 390
14 Political Meritocracy and Direct Democracy......Page 393
I. Rebooting California’s Dysfunctional Democracy......Page 396
2. Initiative Reform......Page 400
3. The Citizens Council......Page 402
III. The Next Steps......Page 406
IV. Lessons of the California Experience......Page 407
Index......Page 413

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more information - www.cambridge.org/9781107038394

the east asian challenge for democracy The rise of China, along with problems of governance in democratic countries, has reinvigorated the theory of political meritocracy. But what is the theory of political meritocracy, and how can it set standards for evaluating political progress (and regress)? Can meritocracy be reconciled with democracy, and, if so, how? What is the history of political meritocracy, and what can it teach us today? How is political meritocracy practiced in contemporary societies – in China, Singapore, and elsewhere – and what are its advantages and disadvantages in terms of producing just outcomes and contributing to good governance? To help answer these questions, this volume gathers a series of commissioned research papers from an interdisciplinary group of leading philosophers, historians, and social scientists. The result is the first book in decades to examine the rise (or revival) of political meritocracy and what it will mean for political developments in China and the rest of the world. Despite its limitations, meritocracy has contributed much to human flourishing in East Asia and beyond and will continue to do so in the future. This book is essential reading for those who wish to further the debate and perhaps even help to implement desirable forms of political change. Daniel A. Bell is Professor of Ethics and Political Philosophy and Director of the Center for International and Comparative Political Philosophy at Tsinghua University (Beijing) and Zhiyuan Chair Professor in the Institute of Arts and Humanities at Jiaotong University (Shanghai). He has coedited three previous books for Cambridge University Press and authored, coauthored, and coedited seven other books. He is a frequent contributor to leading media outlets in China and the West. His writings have been translated into twenty-three languages. Chenyang Li is Associate Professor and founding director of the philosophy program at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Previously, he served as Professor and Chair of the Philosophy Department at Central Washington University, where he received the Distinguished Research Professor Award, Outstanding Department Chair Award, and Keys to Success Award (Student Service). He was a 2008–2009 American Council on Education Fellow. His research interests include Chinese philosophy, comparative philosophy, and value theory. Among his publications are The Confucian Philosophy of Harmony (2013); The Tao Encounters the West: Explorations in Comparative Philosophy (1999); and The Sage and the Second Sex: Confucianism, Ethics, and Gender (ed., 2000), as well as about 100 journal articles and book chapters.

The East Asian Challenge for Democracy political meritocracy in comparative perspective Edited by

DANIEL A. BELL Tsinghua University Shanghai Jiaotong University

CHENYANG LI Nanyang Technological University Singapore

32 Avenue of the Americas, New York, ny 10013-2473, usa Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge. It furthers the University’s mission by disseminating knowledge in the pursuit of education, learning, and research at the highest international levels of excellence. www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781107623774  C Cambridge University Press 2013

This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2013 Printed in the United States of America A catalog record for this publication is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data The East Asian challenge for democracy : political meritocracy in comparative perspective / edited by Daniel A. Bell, Chenyang Li. pages cm Includes index. isbn 978-1-107-03839-4 (hardback) – isbn 978-1-107-62377-4 (paperback) 1. Democracy – East Asia. 2. East Asia – Politics and government. I. Bell, Daniel (Daniel A.), 1964– jq1499.a91e22 2013 321.8095–dc23 2013010562 isbn 978-1-107-03839-4 Hardback isbn 978-1-107-62377-4 Paperback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of urls for external or third-party Internet Web sites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such Web sites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

From Daniel A. Bell To Val´erie, Oliver, and Yana From Chenyang Li To Fay and Hansen

Contents

page ix xv

Contributing Authors Acknowledgments Introduction: The Theory, History, and Practice of Political Meritocracy Daniel A. Bell

1

section i. the theory of political meritocracy 1. Political Meritocracy and Meritorious Rule: A Confucian Perspective Joseph Chan

31

2. A Confucian Version of Hybrid Regime: How Does It Work, and Why Is It Superior? Tongdong Bai

55

3. Confucian Meritocracy for Contemporary China Ruiping Fan

88

4. The Liberal Critique of Democracy John Skorupski

116

5. Meritocratic Representation Philip Pettit

138

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Contents

section ii. the history of political meritocracy 6. Between Merit and Pedigree: Evolution of the Concept of “Elevating the Worthy” in Pre-imperial China Yuri Pines 7. A Society in Motion: Unexpected Consequences of Political Meritocracy in Late Imperial China, 1400–1900 Benjamin Elman 8. Meritocratic Democracy: Learning from the American Constitution Stephen Macedo

161

203

232

section iii. realizing political meritocracy today 9. How East Asians View Meritocracy: A Confucian Perspective Doh Chull Shin

259

10. Political Meritocracy in Singapore: Lessons from the PAP Government Benjamin Wong

288

11. Meritocracy and Political Liberalization in Singapore Kenneth Paul Tan

314

12. China’s Meritocratic Examinations and the Ideal of Virtuous Talents Hong Xiao and Chenyang Li

340

13. Reflections on Political Meritocracy: Its Manipulation and Transformation Philippe C. Schmitter

363

14. Political Meritocracy and Direct Democracy: A Hybrid Experiment in California Nicolas Berggruen and Nathan Gardels

375

Index

395

Contributing Authors

Tongdong Bai is the Dongfang Chair Professor of Philosophy at Fudan University in China. His research interests include Chinese philosophy and political philosophy, especially the comparative and contemporary relevance of traditional Chinese political philosophy. His books are A New Mission of an Old State: The Comparative and Contemporary Relevance of Classical Confucian Political Philosophy (in Chinese, Peking University Press, 2009) and China: The Political Philosophy of the Middle Kingdom (in English, Zed Books, 2012). Daniel A. Bell () is Professor of Ethics and Political Philosophy and Director of the Center for International and Comparative Political Philosophy at Tsinghua University (Beijing) and Zhiyuan Chair Professor in the Institute of Arts and Humanities at Jiaotong University (Shanghai). He has coedited three previous books with Cambridge University Press and authored, coauthored, and coedited seven books with Princeton University Press. He is a frequent contributor to leading media outlets in China and the West. His writings have been translated into twenty-three languages. Nicolas Berggruen is an investor and philanthropist and founder and president of Berggruen Holdings, a private investment company, and the Nicolas Berggruen Institute, a think tank that works on addressing governance issues. Joseph Chan is Professor and Head of the Department of Politics and Public Administration at the University of Hong Kong. His research interests include contemporary liberalism and perfectionism, Confucian political philosophy, the theory and practice of human rights, civil society and NGOs, and social cohesion. He has published articles in ix

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Contributing Authors

various journals, including China Quarterly, Ethics, History of Political Thought, Journal of Chinese Philosophy, Journal of Democracy, Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, Philosophy and Public Affairs, and Philosophy East and West. He serves on the editorial committees of Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy and Law and Philosophy. Benjamin Elman is the Gordon Wu ’58 Professor of Chinese Studies, Professor of East Asian Studies and History, and chair of the Department of East Asian Studies at Princeton University. He works at the intersection of several fields including history, philosophy, literature, religion, economics, politics, and science. His ongoing interest is in rethinking how the history of East Asia has been told in the West as well as in China, Japan, and Korea. He is currently studying cultural interactions in East Asia during the eighteenth century – in particular, the impact of Chinese classical learning, medicine, and natural studies on Tokugawa, Japan, and Choson, Korea. Ruiping Fan is Professor of Philosophy in the Department of Public Policy at City University of Hong Kong. He authored Reconstructionist Confucianism: Rethinking Morality after the West (2010) and Contemporary Confucian Bioethics (2011). He is the editor or coeditor of Confucian Bioethics (1999), Confucian Society and the Revival of Dao (2008), The Renaissance of Confucianism in Contemporary China (2011), Ritual and the Moral Life (2012), and A Confucian Constitutional Order (2013). Nathan Gardels is editor-in-chief of NPQ and Global Services of the LA Times Syndicate. He is coauthor with Nicolas Berggruen of “Intelligent Governance for the 21st Century: A Middle Way between West and East.” Chenyang Li is Associate Professor and founding director of the philosophy program at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. He served as Professor in and Chair of the Philosophy Department at Central Washington University (1999–2010). His research interests include Chinese philosophy, comparative philosophy, and value theory. His publications include The Confucian Philosophy of Harmony (Routledge, 2013); The Tao Encounters the West: Explorations in Comparative Philosophy (State University of New York Press, 1999; Chinese trans. Remin University Press, 2005); and The Sage and the Second Sex:

Contributing Authors

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Confucianism, Ethics, and Gender (ed., Open Court, 2000), and about 100 journal articles and book chapters. He is a member of the editorial/ academic boards of the Journal of Chinese Philosophy and thirteen other scholarly publications. Stephen Macedo is Laurence S. Rockefeller Professor of Politics in the University Center for Human Values at Princeton University, where he has also served as Director of the Center and Founding Director of the Program in Law and Public Affairs. His books include Diversity and Distrust: Civic Education in a Multicultural Democracy and Liberal Virtues: Citizenship, Virtue, and Community in Liberal Constitutionalism (Chinese trans., Yilin Press, 2010). Philip Pettit is Laurence S. Rockefeller University Professor of Politics and Human Values at Princeton University and Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the Australian National University. His recent books include On the People’s Terms: A Republican Theory and Model of Democracy (Cambridge University Press, 2012), Group Agency (with Christian List, Oxford University Press, 2011), and A Political Philosophy in Public Life (with Jose Marti, Princeton University Press, 2010). His work is the focus in Common Minds: Themes from the Philosophy of Philip Pettit (Oxford University Press, 2007), edited by H. G. Brennan et al. Yuri Pines () is Michael W. Lipson Professor of Asian Studies at Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His major publications include The Everlasting Empire: Traditional Chinese Political Culture and Its Enduring Legacy (Princeton University Press, 2012); Envisioning Eternal Empire: Chinese Political Thought of the Warring States Era and Foundations of Confucian Thought: Intellectual Life in the Chunqiu Period, 722–453 B.C.E. (both University of Hawaii Press, 2009 and 2002); and the coedited volume Birth of an Empire: The State of Qin Revisited (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013). Philippe C. Schmitter is Professorial Fellow and a recurring lecturer at the Istituto Italiano di Scienze Umane (SUM) in Florence and at the Central European University in Budapest. He has published books and articles on comparative politics, regional integration in Western Europe and Latin America, the transition from authoritarian rule in Southern Europe and Latin America, and the intermediation of class, sectorial, and professional interests. His current work is on the political

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characteristics of the emerging Euro-polity, the consolidation of democracy in southern and eastern Europe, and the possibility of postliberal democracy in western Europe and North America. Doh Chull Shin is Jack W. Peltason Scholar in Residence at the Center for the Study of Democracy at the University of California, Irvine. His publications include Mass Politics and Culture in Democratizing Korea (Cambridge University Press, 1999); Economic Crisis and Dual Transition in Korea (Seoul National University Press, 2004); Citizens, Democracy, and Markets around the Pacific Rim (Oxford University Press, 2006); How East Asians View Democracy (Columbia University Press, 2009); The Quality of Life in Korea (Kluwer Academic, 2003); and The Quality of Life in Confucian Asia (Springer, 2009). John Skorupski studied philosophy and economics at Cambridge University. After lecturing at the University of Glasgow, he moved to the Chair of Philosophy at Sheffield University in 1984 and to the Chair of Moral Philosophy at Saint Andrews in 1990. His interests at the moment are moral and political philosophy, meta-ethics and epistemology, and the history of nineteenth- and twentieth-century philosophy. His books include John Stuart Mill (1989), Ethical Explorations (1999), and The Domain of Reasons (2010). Kenneth Paul Tan is Associate Professor at the National University of Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy. He has written widely about Singapore, mainly on governance, democracy, and civil society; the creative city and culture industry; and race, gender, and sexuality. He has published in leading international journals such as Asian Studies Review, Critical Asian Studies, International Political Science Review, and Position: Asia Critique. He has authored two books: Renaissance Singapore? Economy, Culture, and Politics (NUS Press, 2007) and Cinema and Television in Singapore: Resistance in One Dimension (Brill, 2008). Benjamin Wong is Associate Professor of Policy and Leadership Studies at the National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University. His teaching and research interests include history of political thought, Singapore politics, and education policy. He is coeditor of Dissident Democrats: The Challenge of Democratic Leadership in Asia and has published articles in the Journal of Chinese Philosophy, Philosophy East and West, and Millennium: Journal of International Studies, among others.

Contributing Authors

xiii

Hong Xiao is Associate Professor of Sociology and Director of Master of Arts in Contemporary China at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. She served as Professor and Chair of the Sociology Department at Central Washington University (1999–2010). She is the author of Childrearing Values in the United States and China: A Comparison of Belief Systems and Social Structure (Praeger, 2001) and has published on topics such as social class and values, child socialization, culture and values, gender, domestic violence, and human rights.

Acknowledgments

The editors thank the Center for Liberal Arts and Social Sciences of the College of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences at Nanyang Technological University for a generous grant and Ang Wee Li, Leo Chung Hoe Gary, and Li Jifen for their dedicated service in support of the conference “The Idea of Political Meritocracy: A Nanyang Technological University Interdisciplinary Symposium” on 6–8 January 2012, from which this volume was generated. This project was partially supported by NTU Research Grant M4080394. Thanks are also due to Alan Chan, Ian Chong, Chua Beng Huat, Michael Dowdle, Prasenjit Duara, Daniel Goh, He Baogang, Leigh Jenco, Leo Koguan, Loy Hui Chieh, William Nienhauser, Pan Wei, Michael Puett, Lisa Raphals, Tan Ern Ser, Tan Sor-hoon, Ten Chin Liew, and Zheng Yongnian, for participating in the conference and for providing valuable comments on the papers; to Mark Elliott for helpful suggestions of translations of Chinese key terms; to Gu Qingfeng and Song Bing for helping us obtain the cover photo, and to photographer of the cover photo Hu Yong at Center for Public Service Examinations, Organization Department, Changsha City (Hunan province, China), for permitting us to use it; to Wu Huawei, Li Jifen, and Sun Qingjuan for help with proofreading and technical assistance in preparing the manuscript; and last but not least, especially to our thoughtful and efficient editor at Cambridge University Press, John Berger, who has made publishing this volume a particularly pleasant and rewarding experience.

xv

Introduction The Theory, History, and Practice of Political Meritocracy Daniel A. Bell

In 1992, Francis Fukuyama famously proclaimed that liberal democracy’s triumph over its rivals signifies the end of history.1 Needless to say, the brief moment of liberal euphoria that followed the collapse of communism in the Soviet bloc soon gave way to a sober assessment of the difficulties of implementing liberal practices outside the Western world. Brutal ethnic warfare, crippling poverty, environmental degradation, and pervasive corruption, to name some of the more obvious troubles afflicting the developing world, pose serious obstacles to the successful establishment and consolidation of liberal democratic political arrangements. But these were seen as unfortunate (hopefully temporary) afflictions that might delay the end of history when liberal democracy has finally triumphed over its rivals. They were not meant to pose a challenge to the ideal of liberal democracy. It was widely assumed that liberal democracy is something that all rational individuals would want if they could get it. The deeper challenge to liberal democracy has emerged from the East Asian region. In the 1990s, the debate revolved around the notion of “Asian values,” a term devised by several Asian officials and their supporters for the purpose of challenging Western-style civil and political freedoms. Asians, they claim, place special emphasis on family and social harmony, with the implication that those in the chaotic and crumbling societies of the West should think twice about intervening in Asia for the sake of promoting human rights and democracy. As Singapore’s former Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew put it, Asians have “little doubt that a society where the interests of society take precedence over that of the individual suits them better than the individualism of America.”2 Such claims attracted international attention primarily 1

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Daniel A. Bell

because East Asian leaders seemed to be presiding over what a United Nations human development report called “the most sustained and widespread development miracle of the twentieth century, perhaps all history.”3 The debate over “Asian values” was led by political leaders with questionable motives, but the views of Lee and his colleagues did have some traction in Asian societies: it prompted critical intellectuals in the East Asian region to reflect on how they can locate themselves in a debate on human rights in which they had not previously played a substantial part. In the 1990s, the debate focused mainly on human rights.4 How “universal” is a human rights regime that draws only (or mainly) on the moral aspirations and political practices found in Western liberal democratic societies? If Asian cultures are less individualist than Western ones, then perhaps certain forms of governance and policies are more suitable to Asian societies that are different from the human rights standards typically endorsed by liberal theorists, Western governments, and international human rights documents formulated without substantial input from East Asia? How can “Asian values” and cultural traditions enrich the “international” human rights regime so that it truly becomes an international order based on universally accepted human rights? Asian critics of “Western-style” human rights criticized liberals both for not respecting nonliberal moralities in Asia that might justify deviations from a “Western” human rights regime and for failing to do what must be done to make human rights a truly universal ideal. In 1997–8, however, the East Asian miracle seemed to have collapsed, and the debate over “Asian values” was one casualty of the crisis. For many, the end came not a minute too soon because the whole debate seemed to rest on faulty theoretical premises. Most obviously, Asia is a huge and exceptionally diverse landmass, encompassing much of the world’s population. It hosts a number of religions, such as Islam, Hinduism, Confucianism, Christianity, and Buddhism, as well as myriad races, ethnicities, customs, and languages. The assumption that Asia has its own cultural essence fundamentally different from that of the West is, to say the least, dubious. And Asian politicians such as South Korea’s former President Kim Dae Jung openly questioned the idea of “Asian values” defended by Lee Kuan Yew, arguing that liberal democratic political values and practices are both universal and appropriate for his country.5 It would only be a slight exaggeration to say that

Introduction

3

“Asian values” were really “Singaporean values” as interpreted by that country’s political leaders! Ironically, few paid attention to the really innovative Singaporean contribution to the debate on political values: the official discourse from Singapore has theoretical and practical interest not so much because it challenges the universality of human rights but more because it challenges the universality of democracy. Singapore’s leaders reject the dichotomy between “good” democratic and “bad” authoritarian regimes. Rather, they argue that the concept of meritocracy best describes Singapore’s political system: given Singapore’s small population and limited resource base, the country should be led by people with the greatest talent and best characters, chosen according to merit. Let us borrow Lee Kuan Yew’s own words once again: Singapore is a society based on effort and merit, not wealth or privilege depending on birth. [The elite provides] the direction, planning, and control of [state] power in the people’s interest. . . . It is on this group that we expend our limited and slender resources in order that they will provide the yeast, that ferment, that catalyst in our society which alone will ensure that Singapore shall maintain . . . the social organization which enables us, with almost no natural resources, to provide the second highest standard of living in Asia. . . . The main burden of present planning and implementation rests on the shoulders of 300 key persons. . . . The people come from poor and middle class homes. They come from different language schools. Singapore is a meritocracy. And these men have risen through their own merit, hard work, and high performance.6

The basic idea of political meritocracy is that everybody should have an equal opportunity to be educated and to contribute to politics, but not everybody will emerge from this process with an equal capacity to make morally informed political judgments. Hence, the task of politics is to identify those with above average ability and to make them serve the political community. If the leaders perform well, the people will basically go along. Such an approach resonates strongly with the Confucian ideals of Singapore’s Chinese community. As Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong (also Lee Kuan Yew’s son) explains, “many Confucian ideals are still relevant to us. An example is the concept of government by honorable men (junzi), who have a duty to do right for the people, and who have the trust and respect of the population. This fits us better than

4

Daniel A. Bell

the Western concept that a government should be given as limited powers as possible, and always be treated with suspicion, unless proven otherwise.”7 Why did Singapore’s discourse on political meritocracy fail to gain much traction abroad? For one thing, Singapore’s political system does not seem designed only to select able and humane Confucian-style leaders; it also relies on highly controversial measures such as a tightly controlled media, strict limits on the freedom of association, and harsh retaliation against members of the political opposition. Hence, in the eyes of many outsiders (especially in the Western world), the political system should still be described as (bad) authoritarianism, even if it’s a “softer” form of authoritarianism compared with regimes such as North Korea. Moreover, the government’s own political discourse suggests that political meritocracy should not be a universal political ideal: the need to select and promote political talent is most pressing in a tiny city-state without natural resources, and, most important, a tiny talent pool. Hence, why debate the universality of an ideal that is meant to fit only a highly unique city-state? Judging by what they do, however, Singapore’s political leaders seem to believe that political meritocracy can and should influence political reforms in other countries, especially those with a Confucian heritage. Singapore and China in particular seem to have a strong relationship. Since the early 1990s, Chinese officials have gone to Singapore for training and to learn from the Singapore experience.8 Of course, Singapore’s political values and institutions cannot readily be transferred to a huge country such as China, but aspects of the Singaporean political system may be transferable.9 From Deng Xiaoping to Xi Jinping, China’s leaders have repeatedly stressed the need to study (aspects of) the Singapore model of governance. Partly inspired by the “Singapore model,” China’s political system has become more meritocratic since the early 1990s. Without denying the authoritarian characteristics of the Chinese political system, Hong Xiao and Chenyang Li argue that China has evolved a sophisticated and comprehensive system of selecting and promoting political talent (see Chapter 12). The success of meritocracy in China is obvious: China’s rulers have presided over the single most impressive poverty alleviation achievement in history, with several hundred million people being lifted out of poverty. Equally obvious, however, some problems in China – corruption, the gap between rich and poor, environmental degradation, abuses of power by political officials, harsh measures for

Introduction

5

dealing with political dissent, overly powerful state-run enterprises that skew the economic system in their favor, repression of religious expression in Tibet and Xinjiang, discrimination against women – seem to have worsened during the same period the political system has become more meritocratic. Part of the problem is that China lacks democracy at various levels of government that could help check abuses of power and provide more opportunities for political expression by marginalized groups: “democratic” reform has all but stalled beyond village-level elections. But part of the problem is also that political meritocracy has been insufficiently developed in China. The political system needs to be further “meritocratized” so that government officials are selected and promoted on the basis of ability and morality rather than political connections, wealth, and family background. And the world is watching China’s experiment with meritocracy. China, unlike Singapore, can “shake the world.” In the early 1990s, nobody predicted that China’s economy would rise so fast to become the world’s second largest economy. In twenty years’ time, perhaps we will be debating how Chinese-style political meritocracy set an alternative model – and perhaps a challenge – to Western-style democracy. Of course, the ideal of political meritocracy is not foreign to Western political theory and practice. Plato famously defended a meritocratic political ideal in The Republic: the best political regime is composed of political leaders selected on the basis of their superior ability to make morally informed political judgments and granted the power to rule over the community. Meritocracy was influential throughout subsequent history, although subsequent thinkers rarely defended a pure form of political meritocracy. U.S. founding fathers and nineteenthcentury “liberal elitists” such as John Stuart Mill and Alexis de Tocqueville put forward political ideas that tried to combine meritocracy and democracy. Yet theorizing about meritocracy has all but faded from modern Western political discourse. There are hundreds if not thousands of books on the theory and practice of democracy, but it is hard to think of a single recent (and decent) English-language book on the idea of political meritocracy. The dearth of debates about political meritocracy would not be problematic if it were widely agreed that liberal democracy is the best political system (or the least bad political system, as Winston Churchill famously put it). But there are growing doubts. The “crisis of governability” in Western democracies caused by the unprecedented globalized flow of goods, services, and capital has been well documented by

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political scientists.10 Capitalist interests have disproportionate influence in the political process, especially in the American political system, which has been described, perhaps not unfairly, as one dollar, one vote rather than one person, one vote. Political theorists have raised questions about the voting system itself. Part of the problem is that voters are often selfishly concerned with their narrow material interest and ignore the interests of future generations who are affected by the policies of government. Jason Brennan has argued that voters should stay away from the voting booth if they cannot make morally informed political judgments.11 Certainly there are some issues where the pursuit of narrow economic self-interest at the voting booth could lead to disastrous consequences for voters who lack representation (consider global warming). Just as worrisome, perhaps, voters often misunderstand their own interests. Drawing on extensive empirical research, Bryan Caplan shows that voters are often irrational, and he suggests tests of voter competence as a remedy.12 Of course, such proposals are nonstarters in liberal democracies because nobody wants to give up (or limit) the vote once they have it. Hence, it really is the end of history, but in the bad sense that no improvements are possible once the system of one person, one vote is in place. This is not to say that there is no room for meritocratic reforms in liberal democracies. But they must take place on a foundation of the principle of political equality expressed in the form of one person, one vote. In short, the rise of China, along with problems of governance in democratic countries, has reinvigorated the theory of meritocracy. But what is the theory of political meritocracy, and how can it set standards for evaluating political progress (and regress)? Is it possible to incorporate the best of meritocratic practices within an overall democratic framework, and if so, how? In a nondemocratic context, how can political meritocracy be structured so that it is seen as legitimate in the eyes of the people and avoids the abuses of authoritarian rule? What is the history of political meritocracy in a particular time and place, and how can the lessons from the past help us to improve political meritocracy today? How did earlier thinkers conceive of political merit – which abilities and which virtues were valued in which contexts – and what is the relevance of earlier conceptions of political merit for leadership selection today? What is the practice of political meritocracy today – in China, Singapore, and elsewhere – and what are its advantages and disadvantages in terms of producing just outcomes and contributing to good governance?

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To help answer these questions, the two editors commissioned research papers from an interdisciplinary group of leading philosophers, historians, and social scientists. The contributors were asked to work with a loose definition of political meritocracy as the idea that a political system should aim to select and promote leaders with superior ability and virtue. Because the contributors are also committed to some form of democracy, we asked them to think about how meritocracy can and should be reconciled with democracy – hence, the title of our book, The East Asian Challenge for Democracy. The East Asian challenge is thus not a challenge to democracy in the sense that it is trying to displace democracy entirely in favor of political meritocracy. We met in Singapore – the only country that openly calls itself a political meritocracy without rejecting democracy – for a free and open exchange of ideas. Drafts of the papers were presented, and we asked two scholars from different disciplines and orientations to comment on each paper. The papers were then revised into chapters for publication in this book. The book is divided in three sections: the theory of political meritocracy, the history of meritocracy, and the practice of political meritocracy today. Given that the ideal of political meritocracy is, arguably, more central to East Asian societies with a Confucian heritage, we lead off each section with “East Asian” chapters that focus primarily on the philosophy, history, and/or practice of political meritocracy in China and Singapore. Each section follows with “Western” chapters that discuss the philosophy, history, or practice of political meritocracy in the United States and the United Kingdom. We are fully aware that our book can be further enriched by comparative study of the philosophy, history, and practice of political meritocracy in other regions (e.g., India, France, the Middle East), but this work aims to fill a glaring gap in the literature and to inspire further research on political meritocracy. THE THEORY OF POLITICAL MERITOCRACY

If the process of “meritocratization” in China is an ongoing and unfinished process, how can we evaluate political progress (and regress)? We need a normatively appealing and politically feasible theory of political meritocracy, just as we need a theory of democracy to evaluate the process of “democratization.” The first three essays in this section – by Joseph Chan, Bai Tongdong, and Fan Ruiping – theorize about political meritocracy, inspired mainly by Confucian political theory,

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and draw some institutional implications. Roughly speaking, the chapters are organized in increasing order of commitment to meritocracy. Joseph Chan, professor and head of the Department of Politics and Public Administration at the University of Hong Kong, distinguishes between political meritocracy as a political system that selects rulers according to their superior merit and “meritorious rule” in the sense that rulers are able and virtuous and govern effectively. Although political systems such as monarchy and democracy are not explicitly designed to select rulers of superior merit, Chan argues that they can achieve meritorious governance to a considerable degree. In Imperial China, emperors were normally chosen according to the nonmeritocratic principle of hereditary succession, but they could be trained at an early age in the art of effective and humane governance. In practice, however, Chan argues that the system was deeply flawed, with even talented rulers such as Emperor Wanli becoming disenchanted and ineffective. But modern-day elections are more likely to achieve a considerable degree of meritorious rule. If elections are viewed as a mechanism for selecting people who have commitment to public service and who cultivate trust and harmony with the people, Chan argues that they can attain a reasonable degree of meritorious rule as well as ensure regime stability. But the practice often deviates from the democratic ideal, in which case the democratic legislature should be complemented by a meritocratic institution that explicitly selects rulers according to their virtue and ability. Hence, Chan proposes a second chamber composed of senior public servants chosen on the basis of their virtue and competence by their colleagues and “experienced journalists.” Chan recognizes that his proposal best fits a small community such as Hong Kong where public servants and journalists have personal experience with each other. And he also suggests that the relative powers of the two chambers should vary in accordance with the virtue of the citizens: the more virtuous the citizens, the stronger the role of the democratic legislature. The meritocratic chamber, by means of its civil and substantive debates, could serve as a role model and improve the moral education of citizens. So the better it works, the more superfluous it would become. Bai Tongdong, Dongfang Chair Professor at the School of Philosophy at Fudan University in Shanghai, is more pessimistic about democracy. He begins his essay by discussing four major problems with democracy, especially the institution of one person, one vote: it often degenerates into a radical form of individualism that celebrates

Introduction

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the pursuit of narrowly defined self interest; it lacks effective mechanisms to take into account the interests of nonvoters who are affected by the policies of government, including past and future generations and foreigners; the interests of the vocal and powerful tends to trump the interests of minorities, the silent, and the powerless; and voters often misunderstand their own interests. Bai reviews nonmeritocratic solutions to these problems and argues that they are fundamentally inadequate. Unlike Chan, Bai concludes that the problems of democracy are likely to be permanent, and he casts doubt on the likelihood of success of democratic education especially in large and complex countries, where few have the time and motive to understand and act on behalf of the common good. Instead, Bai proposes a Confucian form of government that is not subject to the problems of a democratic selection process. This ideal form of government – Bai calls it “Confu-China” – would protect the rule of law and human rights, be responsible for the moral and material well-being of the people, and include a democratic house of the people that allows for people’s voices to be heard and provides citizens with the psychological benefits of voting. The meritocratic aspect is a powerful legislature consisting of people selected on the basis of superior ability and virtue. The members would be chosen by a mixture of exams, votes by members of lower-level legislators, and a quota system to represent diverse sectors of society. The meritocratic house would have power to legislate on issues concerned with voters and long-term considerations, although their decisions could be vetoed by a supermajority vote from the popularly elected house. Bai puts forward the ideal of “Confu-China” as a universal ideal that does not presuppose the social dominance of a Confucian culture; in fact, one of the tasks of the meritocratic house would be to promote a form of moral education that makes common people respect political leaders who are morally and intellectually superior. The problem, of course, is that it is difficult to imagine people from anti-elitist cultures such as the United States ever agreeing to political institutions that promote such a form of moral education. And it is even less likely that common people will agree to proposals that limit their power to choose the country’s top leaders once they have the equal right to vote. So perhaps “ConfuChina” is really only applicable in a nondemocratic country such as China. And Bai might need to modify his ideal so that the “house of the people” does not select deputies by means of one person, one vote; otherwise, it would be difficult to persuade common people that

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their leaders are not the only (or main) legitimate representatives of the people, even if the people vote in an incompetent and immoral way. The slippery slope to full electoral democracy may be impossible to stop once some central government leaders are chosen by means of one person, one vote. Fan Ruiping, professor of philosophy at the City University of Hong Kong, argues not just for strongly meritocratic political institutions but also for a constitutional system that would actively promote a religious form of Confucianism. Fan argues that Confucian theorists should ask not just what kind of people should lead society and what kind of mechanisms should be used to select such persons; even more fundamental, the question is what those leaders should do. Fan argues that Confucian views about family-based ways of life should be written in the constitution and actively promoted by political leaders. Although Fan appeals to metaphysical ideas as justification for a Confucian-based family ethics, he argues that such views can be made appealing to nonConfucians (and nonreligious Confucians) because other ways of life would be tolerated and Confucian values would not be promoted in a strong-armed way. Once we are clear about what the government should do, then we can discuss who the leaders should be and how they should be chosen. Fan argues against liberal democracy on the grounds that it encourages (or does not discourage) a highly individualistic and shortsighted form of life; even sophisticated liberal theorists such as John Rawls defend a principle of equal opportunity that conflicts with the good of family life (because Confucians allow for intergenerational savings that benefit their own children). Instead, Fan defends Jiang Qing’s proposal of a tricameral legislature, with a democratic house, a meritocratic house, and a house of government that expresses a country’s history and culture, with each house expressing a different form of political legitimacy. The meritocratic house would have the most power, and it would be composed largely of Confucian trained scholar-officials who aim to promote a Confucian conception of human well-being. Fan is explicit that Confucian meritocracy may only apply in the Chinese context where meritocratic political values are widely shared and ways of life already express Confucian family values. Still, it is worth noting that Jiang Qing’s proposal has been intensely controversial even in China. And the proposal would face the same problem as Bai’s meritocratic chamber: if a democratic house of government is established in China, it is likely to gain more legitimacy in the eyes of the people (even if

Introduction

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that legitimacy is not warranted from a moral point of view), and hence it would be difficult to maintain a constitutional system that limits the power of the democratic house. The next two essays, by John Skorupski and Philip Pettit, consider the possibility of building political meritocracy on the basis of (Western) liberal democratic values and institutions. Democracy must come first – that is, the ultimate controlling power must lie in the hands of political leaders chosen on the basis of one person, one vote – but how can political leaders with superior ability and morality emerge on that basis? John Skorupski, chair of moral philosophy at the University of St. Andrews, distinguishes among democracy, meritocracy, and meritarchy. Democracy is a political order whose constitution vests ultimate sovereignty in its members on the basis of one person, one vote. Meritocracy is a political order whose constitution vests ultimate sovereignty in a ruling group solely on the grounds that that group has relevant competence and virtue. Meritarchy is the principle of appointing officials on the basis of merit, and it is compatible with democracy if the appointments are made directly or indirectly by democratically elected politicians. Skorupski points out that nineteenth-century “liberal elitists” argued for restrictions on democracy to increase the likelihood that liberal-minded politicians are selected by the political process; for example, John Stuart Mill favored giving extra votes to educated voters. But such proposals are nonstarters in contemporary liberal democracies in which one person, one vote has assumed quasi-sacred status. Beyond de facto support for democracy, Skorupski argues that liberals can make a good case for democracy (and against meritocracy) today: meritocracy stunts the moral growth of its citizens; elites, however meritorious, are likely to combine into vested interests; and meritocratic government overrides the principle that everyone should have a fair say in matters that affect them. Still, Skorupski articulates some liberal worries about democracy: the system may not be stable in the event of a prolonged economic and political crisis (he reminds us that several European democracies collapsed in the first half of the twentieth century); it has the potential for majoritarian despotism that undermines basic liberties; and it can produce a moral and spiritual leveling down. Skorupski expresses particular worry about the third problem. He is sympathetic to nineteenth-century classical liberals who argued that government should promote an ideal of autonomous moral and aesthetic self-development: today, this ideal is seriously threatened by the tendency of capitalist democracies towards

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commercialism and populist pressures towards conformity. At the end of the day, however, Skorupski says classical liberals should argue their case in public rather than calling for curbs on democracy. But what if classical liberals lose their case, and what if nondemocratic liberal societies (such as Hong Kong) do a better job at promoting an ideal of moral and aesthetic self-development? Perhaps classical liberals need to be more open to the possibility of nondemocratic liberal institutions. Friedrich Hayek, for one, argued for a political institution composed of meritocratic elites.13 Philip Pettit, L. S. Rockefeller University Professor of Politics and Human Values at Princeton University and Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at Australian National University, argues that electoral democracies can and should appoint (some) public officials on the basis of merit. Such officials include contestatory authorities who have the duty of raising or relaying complaints against government (e.g., an auditor general or an ombudsman), adjudicative authorities who are responsible for hearing and adjudicating such complaints (e.g., judges), and executive authorities who are charged with duties of kind for which elected authorities are deemed unsuitable (e.g., election commissioners, central bankers). Such meritocratic authorities are common in electoral democracies, and they do not undermine the democratic idea that ultimate sovereignty lies with the people because the appointments are made, even if in a highly indirect way, by democratically elected politicians. But given that they do not serve at the pleasure of the government that appoints them, can they count as representatives of the people? Pettit answers affirmatively, insofar as their brief, the constraints to which they are subject, and their exposure to contestation ensure that how they act in their area of responsibility is indicative of how they ought to act. Such meritocratically selected authorities are designed to be representative, not in the responsive sense in which elected deputies may be representative but in the indicative sense in which a statistical sample can be representative of a wider population. It is worth asking whether Confucian political theorists could accept a form of liberal democracy that grants ultimate sovereign power to democratically elected deputies, although with a strong component of indicative representation by meritocratically selected officials (or what Skorupski terms “meritarchy”). There is no theoretical problem, perhaps, if (at least some of) the meritocratically selected officials are entrusted with the task of promoting Confucian values

Introduction

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(e.g., promoting Confucianism in schools). But “democratic pessimists” such as Bai and Fan are almost certain to reject this possibility on the grounds that voters and democratically elected politicians are not likely to choose meritocratic officials with the task of promoting Confucian social and political values. Chan is more optimistic about the possibility of educating voters so that they vote in a rational and public-spirited way, but he still favors a meritocratic political institution that would have more power compared to meritocratic officials in democracies. That is, meritocratic officials in a democratic context are still bound by constraints and mandates and can only make decisions within a circumscribed area of responsibility; they are not supposed to use their own values to make political judgments outside of that area. Even the U.S. Supreme Court, perhaps the most powerful meritocratic institution in the United States, is theoretically bound by its mandate to interpret the U.S. Constitution. In contrast, even Chan’s proposal for a semipermanent meritocratic institution seems to give leeway to its deputies to deliberate and rule on a wide range of controversial political matters; they are not supposed to be “impartial” (in the sense that judges are supposed to be impartial), constrained by a clear mandate, or representative in an indicative way. Perhaps it is not surprising that there are no such meritocratic institutions in contemporary liberal democracies today, even in an advisory capacity: it seems too much of a deviation from the principle that only democratically elected politicians should have the power to debate and decide on a wide range of issues affecting the political community. THE HISTORY OF POLITICAL MERITOCRACY

Political meritocracy is a key theme in the history of Chinese political culture. Even an ideal political society famously described in the Confucian classic The Book of Rites specifies the need for rule by people of virtue and ability (in contrast, the state would have withered away in Marx’s ideal of higher communism, which is supposed to be the end goal of the Chinese Communist Party). But 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? To answer these questions, it is helpful to look at and draw lessons from Chinese political history. Yuri Pines, Michael W. Lipson Professor of Asian Studies at Hebrew University of Jerusalem, discusses the evolution of the concept of

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“elevating the worthy” in preimperial China. Pines argues that the idea emerged in the wake of the disintegration of the pedigree-based aristocratic order of the Spring and Autumn period (770–453 bce) and proliferated rapidly throughout the Warring States period (453– 221 bce), being shared by every major intellectual current.14 Yet there was wide disagreement about what counts as “worth” or “merit.” For Confucius and his followers, “worthiness” is primarily related to one’s morality. For pragmatic statesmen known as “Legalists,” morality cannot be objectively measured and they warned that unless precisely defined, “worthiness” can be manipulated to promote hypocrites and one’s partisans rather than truly capable public servants: Shang Yang was most explicit that meritocratic promotion needed to take clear and uncontestable forms, such as promoting soldiers based on the number of decapitated heads of enemy soldiers. The Warring States era came to an end with the victory of the Qin. Preimperial Qin succeeded at least partly because it combined multiple tracks of social and political advancement: a measurable merit-based promotion system that attracted significant proportion of the males and promotion of “worthy” educated individuals, including foreigners, who could climb to the top of Qin’s official ladder because of their intellectual abilities. But the balanced approach ended soon after unification. The interstate market for talent was replaced with a solid imperial monopoly, and China’s first dynasty soon collapsed. Pines draws a normative lesson for modern meritocracies: the political system will be more fair, dynamic, and adaptable if it has many routes of individual advancement, whereas a political system organized around one route of advancement is prone to ossification and, eventually, collapse. He notes that the Chinese Communist Party maintains its dynamism by being able to recruit soldiers, students, migrant workers, and millionaires, adding that “the Party should constantly seek expansion to other, currently marginalized social groups, attracting their ambitious representatives and co-opting them into the ruling apparatus.” But what if some groups don’t want to be co-opted in the ruling party? Can the Chinese Communist Party maintain its dynamism in the absence of multiparty politics? Imperial China’s great contribution to political meritocracy is the imperial examination system.15 Scholars often contend that examinations were an important part of what made China a political meritocracy. They point to the examination system to show that the selection process served more as a training ground for literati than as a gatekeeper

Introduction

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to keep out nonelites. Although the emperor played the final card in the selection process, the system nonetheless empowered elites to seek upward mobility as scholar-officials. Benjamin Elman, Gordon Wu ’58 Professor of Chinese Studies and Chair of the East Asian Studies Department at Princeton University, casts doubt on the received wisdom. In late imperial China (1400– 1900), true social mobility, peasants becoming officials, was never the goal of state policy. Success at examinations had literary requirements, which effectively excluded most peasants, artisans, and clerks (women were formally excluded). The literary requirements meant that only the children of wealthy families could compete for examination success, and social circulation was mainly an unexpected consequence of upward (and downward) movement between lower elites (gentry, merchants, and military men) and (upper) political elites with degrees. To the (limited) extent there was upward political mobility from lower social classes, it was normally first via commercial wealth, then success at examinations, and the whole process normally took more than one generation. Moreover, the merit-based bureaucracy never broke free of its dependence on an authoritarian imperial system, and the emperors could and did exercise arbitrary political power over the whole system. Elman draws the normative implication that a modern electoral democracy might be more compatible with meritocracy. As we saw, modern democracies do indeed allow for the selection of meritocratic officials, so long as they are appointed, even in an indirect way, by democratically elected officials. But such officials also need to be constrained by a tight mandate; they are bureaucrats who are not supposed to exercise a wide range of political powers. In imperial China, by contrast, successful examination candidates were put on the road (and sometimes automatically awarded) to what we would today call political posts, the functional equivalents of, say, provincial governors.16 Might this form of meritocracy be more compatible with a nondemocratic system not overseen by an emperor, similar to the Chinese political system today? The American experience with political meritocracy provides a fascinating point of contrast. Stephen Macedo, L. S. Rockefeller Professor of Politics at Princeton University, argues that the relationship between elites and nonelites was central to the founding debates over the ratification of the U.S. Constitution, and those debates have exerted an enduring influence. Federalist defenders of the constitutional plan argued that the point of well-designed constitutional institutions is to empower

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the relatively meritorious and require them to serve the interests of the public as a whole. In line with their principles, there has been a vast proliferation of delegation of authority to administrative agencies such as the Food and Drug Administration, the authority of which in some ways is similar to that of the Supreme Court: it operates on the basis of elaborate forms of process, public reasons, and evidence and indirect forms of accountability to the public. On the other side, Antifederalist opponents of the Constitution worried that many features of the constitutional plan would empower remote and insufficiently representative elites. Today, the public exercises more direct political control of the Senate and the president, as Antifederalists would have wanted, and the franchise has been widened substantially. Put differently – borrowing from Skorupski’s terminology – the U.S constitutional system has evolved from a combination of democracy and meritocracy to a foundation of democracy with some meritarchic elements. In its founding constitutional moment, political leaders were meant to be selected by a mixture of democratic and meritocratic mechanisms.17 As the constitutional system evolved, however, the democratic principle that top political decision makers had to be chosen by means of one person, one vote was gradually seen to be more fundamental than meritocracy. Administrative agencies can and should be staffed with experts selected because of their abilities, but the experts must be accountable, if only in an indirect way, to democratically elected leaders. And those experts are not meant to exercise power beyond the limited mandate endorsed and given to them by democratically elected leaders. Democracy trumps meritocracy. It is worth asking what the Founding Fathers would have made of this development. What seems likely is that the Federalists would have been disturbed by the populism and antielitist discourse in contemporary American political life, and they might have attributed some of the blame to the leveling effects of democracy: in the popular mind, one person, one vote somehow came to mean that any political judgment is as good as any other.18 Macedo notes that commerce was seen as undermining the capacity for independent political judgment by both sides of the debate, and it seems almost certain that the Founding Fathers would have been horrified by the extent to which the American political process has become corrupted by commercial and financial interests. Perhaps they would recognize that it is almost impossible to reinstitute meritocratic institutions similar to those defended by Chan, Bai, and Fan once people come to believe that power must ultimately be vested

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in politicians chosen by means of one person, one vote, but they may not look so negatively on attempts to institutionalize meritocracy in political systems that have yet to go that route. POLITICAL MERITOCRACY TODAY

Pure meritocracy in the sense defined by Skorupski – a political order in which the constitution vests ultimate sovereignty in a ruling group solely on the grounds that that group has relevant competence and virtue – is hard to imagine today. The democratic idea that power must flow from the people is deeply embedded in contemporary political discourse and practice. But do some cultures and societies endorse a mixture of meritocracy and democracy? And how do such societies practice democratic meritocracy (or meritocratic democracy) today? Given the centrality of political meritocracy in Confucian thought and practice, it makes sense to look to East Asian societies with a Confucian heritage for political meritocracy today. What do East Asian people really think? Do they really endorse “Asian values” in the form of political meritocracy? Such questions can only be answered on the basis of empirical research. Doh Chull Shin, Jack W. Peltason Scholar in Residence at the Center for the Study of Democracy, University of California at Irvine, discusses the findings of Asian Barometer surveys conducted in 2010 in six historically Confucian societies in East Asia and five non-Confucian societies in Southeast Asia. The surveys were specifically designed to examine how the people of “Confucian Asia” compare the desirability of democracy with that of ethical meritocracy, a nonoppressive alternative to democracy. From a policy perspective, such studies are important: if there is substantial support for rule by able and moral leaders in society at large, rulers chosen by meritocratic means will be seen as morally legitimate even if they are not chosen by means of democratic elections, and it will be easier to implement and maintain political meritocracy. The results do show support for political meritocracy in “Confucian countries”: majorities in three of the six countries agreed with the idea that citizens should be passive or inactive and that policy making should be delegated to virtuous leaders. However, there was also support for democratic elections. Shin concludes that the findings show support for both democracy and meritocracy, and he draws the implication that “for those favorably oriented to meritocracy and democracy, there is an opportunity to overcome the limitations of liberal

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democracy by blending characteristics of both regimes.” But there are also some seemingly puzzling findings: with the exception of more support for moral leadership over technical leadership in Confucian East Asia, the findings show that the people in non-Confucian Asia are more attached to Confucian meritocracy than those in Confucian Asia. Shin suggests that meritocratic politics is valued in different types of traditional societies and that attachment to such meritocracy may decrease along with level of economic development and degree of democratization (of course, the defender of meritocracy might conclude that the appropriate response is not to democratize). Another finding that may encourage democrats is that all Confucian societies show a strong preference for democracy over meritocracy, given the choice: even in China, 79% chose democracy, and only 17.7% chose meritocracy. But such findings may be rooted in different meanings of the term “democracy”: recent political surveys show that the large majority of Chinese define democracy as government for the people (by benevolent rulers) rather than government by the people.19 In other words, when Chinese people say democracy, they really mean meritocracy. To be fair, the 2010 Asian Barometer Survey did try to test for democracy in the “Western” sense of electoral democracy: people were asked to choose between the democratic system of choosing leaders “by the people through competitive elections” and the meritocratic system of choosing them “on the basis of their virtue and capability even without election.” But the meaning of the term “election” can also vary from context to context: most Chinese have participated in local-level elections, and perhaps the respondents thought that meritocracy meant doing away with all forms of elections. Had respondents been asked to choose between a pure democratic system with all political leaders chosen through competitive elections and a hybrid system with central-level leaders chosen on the basis of their virtue and capability and lower-level leaders chosen through competitive elections, there might have been more support for the latter. Perhaps such questions can be tested in the future. The next three essays discuss the practice of political meritocracy in two East Asian societies, Singapore and China. Singapore is ground zero for the revival of political meritocracy in the modern world. Benjamin Wong, associate professor of policy and leadership studies at the National Institute of Education in Singapore, discusses the rigorous ways in which Singaporean leaders are identified and groomed for public office. The search for top talent begins in the school system

Introduction

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where promising students are identified and trained for future leadership roles in government. Major national examinations are conducted at key stages of students’ school life. The best students are then further tested for intellectual ability as well as integrity, commitment, leadership skills, and emotional intelligence. Those ranked highest are then awarded government scholarships to study at prestigious overseas universities (and they are contractually bound to return to Singapore). Upon graduation, a minority of scholars are then selected to join the elite Administrative Service. The process of selecting ministers is as systematic and even more rigorous, and once they are identified, they are expected to stay at least three to five terms in office because, as Lee Kuan Yew puts it, it takes about two terms in office for a minister to become good at his job. “Being good” means the ability to engage in long-term (mainly) economic planning. And the best ministers are trained for succession at the highest levels. Singapore does have elections, but the opposition is tightly constrained, and the reason should be obvious: Singapore-style meritocracy is based on the assumption that political leaders have a better sense of the community’s interest than people are large, and the need for training of leaders over several electoral cycles means that meritocracy is incompatible with multiparty rule and the possibility that it would lead to the alteration of political power. What makes Singapore-style meritocracy attractive, of course, is its stunning economic success: the People’s Action Party (PAP) has guided the country “From the Third World to First,” as Lee Kuan Yew put it.20 Hence, the PAP has won the large majority of the vote since the early 1960s, and even social critics contend that most citizens are relatively satisfied and support the system with good reasons. Singapore’s ministers have been rewarded for their performance with the world’s highest salaries for political officials. Without those salaries, PAP leaders argue, talented ministers would opt for jobs in the private sector, and given Singapore’s limited talent pool, the political (and economic) results would be disastrous. Yet the market-based salary system has proven to be highly controversial in Singapore, particularly at a time when the gap between rich and poor increased dramatically and the myth of equal opportunity began to be seen as, well, a myth by Singapore’s disadvantaged (not to mention the fact that the Lee family dominates so much of the political and economic life in Singapore). In response, the government reduced ministers’ salaries by 40 percent, and bonuses were linked not just with high economic performance but to the

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economic state of the poorest Singaporeans. The PAP also acknowledged that politicians should be motivated at least partly by the desire to serve the community, not just by selfish material interests. Even after the cuts, however, the salaries of Singapore’s ministers are the highest in the world. Wong discusses the key problem with Singapore-style political meritocracy: it is based on too narrow a conception of merit that breeds an elitist attitude and lack of empathy (if not contempt) for the “losers” in the competitive race to the top. Leaders are selected mainly according to high performance in disciplines such as economics and engineering, as opposed to moral education in the humanities – as Confucians would favor – that might encourage a more noble conception of public service as well as compassion and humility. The fact that few women have made it to the higher echelons of political power also points to the biased way of measuring political merit in Singapore. The lesson Pines draws from early Chinese history may be relevant here: meritocratic ruling parties need diverse routes of political advancement. But improved meritocracy won’t be sufficient: Wong suggests that some form of further democratization is also necessary to make the government more responsive and sensitive to the needs of ordinary citizens. Kenneth Paul Tan, associate professor at the National University of Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, develops this theme. Meritocracy has served as a powerful ideological resource to maintain the PAP establishment’s hegemony, particularly over the decades of national survival and rapid development. In recent years, however, Tan argues that the state’s ideological hegemony has begun to crack. New social formations bearing alternative perspectives have come to be more audible and persuasive to a larger segment of Singaporeans with new media. As the problems that attend to Singapore’s commitment to economic globalization pervade the quotidian aspects of citizens’ experience, popular belief in meritocracy has weakened, leaving a strong sense that in its place is now elitism of the kind that focuses on winning and maximizing rewards for the winners, while downplaying factors and reasons that limit opportunities for the disadvantaged. Meritocracy, Tan says, is becoming a dirty word in Singapore. As meritocracy has lost moral authority, counter-hegemonic leadership and alternative ideological formations have been energized in an expanded and politicized new media environment. Tan argues that the May 2011 parliamentary elections proved to be a “watershed” moment in Singapore’s political history: the PAP won “only” 60% of the popular

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vote, and it lost six parliamentary seats. In response, the PAP establishment has taken steps to catch up with the new media environment, and Singapore has now become more politically open. Like Wong, Tan argues that the PAP needs to expand its narrowly technical and academic notion of merit, in part to recognize the importance for political success in competitive elections of communicative talent and emotional intelligence. The question is whether it can do so before the energized and (relatively) unconstrained opposition forces really threaten PAP rule. What if the PAP fails to win a majority (or a plurality) of the vote in a future election? Will the PAP voluntarily give up (or even share) power? At that point, the contradiction between Singaporestyle meritocracy and democracy will really show itself. Perhaps it was a mistake to try to build single-party meritocracy on the foundation of a democratic electoral system inherited from British colonial rulers. China, although influenced by Singapore, has been building a different model over the past two decades or so: democracy at the bottom, with the majority of Chinese voting in village-level elections, and meritocracy at the top. Much has been written about the development of local-level democracy in China21 but hardly anything about the development of meritocracy: the chapter by Hong Xiao and Chenyang Li, associate professors of sociology and philosophy (respectively) at Nanyang Technological University, fills this gap.22 Emphasis on both moral character and talent in selecting government officials has been a central part of China’s meritocratic tradition, particularly of the Confucian heritage. Similar to Pines and Elman, Xiao and Li argue that the ideal has encountered perennial challenges in practice, but they show that, despite difficulties, China has been evolving the most comprehensive and sophisticated form political meritocracy in its history. Aspiring government officials normally go through a battery of tests and trials. First, they take the ultracompetitive national university examinations to be admitted to an elite university that trains future leaders. Then they compete fiercely to join the Chinese Communist Party; unlike the 1980s when top students shied away from party membership, today only high-performing students who have undergone thorough character checks are admitted. Those who want to serve in government then usually need to pass government examinations,23 with thousands of applicants competing for single spots. Once they are part of the political system, further evaluations are required to move up the chain of political command. They must perform well at lower levels of government and pass character tests. Then there are more position-specific exams

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that test for specialized skills. The selection mechanism for posts at the central level is still somewhat opaque and may rely more on patronage than performance, but those who make it to the highest level – the Standing Committee of the Politburo – must normally have served as governor or party secretary of a province the size and population of most countries. One key problem with political meritocracy is that it is easier to measure ability than virtue. Exams can test for knowledge and perhaps some virtues like persistence and the ability to examine a problem from different points of view, but they cannot filter out potentially corrupt rulers who care more about their own interest than the community’s interest. In response, promotion within the government today places more emphasis on moral character. Xiao and Li note that the government has become more corrupt over the years, but they suggest that it would have been even more corrupt without meritocratic reforms. Still, they argue for the need for more independent checks and balances of power. They also criticize the emphasis on “political reliability” as a measure of moral character. A truly meritocratic system would test for commitment to the good of the country (and to all those affected by the policies of the government, including foreigners and animals), not for commitment to the ruling party. A more clear distinction needs to be made between the good of the political community and the good of the Chinese Communist Party, and meritocracy should test for the former, not the latter. In other words, the government needs to loosen up on authoritarian controls to allow for more criticisms of the party and alternative paths for contributing to the common good. But can it do so without going the way of multiparty rule and democratic elections for top leaders, which means that the people might choose political leaders who have not been through the rigorous meritocratic selection and training process, hence undermining the meritocratic system? Perhaps political meritocracy requires some controls on the freedom of political association so that nonmeritocratic parties cannot readily win political power. It might also require some constraints on the freedom of political speech to protect the reputation and moral authority (hence legitimacy) of meritocratically selected political rulers. Defenders of political meritocracy who favor a more open society in China may need to make some hard choices. The last two chapters discuss the practice of political meritocracy in contemporary Western societies founded on democratic values and institutions. Philippe Schmitter, professor in the Department of Political and Social Studies at the European University Institute, argues

Introduction

23

that the conception of merit has changed in what he terms “RealExisting Democracies” (REDs). In a democratic system, political merit is attributed to those who succeed in competitive elections. In the past, successful politicians were also viewed as willing and able to serve the political community. As Schmitter puts it, liberal democratic theory presumed that politicians were amateurs who were motivated, at least partly, by public-spiritedness. Candidates would reluctantly agree to serve in public office for a prescribed period of time (like Plato’s guardians, who would rather be doing philosophy) and then return to their private lives and occupations. Hence, politicians were viewed not just as the people’s representatives but also able and virtuous political leaders. At some time during the twentieth century, however, more and more politicians began to live not for politics, but from politics. They not only entered the role with the expectation of making it their life’s work; they also surrounded themselves with other professionals, and the cost of getting elected grew exponentially. Unfortunately, “many of the professional skills that contemporary politicians need (telegenic image, programmatic ambiguity, ideological flexibility, personalistic promotion, information manipulation, package-dealing, fundraising, and adjusting to opinion surveys and focus groups, negative advertising, and media penetration – not to mention receiving kickbacks from contractors and distributing payoffs clandestinely to supporters) are hardly compatible with the qualities most citizens desire in their representatives. No doubt this clash between normatively expected and actually practiced merits has contributed to the sharp decline in the prestige of and trust in politicians in almost all REDs.” In other words, political leaders are viewed as more self-interested and less meritorious, and REDs are experiencing a legitimacy crisis. If this tendency is difficult to avoid in REDs, it suggests that Confucian democrats may also have to face some hard choices. In theory, it would be wonderful for elections to function, as Chan favors, as a mechanism for selecting people committed to public service and who cultivate trust and harmony with the people. But if the real democratic world suggests an opposite trend, perhaps Confucian thinkers need to favor a stronger form of meritocracy, similar to what Bai and Fan advocate? Nicolas Berggruen, president of Berggruen Holdings, and Nathan Gardels, editor-in-chief of New Perspectives Quarterly, put forward a case for a deliberative body of delegated authority selected on merit that is meant to deal with the dysfunctional aspects of democracy in California. Facing daunting deficits after years of political gridlock,

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California has come to epitomize the crisis of democratic governance spreading across the West from Athens to Washington, with mountains of public debt and more public spending on prisons than higher education. Ordinary voters repeatedly vote for lower taxes and higher public spending – an irrationality enshrined by Proposition 13 in 1979 that deprived the state of its most stable source of financing by severely limiting property taxes – and referenda that were meant to increase popular participation have become captured by well-funded special interests and lead to outcomes inimical to the common good. In response, Berggruen and Gardels helped put together (and fund) a bipartisan Think Long Committee. The committee has proposed a plan to decentralize power at the local level while, at the same time, creating a deliberative council at the state level that incorporates a longterm perspective in governance. The council, “composed of eminent citizens with expertise and experience in California affairs, would be tasked with both foresight and oversight responsibilities, deliberating on the ‘big picture’ issues of the state and making recommendations to ensure that the public’s long-term priorities are met.” It would be democratically accountable because its members would be appointed by elected officials, and all its proposals would need to be approved by voters in California’s unique direct democracy initiative process. The deliberative council is more meritocratic compared with the agencies and institutions discussed by Macedo and Pettit because it would have the power to deliberate on a whole range of issues, and the council members would be viewed as moral experts, not just technical experts. The whole point of the council is to choose wise men and women with superior ability to make morally informed political judgments that check the quick fixes often favored by common people and their elected representatives and to take into account the long-term consequences of proposed policies.24 Given the anti-elitist political culture in the US, it will be an uphill struggle to persuade the California public of the merits of a deliberative council of moral experts. If it succeeds, however, the deliberative council can set an innovative and inspiring model for building a meritocratic institution on a democratic foundation. And why not try? If it doesn’t work, the people can vote it out of existence. CONCLUDING WORDS

In closing, we should note that the chapters in this volume raise at least as many questions as they answer. Our hope is to provide perspectives as reference points and germinating ideas that are instrumental to

Introduction

25

renewed discussion about the theory, history, and practice of political meritocracy. After much excitement in past decades, the end of history did not arrive. And there is no good reason to believe it will arrive. With China becoming a major player of increasing importance in the international arena, cultural diversity, including political diversity, has become a manifest reality in today’s world. It is not just a matter of using liberal democratic norms as they emerged from Western political history to judge the rest of the world’s political development. Given the centrality of political meritocracy in Chinese political tradition and the ongoing influence of political meritocracy today, China’s rise will almost certainly mean that meritocracy will also serve as a reference point to judge political development. Despite its limitations, meritocracy has contributed much to human flourishing and will continue to do so in the future. Democracy itself is an evolving project and will be affected by the renewed interest in political meritocracy. The key political question of our time, perhaps, is how to combine democracy and meritocracy in ways that are politically feasible and morally desirable. To the extent there is a division in our book, it is between “weak meritocrats” who think meritocracy should be subordinated to democracy and “strong meritocrats” who think meritocratically selected leaders should have the power to debate and decide on a wide range of issues affecting the political community in ways that complement, and sometimes override, the decisions of democratically elected leaders. Strong meritocrats are more likely to have a hearing in China than in established liberal democracies, though more research is needed to answer the question of how to combine democracy and meritocracy in different contexts. We hope that the reader will draw on this book to further the debate and perhaps even help implement desirable forms of political change.25 notes

1. Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (New York: Free Press, 1992). 2. Quoted in the International Herald Tribune, November 9–10, 1991. 3. Quoted in Barbara Crossette, “U.N. Survey Finds Rich-Poor Gap Widening,” New York Times, July 15, 1996. 4. See, e.g., Joanne Bauer and Daniel A. Bell, eds., The East Asian Challenge for Human Rights (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999). 5. See Kim Dae Jung, “Is Culture Destiny? The Myth of Asia’s Anti-Democratic Values,” Foreign Affairs, Nov./Dec. 1994. 6. Quoted in Han Fook Kwang, Warren Fernandez, and Sumiko Tan, Lee Kuan Yew: The Man and His Ideas (Singapore: Times Editions, 1998), p. 315.

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7. Quoted in Edwin Lee, Singapore: The Unexpected Nation (Singapore: ISEAS, 2008), p. 547. 8. Since 1992, for example, more than 12,000 Chinese officials at the rank of county mayors or above have undergone executive training programs and postgraduate programs in managerial economics and public administration at Nanyang Technological University, and many are now influential decision makers in the Chinese government. 9. See, e.g., http://news.qq.com/a/20121022/000098.htm. 10. See, e.g., Charles Kupchan, “The Democratic Malaise,” Foreign Affairs, Jan./ Feb. 2012. 11. Jason Brennan, The Ethics of Voting (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011). 12. Bryan Caplan, The Myth of the Rational Voter (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007). ´ ´ 13. See Olivia Leboyer, Elite et lib´eralisme (Paris: CNRS Editions 2012), Deuxi`eme Partie, Ch. 3. 14. In ancient Athens, a transition from aristocracy took place at roughly the same time, but to democracy, not meritocracy. Intellectuals such as Plato still favored meritocracy, but arguably they had a different model to argue against, which made their task more difficult (compared with Chinese defenders of meritocracy), and the democrats pretty much won the intellectual battle in the subsequent history of Western political theorizing. 15. The imperial examination system shaped the development of public service examinations not just in East Asia, but in Western countries as well; see Ssu-yu Teng, “Chinese Influence on the Western Examination System: I. Introduction,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, vol. 7, no. 4 (Sept. 1943), pp. 267–312. 16. The usual translation of the imperial examination system – “civil service examinations” – refers to the contrast between civil and military service in Imperial China, but the modern reader may have in mind the distinction between civil servants and political leaders, with the former supposed to implement the decisions of the latter. In Imperial China, however, there was no distinction between civil servants and political leaders: the successful examination candidates were put on the road to be political leaders (although they were still supposed to serve, in an ultimate sense, at the behest of the emperor). Given that most of our readers will not be experts in Chinese imperial history, we translate keju as “imperial examination system.” 17. I leave aside the racist and sexist values that may have motivated the Founding Fathers at the time (on the grounds that no sensible person would want to defend them today). 18. See, e.g., Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1987). 19. See Shi Tianjian and Lu Jie, “Cultural Impacts on People’s Understanding of Democracy,” paper presented at the 2010 American Political Science Association Annual Meeting, Washington, DC, Sept. 1–5. 20. Lee Kuan Yew, From Third World to First: The Singapore Story 1965–2000 (New York: Harper, 2000). It is worth noting that the PAP’s share of the vote

Introduction

21. 22.

23.

24.

25.

27

actually increased in the election after the 1997 economic crisis because the PAP was not blamed for the crisis and it was still viewed as most capable of putting Singapore back on a sound economic footing (in contrast to political scientists who predicted that meritocratic governments that derive part of their legitimacy from good economic performance would take a hard hit in times of economic crisis). See, e.g., http://www.cartercenter.org/news/publications/peace/china_reports .html. See also Eric X. Li, “The Life of the Party,” Foreign Affairs, Jan./Feb. 2013; and Zhang Weiwei, “China’s New Political Discourse” and Daniel A. Bell, “Meritocracy Is a Good Thing,” both in New Perspectives Quarterly, Fall 2012. Party membership is usually required for higher-level posts. As in imperial China, successful candidates often go on to exercise political power (even in theory, they are not supposed to be put on a track exclusively for civil servants), so I use the term “government examinations” rather than “civil service examinations” to translate gongwuyuan kaoshi. They are not meant to be “political” in the sense of “partisan” or “on behalf of a political party,” but they are political in the sense that they are supposed to deliberate in a morally informed way on a wide range of politically controversial issues. I am most grateful to my coeditor Chenyang Li, who has been jointly responsible for conceptualizing this project and for his valuable and extensive comments on several drafts of the introduction. Thanks also to the contributors for their comments on the introduction.

section i The Theory of Political Meritocracy

1 Political Meritocracy and Meritorious Rule A Confucian Perspective Joseph Chan

I. POLITICAL MERITOCRACY AND MERITORIOUS RULE

“Political meritocracy” is defined in this volume as “the idea that a political system should aim to select and promote leaders with superior ability and virtue.”1 Political meritocracy is thus different from democracy, which selects officials according to the votes of citizens; it is also different from monarchy, which selects rulers according to the principle of heredity. Political meritocracy is not equivalent to “meritorious rule” or “meritorious governance.” The former is primarily a selection principle and mechanism, and the latter is a quality of government or governance. “Meritorious rule” or “governance” refers to the fact that those in power are in fact of merit and do govern effectively. It is important to distinguish between political meritocracy and meritorious rule in the context of a debate on the pros and cons of meritocracy. Meritocracy, one might argue, does not guarantee the selection of the meritorious – selection mechanisms may be imperfect or faulty and fail to assess the appropriate merit or prevent abuse in the selection process. Meritocracy also does not guarantee meritorious governance, for the meritocratically selected may not govern effectively.2 In addition, under certain favorable conditions, nonmeritocratic systems such as monarchy and democracy might achieve meritorious governance to a considerable extent. The distinction between political meritocracy and meritorious rule is also important in the context of Confucian political thought. In the political history of traditional China, there were three main forms of power transfer at the highest level – abdication, heredity, and violence. Among the three, abdication to the virtuous and competent is perhaps the most consistent with, or even required by, the principle of 31

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meritocracy. But abdication is easier said than implemented. None of the major Confucian thinkers insist on abdication; rather, they implicitly or explicitly embrace hereditary monarchy as a legitimate and acceptable system, all things considered. This does not mean, however, that they abandon meritorious rule as an ideal. Some Confucians put forward ideas to enhance the monarchy’s meritorious rule, such as strengthening the governing role of meritocratically selected prime ministers and other senior officials. These points are discussed in Section II of this chapter. The distinction between meritocracy and meritorious rule also matters a great deal for modern Confucian thinking about democracy. In Section III, I show that in modern times, some Confucians try to reconcile meritorious rule with democracy, just as they did with monarchy. Although democracy is not meritocratic, many Confucians do not see it as antithetical to the Confucian ideal. Under favorable conditions, democracy, like monarchy, could attain some degree of meritorious governance as well as regime stability. Contemporary Confucians also try to inject meritocratic elements into democracy, just as previous Confucian thinkers did with the imperial system. In Section IV, I propose one way to incorporate certain meritocratic elements in a democratic political system to promote meritorious governance. II. ABDICATION AND HEREDITY

Meritorious rule is one of the most central ideas in Confucian political thought. The idea, simply put, is that those who occupy positions of power should possess the appropriate virtue and ability (for simplicity’s sake “virtue” hereafter includes “ability”). There should be a certain fit between position and virtue. Mencius (approximately 379–289 b.c.e.) says, “only the benevolent man is fit to be in high position.”3 Xunzi (approximately 340–245 b.c.e.) is even more explicit: “As a general principle, every rank and official responsibility, and each reward or punishment, was given as a recompense that accorded with the nature of the conduct involved.”4 The coming of honor or disgrace must be a reflection of one’s inner virtue (de),5 and offices must be matched by appropriate ability and worth.6 How to bring about meritorious rule in terms of correspondence between office and virtue? Confucian thinkers have considered two methods, which I call ex-ante and ex-post. The ex-ante method selects and places those of appropriate virtue in office, whereas the ex-post

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method helps those who have taken office to cultivate and practice virtue; the former is meritocratic selection, and the latter moral edification and education. I do not mean to suggest that meritocracy is a one-off process that stops at the selection stage. Training and further promotion of officials based on merit, which is an ex-post method to enhance meritorious rule, can be regarded as a meritocratic practice. So in this sense, the training of monarchs into virtuous people can be regarded as meritocratic, although the system of monarchy is still not full meritocracy because rulers are not selected on the basis of merit. If one applies the ex-ante method – meritocratic selection – to the highest level of authority (i.e., the throne), then “abdication to the virtuous” would seem the right method of succession. Early Confucian thinkers, however, are ambivalent about abdication. On one hand, abdication does appear to be part of the Confucian conception of ideal politics. The Liyun chapter of the Confucian classic The Book of Rites describes the conception as follows: “When the grand course was pursued, a public and common spirit ruled all under the sky, they chose men of talents, virtue, and ability; their words were trustworthy, and what they cultivated was harmony.”7 Major commentators of Confucian classics such as Tang dynasty’s Kong Yingda and Qing’s Sun Xidan remark that this passage endorses abdication to the virtuous and rejects dynastic hereditary succession.8 On the other hand, none of the early major Confucian thinkers unequivocally prefer abdication to hereditary rule. Mencius approvingly quotes Confucius’s (551–479 b.c.e.) view that “In Tang and Yu [the pre-dynastic period in early China], succession was through abdication, while in Hsia [Xia], Yin and Chou [Zhou] [the first three hereditary dynasties in early China] it was hereditary. The basic principle was the same.”9 The “basic principle” is Heaven’s will – it is Heaven’s choice whether abdication or heredity is the preferred method of succession. Mencius says, “If Heaven wished to give the Empire to a good and wise man, then it should be given to a good and wise man. But if Heaven wished to give it to the son, then it should be given to the son.”10 In the same passage, Mencius implicitly acknowledges that heredity is the general principle of succession favored by Heaven since the era of the three early dynasties. Xunzi even more clearly rejects the principle of abdication by arguing, in a complicated way, that it is historically unfounded and theoretically confused.11 As some scholars have suggested, early Confucian thinkers’ uneasiness with abdication might be a result of the “undeniable power of

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centuries-old tradition” of hereditary dynasty12 or a “compromise” with the reality of hereditary rule.13 It might well be the case that Mencius had grave reservations about abdication because he himself witnessed how King Kuai’s abdication embroiled his state of Yan in turmoil.14 Whatever the real reason, it is not difficult to see, from a practical point of view, that abdication is not a reliable method of succession. The logic of abdication impels a search for the most virtuous and capable. But abdication could only work against certain background conditions: that the ruler in power is virtuous enough to voluntarily give up his throne to another person, that there is consensus as to who the most virtuous person is, and that other contenders are willing to yield to that person. If these conditions are not met, abdication could easily create contention, competition, and instability. In fact, abdication has often been invoked in traditional China as an excuse to topple rulers and seize power.15 Probably for the sake of regime stability, Confucian thinkers favor heredity over abdication. Heredity promises greater stability as its norm of succession allows little room for interpretation. The norm that the first son of an emperor will succeed his throne means that neither the other royal family members nor self-proclaimed sages and their followers could readily challenge the legitimacy of the new throne. Yuri Pines has persuasively argued that “[w]hile throughout China’s imperial history ideas of ‘righteous rebellion’ and ‘virtuous abdication’ have routinely been invoked in times of crisis to justify dynastic changes, the dynastic principle itself was never questioned again. The argumentative weakness of its opponents, the impracticality of non-hereditary means of power transfer, the undeniable power of centuries-old tradition – all these combined to solidify lineal succession as the only normative principle for determining the throne’s occupant.”16 Early Confucian thinkers’ acceptance of hereditary monarchy, however, does not mean that they have given up the ideal of meritorious rule. Earlier, we distinguished between the ex-ante and ex-post methods of attaining correspondence between office and virtue. If the ex-ante method of meritocratic abdication is not reliable, how about the expost method – the moral edification of those already in power? Some thinkers do attempt this path in trying to reconcile meritorious rule with hereditary monarchy. Hence, Confucius and Mencius frequently travel between states urging rulers to engage in moral cultivation and practice benevolence. To bolster his persuasion, Mencius even go so far as to make the extraordinarily idealistic (and moralistic) claim that

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benevolence and righteousness are all a ruler needs to obtain the universal empire and achieve universal peace. In the end, however, both thinkers find that their efforts are of little avail and grow disillusioned of the prospect of convincing rulers to follow the Way and practice virtue. It should be noted that the moral edification of rulers was an important part of Chinese imperial history; however, the emphasis was on educating young emperors and princes. As Pines writes, “it is well known that almost every dynasty considered the education of an heir apparent, or even of each of the princes, to be a matter of high priority. The emperor-to-be was trained by the best literal minds of the empire; he was introduced to a plethora of historical documents from earlier dynasties and from the immediate past; he was given certain administrative or military assignments; and he was taught moral lessons, usually in the spirit of Confucius’s teaching.”17 A case in point is the Ming dynasty emperor Wanli (1563–1620), who rose to the throne at the age of nine. In early years, the young emperor was taught Confucian classics, calligraphy, and history under the strict discipline and guidance of a team of scholars. He was discouraged from indulging in hobbies that might distract him from his learning. In later years of his education, when Wanli began to develop a serious interest in calligraphy, which was considered a necessary skill of any educated person yet only peripheral to the serious business of governance, his mentor eliminated it from Wanli’s curriculum so that he could focus on the more important subjects – classics and history.18 Besides private study sessions, Wanli had to attend public lectures held three times a month in spring and autumn. These lectures were delivered by special officials of the imperial court and attended by all ministers and senior officials. During the lectures, the young emperor’s slightest diversion of attention or inappropriate bodily movement would be met with a stern eye or even criticism from lecturers.19 Needless to say, he also had to be familiarized with, and participate in, court rituals, which at once legitimated and strengthened his exalted status as the Son of Heaven and subjugated him to the authority of tradition and morality.20 The success of the education of princes and young emperors in China varies from case to case. It depends, to a considerable degree, on chance factors such as the person’s natural temperament, ability, and willpower. Intense education and strict discipline of the kind Wanli went through would probably be too demanding for most children. In Wanli’s case, despite – or because of – his strict education, he failed to sustain the

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suffocating court life and tiresome power struggles. The adult emperor became so completely alienated from the inner mechanism of his court that he cast aside his sovereign duties to indulge in play and travels for decades of his reign.21 Whatever the merit of princely education, it was generally considered insufficient for meritorious governance, and thinkers from Xunzi onward turn their attention to alternatives. Xunzi is aware that the design of a political system cannot be based on the unrealistic assumption that rulers will always be capable and virtuous. Instead, Xunzi argues that rulers must be aided by people of real merit. Central to this idea is the division of labor between the ruler and his meritocratic prime minister and other ministers – the ruler endorses general principles, whereas the prime minister formulates the necessary details and specifications.22 Xunzi thus injects a strong dose of meritocracy into the imperial political system. Xunzi writes, [T]he strength, defensive security, and glory of a country lie in the selection of its prime minister. Where a ruler is himself able and his prime minister is able, he will become a True King. Where the ruler is personally incapable, but knows it, becomes apprehensive, and seeks those who are able, then he will become powerful. When the ruler is personally incapable, but neither realizes it, nor becomes apprehensive, nor seeks those who are able, but merely makes use of those who fawn over him and flatter him, those who form his entourage of assistants, or those who are related to him, then he will be endangered and encroached upon, and, in the extreme case, annihilated.23

On Xunzi’s view, the prime minister and his team play a pivotal role in governance. Even if a ruler is mediocre, his state can still prosper if he is willing to work with the prime minister. But a ruler who is incapable and refuses to “honor the worthy and employ the able”24 will bring his state to ruin. Here Xunzi anticipated the development of a meritocratic and ritualized bureaucracy in the imperial system. I shall not delve into the nature this bureaucracy and how officials were selected, because other chapters in this volume touch on this. Suffice to say here that the relationship between monarchy and meritocratic bureaucracy fluctuated in the long imperial history of China. In good times, the two sides worked in good partnership; in bad times, one side dominated the other, or the two sides vied bitterly for power.25 Nevertheless, it seems right to think that, on the whole, meritocratic ministers and officials have

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helped maintain the stability of the hereditary monarchy, contributed to meritorious governance, and served as “checks and balances” against emperors.26 It may be useful to summarize the main ideas in this section. The Confucian ideal of meritorious rule, understood as the marriage of office and virtue, can be pursued in two ways: (1) select and place virtuous people in power – the ex-ante method, and (2) groom rulers (and rulers-in-waiting) into virtuous people – the ex-post method. The first method is meritocratic, whereas the second is not a meritocracy in the full sense because the rulers are not selected on the basis of ability and morality. Theoretically, the meritocratic selection method seems a more direct and rational way of realizing meritorious rule, hence abdication to the virtuous is presented as part of the Confucian conception of ideal politics as stated in The Book of Rites. But in reality, abdication is not considered practical or feasible – Confucian thinkers thus accept heredity as the legitimate method of succession and hope the ex-post method of moral edification will improve the quality of rulers and their governance. But the ex-post method is later also considered unreliable or insufficient for meritorious governance. Confucian thinkers like Xunzi then argued for a third way of promoting meritorious rule, which is to forge a close partnership of governance between those with power (the rulers) and those with virtue (the meritocratically selected prime ministers and officials). The imperial system in China was sustained (in part) by the meritocratic literati who loyally served and checked the emperors. III. MERITORIOUS RULE AND DEMOCRATIC ELECTIONS: IDEAL AND NONIDEAL SITUATIONS

Like hereditary monarchy, democracy as a selection mechanism is not meritocratic, and, like monarchy, democracy need not be antithetical to meritorious rule.27 Under certain favorable conditions, democracy – democratic elections in particular – could be a vehicle for meritorious rule. To see this possibility, we need to raise questions about the popular academic view of democratic elections as a device to hold political leaders accountable through rewards (powers and privileges) and sanctions (removal from office). Behind this so-called sanctions model of elections is the notion that politicians are opportunistic agents motivated solely by self-interest. Periodic elections and other accountability mechanisms are therefore necessary to monitor elected officials

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and induce them to do what the voters want. This “sanctions model” of democracy, and politics in general, is thus based on distrust and control. I want to suggest that the meaning or point of elections can be understood in light of the Confucian conception of meritorious rule and the political ideal. As quoted earlier, the Confucian political ideal as expressed in the Liyun chapter of The Book of Rites is that “[w]hen the grand course was pursued, a public and common spirit ruled all under the sky, they chose men of talents, virtue, and ability; their words were trustworthy, and what they cultivated was harmony.”28 From this perspective, elections should be viewed not primarily as a mechanism of monitoring or control but rather as one for selecting people who have integrity, ability, and commitment to public service and who will cultivate trust and harmony with the people. In fact, the inauguration of democratically elected leaders is an example and often a high point of this relationship of trust – the people gather to celebrate and witness the swearing in of a president or prime minister whom they elected and support, and the president or prime minister in turn pledges to “devote” himself or herself “to the service and well-being of the people”29 and vows that he or she “will in no way betray the people’s trust.”30 Election is at once a means to select good rulers and to express the mutual commitment of the rulers and the people. In fact, some Confucian scholars in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries view Western democracies precisely this way. One example is Wang Tao (1828–1897), the Chinese assistant to James Legge (the first English translator of the Confucian classics), who characterizes the English government and people as such after a two-year trip to the British Isles and Europe in the late 1860s: The real strength of England, however, lies in the fact that there is a sympathetic understanding between the governing and governed, a close relationship between the ruler and the people. . . . My observation is that the daily domestic political life of England actually embodies the traditional ideals of our ancient Golden Age. In official appointments the method of recommendation and election is practiced, but the candidates must be well known, of good character and achievements before they can be promoted to a position over the people. . . . And moreover the principle of majority rule is adhered to in order to show impartiality. . . . The English people are likewise public-spirited and law-abiding: the laws and regulations are hung up high [for everyone to see], and no one dares violate them.31

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To Wang, the English elections are conducted in a spirit strikingly similar to the Confucian principle of selection and spirit of impartiality, so much so that he thinks the political life of England actually embodies the Confucian ideal as expressed in the Liyun chapter. My point here is not that Wang paints an accurate picture of English political life but that some Confucians view Western democracy as consistent with the Confucian ideal of meritorious rule. Contemporary historian Yu Yingshih provides further examples of Confucian scholars in the modern period who give high praise of Western democracies.32 America’s Founding Fathers also take the point of democracy to be, in part, the selection of the virtuous.33 In the Federalist Papers (#57) written in 1788, James Madison writes: “The aim of every political constitution is, or ought to be, first to obtain for rulers men who possess most wisdom to discern, and most virtue to pursue, the common good of the society; and in the next place, to take the most effectual precautions for keeping them virtuous whilst they continue to hold their public trust. The elective mode of obtaining rulers is the characteristic policy of republican government.” Some political scientists and economists today call the Madisonian understanding of democratic elections and representation the “selection model,” in contrast to the “sanctions model” championed by public choice theorists. The selection model has largely been rejected or ignored in much of the public choice scholarship of the past few decades.34 But there is now a burgeoning literature that argues for the selection model as both normatively more attractive and empirically more valid than the sanctions model.35 The selection model seems attractive in two ways. First, it breaks the vicious circle of “distrust, control, and more distrust” of politicians. Although no system or rule can control politicians completely, especially when they are self-interested agents, the selection model encourages people of integrity and public-interest motivation to enter politics. The presence of such people fosters a culture of civic virtue and helps to monitor those politicians who are knaves.36 Second, as argued by Jane Mansbridge, a strong advocate of the selection model, the electoral system conceived under the selection model can normatively reinforce “a commitment to the public good and a warranted relationship of trust and goodwill between representative and constituent.”37 She writes: Beyond efficiency, constituents can take some satisfaction from the quality of their relationship with an intrinsically motivated representative. A selection model privileges commitment to the common interest

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over the more self-interested motive of desiring reelection. . . . Without knowing each other personally, both partners in the relationship can wish the other well.38

In the ideal situation, therefore, democratic elections could be a good way to realize the Confucian conception of meritorious rule. However, this positive picture of democracy is only possible with certain demanding assumptions: not only that there are virtuous people willing to run for offices, but also that voters are themselves virtuous enough to want to put those people in office and have enough knowledge of the candidates to pick the right ones. In nonideal situations, however, not every politician or voter possesses virtue and ability. Some may have little. Many may have mixed – both public interest and selfinterest – motives. In these situations, although democratic elections provide incentives and sanctions for elected officials to improve people’s lives, they are also fraught with well-known problems that concern advocates and critics of democracy alike. I give only a brief sketch of some of these problems because they are discussed in detail in other chapters of this volume.39 In ideal situations, elections can be conducted in the most civil and respectful manner consistent with the spirit of selecting the virtuous. But elections necessarily produce winners and losers (unless there is no competition). In reality, elections may induce highly antagonistic competition between candidates, who adopt negative campaigning strategies to discredit opponents and offer policy promises detrimental to the long-term good of society in exchange for short-term electoral support. In addition, although democracy is generally effective in exposing corruption and administrative blunders, it does not best promote quality deliberations and the politics of common good. As Amy Gutmann and Dennis Thompson note, “[I]n the practice of our democratic politics, communicating by sound bites, competing by character assassination, and resolving political conflicts through self-seeking bargaining too often substitute for deliberation on the merits of controversial issues.”40 Political parties are often seen as opportunist, which prey on opponents’ weakness and go to such lengths as risking the country’s long-term good (including the good of future generations) for partisan gains. The performance of voters and the citizenry in established democracies is no more encouraging. Many citizens are apathetic and have lost interest in voting, and when they do vote, many are ill informed and some are irresponsible (in the sense that they pursue narrow self-interests at the expense of the common good).41

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This negative picture of political leaders and citizens would trouble Confucians, for it goes deeply against the Confucian values of meritorious rule, the common good, sincerity, trust, and harmony. If democracy does not generate good rulers but instead reinforces hostile antagonism and induces the trading of narrow interests at the expense of the common good, Confucians would be deeply concerned. Is there a remedy? The correct response, in my view, is not that we should throw away democracy, for although it is not a good enough form of government, it is not the worst. Unless citizens are very corrupt, irresponsible, and uncivil, democracy is still “a guarantee against bloody revolution and effective in preventing the government from systematically ignoring the interests or flouting the wishes of the governed. It avoids the worst abuses and makes the government responsive to large shifts of public opinion.”42 Confucians would argue, instead, that we should supplement democracy with a strong ethical foundation through civic or moral education43 and with alternative political institutions. Close in spirit to the Confucian project of injecting meritocracy into monarchy to enhance meritorious governance, I discuss and propose meritocratic institutions to supplement democratic ones.

IV. MIXING MERITOCRACY AND DEMOCRACY

Theorists have proposed many ways to improve democratic governance, such as deliberative forums, new forms of participatory governance, and reforms of electoral systems and campaign finance.44 But there is no reason not to put serious thinking into the recruitment of political leaders. For Confucians, the quality of governance stands or falls with the quality of political leaders. If democratic elections cannot furnish enough high-quality politicians, the reason of public interest compels us to find other means to supplement elections. One possible institution is a meritocratically selected second chamber (hereafter “second chamber”) in a bicameral legislature, which has been proposed by scholars of different traditions of political thought. This chamber has two kinds of value. The first is its contribution to governance through discussing and passing bills as well as government budget and spending; balancing the views of the democratically elected chamber (hereafter “first chamber”); and monitoring the government. The second value is educational. If the second chamber is filled with virtuous politicians, they could serve as role models for other politicians and the entire citizenry. The manner in which they debate public affairs, the viewpoints

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they bring into public discussion, and the judgments and decisions they make can all have educational effects. Confucian thinkers have long held the view that a key function of political leaders is to set themselves as moral examples for people to emulate, so that they too can become moral exemplars. In this light, the second chamber is not only a governing institution in its own right but also an important part of moral education for society at large.45 Needless to say, the second chamber has some well-known issues. The first regards its legitimacy and apparent violation of democratic principles. The second regards whether the meritorious can be reliably identified and selected. The third regards the powers and responsibilities of the two chambers and possible conflicts between them. A complete defense of the second chamber has to adequately address all these issues, which is beyond the space of this short essay. I do not pursue the first question about legitimacy, for it raises difficult philosophical issues that cannot be adequately dealt with here. I will, however, say something about the second and third issues to show the proposal’s preliminary plausibility and desirability. A. Reliability One of the most commonplace criticisms of the idea of the second chamber is that there is simply no reliable way to identify the virtuous. There are two reasons to support the criticism. The first is that there is no objective basis to differentiate people according to merit. The second is the weaker claim that there is no reliable institutional mechanism to identify and select those of merit. The first reason, I believe, is too strong to be tenable. The virtues and competence we expect of political leaders are neither mysterious nor highly contestable. We want leaders to be knowledgeable about their tasks, to have the ability to think and express clearly and to understand complex arguments, and to possess such virtues as public spiritedness, a sense of responsibility, integrity, trustworthiness, civility, benevolence, and so forth. These virtues are human virtues that can be known and experienced in many social contexts. It is possible to judge whether people do or do not possess these abilities and character traits. In fact, we feel that we are able to make this sort of judgment about the people with whom we closely work or interact – our colleagues, fellow members of a committee or group, or friends. We make judgments all the time when we evaluate colleagues for the appointment of positions or tasks. We know that some

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people are better qualified than others. Through an extended period of interaction, we have observed how they think, decide, and execute and how they treat other people. Such a process of evaluation is commonly done in other spheres of society such as education, medicine, and business, so why not politics? However, when we know little about the people we evaluate, as in the case of external applicants not personally known to a selection committee, we do not feel confident in passing this sort of evaluative judgment. Interviews and personal references may help, but only to a limited extent. This point actually shows that democratic elections in constituencies of considerable size are quite unreliable in selecting good leaders, for the electorate usually has little interaction with, and personal knowledge of, the candidates. It is true that voters can come to know the candidates through town hall or televised debates or pamphlets of self-introduction, but this is far less reliable than the regular interaction through which we know our colleagues. Voters often vote on their highly impressionistic observations of the candidates. To some extent, smart candidates can fool voters by pretending to be virtuous and caring. B. Selection by Competitive Examinations Is there a more reliable institutional mechanism to select good people for the second chamber? Critics may argue that that there is not, because no institutional mechanism can acquire or supply enough accurate information about candidates to appraise them or because no mechanism is immune to abuse by interested parties. Although this is an important practical challenge, it cannot be assessed in the abstract without having some institutional mechanism as a focus. I therefore discuss Daniel A. Bell’s influential proposal of the second chamber, then proceed with my own. Bell has made a strong case for valuing and incorporating virtue and talent in political decision making in contemporary societies.46 “Political decision makers in contemporary societies,” he writes, “should be intelligent, adaptable, long-term minded, and public-spirited – traits not all that different from the traditional virtues of Confucian exemplary persons.”47 He argues that “[m]odern societies . . . face the challenge of combining dual commitments to democracy and decision making by talented and public-spirited elites. More specifically in the East Asian context, societies must try to reconcile rule by ‘Confucian’ exemplary persons with democratic values

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and practices.”48 Bell then proposes a selection mechanism – the use of competitive examinations to select people with virtue and talent to be members of the second chamber, which he calls the “House of Virtue and Talent” (Xianshiyuan). The examinations, according to Bell, “should test for both memorization and independent thought.” Essay questions should be tailored to test for “economic and political knowledge of the contemporary world,” “knowledge of philosophy and literature that have inspired great leaders of the past,” as well as “problem-solving ability.” There should also be “essay questions on ethics to help filter out political demagogues and brilliant but morally insensitive technocrats.”49 When applying his model to China, he suggests elsewhere that “the examinations would test for the Confucian classics, basic economics, world history, and a foreign language.”50 There is considerable merit in Bell’s proposal. Examinations do have a number of virtues. They seem to be able to test for knowledge relevant to public affairs and thinking abilities. They filter out the effects of guanxi and political loyalty, which is an important concern in a context like China. More important, because members of the House need not respond to the pressures of voting, they are in a politically more secure position than those in the first chamber to tackle long-term policy issues that require short-term sacrifices on the part of voters. They are also in a better position to care about the interests of nonvoters, whether foreign workers, future generations, or animals. But as critics of Bell’s proposal have pointed out, the major weakness of examinations is that they can hardly test for virtues such as civility, public spiritedness, trustworthiness, and integrity for the simple reason that ethical knowledge is not equivalent to a well-developed disposition to act.51 Bell is not unaware of this problem, although he does not seem to think it a serious one. As he puts it, “examinations won’t test perfectly for these virtues.” His defense of the model, despite this inadequacy, is that “deputies chosen by such examinations are more likely to be virtuous than those chosen by democratic elections”52 and that “this procedure is more effective than other methods of political selection currently on offer.”53 I think it is doubtful if examinations are indeed a more reliable test for virtue than democratic elections. It seems easier for bright candidates to fake virtue in examinations by making what appear to be ethically correct judgments and arguments than to fake it in public democratic elections by simulating virtuous behavior.54

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C. Selection by Close Acquaintance This is not to say that it is easy to think of alternative mechanisms that will fare better than examinations and democratic elections. Early Confucians are not unaware of the practical difficulties in evaluating people’s virtue. Confucius, for example, says that in assessing a person, we must carefully observe his actions and motives, consult others who know him, and then make independent judgment. The Master said: “See what a man does; watch his motives; examine what he is at ease with. How, then, can he conceal himself? How, then can he conceal himself?”55 Zi-gong asked, “The people of the prefecture all love him – What do you think about such a man?” The Master said, “Not good enough.” “The people of the prefecture all loath him – what do you think about such a man?” The Master said, “Not good enough, either. It would be best if the prefecture’s good people loved him and its evil people loathed him.”56

During the Tang dynasty, Lu Zhi (754–805), a famous senior Confucian official whose political writings are held in high regard by later generations of Confucian thinkers, also wrestles with the difficult problem of identifying and selecting the virtuous.57 In the following passage, Lu examines various methods, including the kind of examinations introduced in Tang, and finds them wanting in terms of reliability. The most urgent matter for bringing about the Way is to get the right people. Yet identifying the right people is so difficult a task that even the sages found it problematic. Listening carefully to one’s speech does not guarantee that one really possesses virtuous conduct; but judging one only according to virtuous conduct may on the other hand lead to neglecting his talent. If examinations are used for selection, people will engage in crafty hypocrisy and as a result the righteous man of principle will seldom get promoted. If fine reputation is followed as the standard, the problem of popularity contest will only worsen, and the subtle-cautious talents will never rise to high positions.58

Similar to my earlier argument, Lu says that examinations tend to select people who “engage in crafty hypocrisy” rather than those who act on principle. Meanwhile, speech, action, or reputation alone does not provide sufficient evidence of virtue. Lu maintains, in the same spirit as Confucius, that the only way to find out about a person is to get to

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know him and observe him for an extended period of time and from all angles. Indeed, it is only when a person has befriended someone for a long time, knowing comprehensively his fundamental as well as superficial sides, having a good grip of his sternest will and intention, seeing thoroughly his capacity for practical matters, can one be certain that he really has kept the Way and preserved his talents for future use. And only under such condition will crafty pretenders find no room for their hypocrisy. This is why Master Confucius says, “See what a man does; watch his motives; examine what he is at ease with. How, then, can he conceal himself?” Adequate observation cannot be hastened within a day and a night.59

Having stated the principle one should follow to identify the right people, Lu goes on to propose what he regards as a workable selection method that was put into practice in early dynasties. This is why in previous dynasties, “recommendation by local elders and officials” was established as the method of selection and promotion. This method was adopted for many benefits: it verifies clearly the actual political/administrative performance of the officials, extends the range of talent selection, encourages the cultivation of virtuous conduct and competence, and, lastly, puts the ambition due to pride to rest.60

Confucius and Lu’s basis for identifying virtue and talent is close acquaintance and careful observation. Who is in the best position to perform that task? For Lu, the answer is the local elders and officials – they have observed their fellows living in the same districts and have the credentials and knowledge to select and recommend people to higher authorities. A contemporary variant of Lu’s suggested model is not inconceivable. In what follows, I propose a selection mechanism for the second chamber, which I call “selection by colleagues” (understood in the widest sense of the term) and then briefly describe the functions and terms of the chamber. D. Selection by Colleagues: A Proposal I must begin with a few important cautionary remarks. The proposal I am putting forward serves as nothing more than an invitation for further discussion. Constitutional design is very much a contextual matter that cannot be fruitfully discussed at a general level such as our present

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discussion. A constitutional proposal, however attractive it seems in the abstract, may not work in a particular social context if, say, it does not win the favor of the people. Also, any proposed institution must work as part of a coherent constitutional package, yet any discussion on the desirability and feasibility of such a package is bound to be highly controversial and difficult, for it involves too many interrelated factors with extremely unpredictable overall effects. This is why we most often do not know if a proposal works until it has been implemented for at least a number of years. Whether it is actually implemented, on the other hand, is a matter of historical contingency. For all these reasons, then, any proposal of new political institutions, including mine, must be considered with a healthy dose of skepticism. My only defense, a limited one without doubt, is that my proposal is not entirely new, and I certainly do not claim originality. Much of the rationale and spirit of the proposal is based on our everyday experience of personnel selection in various institutional settings, as well as theoretical reflections by thinkers from both East and West.61 Rationale, Approach, and Selection Method. For any selection of the virtuous to work, it must meet two requirements: such people must be available for selection, and the selectors must be able to identify them and be willing to make a disinterested choice. From where do candidates for the second chamber come? To see the distinctiveness of the approach of colleague-based selection, let us contrast it with the method of examination. The method of examination targets political beginners; because their qualities are relatively unknown, selection has to rely completely on examination questions to test for virtue and talent. This method not only is unreliable, it unnecessarily excludes available information about the distribution of virtue in a society. My approach, however, does not target people at the ex-ante of public service but those near the ex-post. Similar to J. S. Mill’s proposal to reform the House of Lords in light of the experience of the Roman Senate,62 I think the best pool of virtue and talent is to be found among seasoned participants of public service – the legislature, courts, civil service, government advisory bodies, statutory bodies, and diplomatic service. In terms of candidate qualification, we may set different lengths of service and levels of seniority for different public service. The general principle is that those senior public servants who qualify are eligible to select each other into the second chamber. The selectors, however, need not be confined to this group. Those who have worked with some of these senior public servants for an extended period of time in

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one capacity or another can be included, for they presumably possess a more reliable knowledge of the public servants than any other in society. These may include senior secretariat staff serving in any of the aforementioned public institutions or experienced political affairs journalists who interact with the public servants on a regular basis. Direct subordinates of the public servants should be excluded because they have conflicts of interest in the selection of their own bosses. Any qualified senior public servant may stand as candidate if nominated by himself or herself, or by others. Once a list of candidates is established, eligible selectors from the three sources (senior public servants, senior secretariat staff, and experienced journalists) would be asked to evaluate the candidates’ virtue (most notably in terms of public spiritedness, sense of responsibility, fairness, integrity, and civility) and competence (in terms of the ability to understand complex arguments from diverse points of view, open-mindedness, knowledge of certain fields of public service, etc.) by giving each candidate an overall mark for each of the two dimensions. Marks would then be aggregated, and those whose overall marks are above a threshold would become members of the second chamber. Powers, Size, and Terms. To determine the powers of the second chamber vis-`a-vis the first, we must look at the role it plays in a democratic society. It could take on a strong role as a guardian of public interest, having overriding powers over the first chamber; or an equal role as partner of the first chamber, with both having the same powers; or a weak role as advisor and role model for the whole society, having only the power to delay and return bills to the first chamber for another round of discussion. In my view, which role it should play depends in large part on the democratic citizenry’s level of virtue63 : the lower the level, the stronger the role. Let us assume the weak-role scenario for the sake of illustration. The second chamber should still be able to exert a healthy influence on society despite its limited power, for the most unique and valuable function of its members is to serve as role models in public deliberations for politicians and citizens. The number of seats would not be fixed; it depends entirely on how many qualified senior public servants are selected – the quality of deliberation is more important than rigid adherence to a “magic” number of members or votes. Members can serve a maximum of two terms. To fulfill the advisory and role-modeling functions, deliberative meetings would be fully broadcast through free public television and radio channels. Members of the second chamber

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would wield their influence mainly through their justly obtained reputation and prestige as virtuous and competent citizens, the force of their arguments, and their powers to criticize the government and the first chamber as well as delay bills. Corruption or power abuse might not pose too much of a problem for the second chamber. Because members are near the ex-post of their public service life, they would be less driven by the thirst for power or fame than their greener counterparts, for presumably such desires have been largely quenched after a long and distinguished career. Also, their limited constitutional powers make their positions unattractive to ambitious, power-hungry politicians. Members’ main incentive of serving in the chamber would be a desire to use their virtue and competence to contribute to society in another capacity. Of course, corruption prevention measures that regulate the first chamber should equally apply to the second. E. The Fact of Disagreement I should conclude with a common criticism of the idea of the second chamber. It argues that although people do want to select good leaders, they often differ in their evaluation of candidates. Because of this, we should not give power to individuals or groups the assessment of which others may disagree with. Instead, we should let every citizen vote, because democratic voting is a fairer, hence more preferable, way of settling disagreements. I do not find this criticism unanswerable. From the fact of disagreement on the quality of candidates, it is wrong to infer we should put aside our concern for candidates’ quality and simply adopt whatever content-independent voting principle as seems fair to everyone involved. After all, if all we want is procedural fairness, we might as well toss a coin to settle disagreements.64 Flipping a coin may indeed be an appropriate decision-making principle if we are not too concerned about the qualitative differences of the options (persons, laws, or policies). But in situations in which we are indeed concerned, such as selecting people for public office, we do want our decisionmaking procedure to help us better evaluate the quality of candidates. So whatever the decision-making procedure, its legitimacy should be based in good part on the quality of discussion on candidates it generates before the actual decision making. The aim of discussion is always to help decision makers arrive at better judgments on the quality of the candidates. Now, if my argument thus far is correct, democratic

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election that takes place within large constituencies is an unreliable way to select good leaders. This point brings us back to our original rationale of searching for other selection mechanisms to form a second chamber. I should stress again that this proposal is rough and tentative and aims only at inviting further debate. It is bound to be controversial, and we should look at every possible problem that may arise from the proposal. There is, however, no perfect institution; an institution solves one problem just as it creates another. In the end, we have to make comparative judgments on different imperfect institutions before making a choice. This chapter has shown the delicate relationships between political meritocracy and meritorious rule in Confucian political thought. “Meritorious rule” refers to a quality of government – the correspondence between office and virtue and effective governance; “political meritocracy” refers to a mechanism that selects and places the virtuous in office. What is meritocratic may not be meritorious, and vice versa. For Confucian thinkers, meritorious rule is an ideal that can be pursued through different institutional methods and realized in different degrees. Although abdication to the virtuous – a meritocratic selection mechanism of rulers – seems a natural requirement of meritorious rule, for a variety of concerns, Confucian thinkers favor monarchy over abdication. At the same time, they strive to enhance the monarchical system’s meritoriousness by various methods, including edification of rulers and the forging of a close governance partnership between rulers and meritocratically selected prime ministers and senior officials. Today, Confucian-inspired scholars who favor democracy are also concerned with how to improve meritorious rule within a democratic political system. This chapter has made one small proposal for this large task. Like mixing monarchy with meritocracy, I have suggested that we could mix democracy with meritocracy by forging a close partnership between a democratic legislative chamber and a meritocratic one.65 notes

1. See the Introduction of this book. For meritocracy in its pure form, all those who wield official powers at the highest level (the chief executive, legislators, and judges) are selected on this basis. In its impure form, some power-holders (such as legislators) may be selected on the basis of merit, whereas others (such as the chief executive) may be selected by the votes of citizens or by inheritance.

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2. There could be many reasons: those selected by meritocratic principles may lack the necessary practical experience, they may become corrupted over time if their powers are unchecked, or the political system within which they operate is poorly designed. 3. Mencius: A Bilingual Edition. Translated by D.C. Lau (Hong Kong: Chinese University of Hong Kong Press, 2003), Book 4A:1. 4. Xunzi: A Translation and Study of the Complete Works. 3 vols. Translated by John Knoblock (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988–94), Book 18.3. 5. Xunzi, Book 1.5. 6. Xunzi, Book 8.3. 7. Translation adapted from James Legge’s The Chinese Classics: With a Translation, Critical and Exegetical Notes, Prolegomena and Copious Indexes in Five Volumes (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1960). 8. Liji zhengyi, annotated by Zheng Xuan and Kong Yingda (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe), vol. 2 (2008), p. 878; Liji jijie, compiled by Sun Xidan (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju), vol. 2 (1989), pp. 582–4. 9. Mencius, Book 5A.6. 10. Mencius, Book 5A.6. 11. Xunzi, Book 18. 12. Yuri Pines, Envisioning Eternal Empire: Chinese Political Thought of the Warring States Era (Hawaii: Hawaii University Press, 2009), p. 81. 13. Yang Yongjun, Shanrang Zhengzhi Yanjiu [A Political Study of Abdication] (Beijing: Xueyuan chubanshe, 2005), p. 86. 14. Pines, Envisioning Eternal Empire, p. 73; Yang, ibid., pp. 88–9. 15. For a discussion of the problems of abdication in theory and practice, see Sun Guangde, Zhongguo Zhengzhi Sixiang Zhuanti Yanjiuji [Collections of the Study of Chinese Political Thought] (Taipei: Laureate Book, 1999), pp. 3–10; and Yang, Shanrang Zhengzhi Yanjiu. 16. Envisioning Eternal Empire, pp. 80–1. 17. Yuri Pines, The Everlasting Empire: The Political Culture of Ancient China an Its Imperial Legacy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012), p. 66. 18. For a fascinating discussion of Wanli’s early education, see Ray Huang, 1587: A Year of No Significance (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981), pp. 9–12. I thank Daniel Bell for drawing my attention to this work. 19. Ibid., pp. 43–4. 20. Ibid., pp. 46–7. 21. Ibid., Ch. 3. 22. Xunzi, Book 11.11 (John Knoblock). For a useful analysis of Xunzi’s views on the roles of the sovereign, see Pines, Envisioning Eternal Empire, pp. 90–7. 23. Xunzi, Book 11.2c. 24. Ibid., Book 16.3. 25. See Huang, 1587, Ch. 3. 26. For an account of this position, see Pines, The Everlasting Empire, Ch. 3. 27. This section is drawn from Joseph Chan, Confucian Perfectionism: A Political Philosophy for Modern Times (Princeton: Princeton University Press, forthcoming, 2013), Ch. 3. I am grateful to Princeton University Press for permission to incorporate the material in this chapter.

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28. 29. 30. 31.

32. 33. 34.

35.

36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41.

42. 43. 44.

45. 46.

47.

48. 49.

Joseph Chan Translation adapted from James Legge. Taken from the oath of office for the president of India. Taken from the oath of office for the president of Taiwan. Ssu-yu Teng and John K. Fairbank, China’s Response to the West: A Documentary Survey, 1839–1923 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1954), p. 140, cited in Yu Ying-shih, “The Idea of Democracy and the Twilight of the Elite Culture in Modern China,” in Ron Bontekoe and Marietta Stepaniants, eds., Justice and Democracy: Cross-cultural Perspectives (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1997), p. 201. Ibid. See Stephen Macedo’s chapter in this volume for further discussion. See, for example, James Buchanan’s view: “To improve politics, it is necessary to improve or reform rules, the framework within which the game of politics is played. There is no suggestion that improvement lies in the selection of morally superior agents who will use their powers in some public interest.” Cited in Timothy Besley, “Political Selection,” Journal of Economic Perspectives, vol. 19 (2005), p. 44. The most recent and comprehensive survey of this literature is Jane Mansbridge, “A ‘Selection Model’ of Political Representation,” The Journal of Political Philosophy, vol. 17 (2000), pp. 369–98. See Bruno S. Frey, “A Constitution for Knaves Crowds Out Civic Virtues,” The Economic Journal, vol. 107 (1997), p. 1049. Mansbridge, “A ‘Selection Model’”, p. 371. Ibid., p. 393. See in particular Tongdong Bai’s chapter. Amy Gutmann and Dennis Thompson, Democracy and Disagreement (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1996), p. 12. See Bryan Caplan, The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007) and Jason Brennan, The Ethics of Voting (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011), Ch. 7. John Randolph Lucas, Democracy and Participation (Harmondsworth and Baltimore: Penguin, 1976), p. 200. I discussed at length why Confucian moral education can help improve democratic governance in Confucian Perfectionism, Ch. 4. This section is drawn from Chan, Confucian Perfectionism, Ch. 4. I am grateful to Princeton University Press for permission to incorporate the material in this chapter. See also Ch. 2, this volume, by Tongdong Bai. For historical developments and effects of meritocratic civil service examinations in China, see the chapters by Hong Xiao and Chenyang Li (Ch. 12) and by Benjamin Elman (Ch. 7) in this volume. Daniel A. Bell, Beyond Liberal Democracy: Political Thinking for an East Asian Context (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006), Ch. 6, “Taking Elitism Seriously: Democracy with Confucian Characteristics,” p. 160. Ibid., p. 162. Ibid., p. 168.

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50. Daniel A. Bell, “Toward Meritocratic Rule in China? A Response to Professors Dallmayr, Li, and Tan,” Philosophy East and West, vol. 59 (2009), p. 556. 51. See Chenyang Li, “Where Does Confucian Virtuous Leadership Stand?” Philosophy East and West, vol. 59 (2009), pp. 531–6; and Sor-hoon Tan, “Beyond Elitism: A Community Ideal for a Modern East Asia,” Philosophy East and West, vol. 59 (2009), pp. 537–53. 52. “Toward Meritocratic Rule,” p. 558. 53. Beyond Liberal Democracy, p. 169. 54. Bell puts forward the assumption that studying the classics improves the virtue of the learner. I am prepared to accept this assumption in a purely educational context, but when learning of this kind is done for an extrinsic cause, such as competing for positions or offices, I doubt if the assumption can stand. 55. The Analects, 2.10. Translations are taken with slight modifications from Chichung Huang, The Analects of Confucius (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997). 56. Ibid., pp. 13, 24. 57. Thanks are due to Elton Chan for drawing my attention to this article by Lu and providing a translation of the quotations into English. 58. Luzhi, “Qingxu taisheng zhangguan jujian shuli zhuang” [Petition to the emperor for allowing taisheng-level senior officials to recommend subordinates], Wikisource, accessed 12 November 2011, http://zh.wikisource.org/zhhant/. 59. Ibid. 60. Ibid. 61. I must make clear that my proposal was developed against the background of Hong Kong’s political institutions, including its statuary bodies and government advisory committees, rather than those of China as a whole. The size of the two regimes also seems to make an important difference in a small society like Hong Kong, where people are more aware of who’s who than in a large country like China. In a large country, exams may be necessary, at least initially, to help filter out a large number of people. In China, therefore, some combination of exams and “selection by colleagues” may be the way to go, which is in fact closer to the historical China then to China now. I thank Daniel A. Bell for instructive discussions on this point. For further discussion of China, see the chapters by Elman (Ch. 7) and Xiao and Li (Ch. 12) in this volume. 62. J. S. Mill, Considerations on Representative Government, Ch. 13, “Of a Second Chamber.” For a brief proposal of a “third chamber” in addition to the bicameral congress in the context of the United States, see also Daniel Bell (American sociologist 1919–2011), “The Old War,” The New Republic, August 23 and 30, 1993, pp. 20–1. Different proposals suggest different credentials to qualify as members of the second chamber. Mill includes not only senior or retired public service officials but also professors. Bell apparently confines membership to retirees of the first two chambers. 63. Another way to determine the relative power of the second chamber visa` -vis the first would be to look at the nature of the two chambers’ work. For example, the second chamber might have more power in policy areas

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(e.g., environmental and population issues) that affect nonvoters such as future generations. I thank Daniel A. Bell for this suggestion. 64. For a detailed argument against a pure procedural justification of democracy, see David M. Estlund, Democratic Authority: A Philosophical Framework (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008), Ch. 4. 65. I thank the editors of this volume, Daniel A. Bell and Li Chenyang, and the participants in the Meritocracy Conference held in Singapore in January 2012 for their highly instructive criticisms of an earlier version of this chapter. My work on this chapter was supported by a grant from the Research Grants Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China (HKU 741508H).

2 A Confucian Version of Hybrid Regime How Does It Work, and Why Is It Superior? Tongdong Bai

I. FOUR PROBLEMS WITH DEMOCRACY

The majority of people all over the world may still believe that liberal democracy is the best possible regime, the “end of history,” as Francis Fukuyama’s famous book title suggests.1 When faced with challenges indicating problems with democracies, the more informed tend to appeal to the famous retort allegedly made by Winston Churchill: “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.”2 Clever as it seems, this claim may be a sign of our intellectual laziness, because it lacks empirical and theoretical support. Empirically, in controlling corruption, making sound long-term economic policies, decreasing ethnic violence, and choosing leaders that are competent and represent the true will of the people, democracies, especially in the developing world,do not always or clearly do better than nondemocracies.3 Theoretically, in my view, there are four problems with democracy, especially its institution of one person, one vote.4 First, the contemporary mainstream ideology behind one person, one vote, especially in today’s America, is the belief in the power of the people, and, by implication, the suspicion of the power of the elite and even the power of the government. This belief often degenerates into, or resonates with, a radical form of individualism that celebrates narrowly defined selfinterests above all else. As a result, for example, in American politics, a candidate often has to present oneself as an average Joe (or Jane) and as an antiestablishment figure; at the same time, he or she must portray the opponent as a member of the elite and of the establishment. When a ruling branch of a government consists of “simple folks” who despise government (i.e., themselves), it is hard to imagine that this branch will 55

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turn out to be respected, even by the people who put them there. This is probably why the US Congress – in principle, the most representative of political institutions – scores at the bottom of most surveys asking Americans which institutions they most respect, whereas the Supreme Court, the armed forces, and the Federal Reserve system (all appointed rather than elected bodies) score highest.5

Second, the institution of one person, one vote lacks effective mechanisms to take into account the interest of nonvoters, including future (and past) generations and foreigners. Thus, democracy may have difficulties in dealing with issues of budget deficit (i.e., spending future generations’ money for the present voters), environmental issues (i.e., spending future generations’ resources for the present voters), proper treatments of resident aliens (e.g., legal domestic helpers and illegal immigrants),6 and foreign aid or other issues involving the interests of foreigners. For example, an interesting phenomenon in the United States is that those interest groups that are concerned with the interests of domestic workers, such as unions and Democrats who are supported by these unions, often favor protectionist policies that hurt the interests of poor workers in other countries.7 Third, and related to the second issue, even among the current living adults of a state, the interest of the vocal and powerful tends to trump the interest of the silent (or silenced) and the powerless. This may be a reason for the ethnic problems in democracies, especially the newly democratized ones (which have not yet developed fully functional rule of law and the protection of liberties). Fourth, even with regard to their own interests, it is questionable whether voters alone can be the best judges of what those interests are and how to satisfy them. As many political observers – from both a more popular and anecdotal perspective and a more scholarly perspective – have pointed out, the appalling political ignorance of the (American) general public is a well-established fact over “the six decades of modern public opinion research.”8 As an example, let me discuss a particular symptom that may have been caused by the foregoing problems: the issue of foreign policy. Foreign policy often needs expertise, patient and often painful dialogues, and long-term planning. But in a popular democracy such as the American one, as Henry Kissinger argues, foreign policy is often driven by the public mood, and this mood is in turn swayed by what is on TV, rather

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than determined by what is important in international affairs. Another influence on foreign policies is domestic politics (e.g., trading favors among politicians) that has nothing to do with diplomacy. These factors are obviously in conflict with the needs of good diplomatic policies.9 II. NONMERITOCRATIC SOLUTIONS AND THEIR FUNDAMENTAL LIMIT

Many liberal and democratic thinkers also realize the aforementioned problems with democracy and have offered various answers to these problems. On the first problem, an obvious answer is call for a proper respect for reason (and those with reason) and government. One way to respect the government is the civic belief that government is a necessary good, and not as a necessary evil or even an unnecessary evil. Popular elections can then be understood as selecting the most competent and worthy, not as the punishment of the bad.10 These revisions can be endorsed by some liberal and democratic thinkers without contradicting their fundamental tenets. A cause of the first three problems is an immoral and radical version of individualism that is taken by some as the sacred ideology of democracy. According to this individualism, we are and should be free and equal individuals who care about nothing but our self-interests (“self” understood as an atom- or monad-like individual). We become a citizen under a government by conceding part of our freedom to this government because we would be better off than we would be in the natural state of affairs, in which our interests are in constant jeopardy from other selfish individuals (hence the government is considered a necessary evil) or because we are deceived into thinking so (hence the government is considered an unnecessary evil). As long as we do not violate the regulations by the government that are considered necessary in this trade-off, we should assert our self-interests as much as we like. As mentioned, “self” here is understood as an atom- or monad-like individual, and thus self-interests are narrowly defined. The interests of the ancestors or descendants of current voters as well as foreigners are not part of these self-interests. To say that self-interests are narrowly defined does not mean that they only include immediate material interests. They can also include articles of faith taken sacred by the individual. As a result, for example, there are so-called issue voters in American democracy. They vote based on their predetermined articles of faith (on abortion, gun rights, etc.) and are not open to just and fair discussion

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with others. Democracy then degenerates into a peaceful form of battle of might (which side has more issue voters that can push their legislature through), and democratic stability is but a modus vivendi. Perhaps seeing that this selfish and radical version of individualism as a cause of the first three problems of democracy, the late American political philosopher John Rawls, for example, challenges the view that one person, one vote is nothing but counting heads and argues that, for voting to be justifiable, the voter has to consider the common good or the interests of other voters rather than merely his or her own narrowly defined private interests.11 He uses the term “reasonable” to describe this voter: Citizens are reasonable when, viewing one another as free and equal in a system of social cooperation over generations, they are prepared to offer one another fair terms of social cooperation . . . and they agree to act on those terms, even at the cost of their own interests in particular situations, provided that others also accept those terms.12

On the contrary, if one votes purely on the basis of one’s “comprehensive doctrine” (e.g., religious dogmas) and accepts the failure of pushing through his or her agenda by the majority of votes only as a convenient truce waiting to be broken by any means possible, for Rawls, the stability so achieved is a modus vivendi and is not stability for the right reasons.13 In short, according to Rawls, liberal democracy requires that each voter vote not merely on private interests, including both material and doctrinal, but on a conception of common good. Thus, Rawls’s requirement of voters to be reasonable is a (thin) moral one. But how to achieve this? How to make people moral as required by Rawls and by our need to address the first three problems of democracy? To achieve this “civil friendship,”14 Rawls appeals to education and habituation (“moral learning”) that are conducted through social and political institutions arranged by liberal democracy,15 families,16 and international and domestic political and cultural environments.17 He also pins his hope on the role of statesmen.18 The question, then, is whether these corrections will be effective and adequate. If the majority of voters are able to be reasonable in a Rawlsian sense, they may be able to pay attention to the interests of non-voters and powerless voters. But if reasonable voters do not constitute a majority, the aforementioned second and third problems (the neglect of interests of non-voters and powerless voters) still remain.

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Then, we can ask the un-reasonable to yield authority to the reasonable and informed. But Rawls pins his hope on making all or the majority of voters reasonable, and says little about the nurturing of respect for the reasonable, as well as the government. Unfortunately, it seems that we cannot realistically expect the reasonable people to form a majority. In fact, Rawls himself offers an argument for this impossibility under the institution of one person one vote, which he attributes to the Hegelians and never answers. He writes, whereas, so the [Hegelian] view goes, in a liberal society, where each citizen has one vote, citizens’ interests tend to shrink and center on their private economic concerns to the detriment of the bonds of community, in a consultation hierarchy, when their group is so represented, the voting members of the various groups take into account the broader interests of political life.19

Of course, whether a majority of reasonable people can be formed is open to theoretical and empirical studies. But there is yet another – I consider most fatal – problem with democracy, which is the aforementioned fourth problem with democracy regarding voters’ inability to understand their own best interests. Again, liberal and democratic thinkers such as Rawls see this problem. He also thinks that, in a real – rather than formal – liberal democracy, citizens have to be informed. To achieve this, it is crucial that their basic needs be satisfied and that they enjoy education, as well as have the means necessary to get informed. For example, Rawls points out, “Hegel, Marxist, and socialist writers have been quite correct in making the objection” that “liberties taken alone” are “purely formal.” By themselves they are an impoverished form of liberalism, indeed not liberalism at all but libertarianism [VII: 3].20 The latter does not combine liberty and equality in the way liberalism does; it lacks the criterion of reciprocity and allows excessive social economic inequalities as judged by that criterion.21

To ensure a plural liberal democracy that is stable for the right reasons, Rawls proposes the following institutions: “a. Public financing of elections and ways of assuring the availability of public information on matters of policy;” “b. A certain fair equality of opportunity, especially in education and training;” “c. A decent distribution of income and wealth meeting the third condition of liberalism: all citizens must be assured the all-purpose means necessary for them to take intelligent and

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effective advantage of their basic freedoms;” “d. Society as employer of last resort” so that citizens can have a sense of long-term security and the opportunity of meaningful work and occupation that are crucial to their self-respect and their sense of being a member of society; “e. Basic health care assured all citizens.”22 According to Rawls, failing to establish these institutions will lead to the sorry state of (American?) political reality. He writes, When politicians are beholden to their constituents for essential campaign funds, and a very unequal distribution of income and wealth obtains in the background culture, with the great wealth being in the control of corporate economic power, is it any wonder that congressional legislation is, in effect, written by lobbyists, and Congress becomes a bargaining chamber in which laws are bought and sold?23

It should become clear that, for Rawls, the desirable form of liberal democracy is a kind of deliberative democracy. In The Law of Peoples, he explicitly expresses this idea: “Here I am concerned only with a wellordered constitutional democracy . . . understood also as a deliberative democracy.”24 Deliberative democracy recognizes that without wide-spread education in the basic aspects of constitutional democratic government for all citizens, and without a public informed about pressing problems, crucial political and social decisions simply cannot be made. Even should farsighted political leaders wish to make sound changes and reforms, they cannot convince a misinformed and cynical public to accept and follow them.25

In addition to the foregoing arrangements, freedom of speech and information and other liberties are also necessary for people to be informed. As Rawls points out, measures such as public financing of elections need to be taken to ensure that public information on matters of policy is not distorted by the influence of money, and, in general, to ensure the availability of public information, in addition to the formal protection of relevant liberties. Moreover, the public has to be given an opportunity to digest the information available. Otherwise, the availability of information will again become merely formal. For example, political scientists Bruce Ackerman and James Fishkin propose that there should be a new national holiday, Deliberation Day, when “registered voters would be called together in neighborhood meeting places . . . to discuss the central issues raised by the campaign. Each deliberator would be

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paid $150 for the day’s work of citizenship.”26 Clearly, the days when voters cast their votes should also be national or state holidays. However, I argue here that these measures – already drastic and radical against the political reality of today’s democracies – are still inadequate. These liberal thinkers have a vision of liberal democracy that is at least in one aspect fundamentally republican. That is, in their ideal form of democracy, citizens need to be well informed and actively participatory and have a form of civil friendship,27 although the degree of participation in their democracy may not be as extensive as it was in ancient republics such as the Roman Republic and ancient Athens. Despite the differences of degree of participation between Athens and contemporary democracies, a look into the Athenian democracy might help us to see why today’s (weaker) republican form of democracy is doomed to fail. First, the success of Athenian democracy was built on slavery. That is, it was the use of slave labors that freed Athenian citizens from daily work and made it possible for them to fully participate in political matters. But even by using slaves, the adequacy of the political competence of Athenian citizens was still challenged by classical writers such as Plato and Aristophanes. Then how likely is it that the common people in a modern democracy, who need to work hard to maintain their desired standard of living (this is a basic fact of capitalism and perhaps all modern societies that rid themselves of the guilty leisure of slavery) can participate in politics to the extent of acquiring the political competence necessary for a desirable form of liberal and deliberative democracy? It is true that, through mass education, modern society produces more educated, white-collar professionals, such as scientists, engineers, doctors, financiers, teachers, and so on. But what education gives them is a special craft, and they are consumed by their daily work and thus may know little about public affairs or anything outside of their narrow specializations. As Jose Ortegay Gasset said, they are “learned ignorami.”28 In short, in today’s world, the majority of people are still consumed by their daily work and may have limited knowledge about public affairs or anything outside of their narrow specializa tions. To make the problem even more serious, we need to understand that also crucial to the level of political participation in ancient Athens is the fact that Athens was small in size and in population compared with most contemporary democratic countries. According to many political thinkers, on the issue of what kind of regime a state can adopt, “size

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matters.” Montesquieu offers one of the most powerful arguments for this view. According to him, it is necessary that a democracy be small. No medium-sized or large country can really be a democracy. The reasons he offers are as follows: In a large republic [which includes both democracy and aristocracy], there are large fortunes, and consequently little moderation in spirits: the depositories are too large to put in the hands of a citizen; interests become particularized; at first a man feels he can be happy, great, glorious without his homeland; and soon, that he can be great only on the ruins of his homeland. In a large republic, the common good is sacrificed to a thousand considerations; it is subordinated to exceptions; it depends upon accidents. In a small one, the public good is better felt, better known, lies nearer to each citizen; abuses are less extensive there and consequently less protected.29

In short, for Montesquieu, a large republic leads to large fortunes. This corrupts the virtue necessary to a democracy. In particular, a person’s interest becomes detached from, or even in opposition to, the common good. Moreover, the common good becomes too sophisticated for the citizens of the state to grasp. One may argue that, for Montesquieu, a large state can be democratic in the form of the federal republic.30 But what Montesquieu discusses is something similar to the federation of ancient Greek states, a federation still far smaller than most of today’s democracies. Also different from Montesquieu’s understanding, the central government of today’s democracies is directly elected and has far greater power than what Montesquieu allows. One may also argue that the kind of democracy Montesquieu discusses is not the same as the liberal democracy Rawls and others understand. This argument may be true, but this and the previous arguments do not affect the force of Montesquieu’s challenge. We can put it in today’s language, challenging the likelihood for citizens to be informed in a large state that does not allow the use of slave labors to free its citizens from their daily works. First, the overwhelming material wealth in a large state may tempt people away from the civil duty to be reasonable and informed citizens. This requirement of citizens to be reasonable and informed is much more limited than what Montesquieu considers the necessary virtue in a democracy,31 but it is still demanding. Second, corporations, especially in the age of globalization, develop interest

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separate from and even in conflict with the interest of their own states, be it democratic or otherwise; outsourcing is an obvious example. Third, the common good in a large state is so complex that it is beyond most people’s willingness or ability to comprehend, and the majority is doomed to be uninformed, however intelligent and well educated and however willing to participate in political affairs each citizen is. Related to this point, in a small state, people might be acquainted with political figures, whereas in a large state, the majority of the people cannot judge the quality of a politician through a long-term and close contact with him or her but can only do so by following all kinds of propaganda, which makes their opinion of the politician easily manipulatable. Journalist Robert Kaplan offers many examples of failed democracies in the modern and contemporary periods. His analysis of the reason for these failures is similar to Montesquieu’s argument,32 although he presents this in the context of modern and contemporary democracies. The solution Kaplan offers is a hybrid regime that combines the democratic elements with paternalistic elements, which, as we will see, is similar to the limited democracy that is suggested by Confucians. A recent article by political scientist Russell Hardin discusses “three devastating theoretical claims” in postwar public choice theory, made by Kenneth Arrow, Anthony Downs, and Mancur Olson, that are “against the coherence of any democratic theory that is conceived as even minimally participatory, collectively consistent, and wellinformed.”33 Hardin develops these claims “by relating them and, in particular, by subjecting them to an economic theory of knowledge.”34 Two crucial arguments he makes in this article are the following: first, each person’s vote doesn’t really matter; second, to be informed is rather demanding, perhaps much more so than we usually think. If we put these two arguments together, the implication is that, if they are rational, voters have, or should have, little interest in voting, let alone getting informed. The first argument is partly a result of the fact that today’s democracies – even on the scale of the state of New Hampshire that has about a quarter of a million voters – are too large for one single vote to matter. This is because even if there is one vote difference after we count all the votes in a large state, “merely for practical reasons of the impossibility of counting votes accurately,” we still cannot say for certain which side wins, and other means have to be used for us to make this judgment.35 To understand this point, we only need to be reminded of the fact that, during the Florida recount in the 2000 election, the matter had to be resolved by the Supreme Court.

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The second argument also has something to do with the fact of the size of today’s democracies because their large size makes the price of getting informed unbearably high. Thus, we can consider Hardin’s thesis as yet another contemporary development of Montesquieu’s. If all these thinkers are correct, then it is simply impossible for the majority of voters to even come close to meet the preconditions of a meaningful democratic participation. On a more sympathetic note, all the previous problems aside, some citizens may prefer other obligations and interests – such as family obligations or scientific or artistic pursuits – to a time-consuming involvement in politics. These citizens may choose to remain politically indifferent.36 This choice becomes increasingly sensible when the political matters become too complicated because of the size of the state and the fact that the modern citizens do not enjoy the guilty luxury of the ancient Greeks who forced the slaves to do their daily chores. Unlike the ancient republican form of democracy, a contemporary liberal democracy should let these voluntarily nonparticipating citizens be. However, there should also be a mechanism that prevents the indifferent citizens from having too much influence on political matters. In Political Liberalism, Rawls points out five facts of democratic society, which lead to his consideration of the central problem: how a plural yet stable liberal democracy is possible.37 We can then add an additional (sixth) fact of modern democracy (or a group of facts). First, human beings have a tendency to fall back to their self-interest, which is encouraged by one person, one vote. Second, some citizens choose to remain politically indifferent to many political matters. Third, modern democratic states are in general so large that it makes it impossible for the majority of the citizenry to be adequately informed, however hard both the government and the individuals try. The causes of this impossibility are, first, due to the size of the modern states and the noble rejection of slavery, to be informed is a burden that most citizens’ intelligence, education, and willingness cannot bear; second, the population of modern states renders a single vote practically meaningless; third, the material wealth and the power of big corporations run free and wild, and they destroy the motive of the elite to devote themselves to the common good and distort information. The sixth fact seems to suggest that the Rawlsian liberal and deliberative democracy, or liberal and deliberative democracy in general, in which every citizen participates in an equal manner and in the form of one person, one vote, is impossible in the modern world where each state is simply too large.

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III. THE HYBRID REGIME OF CONFU-CHINA AND ITS SUPERIORITY

Next, I present a Confucian form of ideal government – I call it “ConfuChina,” which, as we will see, can address the four problems of democracy better than the present democratic regimes with all their possible internal, nonmeritocratic revisions. I have argued elsewhere that this government is what a Confucian would endorse and promote,38 which is why it is called “Confu-China.” But it should be clear that this regime does not presuppose the social dominance of a “Confucian” culture in a narrow sense (a culture Chinese or East Asians have allegedly adopted), and this regime design is meant to be universal, applicable to any state that satisfies the group of facts listed in the previous section. In the following, I offer a framework of this regime. First, the rule of law and human rights are endorsed and firmly established in Confu-China. The possibility and necessity of this endorsement have been discussed elsewhere.39 Second, in Confu-China, the government is considered to be responsible for the material and moral well-being of the people. It is responsible for making it possible that average citizens have their basic material, social and relationship, moral and political, and educational needs met. On the issue of material needs, economic inequality is contained, following Rawls’s own “Difference Principle.”40 On the issue of education, in addition to theoretical and technical knowledge, the government is also responsible for offering citizens civic education. The goal of civic education is to make citizens understand the following: each citizen should have compassion for others and maintain proper relationships to them; the role of the government is to maintain the material and moral well-being of the people (moral well-being includes citizens’ compassion to each other, their proper family relations, etc.); the politicians in the government should be those who are morally and intellectually superior – morally superior in the sense that they are willing to extend their compassion to all the people who are within his or her power to help; if the politicians are indeed morally and intellectually superior, they should be respected by the common people; the right to participate in a certain political matter is inseparable from one’s willingness to consider the common good and one’s competence at making sound decisions on this matter. To satisfy the political needs of each citizen includes satisfying his or her need to participate in politics. Then, in addition

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to offering the aforementioned education, if a citizen is interested in and has potential of participating in politics, the government should offer all means necessary – for example, the freedom of speech that makes it possible for people to be informed, the place and time (for example, “deliberation days”) necessary for political discussions and voting, and so on. Some democratic thinkers may accept the necessity of respecting the government and the statesmen (and stateswomen), but this is built into Confucianism, making Confu-China more firmly equipped with dealing with the first problem with democracy. A fact noticed by many is that, in the United States, politicians often pretend to know less than they actually do, whereas in East Asia, with its Confucian influence, politicians often pretend to know more than they actually do – the first thing almost every Chinese politician does when getting to some higher office is to get a master’s or doctoral degree from a university that wishes to prostitute itself to this official. Of course, faking knowledge is not what we want, but, at least, faking in the right direction may help the coming into being of the desirable reality. We can reveal his or her lie if a leader fakes his or her educational background, thus encouraging other leaders to become truly learned. The faker himself or herself, after faking for a long time, may sincerely identify himself or herself with the beliefs he or she fakes having.41 But if, in a culture, to have knowledge and experience is considered hurting political qualifications, no hope is left for improvements. The treatments with other problems of democracy by democratic thinkers are also endorsed and heartily promoted in Confu-China. Indeed, the Confucian education may be more adequate than the democratic ones because, as mentioned, the democratic hope lies in a form of civil friendship, which becomes impossible when the population is large, whereas the Confucian education emphasizes on compassion that is targeted at strangers. But as I argued in the previous section, these arrangements, even with the further revisions in Confu-China, are not adequate. This leads to the third arrangement of Confu-China that departs from the “internal,” nonmeritocratic solutions today’s democratic thinkers would easily endorse. Firmly asserting that the service to the people offers legitimacy to a state, but understanding the fundamental limitations of the aforementioned arrangements to improve people’s morals and informed-ness, the Confucian would be in favor of a hybrid regime that introduces and strengthens the role of the competent and moral

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“meritocrats,” in addition to the institution of one person one vote. As we see subsequently, because the meritocrats are not beholden to popular votes as much as elected legislators, they might be on the side of long-term, nonvoters’ or minorities’ interests when there are conflicts between short-term and long-term, voters and nonvoters, or majority and minority interests, and they might maintain stable, long-term policies. Confucians think that the voting right (right of political participation) should be based upon (intellectual, moral, and political) competence, and the sixth fact of modern democratic society means that many citizens are not capable of making sound judgments on many political matters. Through civic education, we hope that these citizens should willingly stay away from the decision procedure on these political matters, when they cannot quickly improve his or her competence on these matters. At the same time, we should have more institutional arrangements that help to prevent the incompetent citizens from having too much a voice in these political matters. On the basis of this consideration, the following arrangements are made in Confu-China. First, we should see that a main reason for people not to be informed is that modern states are often way too large. But on “strictly” communal and local matters, almost any local resident knows them better than officials in the distant central government.42 Since the matters dealt with here are daily affairs most relevant to residents, it is likely that they are willing to pay attention to them, rather than staying indifferent. It is also likely that the private interests of local residents can be checked by local governments. Therefore, the preconditions for the sixth fact to hold don’t exist in a small community. This means that all residents should be allowed to participate in local affairs, electing local officials through one person one vote, directly voting on important matters, etc. A difficult problem here is which matters should be considered “strictly” local. In a well-connected world, no local matters are strictly local. Thus, “strictly local matters” are merely those that have relatively little outside influence. With regard to “local” matters that have a relatively strong influence on the outside world, then, the votes from this community can only be one factor in the decision process, and arrangements (such as those that will be discussed later) need to be made to prevent local voters from doing things in a “NIMBY” or short-sighted way. Meanwhile, if certain national policies are closely affecting local affairs, and the populace can make sound judgments on them, people should be allowed to participate, and these matters can be decided by

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referendum. A general problem is that how large (how many people) a community has to be in order for its complexity not to be beyond the comprehension of its people, and the answer to this problem will determine the size of “local community.” These questions need to be answered empirically, and cannot be answered by armchair philosophers. But a philosopher can offer a general principle: how much democratic participation depends upon how likely the participants are able to make sound decisions that are based on public interests. Second, when we are dealing with matters beyond those of a small community, the preconditions for the sixth fact of modern democracy are met, meaning that it is likely that citizens are indifferent to many of these matters, and they lack capacity of making sound judgments. We should then introduce arrangements to limit the influence of (uninformed and unreasonable) popular will on policies. There are many ways to achieve this restriction. For example, at each higher level, each voter has to take a class and participate in discussions, or take a test specially designed for this level before he or she can be allowed to vote. Different weights may be given to their votes based upon their performances in class or in the test, or based upon their educational levels, social and political roles, and other relevant factors. Another, perhaps more practical and manageable arrangement is this. At a higher level, in addition to the directly elected branch, there can be an additional branch of the legislature that is used to check the popular will. Let’s call the former branch the lower house or the house of people, and the latter the upper house or the meritocratic house that consist of people with intellectual and moral merits. I can imagine three ways, which are not mutually exclusive and can be mutually complementary, to select members of the upper house (s). The first one can be called a leveled model. Legislators of the lowest level, the “strictly local” level – “strictly local,” as argued earlier, is to be determined by common peoples’ cognitive limits, given the sixth fact of modern democracies – are directly elected by the people of the corresponding local districts. These legislators are freed from specialized jobs (to the extent possible) and are exposed to policy-making on a higher level. Thus, they are likely to be capable of understanding higher-level affairs that are beyond the grasp of the common people. They are then eligible for selecting and being selected for the upper house of the legislature one level higher. This process is to be repeated until we get to the upper house of the legislature of the highest level. An alternative is that candidates for the upper house of higher levels

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than the lowest level can be members of the upper and lower house of one level lower. In fact, traces of this leveled way of selection can be found in American political history. For example, at the earlier stage of the republic, American senators and even the president on the national level were not directly elected by the people, but were voted by state legislators or electors of the electoral college. They were intentionally designed this way by American founding fathers, especially the Federalists, precisely for countering the uninformed and immoral popular will (“popular whim” might be a better term), identical to the aim of my design of the leveled way of selection.43 The second way of selecting members of the upper house (of various levels) is exam-based. For example, a model Bell offers is the following. Central is “a bicameral legislature, with a democratically-elected lower house and a ‘Confucian’ upper house composed of representatives selected on the basis of competitive examinations [later called the Xianshiyuan].”44 When there is a conflict between these two houses, The “Confucian” solution might be to strengthen the Xianshiyuan, for example, by means of a constitutional formula providing supermajorities in the upper house with the right to override majorities in the lower house. The Head of Government and important ministers could be chosen from the Xianshiyuan. Most significant legislation would emanate from the Xianshiyuan, with the lower house serving primarily as a check on its power.45

One can question the practicality of Bell’s model by making the following points. In traditional China, the keju exams were used to select officials, and there was already constant, and constantly increasing, pressure on this system caused by the increasing number of exam-takers fighting over a limited number of official positions. This happened when state-funded mass education was extremely limited.46 Now there is, in China and elsewhere, far more extensive state-funded mass education, meaning that there are far more qualified and aspiring students who might wish to take the exams, outpacing the increase of the number of offices or legislator positions available. A look at how fiercely competitive the present China’s civil service exams are in recent years can give us a vivid picture. This kind of pressure may lead to arbitrariness of selection and to social problems. But we can argue that the problem with traditional and today’s China is that there are not an adequate number of channels that can divert the talents. Moreover, as Elman

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suggests in Chapter 7 of this volume, the “losers” in these exams can become learned practitioners of other arts needed in a society, which is not a bad “unintended consequence” (knowing this possible consequence, we can actually intend it to happen). That is, these exams can, intentionally or unintentionally, improve the “political intelligence” of the citizenry. Nevertheless, when there are far more people taking the exams than the number of positions available, the results can be extremely arbitrary. An alternative exam-based selection process can make the passing of exams a qualification for someone to be a candidate of the upper house. After obtaining this qualification, he or she can then be selected on the basis of popular votes or other procedures. Another possibility is for those who pass the exams to be sent to some sort of academies, where they will be exposed to further education and be involved in observing statecraft and writing policy proposals. They can also be appointed at local offices to obtain some real-world political experiences and thus to prevent them from being merely “book smart.” Then a further selection will take place, through either exams or other processes. Considering the fact of specializations in the contemporary world, there can also be different tracks in the exams, the economics track, the political science track, the natural sciences track, and so forth, which, although still requiring a general, liberal-arts-style education, emphasize on a particular expertise. Clearly, administering exams in this exam-based way of selection will be an important issue. One common objection is that exams do not seem to be good at testing one’s morals, which I am willing to acknowledge. Still, exams can direct exam-takers to study works in moral philosophy, thus improving their moral sophistication if not their morals. Exams can also direct people to study moral exemplars in the past, and this might have a positive effect on people’s moral cultivation. To master materials for the exams demands not only intelligence but also virtues such as persistence, meaning that exams do test certain virtues, although the virtues tested are not as comprehensive as we desire. Moreover, although it should be acknowledged that exams are targeted primarily on one’s competence, the aforementioned institutions of political academy and real-world experiences can be a way to observe candidates’ moral and political character. To guarantee fairness of exams, the rule of law and other institutions are clearly necessary. Some may still doubt the possibility of fair

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examinations. They should consider traditional Chinese keju exams (today’s national college entrance exams) or exams such as the SAT or the difficult and comprehensive foreign service exams in the United States. Although there are problems with these exams, as with any and every procedure in human society, there is a relatively fair and uncontroversial process of determining their content.47 Generally speaking, for those who doubt the practicality of the exambased method of selection, the fact that keju and some earlier forms of exam-based selections were used relatively successfully to select members of the ruling class for a rather long period of time in traditional China may respond to their doubt.48 Indeed, these practices, as well as their successes and failures, are also rich resources for us to design exam-based selection models.49 For example, as we have already seen, the keju system has some resonance with certain models in the exambased way of selection. In this manner of selection, I have also suggested a more complicated model in which people are sent to an academy or to local offices. The former resonates with the han lin yuan () in later imperial China and the imperial college (tai xue, ) in early imperial China. As for a practical training in local offices, which serves as a further testing ground in the complicated model, we can also find historical resonance in the earlier imperial form of selection, the so-called recommending the filial and the uncorrupt (ju xiao lian, ) during the two Han dynasties (206 b.c.–a.d. 220). In this form of selection, promising students were first selected to the imperial college; those who did well in studies and exams were then sent to local governments; and those who did good work in their governmental jobs were eventually recommended for higher offices. In short, despite our philosophical approach, the various experiments of selecting those with merits in traditional China show that our designs here are not purely armchair, idle, and overly idealized inventions. The third way of selecting members of the upper houses of various levels is a quota system. Seats of the upper house can be allocated to those who have done well in areas related to politics and wish to devote themselves to public affairs, such as local political offices (county, municipality, state, etc.), industry leaders, scientists, and organizers of local nongovernmental organizations such as environmental groups, groups for minority affairs, and unions. Their competence, experience, and morality have been tested in their political service, and so there can be ways to select them – such as internal elections (internal to their own organizations) – to the upper house. The Chinese People’s

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Political Consultative Conference in today’s mainland China and the Functional Groups in the present legislature in Hong Kong have, on paper, tried to select members through a quota system similar to what I am proposing here. But in mainland China in particular, the institution falls far short of the role of the upper house proposed in this chapter.50 I should again make it clear that these three ways of selecting members of the upper houses of various levels are not mutually exclusive and can be combined. Indeed, I think the quota method of selection is likely to be merely a supplement to two other means of selection. The next issue is the functions of the upper house. They can be entrusted with formulating propositions for people to vote on, as Nicolas Berggruen and Nathan Gardels’s contribution (Chapter 14) in this volume suggests. The upper house and the lower house can be entrusted – with weights of their votes specified – with the usual legislative matters, as well as with matters such as the selections of Supreme Court judges, prime minister, and the like when such offices are established in the polity in question. More important, the upper house should be given more weight with regard to issues that are concerned with nonvoters and long-term considerations, because, as I have argued, these issues are what the voting public tends not to be able to handle adequately, which is why the kind of upper house is introduced in this chapter.51 A clarification needs to be made. All these ways of selection, especially the leveled model, should be distinguished from a certain form or understanding of representative democracy. In my design, those who enter the upper houses are not representatives of local interests in the higher-level government but are those who are capable of participating in the policy making on a higher level. But these members of the upper house, even if they are free from specialized jobs, may not be free from special interests, especially the immediate and narrow material interests of their constituencies, if they are subjected to frequent elections by the local people (as is the case in some representative democracies). This is what often happens in the American congress, and an obvious example is the various infamous earmarks or pork barrel projects in which members of Congress have the federal money spent on the pet projects in their own districts. Often these projects use federal money not in districts that desperately need it but in the districts with the politicians who are best at bargaining with and manipulating others through material interests and threats. For a Confucian, however, popular participation is not a way to find consensus of people’s short-term

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interests, and politicians should not be the mere mouthpiece of these interests but their genuine interests in a broad sense. The method of selecting members of the upper houses in my proposal frees politicians from the control of special interests. In sum, the Confucian hybrid regime is a government for the people, but not purely by the people; rather, it is partly by the people and partly by the competent people. IV. ANSWERS TO CHALLENGES TO THE SUPERIORITY OF THE CONFUCIAN HYBRID REGIME

In the following two sections, I consider a few challenges to the desirability and superiority of Confu-China. Some people may object to Confu-China because it apparently violates two principles of liberal democracy: the principle that the legitimacy of a government comes from popular votes and the principle of equality. This objection is external because it considers some fundamental ideas of Confu-China problematic, and I address this in the next section. Here, I answer some internal objections to Confu-China. That is, Confu-China will lead to consequences it considers bad with its own framework, it is not as good as it claims to be, or we do not have to go that far to achieve what is desired by the designer of Confu-China. By answering all these challenges, I hope to elaborate on the designs of the Confucian hybrid regime and the reasoning behind it and to show the superiority and the desirability of this regime. The first objection is this. Various uses of exams in Confu-China may become an excuse for the powers that be to exclude a certain group of people from politics (for example, the exclusion of African Americans in American history), and they will breed resentment of the disenfranchised that will question the legitimacy and thus threaten the stability of the state.52 In comparison, an important function of democracy is to give people a sense that the legitimacy of the state and the government lies in approval by all, so that people will sincerely support the state and the government.53 My answer to this objection is the following. First, as is already shown, it is crucial to the Confucian hybrid regime that people be instilled, through civic education, with a sense of respect for excellence and acceptance of the rule of the wise and virtuous so as to willingly abdicate their right to participate when they consider themselves incompetent. Chinese peasantry in the past and many Western voters before the age of populism and cynicism had

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respect for the authority, and they did not find it unacceptable that the experienced and knowledgeable have more authority. This fact shows the power of education and culture. Second, in Confu-China, the government bears the responsibility of educating everyone and offering necessary means for people to live a materially and morally flourishing life; if we use the exam-based way of selection, the exams are open to everyone. This makes the fairness of exams not merely formal and is clearly different from disenfranchisement of African Americans or other poor and “lowly” people in history and can diminish the feeling of resentment. Third, legislatures of every level still have a directly popularly elected branch. An objection related to the first is that the rule of the wise will make the people who are excluded from politics more and more incompetent, thus artificially perpetuating the distinction between the ruler and the ruled. This is like the situation in which children tend never to grow up when the parents are overcompetent and try to take care of everything. John Stuart Mill once made this argument against paternalism and maintained that popular participation offers the best civic education of the people, leading their vision to go beyond their selves.54 Rawls also offers a similar argument in his earlier work, A Theory of Justice, praising popular participation’s role in promoting civil friendship and people’s competence.55 From the discussion of the sixth fact of modern democracy, however, we should see that Mill’s and Rawls’s expectation of the educational function of popular elections may have been overly optimistic. On the contrary, through popular elections, members of the voting public tend to retreat to their narrow and often misguided private interests. Defending Confu-China against this challenge, we can see that, in Confu-China, popular participation is still preserved. It is just that the check by the elite is added to the legislating and decision-making processes. More important, a Confucian can happily acknowledge the civilizing role of mass participation. Moreover, Confucians may even see the practical and psychological benefit of making people feel politically involved through mass participation in the age of democracy.56 As Bell points out, even in today’s China, “the symbolic ritual of free and fair competitive elections – even if the people’s views have minimal impact on actual policies” – has to be recognized.57 All these considerations give us additional reasons for Confu-China to preserve popular elections, although, at the same time, different from Rawls, Confucians may also be concerned with the possibility that, through this civilizing

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process, people may grow over-confident, thus losing respect for the wise and the virtuous. In Confu-China, exams and experiences are introduced as the basis for voting rights in the case of certain political matters or for the membership or candidacy for the upper house of the legislature, but these exams are open to the public, and the government has the responsibility of offering any means necessary for citizens to be educated and participate in politics. Even if people fail to pass or choose not to take the exams, the door will be always open when they change their mind or improve their competence. That is, unlike what Mill criticizes, this hierarchy is not fixed. On the contrary, it encourages upward mobility. As a famous line of an ancient Chinese poem (exaggeratingly) says, “one can be a farm boy in the morning, but come to the emperor’s court in the evening” (, ).58 This mobility, as discussed earlier, may also dispel possible resentment of the disenfranchised against the powerful elite. When discussing the keju system, which can be considered a forerunner of the selection mechanism we discuss here, the historian and philosopher Qian Mu () argues, it “can fundamentally eradicate the social classes . . . [and] can cultivate people’s interest in politics and strengthen their patriotism.”59 We can see here that these arrangements by the Confucians have an intention similar to the popular participation in a democratic regime. Clearly, the rule of law has to be enforced so that there is no perceived unfairness in this mobile hierarchy. Another sensible objection is that the learned and the experienced do not always make good decisions. But we should see that the reason we need the upper house is the recognition of the sixth fact of modern democracy. The introduction of popular election in history was to prevent few noblemen from controlling political decision-making process and using public resources for their own gains, and mass participation was a good check of pure aristocracy. But a grave problem of today’s democracies is that what was meant to be a correction of aristocracy has gone to the other extreme, and it has given too much voice to blind popular will.60 Therefore, we need to reintroduce the good aspect of aristocracy, that is, “aristocracy” in its original sense, the rule by the excellent (in terms of both knowledge and morality), and use it to check the excesses of democracy, hoping to achieve a more desirable middle ground between these two systems, rather than pinning our hope for good governance on the conscience of members from either side.

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Besides, even if the branch of the experienced and learned didn’t directly improve the quality of policy making, its existence can be taken as a civic education, thus indirectly improving the quality of policy making. That is, the existence of this branch makes people aware of the idea that political participation is not an inborn right, but is based upon competence and has moral requirements. It is a right to be earned. Mill and Rawls are correct to say that political participation offers opportunity of civic education. But when participating, common people are also helped by looking up to the exemplary people and institutions. They offer role models for people to participate in politics. As Confucius says, “Governing by virtue is like the north polar star, which remains in its place while all the other stars revolve around it” (2.1 of The Analects). The role of civic education by the upper house in Confu-China enriches the educational role of mass participation discussed by Mill and Rawls. In short, as long as we don’t hold a radically pessimistic attitude that denies any positive role of reason and morals in decision making, we should see that the upper house can improve government. Some might object that, not only do not the elite often make good decisions, but they often make bad decisions. Thus they shouldn’t play the role of check and balance. The basis for this argument is that the rule by the elite often falls victim to the interest of the elite class. This worry is a sensible one. To prevent this from happening, we hope that the moral education of the elite may play some role. More importantly, some institutional arrangements should be made. A key is that we must establish a respectable and stable rule of law that regulates the elite branch and use the house of people to check the former branch, so as not to let the elite establish laws at their own will to benefit themselves or their associates. Another mechanism to prevent the elite from serving their own interests is that each branch has to have a significant number of members, so that it is hard for the elite to form a unified interest group. Another reason to suspect that the elite will make bad decisions is this. The sixth fact of modern democracy presupposes that the populace in a large state can easily be misled by interest groups. But perhaps to mislead a small circle of elite is practically even easier than misleading millions of people.61 This might be the case, and I can only give an imperfect answer. We need empirical evidence for this claim, and, until we have it, we can at least hope that the ruling elite who are wiser, more experienced, more virtuous, and with better conditions (time, assistance, etc.) are less susceptible to misinformation than the populace.

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The above objections to the Confucian hybrid regime are to show that it fails to hit the targets it desires, or doesn’t do as a good job as a democracy does. I have argued that it is as good as, and sometimes even better than liberal democracies in terms of these aims. Some others may be more willing to acknowledge the merits of meritocracy and of a hybrid regime that combines democratic with meritocratic elements. But they could argue that what is truly superior, for example, in the American regime is its rule of law and bureaucratic system as well as other meritocratic institutions (the Supreme Court, the Federal Reserve, the military, etc.), and one person one vote doesn’t really have as much influence as it appears to do. Moreover, one person one vote only gives people a sense of imagined equality, and this can be seen from the fact of the disproportionally high number of rich and highly educated people in American congress. In other words, although there are no explicit arrangements like those in Confu-China, the American legislature is a de facto meritocratic regime, making arrangements introduced in Confu-China unnecessary. But first, those with merits in American legislature may not possess the relevant kinds of merits. Second, and more importantly, this meritocracy is a “closeted” one, and it needs to “come out of the closet,” becoming a proud part of the political regime and culture. As Confucius said, when the names are not right, what is said will not sound reasonable; when what is said does not sound reasonable, things [tasks] will not be accomplished . . . (13.3 of the Analects) If meritocracy is not a proud member of the political regime and culture, as mentioned earlier in this chapter, politicians would hide their meritocratic identities, and cater for popular will instead of doing what is right for the populace; but if they dared not to hide, they and the openly meritocratic institutions would be under constant suspicion, even attacks by the populace and could only yield to the popular will or accept the fate of being marginalized. As Macedo shows in his contribution in this volume, the American regime during the founding of the republic was a hybrid regime that contained many meritocratic arrangements. These arrangements were put in there specifically for preventing the uninformed populace from having too much influence and harming people’s true interests. Macedo maintains that the government is of the people and for the people, but he is hesitating about whether it is by the people. In this

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sense, the American regime at its early stage, especially with regard to the aspects mentioned above, can be considered an example of “ConfuChina.” Again, “Confu-China” is not merely applicable to those who are ethnically Chinese or culturally Confucian (“Confucian” in a thick or narrow sense), and, indeed, the fact that the American regime at its founding is a Confucian hybrid regime supports the universality of the latter. However, as we see, many of these elements have been eroded and eliminated, and a reason may have been that the open ideology is not in favor of meritocracy, but in favor of equality – equality understood as being the opposite to meritocratic hierarchy. Thus, although both the founding fathers, the Federalists in particular, and contemporary scholars such as Macedo think that meritocracy and democracy are not mutually exclusive, the meritocratic elements, if being closeted, will end up being locked in permanently and thus dead for good. Not to repeat this history, we should make the meritocratic elements explicit. The “elitist” design of Confu-China is to give more power to the politically motivated, compassionate, and competent people, and check the influence on politics by those who are politically indifferent, narrowminded, and incompetent. Some might ask why we cannot leave it to “natural selections.” Those concerned with politics naturally wish to push for their ideas. From American political reality, however, this hope might be overly optimistic, when we see the result of “natural selection” is the rise of the extreme, the issue voters. On surface, they are the opposite to the political indifferent, but, in reality, they adopt the same kind of attitude of political indifference and have the same kind of political ignorance as the openly politically indifferent and ignorant. For the former are concerned with and have a dogmatic conviction about but one issue, refuse to discuss it with others, and indifferent to or ignorant of other issues. They actually offer a supporting example to the sixth fact. It should be acknowledged that many observations of democracy in this chapter are based upon American political reality. But whether this reality is peculiarly American or is world-wide can be debated. In particular, we need to refer to political scientists for their theoretical and empirical studies of whether Western European and Japanese democracies suffer from the problems caused by the sixth fact of democracy. As I have said a few times, I believe that the regime of Confu-China is applicable to all states. The account of it is not only theoretical, but also

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is meant to be practical. However, whether the ideal can be realized depends upon the mainstream culture of each state. In the U.S., where most people take one person one vote as something sacred and any challenge to it simply as outrageous,62 the regime of Confu-China may only be established through skillful disguises, or only after repeated failures of its present regime and the establishment of a shining model of Confu-China somewhere else first. But in emerging democracies and democratizing countries, the idea of the regime of Confu-China might be spread in its original form, and instead of going to one extreme (the popular extreme) and then coming back, we might wish to hit the right mark in the first attempt.63 Although I have been criticizing liberal democracy, the design of Confu-China may actually help the democratization process of predemocratic countries. This is because a problem with recently democratized countries is that there are many populist governments among them. The chaos these governments create not only make their own citizens suffer but also makes people in predemocratic states resist democratization. For example, much of the political turmoil in Taiwan is often taken as a product of a populist government, and the lack of education and other conditions makes many who desire democracy think that it is not feasible in today’s China. But Confu-China, especially its limited or restricted form of democracy, might help us to get around these obstacles. More important, the previous discussions might help us to see clearly the truly desirable elements of liberal democracy, thus offering guidance to the democratization process. These discussions, simply put, show that liberties (rights) and the rule of law might be the gem of liberal democracy, while popular election needs revisions. People often believe that liberties and the rule of law on the one hand and popular election on the other are inseparable from each other, but this view is verified neither theoretically nor empirically. If the two parts are separable, a simple summary of the foregoing discussions in dealing with democratization is that liberties and the rule of law should come first, and a hybrid form of democracy should come second. V. CONFU-CHINA: INCOMPATIBLE WITH LIBERAL DEMOCRACY?

After answering the challenges to the superiority of a Confucian hybrid regime to present liberal democracies, let me deal with the elephant in the room, the apparent conflict between Confu-China and liberal

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democracy. For liberal democracy has an almost sacred, “end of history” status. Any apparent challenge to it and its basic principles will be immediately dismissed. Unfortunately, the Confucian hybrid regime seems to violate two basic principles of liberal democracy, the principle of legitimacy of the state and the principle of equality. I address this issue in this section. The issue of legitimacy was already touched on in the previous section in the context of a more practical issue of resentment, but some may believe that as long as there are governmental offices that are not voted by the people, they are not legitimate. First, we have to consider the legitimacy of this understanding. If we do not appeal to some a priori tenet, an easy answer seems to appeal to the contemporary consensus on the idea of legitimacy. But this sounds like a circular argument: to appeal to the people to support popular votes (a form of consensus) as the legitimate foundation of a government. Moreover, people can be educated to think otherwise. Just because this understanding of the legitimacy of government may be a dominant view today does not mean that it should be and always will be a dominant view. But for argument’s sake, let me put the theoretical quibbles aside and accept the idea that legitimacy of the government comes from the people. This idea does not necessarily mean that only direct voting by the people can confer legitimacy on the government. Many institutions in a democracy, such as the U.S. Supreme Court, are not directly elected by the people. In his contribution in this volume, Philip Pettit (Chapter 5) distinguishes indicative representation from responsive or deputy representation. In the former, representer’s attitudes are evidential of representee’s attitudes, whereas in the latter, representee’s attitudes causally determine representer’s attitudes. Examples of the latter are members of the U.S. Congress, who are elected directly by their constituencies and beholden to interests of these constituencies; examples of the former are U.S. Supreme Court justices. Although the justices are not directly elected by the people, they nevertheless represent the people’s will. In my view, this distinction seems to have something to do with the distinction between popular will and general will, or people’s whims and people’s true will. The meritocrats in the Confucian hybrid regime also represent people’s (general or true) will, even though they are not directly elected. If Pettit’s argument that these two forms of representation are legitimate in a democracy holds, why can’t we consider the meritocratic element in Confu-China as also legitimate? One can argue, as Pettit does in his chapter, that those who

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appoint Supreme Court justices are elected by the populace, meaning that the legitimacy of the Supreme Court ultimately comes from the people. But as mentioned, in the leveled method and some models in the exam-based method of selection, popular elections also take place. In the leveled method, legislators on the lowest level are directly elected, and they will be eligible to vote for and be a candidate of upper houses of legislature at higher levels. Again, this was how U.S. senators on the national level were elected, and scholars such as Macedo consider it a legitimate way of selecting legislators in a democracy. Thus, the Confucian hybrid regime can be considered legitimate if we accept arguments by scholars such as Pettit and Macedo. Another issue with the Confucian hybrid regime is its apparent violation of equality and its advocacy for hierarchy. As we see, in practice, a key difference between Confu-China and a liberal democracy is that the former indirectly restricts one person, one vote and leads to some sort of political inequality. But is one person, one vote a fundamental form of equality that is considered essential in a liberal democracy? After all, equality is a broad concept, and what is important is what is to be equal. Rawls’s view on this issue, for example, is ambivalent at best, and it seems to lead toward the idea that one person, one vote is not essential to liberal democracy. We can argue that in Confu-China, although one person, one vote is not as inherent as it is to current democracies, equality in many aspects (that liberal democratic thinkers consider essential to liberal democracy) is preserved, making Confu-China largely (if not fully) compatible with the equality principle in liberal democracy.64 In fact, although advocating equality, in his famous difference principle in A Theory of Justice, Rawls considers economic inequality acceptable if the least advantaged benefit.65 Then why can’t we have a difference principle in politics (I will call it the political difference principle): political or electoral inequality can be accepted if the least advantaged (from a material point of view) benefit. There is yet another way to see the relation between Confu-China and the Rawlsian liberal democracy. Domestically, Rawls assumes that the majority of the people are reasonable and equal, but internationally, he assumes that there is a hierarchy of peoples, with more power given to the “well-ordered” peoples. There is an asymmetry, if not inconsistency, in Rawls’s theory. Confu-China, then, is merely to make his theory consistent by acknowledging the existence of hierarchy within a state.66

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In addition to the formal comparisons presented here, from a more substantial perspective, Confu-China actually develops Rawls’s ideas, deals with problems Rawls doesn’t deal with (the situation in which the unreasonable people may constitute the majority or a substantial minority in a society), and offers more realistic solutions to the problems with which Rawls is concerned. In The Law of Peoples, Rawls calls the regime he designs a “realistic utopia.”67 But from the point of view of Confu-China, Rawls fails to deal with some realistic factors that must be considered even in an ideal design. Therefore, using Rawls’s terminology, we can say that Confu-China is a more realistic utopia than Rawls’s design of liberal democracy. notes

1. This chapter is closely based on Chapter 3 of Tongdong Bai, The New Mission of an Old State: The Contemporary and Comparative Relevance of Classical Confucian Political Philosophy :   (Beijing: Peking University Press, 2009; a revised English manuscript is available by contacting the author), especially the revised English version of the chapter. I thank Daniel Bell and Chenyang Li for inviting me to participate a conference on meritocracy and for their comments on an earlier draft of this paper. The research for this chapter is supported by the Program for Professor of Special Appointment (Eastern Scholar) at Shanghai Institutions of Higher Learning, the “New Century Excellent Talents in University” grant, Shanghai Educational Development Foundation (Shuguang Project), the “Pujiang Talents” grant from the Shanghai government, the Shanghai Philosophy and Social Sciences Projects, and by research grants from Fudan University (the Guanghua program, 985 Project 2011RWXKZD009, 985 Project 2011 RWXKZD010 and others). I am grateful for their support. Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (New York: Avon Books, 1992). 2. From a House of Commons speech in 1947, according to http://en.wikiquote. org/wiki/Winston Churchill (accessed November 29, 2011). 3. For some examples, see Robert Kaplan, “Was Democracy Just a Moment?”, The Atlantic Monthly, vol. 280 (1997), pp. 55–80; and Fareed Zakaria, The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2003). A lot of academic research has been conducted on the relations between democracy and growth, democracy and corruption, and democracy and ethnic violence (I thank the late political scientist Tianjian Shi for calling my attention to some of this research). For example, the political scientist Jonathan Krieckhaus has shown that democracy had a negative effect on economic growth in the 1960s and should have had a negative effect in Latin America (although it had a positive effect on growth in the 1980s and should have a positive effect in Africa); see in

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5. 6.

7.

8.

9. 10.

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Krieckhaus, “The Regime Debate Revisited: A Sensitivity Analysis of Democracy’s Effects,” British Journal of Political Science, vol. 34 (2004), pp. 635–55; and “Democracy and Economic Growth: How Regional Context Influences Regime Effects,” British Journal of Political Science, vol. 36 (2006), pp. 317– 40. Daniel Treisman shows that the perceived corruption is influenced by many factors, and whether a country is democratic is only one of them; see in Daniel Treisman, “The Causes of Corruption: A Cross-National Study,” Journal of Public Economics, vol. 76 (2002), pp. 399–457. Moreover, with regard to the effect of democracy on perceived corruption, a country has to have been democratic for decades for democracy to have a significant but relatively small effect on perceived corruption. Steven I. Wilkinson shows a complicated picture of the relations between democracy and ethnic violence in India, and Daniel Bell shows that democratization often leads to an increase of ethnic violence. See Steven I. Wilkinson, Votes and Violence: Electoral Competition and Ethnic Riots in India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005); and Daniel Bell, Beyond Liberal Democracy (Princeton: Princeton University Press; 2006). More sophisticated democratic theorists (for example, see Ch. 5 by Pettit and Ch. 8 by Macedo’s in this volume) may acknowledge the following problems but argue that there are checks and balances of the problems with one person, one vote in real-world democracies. I discuss these remedies in the last two sections of this chapter. Zakaria, op. cit., p. 248. Daniel Bell argues that there is an interesting issue in Singapore and Hong Kong about democracy being bad for foreign domestic helpers, whereas “bureaucratic” elites can do more for their interests (Bell, op. cit., pp. 281–322). One example is the World Trade Organization (WTO) lawsuits and bans on products made in China by the U.S. government under various pretenses (the most ironic of which is that Chinese factories fail to treat their workers properly). A recent case is the Obama administration’s filing of a WTO lawsuit that is clearly intended to cater to American voters in the “industrial battleground” during the 2012 presidential campaign. See in Mark Landler, “In Car Country, Obama Trumpets China Trade Case,” New York Times, September 18, 2012, p. A1. For a more detailed account, see Bruce Ackerman and James Fishkin, Deliberation Day (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005). A more recent scholarly account on this issue is Bryan Caplan, The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies (New Edition) (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008). There are also numerous popular accounts of the lack of basic political knowledge among Americans. See, for example, Nicholas D. Kristof, “ ‘With a Few More Brains’,” New York Times, March 30, 2008. Kissinger, Henry, Does America Need a Foreign Policy? (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011), p. 77. See Joseph Chan, “Early Confucian Conception of the Ruler-Ruled Relationship: From Political Ideal to Nonideal Institutions,” unpublished manuscript; and Chapter 2 of Bai, op. cit.

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11. Bruce Ackerman and James Fishkin, “Righting the Ship of Democracy,” Legal Affairs, January/February 2004, p. 34; See also Brennan, Jason, Ethics of Voting (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012). 12. John Rawls, Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press; 1996), p. xliv. An almost identical passage can be found in Rawls, The Law of Peoples with “The Idea of Public Reason Revisited” (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999a), p. 136, and a similar passage can be found in Rawls 1996, op. cit., p. 49. See also Rawls 1999a, op. cit., pp. 86–8 and 177–8. 13. See Rawls 1996, op. cit., pp. xxxix–xliii and 146–150; Rawls 1999a, op. cit., 149–50 and 168–9. 14. Rawls 1999a, op. cit., p. 137. 15. Ibid., p. 15 and pp. 44–5. 16. Ibid., p. 157. 17. Ibid., p. 27 (n. 23), pp. 102–3, and pp. 112–13. 18. Ibid., pp. 97–103 and p. 112. 19. Ibid., p. 73. 20. On the basis of this distinction, many “liberals” in China are not really liberals in Rawls’s sense, but libertarians. 21. Rawls 1996, op. cit., p. lviii; also see Rawls 1999a, op. cit., pp. 49–50. 22. Rawls 1996, op. cit., pp. lviii–lix. 23. Rawls 1999a, op. cit., p. 24, f19. 24. Ibid., p. 138. 25. Ibid., pp. 139–40. 26. Ackerman and Fishkin 2004, op. cit., p. 34. 27. See Rawls 1999a, op. cit., p. 137. 28. Gasset, Ortegay, The Revolt of the Masses (London, 1932), pp. 108–12. 29. Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws, Anne M. Cohler, Basia Carolyn Miller, and Harold Samuel Stone, eds. and trans. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), p. 124. Jean-Jacques Rousseau agrees with Montesquieu on this issue and offers similar arguments. See his dedication “To the Republic of Geneva” in his Discourse On the Origin and Foundations of Inequality among Men (Rousseau Jean-Jacques, The First and Second Discourses, Roger D. and Judith R. Masters, trans. [New York: St Martin’s Press, 1964], pp. 78–90) and Chapters 3 and 4, Book 3 of his On the Social Contract (Rousseau, On the Social Contract with Geneva Manuscript and Political Economy, Roger D. Masters, ed.; Judith R. Masters, trans. [New York: St. Martin’s, 1978], pp. 83–5). 30. See Montesquieu 1989, op. cit., pp. 131–2. 31. Ibid., pp. 22–6. 32. See Kaplan, op. cit. 33. See Russell Hardin, “Street-Level Epistemology and Democratic Participation,” The Journal of Political Philosophy, vol. 10 (2002), p. 212. 34. Ibid., p. 213. 35. Ibid., p. 220. This impossibility may be a mathematical impossibility: the statistical error of counting a large number of votes is too significant for one vote difference to be considered meaningful in determining the outcome. I thank Qian Jiang for pointing this out to me.

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36. Of course, for a Confucian, to focus on family does not necessarily mean politically indifferent. See Ch. 6 of Bai, op. cit. 37. See Rawls 1996, op. cit., p. xxvii, pp. 36–8 and 58; also see Rawls 1989, op. cit., pp. 474–8. 38. Bai, op. cit., Sections 1 and 2 of Ch. 3. Given the theme of this volume and the limit of space, I will not repeat these arguments here. 39. Ibid., Ch. 2 and 4 and Section 5 of Ch. 3. 40. See John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971), pp. 60–2 and 78–83. 41. Although condemning the “five hegemons” (wu ba,  )’s “borrowing” benevolence or humanity (ren ), that is, pretending to be a humane overlord intending to maintain peace among the fighting feudal lords, Mencius says, “but if a man borrows a thing for a long time and doesn’t return it back, how can one be sure that it will not become [truly] his?” (Mencius, 7A30). The translations of the Mencius and the Analects in this chapter are mine. For alternative translations, see D. C. Lau (), trans., Confucius: The Analects (paperback bilingual edition; Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press, 2002) and Mencius, revised and bilingual edition (Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press, 2003). 42. See the discussion in the next paragraph on the meaning of “ ‘strictly’ local.” 43. See Stephen Macedo’s contribution in this volume (Ch. 8) for a more detailed discussion. 44. Bell, op. cit., p. 267. 45. Ibid., p. 271. 46. See Benjamin Elman’s contribution in this volume (Ch. 7) for more detailed description of the pressure and the reality of education in later traditional China. 47. Philip J. Ivanhoe once suggested to me that the foreign service exams can be a possible form of the selection or qualification exams for the upper house. I thank him for this suggestion. 48. I am not saying that the regimes in traditional China were those mixing meritocratic with democratic elements. I am not even saying that they were purely meritocratic. As Elman points out in his contribution in this volume, the meritocratic elites in later imperial China never broke free of a system in which emperors had the highest and ultimate authority. But he also maintains that a modern political system can be more compatible with meritocracy, with which I fully agree. Indeed, if we replace the office of the emperor with popular will, the games of dominance, checks and balances, and cooperation between emperors and elites in traditional China can be easily translated into lessons for our explorations of an ideal hybrid regime. 49. The late Chinese historian and philosopher Qian Mu () offers many detailed, subtle, and insightful analyses of political arrangements in traditional China. See, for example, Qian Mu (),( :  , 1996), and( :  , 2002). 50. See Xiao and Li’s contribution to this volume for more detailed discussion of the political practices in mainland China. 51. I thank Daniel Bell for making this suggestion to me.

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52. I wish to thank Daniel Bell and Qian Jiang for pointing out this problem to me. 53. This challenge is different from the challenge, to be discussed in the next section, that Confu-China violates a democratic tenet of legitimacy. Here, the issue is not about the violation of a “sacred” principle but about the consequences of this violation. 54. See John Stuart Mill, Considerations on Representative Government (New York: The Liberal Arts Press, 1958), pp. 36–55. 55. See Rawls 1971, op. cit., p. 234. 56. Based on some field works in Indonesia, Benjamin Olken arrives at the following conclusion: although direct participation does not lead to policies significantly different from those adopted without mass participation, people in the former situation feel far more satisfied with these policies (Benjamin A. Olken, “Direct Democracy and Local Public Goods: Evidence from a Field Experiment in Indonesia,” Working Paper 14123, NBER [National Bureau of Economic Research] Working Paper Series, June 2008, http://www.nber.org/ papers/w14123; accessed October 26, 2008). One might dismiss democratic participation as cynical manipulation. But we should not ignore the significance of democratic participation, even if it lies chiefly in psychological satisfaction. After all, the goal of a good state is to make people happy, and happiness does not merely come from the satisfaction of material needs. I wish to thank Qian Jiang for pointing this out to me. 57. Bell, op. cit., p. 273. 58. Of course, the picture portrayed through this line is perhaps too rosy. See Elman’s contribution in this volume for more details. What he shows in his chapter is that a peasant would rarely, and likely never, have a chance to move up the ladder all the way to the ruling elite. But the apparent mobility offered hope to the peasant and other people of the lowest strata of traditional Chinese society, and they could – perhaps over the efforts of a few generations – first move up to the level of propertied men (landlords and wealthy merchants) and go from there to the elite ruling class. Moreover, now that the basic needs are better satisfied and mass education is far better established in many contemporary states, we can be more hopeful about fuller upward mobility than what was achieved in traditional China. 59. Qian 1996, op. cit., pp. 405–6. 60. As mentioned, those who favor popular election (unchecked by the rule of the meritocrats) may offer different diagnoses and treatments of these problems. For example, Thomas Pogge points out that a reason for the American protectionist policies is that American democracy is not a genuine democracy based on one person, one vote, but on one dollar, one vote (a diagnosis similar to Rawls’s). The American government pays back a small portion of influential voters (for example, the big farmers) while harming both the majority of the domestic voters and people in other countries. This is a response he gave to a question I asked in a discussion at Tsinghua University, Beijing, in May 2005. See also Bell 2006, op. cit., p. 162 (n. 35). Generally, one can argue that what happened in Western early modernity was that inherited nobility did not entitle someone with political access anymore, but the acquisition of wealth did.

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61. 62.

63.

64. 65. 66. 67.

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This is not enough, and the problem with today’s democracies is the failure to give political access to all, or the failure of comprehensive representation. But if my account of the sixth fact of modern democracy holds, then the treatments by these democratic thinkers are doomed to fail. The problem with the early modern reform is not that it was still a meritocracy and thus excluded the poor and the working class, as democratic thinkers argue, but that it was a wrong kind of meritocracy. (We could also say that the problem with the Iranian hybrid regime is not its meritocratic element but that its meritocracy emphasizes a wrong kind of merits.) The solution, then, is to introduce the right kind of meritocracy, mixed with democratic elements. I thank Michael Puett for helping me formulate the differences between a democratic solution and my solution to the problems of today’s democracies. I wish to thank Qian Jiang for pointing out this problem to me. For example, a most powerful objection to Samuel Alito’s nomination to the American Supreme Court is a ruling he made that could be interpreted as an indirect challenge to one person, one vote, “a corner stone of American democracy”; Adam Cohen, “Question for Judge Alito: What about One Person One Vote?” New York Times, January 3, 2006; see also the New York Times editorial (New York Times, January 8, 2006). Interestingly, some, if not all, who defend Alito do not defend him by criticizing the idea of one person, one vote but by pointing out that Alito did not really challenge this idea in his ruling (see, e.g., http://www.professorbainbridge.com/2006/01/what the ny tim.html; accessed March 15, 2006). For the perception of democracy and meritocracy in East Asian countries and the rest of the world, see Doh Chull Shin’s contribution in this volume (Ch. 9). For a detailed discussion, see Section 7, Ch. 3, of Bai, op. cit. See Rawls 1971, op. cit., pp. 75–83. See Section 7, Ch. 3, of Bai, op. cit., for a more detailed discussion. Rawls 1999a.

3 Confucian Meritocracy for Contemporary China Ruiping Fan

I. INTRODUCTION

Confucian moral and political thought concentrates on the cultivation of virtue (xiushen) by individuals and the rule of virtue (dezhi) in government.1 It emphasizes that every individual learn the virtues (such as xiao, ren, yi, zhi, xin, zhong, and he) by observing rituals (li) (i.e., a series of familial and social norms, ceremonies and patterns) affirmed by the tradition.2 In this tradition, only virtuous individuals deserve to be selected as rulers, and they will rule the people through rituals as well as other virtuous means, using coercion or punishment only as a last resort. In the Confucian view, rulers, as individuals, should strive to become outstanding exemplars of the good life for the people to follow. Government must be appropriately institutionalized to formulate proper policies and conduct suitable administrations to promote people’s well-being. Accordingly, although the Confucian view of government can fit into the formal definition of political meritocracy that this book generally adopts – namely, a government by those with aboveaverage ability or virtue along with a selection mechanism designed to choose them – it also goes deeply beyond it. A good Confucian polity inevitably involves substantive Confucian moral and political norms that provide specific guidance as to how rulers should rule. Without engaging such norms, it is impossible to offer an adequate account of Confucian meritocracy, because they are at least needed to inform what “merit” is precisely for a Confucian meritocracy. Such norms, for this book’s concern with sorting out various political arrangements for legitimate legislature and governance, are also needed to distinguish the Confucian form of meritocracy from other forms, such as liberal meritocracy,3 because they are undeniably different. 88

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As I see it, a complete Confucian account of political meritocracy, for it to be applied to contemporary China,4 must explicitly address the three following questions: 1. What kind of persons are qualified to lead society (in short, who is qualified to lead)? 2. What are the proper ways of selecting leaders (in short, how to select leaders)? 3. How should leaders lead society (in short, how to lead)? Recent works on Confucian meritocracy, especially those by Daniel A. Bell, Tongdong Bai, and Joseph Chan, have focused on questions 1 and 2. They attempt to draw on Confucian resources to establish useful standards and discover effective mechanisms to select intelligent and virtuous leaders and improve liberal democracy without engaging question 3. It seems that they do not want to deal explicitly with question 3 because they fail to see the necessity of distinguishing Confucian meritocracy from liberal meritocracy.5 I agree that questions 1 and 2 are important. But in this chapter, I contend that a proper account of Confucian meritocracy must address question 3 because it involves the fundamental Confucian political substance not covered in questions 1 and 2. I argue that to reconstruct Confucian meritocracy for contemporary China, it is both conceptually fundamental and practically significant to draw on serious Confucian thoughts on question 3. In this chapter, Sections II and III indicate why question 3 is both conceptually and practically important for Confucian meritocracy for the future of China. Section IV discusses the problems of the liberal meritocracy in its current form of Western liberal democracy and of the traditional Confucian meritocracy in its Chinese minben polity. After explicating why I suspect that the meritocratic suggestions made by Bell, Bai, and Chan, based on their answers to questions 1 and 2, cannot genuinely solve these problems, in Section V, I outline and defend a reconstructionist Confucian meritocracy by drawing on a Confucian account of question 3 – namely, that a substantive Confucian view of human well-being must be written into the Chinese constitution to direct legislation and governance, although this reconstruction does not deny the benefit of establishing a democracy-andmeritocracy–balanced legislature proposed by Bell, Bai and Chan. In Section VI, I disclose the classical Confucian resources to show how an essential component of human well-being consists in developing and maintaining an appropriate family-based and family-oriented way

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of life. Then I argue, in Section VII, why Jiang Qing’s proposal of Confucian constitution is a more complete and adequate account of Confucian meritocracy than others. The final section offers concluding remarks. II. QUESTION 3 IS CONCEPTUALLY FUNDAMENTAL

To begin, an account provided for question 3 about how leaders should lead society will contain essential standards for answering questions 1 and 2 (about who is qualified to lead and how leaders should be selected). For example, when Confucius teaches that leaders should normally lead by virtues and rituals rather than by edicts and punishments (Analects 2.3), it implies that only virtuous persons are qualified to be leaders (because nonvirtuous persons are, by definition, unable to lead by virtue) and that selection mechanisms should be designed in ways in which virtuous persons can be distinguished from nonvirtuous persons. On the other hand, it is unclear whether answers to the questions about who is qualified to rule and how to select such people provide essential instructions regarding how they should rule. For example, suppose we state that only virtuous persons are qualified to be rulers. Does this also imply that they, if selected, should lead by virtues and rituals rather than by edicts and punishments? The answer is at least indefinite because relevant information is not offered. Moreover, one will need a serious response to question 3 to provide effective guidance to rulers and officials as to how they should rule, including what laws and policies should be formulated and which administrative instruments should be adopted in their governance. For example, current Chinese leaders are confused about China’s demographic issue: is it in the best interests of the people to allow each family to have an average of two children while the per capita GDP growth rate will be somewhat lower than it is at present, or is it in their best interest to limit every family to having only one child, accompanied by a high GDP growth rate, as is the case in China at present? To answer a question like this, Chinese leaders must appeal to a substantive view of question 3 (such as that offered by Confucianism) beyond responses to questions 1 and 2. Finally, only a complete and coherent answer to question 3 (but not questions 1 and 2) will disclose the end at which government should aim and describe how government should appropriately be institutionalized to pursue that end. From Confucian resources, it is

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clear that government should govern by aiming at improving people’s well-being. Confucianism contains a substantive view of people’s wellbeing (in which a family-oriented way of life is a crucial element, see Section VI)6 and holds that the form of government must be meritocratic in pursuing this end. Accordingly, given their different answers to question 3, Confucian meritocratic institutionalization will definitely differ from liberal meritocratic institutionalization. This is to say, an account of question 3 will necessarily provide Confucian fundamental political principles for constructing and characterizing Confucian meritocracy and will inevitably affect and shape answers to questions 1 and 2 (see Section VII). III. QUESTION 3 IS PRACTICALLY IMPORTANT

An account of question 3 is, in addition, as practically important as accounts of questions 1 and 2, if not more so. First, politicians, governors, and officials already exist in society, regardless of whether they are virtuous or have been selected through proper mechanisms. An account of how they should govern society (including what necessary moral, legal, and institutional constraints should be put on them) can provide guidance to improve their governance. Meritocratic politics cannot be effective if we only care about how to set up new methods to secure meritorious leaders but do not care about how to improve the performance of current leaders. Moreover, it is impossible to find perfectly meritorious leaders and officials who will always lead people in virtuous and wise ways, no matter what methods we use. Because there are rarely perfectly virtuous persons, meritorious leaders and officials would at best be only generally, but not perfectly, virtuous. In fact, even genuinely meritorious leaders will sometimes be seduced into making incorrect decisions, corrupting their powers, and conducting nonvirtuous and even vicious actions that damage the people’s well-being.7 Accordingly, moral, legal, and institutional constraints and checks and balances are always necessary to regulate leaders and prevent them from carrying out poor decisions or harmful actions. Such constraints, checks, and balances can reasonably be developed in light of a detailed account of how leaders should lead. Finally, there could even be occasions in which generally virtuous rulers change to nonvirtuous leaders or even vicious dictators. Thus, it is absolutely necessary to impose moral, legal, and institutional curbs on them to prevent political disasters – disasters that only powerful rulers, not ordinary people,

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can generate. Accordingly, a crucial issue is what should serve as the foundational considerations for making such constraints and providing guidance for leadership. Here Confucian meritocracy may hold genuine disagreements with the dominant form of liberal meritocracy, and such disagreements may not be easily reconciled. The first disagreement is about the nature and content of individual rights. Confucians may accept a notion of rights as necessary for guiding and limiting legislation and governance, but they may not accept a robust individualist conception of rights. As Joseph Chan has argued, Confucians can propose and accept a list of rights as a fallback apparatus to protect important human interests in ren or humanity when the virtues fail to obtain or people’s personal relationships break down.8 The logic of this fallback notion indicates that on the Confucian view, virtues are conceptually more fundamental than rights for pursuing human well-being. A list of Confucian rights must be worked out in light of virtue considerations and will possess essential differences from the list of liberal individualist rights.9 Nevertheless, such a Confucian list of rights, if properly worked out, must be written into the Chinese constitution, serve as a basis for the Confucian rule of law, and impose necessary constraints on leaders and officials to protect legitimate individual interests. This is to say, contemporary Confucian scholars should be willing to learn from and dialogue with Western liberal scholars regarding individual rights, although they hold different foundational views. Confucian scholars must establish Confucian rights and arrange necessary constitutional checks and balances of governmental power to prevent any possible totalitarian political system in which the state recognizes no limits to its authority and strives to regulate every aspect of public and private life wherever feasible. The second disagreement may be more dramatic. Liberalism refrains from offering a “thick” account of people’s well-being to inform a relevant political structure and guide leaders to pursue it; instead, it requires that the state ensure “for all citizens equal opportunity to advance any conception of the good they freely affirm” and that “the state is not to do anything intended to favor or promote any particular comprehensive doctrine rather than another, or to give greater assistance to those who pursue it.”10 Some liberal scholars argue against any cultural or ethical role that the state should play. From their view, perfectionist works (to provide persuasions or incentives to guide citizens away from trivial and harmful activities and toward ones that are genuinely worthwhile) should all be left to civil society.11 Of course, such a robust version of

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liberal neutrality is not held by all liberals. Liberals also do not support any populist (nonliberal) belief that the ends and values of all individuals and activities deserve equal respect. Nevertheless, liberalism insists on the fundamental individualist concern of the priority of individual liberty over the good way of life in society. Liberal elitists hope that, under the conditions of maximum civil and political liberties as well as fair equality of opportunity ensured by liberal democracy, genuinely worthwhile ways of living will gain popular support and trivial and harmful ones will lose out. Unfortunately, consequences seem not so optimistic. It appears that the governance in contemporary Western liberal democracy has more and more been led not by liberal elitist rational autonomy but by a majority people’s shortsighted selfish desires, wishes, and preferences that are ultimately to the detriment of their well-being (see Section IV). In contrast, Confucianism provides a substantive account of people’s well-being and argues that the end of government is to promote people’s well-being. Apart from this vital element, Confucian tradition also emphasizes that leaders should lead society in ways in which they can promote people’s well-being or long-term interests, even if such ways do not conform with people’s occurrent desires, wishes, or preferences. In the next section, I address the defect of a traditional Chinese minben model that has been developed based on this view. Now it is necessary to note that the essential features of this Confucian meritocratic view are still shared by contemporary Chinese people and that is in part why I think a reconstructionist Confucian meritocracy can be proposed to apply to contemporary China. As a series of careful research made by late political scientist Shi Tianjian shows, the contemporary Chinese understanding of “democracy” (minzhu) has been significantly influenced by the Confucian doctrine of minben (i.e., that the people alone are the basis of the state), which is different from that of liberal democracy (i.e., that the people alone are the master of the state). In particular, whereas liberal democracy emphasizes procedural arrangements, the Chinese tend to trust qualified elites by reason of their superior knowledge and virtue; liberal democracy insists on the fair election of a government, but the Chinese care more about the substance and outcomes of its policies; and finally, liberal democracy claims a right to political participation for everyone, whereas the Chinese give political leaders greater freedom to deviate from public opinion when making policy for promoting the people’s long-term interests.12

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IV. PROBLEMS WITH EACH SIDE

Both the liberal meritocracy in its current form of liberal democracy (or democratic meritocracy) and the traditional Confucian meritocracy in its Chinese minben polity have their respective problems. On the Western side, many have noted that following a majority people’s desires, wishes, and preferences may not lead to their well-being. However, this problem is difficult to overcome in contemporary liberal democracy. As many have shown,13 in the liberal democratic institution of “one person, one vote,” politicians often get elected by pandering to the people’s short-term interests, to the detriment of their long-term interests or well-being. Of course, liberal meritocracy never requires politicians to govern society by directly following a majority people’s desires, wishes, or preferences regardless of their long-term interests. Instead, it ideally requires politicians to operate on the basis of elaborate forms of process, public reasons, and evidence and even hold only indirect forms of accountability to the public in the political process. Nevertheless, contemporary Western political ethos is marked by a significantly egalitarian, populist and antielitist atmosphere. Thus, politicians and officials, in making their public decisions, have been put under immense pressure from a majority people’s immediate passions and interests. This seems to be the case not only for those politicians directly elected by the people but also for those (meritorious) officials appointed in terms of their merits, such as the American Justices and the U.S. Federal Reserve (Fed) members. For example, the Fed lowered the federal funds rate target from 6.5 percent in 2000 to 1 percent in 2003 through thirteen rate cuts. Such low rates made mortgage lending and borrowing appear riskless and encouraged the house-price bubble in the United States that eventually led to the American financial crisis in 2008. In reflecting on this monetary policy, Alan Greenspan, the former meritorious chairman of the Fed, points out: “no central bank could have terminated the asset price boom because, had it done so, the economy would have been engulfed in a recession that the public in a democracy would not stand for.”14 In short, in a contemporary liberal democratic state, politicians and officials have often been pressed to follow the “public opinion” of a majority people who are often not only shortsighted but also in low tastes.15 The Chinese minben model has the opposite kind of problem. Here powerful leaders could successfully propose and implement policies according to their understandings of people’s well-being or long-term

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interests, even if their understandings squarely conflict with the people’s own desires, wishes, and preferences. Such leaders could sometimes make extremely bad decisions and cause horrible social disasters. Chinese dynastical history aside, prominent recent examples are also at hand: the Great Leap Forward movement in the late 1950s and the Cultural Revolution in 1966–76. Even the One Child Policy implemented in mainland China since 1980s can provide a similar example. Although the policy was fiercely opposed by most people in its early stages, the Chinese leaders wanted to defend it as designed to cause short-term pain for long-term gain. However, ever-increasing evidence shows that under this policy, China is rapidly becoming an aging society before becoming rich, accompanied with a series of severe social and ethical problems (including insufficient young labor, lack of elderly care facilities, and psychological problems of only children). The irreversible detrimental effects of this policy for the long run have now become obvious. In short, in the Chinese minben model, it seems that politicians are too powerful to be controlled by the people’s perspective. V. A RECONSTRUCTIONIST CONFUCIAN MERITOCRACY FOR CHINA

Several Confucian-inspired scholars, especially Daniel Bell, Tongdong Bai, and Joseph Chan, have proposed to improve meritocratic rule within a liberal democratic political system by establishing an additional meritocratic parliamentary chamber (in addition to the democratic chamber) to improve contemporary Western liberal democracy as well as for its better application to China. They argue that the members of this additional chamber should not be elected through the one-person, one-vote popular will but selected for their merits through competitive examinations (Daniel Bell) or other types of evaluation (Joseph Chan and Tongdong Bai). They hope, through the balance of this “House of Virtue and Talent” over the house of directly elected members in the parliament, the liberal democratic order can be improved (rather than dramatically changed) to better attend to both democratic and meritocratic values and thus to formulate adequate legal and political decisions to take care of the interests of everyone, including nonvoters and future generations.16 I agree this is an improvement. Such a balance is better than none in relieving some members of the parliament from the direct pressure of

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the voters to subject to their short-term interests. However, I suspect that this proposal cannot sufficiently handle the aforementioned problem of contemporary liberal democracy because, as I see it, its difficulty is not so much that it cannot secure intelligent and knowledgeable politicians and officials but is rather that even after it obtains such leaders, its problem roughly remains. Just like dominant liberal democratic theories (such as that of John Rawls), their proposal fails to offer a substantive account of people’s well-being going beyond the usual liberal social justice concerns to direct its legislation and politicians’ activities. Although the meritocrats from this proposal will not be swayed by votes to side with people’s apparently short-term interests, they will have no legitimate public resources transcending or amending liberal social justice principles to direct them to promote people’s long-term interests. Consequently, as legislators or executive officials, they can only exercise some “neutral” liberal virtues and discharge their political energies in pursuing the liberal social justice commitments to equal civil liberties and rights, fair equality of opportunity, and the difference principle as argued by the liberal elites (such as Rawls).17 In this case, I am afraid that the fate of their proposal cannot be as positive as they expect, because the problem of liberal democracy cannot be solved by following these principles, even if it is not directly caused by them. Thus, even if their proposal can be implemented in a Western liberal democratic state, the state may still be one in which an elitist liberalism shows itself in name but a populist liberalism exists in actuality: liberal individual independence and diversity gradually change to a decadent ethical relativism that is guaranteed by equal “civil” and political rights, along with ever-soaring, but eventually unfundable and unsustainable welfare costs, budget deficits, and national debt for the sake of “social justice.” Alternatively, there may well be increasingly polarized politics and confrontation between those liberals supporting egalitarian liberalism and those supporting libertarian liberalism, with both supporting equal individual liberties in social and political matters. I cannot be certain of these conclusions, because my knowledge and experience of the West are limited. But I am more confident that their proposal, if not attached with an adequate Confucian view of people’s well-being to offer constitutional guidance and limitation, will not work well for Chinese politics. Given the minben tradition, the Chinese (including most elitists who would serve in the meritocratic chamber according to the three scholars’ proposals), compared with Westerners, are easier for a charismatic leader (such as Mao) to manipulate

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into changing their opinions and following the leader, often accepting damaging policies in the pursuit of well-being or long-term interests. Today’s Chinese, although different in many other ways from Mao’s era after the thirty years’ reforms, remain the same in this respect. Anyone who thinks differently should carefully reflect on the recent political movement of “singing revolutionary songs and fighting organized crime” (changhong dahei) initiated by Bo Xilai, a member of Chinese Communist Party Central Committee Political Bureau and party chief of Chongqing municipality. Although Bo was recently expelled, the movement he successfully launched was precisely like “a little Cultural Revolution” mobilized through a populist modern ideology of “becoming rich equally” (gongtong fuyu) in a new stage of China’s development. I should add that this is primarily not an issue of a leader’s intention. For example, I do not think Mao introduced the Cultural Revolution or the Great Leap Forward with bad intentions. Rather, I think it was more an issue being tempted by glamorous modern ideologies. Mao wanted to promote the people’s well-being or long-term interests according to his Maoist-Marxist egalitarian ideology, and he could successfully inspire hundreds of millions of Chinese (and similarly “persuade” the Chinese elitists around him and throughout the country) to follow him in those eventually disastrous causes.18 In the case of China’s one-child policy, most Chinese have now acquiesced in (and some have willingly accepted) this demanding requirement, which was initially viewed as detestable. This is to say, in modern China, a powerful leader could readily create a dictatorship through an emotion-bullying ideology in the name of the people’s well-being or long-term interests, despite the availability of elites or whether the people do not initially agree with a given policy. Accordingly, what is urgently needed in contemporary China, apart from necessary institutional reforms and arrangements, is a well-established substantive view of people’s well-being that can be used against the attraction of specious modern ideologies. Accordingly, without denying the usefulness of a balance between a chamber of the people and a meritocratic chamber as proposed by Bell, Bai, and Chan, I argue that a substantive view of people’s wellbeing is also needed for an adequate account of political meritocracy. It should be written into the constitution of a country to guide its legislation and political activities. If such a substantive view could be worked out in the Western case,19 it could direct politics away from the pressure of a rising populist culture that is generally deconstructionist,

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relativist, and in favor of ever-increasing state welfare. In the Chinese case, such a substantive view could help China regain a lost culturesensitive moral politics for the government to constrain its authority (especially the authority of powerful leaders) and properly reorient China’s development, preventing charismatic leaders from stirring and manipulating the people through alluring modern ideologies in the name of the people’s well-being or long-term interests. In this regard, a list of Confucian constitutional rights (as a fallback apparatus) and the rule of law are certainly helpful but not sufficient. Such rights and laws can prohibit politicians or governors from coercing people to support certain policies that obviously violate such rights or laws but cannot prevent them from manipulating the people to accept a policy (such as the one-child policy or Bo Xilai’s aforementioned movement) that is apparently but not actually beneficial to their long-term interests. A substantive view of people’s well-being (in addition to a list of civil and political rights) is needed to provide specific instructions and limitations to legislators and officials regarding what they could and could not do in pursuing people’s well-being or long-term interests. This is to say, to deal effectively with the respective political problems in the contemporary West and China, a more adequate account of political meritocracy than the proposals of Bell, Bai, and Chan is needed at least to affirm and balance the three types of authority: the leaders’ view, the people’s view, and a well-established substantive view of the people’s well-being. By the last term, I mean those moral and political norms, values, or principles that have been entrenched in the mainstream culture of a people’s history as well as its political culture regarding how rulers should properly rule, that have been indispensable to the people’s understanding of human nature and human flourishing, and that have been proved through historical events and tests to be essential to human well-being or long-term interests. Of course, what such norms, values, or principles precisely are for a country or people will be controversial. But this should not become an all-ornothing issue. We do not have to require a complete, all-encompassing list for proper political meritocracy. All we need to do, at least for the Chinese case, is to stipulate some of them as constitutional essentials to contribute to restraining powerful politicians from inciting people through specious modern ideologies, like those being used in the Chinese communist political movements, to damage their well-being. In short, although the traditional Chinese minben model has given more weight to the authority of leaders’ views and modern liberal

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democracy, by contrast, to the authority of the people’s view, both have downplayed the importance of the authority of a well-established substantive view of the people’s well-being. In the Chinese case, such a view will inevitably be Confucian, given Confucianism’s well-established cultural status in China.20 Some might contend that my proposal is similar to the traditional minben model, in which the Confucian account of people’s well-being was always present yet has failed to keep the Chinese form of dictatorship from arising on occasion. In response, I would point out that my proposal is targeted not at traditional China but at modern China, the political problems of which have been, or still are, triggered by specious modern ideologies. This proposal includes an explicitly articulated new constitution affirming a well-established substantive view of people’s well-being and a properly balanced parliament (see Section VII) that should make a real difference compared with the traditional minben model. A more severe critique might be that my proposal, which includes stipulation of a substantive Confucian view of people’s well-being in the constitution, is unjustifiable in modern Chinese pluralist circumstances because it might not garner the consent of non-Confucians. This critique requires a long answer, but I can offer only a few reasons, briefly outlined, here. First, if it is true that, as liberals argue, political legitimacy must be rooted in people’s consent if it is not to threaten individual freedom, such consent may properly be understood only as a tacit or hypothetical consent that defines limits for actual consent or contract. The issue is not whether the individuals who live in a political order have actually agreed to its terms but whether its terms can reasonably be represented as the object of agreement between them.21 That is, the focus of political justification must be on the reasons people might have for exercising their will in one way rather than another. In the Chinese case, given the primary features of its mainstream Confucian culture as well as its essential historical and social differences from the diverse West (with its bloody religious wars, the Reformation, and the Enlightenment, none of which played a part in Chinese history), it is more plausible to justify a constitution influenced by Confucianism than by liberal neutrality. Moreover, although intolerance is inarguably wrong, there is a huge difference between intolerance and neutrality. Tolerance may well mean that government should not forcibly prohibit certain activities that are not worthwhile from a mainstream ethical perspective, but it does not mean that government should not provide educational

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persuasion or financial incentives to support certain worthwhile activities or ways of life, such as a family-based and family-oriented way of life (as discussed in the next section). A Confucian constitution may justify offering such persuasion and incentives, rather than prohibitions. Furthermore, a Chinese constitution including a primarily Confucian view of human well-being offers favor not only to Confucian believers but to non-Confucians as well. It is arguable that, compared with liberal neutrality, such a Confucian view, given its family-friendly character of supporting normal, loving, and caring families, will be helpful to most people, even if they are non-Confucians. Children and elderly persons at the very least will benefit significantly from such a view and relevant policy. Finally, a Confucian view of human well-being for Chinese politics does not need to include all or even most substantive Confucian values, but only those moral and political norms that have been proved through historical events and the test of time to be essential to human well-being and long-term interests. This should offer practical reasons for non-Confucians to support a reconstructionist Confucian constitution. VI. A CONFUCIAN CONSTITUTIONAL ESSENTIAL FOR PEOPLE’S WELL-BEING

In this section, I discuss one Confucian norm as an illustration of how a new Chinese constitution could be reconstructed by integrating a substantive Confucian view of people’s well-being into a Confucian meritocracy for contemporary China. This norm is certainly not the only one that could be reconstructed from Confucian ethical and political resources for this purpose, but it is a central one, in my view. That is, an essential component of human well-being consists in developing and maintaining an appropriate family-based and family-oriented way of life, which has been sustained by Confucian virtues and rituals. This way of life is not only family-based in the sense that Confucian society is composed of the family as the primary and permanent human community; it is also family-oriented in the sense that the telos of Confucian society is to promote the integrity, continuity, and prosperity of the family.22 The purpose of this section is not to persuade Western readers to accept the superiority of this Confucian familist way of life. It is only to expose (1) how this way of life differs from individualist lifestyles under modern Western liberal democracy and (2) how this way of life has been taken for granted by Confucians in Chinese culture

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and history. Accordingly, it is necessary first to note that the value of such a way of life has been significantly depreciated, if not rejected right away, by some contemporary liberal democratic scholars. The West has been experiencing a cultural transformation regarding the family that Confucianism cannot appreciate in light of its family-centered moral concerns. In contrast to Confucian accounts that conceive an authentic human lifeworld nested in the moral fabric of the family, contemporary liberal accounts of humans are robustly individualistic, anonymous, and egalitarian. For example, although Rawls acknowledges the strong heuristic power of engaging the family with regard to intergenerational savings because families tend to look to and often save for at least one generation beyond themselves,23 he also recognizes that the family presents a problem for his view of “fair equality of opportunity.” Families do not save for future generations generally but focus on their own children, which undermines the commitment of the social-democratic state that Rawls’s theory of justice upholds to achieve “fair equality of opportunity.” Although in his account of social justice Rawls does not think it urgent to abolish the family, he does admit that the liberal requirement of equal opportunity leans in this direction.24 Indeed, contemporary liberal accounts in general and Rawls’s theory of justice in particular have generally regarded the family with suspicion – not only because of its traditional patriarchal character but also because of its anti-individualist, nonegalitarian character. In any case, they would never take the family as an indispensable, intrinsic value for human well-being as Confucians. For Confucians, a formal sense of equality (that like situations should be treated alike) is certainly right and a benevolent government offering help to families in difficulty is admirable, but they would not support leveling the integrity or stability of the family to promote any substantive sense of equality (such as Rawls’s “fair equality of opportunity”), given that the family stands in the central place of their lifeworld.25 With the influence of liberal egalitarian ideology, a series of socialdemocratic entitlements have been created in Western liberal democracies in which the family is no longer appreciated and protected in governance for preserving individuals’ well-being or their longterm interests. Instead, primary responsibility for individual well-being is transferred from families to the state, thus undermining, among other things, the moral virtue, authority, and function of the family. The individualistic character of the dominant post-Enlightenment

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morality, along with the thick web of individualist welfare support, encourages and nurtures a form of life that accents individual independence and is unfriendly to traditional families. The result is, as Francis Fukuyama shows in the American case, “the unanticipated consequences of welfare programs like Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), which encouraged out-of-wedlock births and contributed to the culture of poverty.”26 The results have been dramatic. In 1950, only 4% of children were born outside of traditional marriages in the United States; by 1970, the percentage had risen to 10.8%. By 1980, it was 18% in the United States, 12% in the United Kingdom, and 12% in Germany. However, by 2000, the number had risen to 34% in the United States, 39.5% in the United Kingdom, and 23.4% in Germany. By 2009, the numbers were 41% in the United States, 46.3% in the United Kingdom, 32.7% in Germany, and 53% in Sweden. It should be noted that there are significant differences in the United States tied to race. Among whites, the out-of-wedlock birth rate in 2009 was 36%; among American Indian or Alaskan Natives, 65.4%; and among blacks, 72.3%; among Asians, it was only 17.2%.27 In contrast, Confucian tradition has long recognized that the family is fundamentally important for authentic human life and flourishing; it has always emphasized that government must formulate proper policy and conduct suitable administration to protect and promote people’s family-oriented way of life to pursue their well-being, and never govern in a manner that could damage this way of life. There have been rich and multiple reasons provided to advocate this way of life and uphold appropriate governance to maintain it. In the remainder of this section, I briefly offer relevant Confucian convictions and ideas in this regard based on the pre-Qin Confucian classics. I do so by sorting out religious, metaphysical, moral, economic, legal, and political considerations to lay out Confucian thought for contemporary readers, although this is not the way original Confucian scholarly classification articulated Confucian central concerns and commitments. In religious terms, classical Confucians believe that their ancestors’ spirits will only accept sacrifices provided by their descendants. If ancestors have no descendants to offer sacrifices, their souls will perish because they cannot accept sacrifices from others.28 This is why Mencius holds that having no heir is the most serious among the three ways of being an unfilial son, so that Shun, an ancient sage, married without telling his father for fear of not having an heir.29 For ancient Chinese, one’s fundamental energy – de (virtue?) – is a sacred power that one

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acquires from Heaven (tian) by performing sacrificial rituals to one’s ancestors.30 If a family accumulates de, its descendants will benefit; if a family accumulates evil, its descendants will suffer (Yijing: KunWenyan). Even today, numerous Chinese believe that the same family name carries the same de (tongxing tongde) (i.e., a whole-family-shared power that contributes to the flourishing of the family).31 For them, if the family dissolves, the real human disappears (jiapo renwang). Metaphysically, it has become the conviction of many Confucians that the structure of the family reflects the deep structure of the universe. As is well known, after Confucius (551–479 b.c.e.), scholars in the former Han dynasty (c. second century b.c.e.) formed a Confucian metaphysics of yin and yang – two fundamental forces of the universe – to understand the Dao of Heaven and explain the structure and dynamic of myriad things (including humans) in the universe. Because the Dao of Heaven is the unity of yin and yang, the way of humans is the bonds of man and women, parent and child, and elderly and young. Hence, from this Confucian metaphysics, an authentic human life as well as its flourishing can only be fulfilled through the family-oriented way of life, and the family is a permanent pattern or institution of the universe that reflects the Dao of Heaven.32 It is also well known that the fundamental Confucian moral principle and virtue of ren requires both universal and differentiated love, as is explicitly described in the Analects. One should love all humans (universally), but one should also love one’s family members more than other humans (differentially or nonegalitarianly). This is not because one’s family members are more virtuous or otherwise more valuable than other people. It is simply because in the Confucian lifeworld, one should bear more moral responsibility to respect and take care of one’s family members than others. “He who does not love his parents but loves others is called a rebel against virtue; he who does not revere his parents but reveres others is called a rebel against ritual.”33 For Confucius, it is through the learning and observing of various Confucian rituals (li) that such universal but differentiated virtuous love becomes realizable34 – by performing the rituals, one comes to grasp the ways in which one can properly respect one’s parents, look after one’s siblings, take care of one’s friends and neighbors, and offer, if one can, generous assistance to strangers. Importantly, one’s familial obligations are more primary than political obligations. One must take care of one’s family first, then, if one has extra energy to spare, one can learn classics and participate in politics.35 Indeed, Confucius followed the tradition and

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held that “by being a good son and friendly to his brothers a man can exert an influence upon government; and in so doing a man is, in fact, already taking part in government.”36 The Analects 14:42 offers an order of priority that Confucius sets forth regarding moral cultivation: one first cultivates oneself and thereby achieves reverence (for Heaven and human beings generally); then one cultivates oneself and thereby brings peace and security to one’s family; and then one cultivates oneself and thereby brings peace and security to all the people. This last task is so demanding that even ancient sages Yao and Shun were not totally successful at it.37 Finally, Confucius emphasizes a crucial function that politicians and officials must play in virtue cultivation, promoting upright character, and producing the good in society: as he sees it, unless those in high station pursue the good, the common people will not become good.38 On the basis of the importance of the well-field system that was adopted at least in some areas in early Zhou dynasty, one might see Confucian economic thought as emphasizing public ownership as well as egalitarian distribution. However, taken as a whole, Confucian economic thought is, primarily, privately family-oriented, market friendly, and nonegalitarian. First, according to the record of the Chunqiu, in Xuangong 15 (594 b.c.e.) Confucius’s home state of Lu started to require from each family a tenth of the produce of its total land, regardless of whether the land was public or private in name (chu shui mu), thus to have the Chinese family-based private land system launched.39 This change happened forty-three years before the birth of Confucius, and he, throughout his life, never said anything indicating he objected to it. Instead, what he and his disciples insisted was that the Duke of Lu should levy a tax of 10 percent of a family’s income, but no more.40 The famous story in which Confucius comments that “a tyrant is worse than a tiger” informs the similar Confucian attitude.41 Although Mencius did propose making land distribution according to the spirit of the wellfield design, his focus was, I think, on securing reliable family property (heng chan) for the people.42 And he never stated that the purchase or sale of such property among the people should be prohibited.43 Instead, Mencius stressed the necessity of a division of labor, the unequal quality of goods, and the inevitability of the market mechanism and argued that they should all be accepted in society to promote people’s well-being.44 For him, “a government of ren . . . must make taxes and levies light” so that resources will be left to families to take care of their members.45 It is not that government should not offer economic assistance to the

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most unfortunate members of society but that most unfortunate members should not be identified simply in terms of income and wealth as in Rawls’ theory. Instead, Confucians always argue that those without complete families (such as old men without wives, old women with husbands, old people without children, and young children without parents) or who have disabilities should receive welfare support from government.46 Government should never formulate any welfare policy to the effect that it would injure the integrity or function of the family. Although Confucius objects to governmental appeal to force or punishment (rather than virtue and ritual) as a major instrument to govern society,47 the Confucian rule of virtue does not exclude the rule of law. Confucians recognize that it is necessary and beneficial to Confucian society for everyone to be placed under the constraint of law. What seems outrageous to the liberal egalitarian moral sentiments of the West is that Confucian legislation resolutely gives priority to family love over love for anonymous others. A few classical arguments made by Confucius in the Analects 13:18 and Mencius in the Mencius 5A:3 and 7A:35 have established foundational considerations for Confucian jurisprudence. A debate has taken place in modern-day China regarding whether the Confucian family-oriented virtues (such as xiao, filial piety) are the roots of morality or the sources of corruption.48 Evidently, the corruption that characterizes contemporary China is not one that derives from the moral favoritism affirmed by Confucius and Mencius for the status and significance of the family, because this Confucian familist favoritism is set within the moral and legal constraints of a life of virtue. As I see it, the three cases discussed by Confucius and Mencius have suggested illuminating points: one should be prohibited from assisting or joining a family member to commit a criminal act, such as to abet one’s father in stealing; one should be prohibited from using one’s power to appoint a family member to hold an actual political position in charge of affairs that go beyond the command of that family member’s talents and abilities; and one should be prohibited from using one’s power to interfere with legal procedures to benefit a family member at stake. In short, Confucians would argue that contemporary Chinese law should restore the Confucian recognition of the moral status of the family. At least, many ways in various legal systems that exempt family members from testifying against each other must be reestablished. Confucian political principle is not equality. It is not a Confucian orientation that individuals should be treated as equals. In today’s

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philosophical terminology, Confucianism would contend that it is respect, not equality, that is in itself an intrinsic value, because genuine Confucian moral concern is not comparative but substantive: what ultimately counts is not how people’s lives compare with the lives of others (which seems to be the major concern of any egalitarianism), but is whether they have good lives.49 Indeed, Confucianism emphasizes treating every human being with reverence or respect (jing).50 This is because, in the Confucian faith, mankind is the noblest of all creatures in different natures produced by Heaven and Earth.51 But the Confucian principle of respect also emphasizes that such respect should be suitable for individuals’ distinct relationships, characters, capacities, and interests for facilitating their well-being. That is, different subjects deserve different types of respect manifested in different ritual practices. Specially, as Confucius teaches, in treating gods and spirits, one should show reverence for them while keeping one’s distance from them.52 The way of serving one’s parents with reverence is that when one remonstrates with them, one must do so in a gentle way; if one sees that they are not inclined to follow one’s advice, one should nonetheless remain reverent toward them.53 In addition, a man must revere his wife and children because his wife is the hostess of the sacrificial ritual to his ancestors and his children the descendants of his ancestors.54 Finally, toward strangers in the world, one should cultivate one’s virtue and attempt to bring peace and security to all of them. This task, as already mentioned, is so demanding that even ancient sages Yao and Shun were not totally successful in achieving it.55 Evidently, such Confucian reverence for all humans does not imply an entitlement for all individuals to have equal political participation. Whether political opportunities offered to individuals through entitlements or rights are suitable and beneficial to their lives depends on what opportunities suit their capacities, interests, and potentials. A Confucian meritocratic constitutional order should not consist only or dominantly in a one person one vote system because that would impose unsuitable burden on many individuals who primarily concentrate on their familial lives rather than political careers or campaigns; they have neither interest in nor capacity for such political involvement. Indeed, if a meritocratic politics (such as that upheld by Confucianism) ideally requires at least junzi – virtuously and intellectually superior persons – to join in politics to serve people, Confucianism recognizes that many individuals are not interested in learning to become junzi56 because that implies demanding cultivation of virtue, stringent self-discipline,

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and supererogation. To use the jargon of rights to express this circumstance, we could say that most individuals should have a right to be left alone. This suggests that a Confucian meritocratic constitutional order should ideally be designed in ways in which individuals of different virtue, capacity, and interest should have different opportunities to join in Confucian politics for the well-being of the people. VII. INSTITUTIONAL IMPLICATIONS

To take such a Confucian constitution seriously, a Confucian meritocratic political order would be represented much better by a tricameral parliament, as proposed by Jiang Qing,57 rather than a bicameral legislature recommended by Bell, Bai, and Chan. From Jiang’s view, the fundamental principles of the Confucian way, such as the Confucian familist way of life we have just considered, should be written into the Confucian constitution to provide basic guidance for politics. Confucian politics must set up appropriate institutions to implement the good (or well-being) for people. However, “[s]o long as the will of the people is seen as the sole source of legitimacy, politics can never aim at implementing the good”58 because such politics will, among other things, inevitably be poorly structured. As Jiang sees it, the popular legitimacy as emphasized by modern Western liberal democracy is one-sided and incomplete. Confucian tradition indicates that there are three forms of legitimacy (among which the popular legitimacy is only one) that should be represented by a tripartite parliament for a proper Confucian meritocracy: the House of the People (established through universal suffrage and by election through functional constituencies) for popular legitimacy; the House of the Nation (selected by hereditary criteria and assignment, with a direct descendant of Confucius as its leader and its members assigned from different religious representatives, social celebrities, and their descendants) for cultural legitimacy; and the House of Ru (consisting of Confucian scholars versed in the classics appointed through examination and exemplary Confucian figures selected through recommendation) for sacred legitimacy.59 Each form of legitimacy, for Jiang, has its own intrinsic justification, and each contributes in its own way to the work of checks and balances, contributing to the whole as an equilibrist Confucian legislature for the good or well-being of the people in Confucian meritocracy. No doubt, the two proposals between Jiang and others have some ideas in common. First, both recognize the legitimacy of the will of

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the people in Confucian meritocracy and accept giving it a reasonable place at the structural level. Moreover, both see the importance for proper legislation of the role of the elites that should be selected on relevant merits rather than one person, one vote. However, they disagree about what role the substantive Confucian philosophy and morality regarding how rulers should rule ought to play in Confucian meritocratic politics. For Jiang, one should not simply use some generalized Confucian ideas about who is qualified to lead (e.g., “the wise”) and how to choose them (e.g., “competitive examination”) to finish one’s “Confucian” task by proposing a meritocratic house. Instead, one must engage the substantive Confucian view of how leaders should lead to disclose the fundamental Confucian political end, legitimacy, and structure to build adequate Confucian meritocracy. For him, it is the rich and profound Confucian substantive resources that first disclose the end of Confucian meritocracy as pursuing and implementing the good or well-being of people, then determine the three forms of political legitimacy to be balanced for that end, and finally indicate how the three forms should be represented by a tricameral parliament. In contrast, although others sometimes also state that Confucian moral insights should be used positively to shape institutions, legislation, and public policy, they seem only to pay them lip service. As Chenyang Li notes, “Bell’s version of the Confucian ‘rule of the wise’ is based on the reality of the prevailing knowledge-based society of today,” but “has basically dismissed the requirement for virtuous leadership in Confucian political philosophy.”60 This critique seems to apply to Bai and Chan as well. Unlike Jiang, they are reluctant to dig into the depth of the Confucian notion of virtue (de) or reflect on the substance of the Confucian way of life for constructing their accounts of Confucian meritocracy. Like liberals, they are willing to adopt only the “Confucian” views that have been significantly moderated, diluted, or generalized by modern liberal values (such as personal autonomy) but refuse to use any “thick” Confucian concepts that are tied to Confucian religious, metaphysical, and moral truths. Compared with Jiang’s version, it seems that they attempt to build a Confucian meritocracy without relying on a genuine Confucian understanding of merit. What Jiang offers is a complete version of Confucian meritocracy. It is not limited to questions 1 and 2 regarding who is qualified to lead and how to choose those people. It is rather based on a comprehensive Confucian account of question 3 regarding how leaders should lead to lay out an overall picture of the fundamental end, multiple legitimacies,

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and appropriate institutionalization of Confucian meritocracy. Jiang’s proposal of the tricameral parliament demonstrates how the details of his answers to questions 1 and 2 are actually embedded in his serious Confucian considerations around question 3, providing a prominent illustration for the point that an adequate account of Confucian meritocracy cannot be offered without seriously addressing question 3, as I posed in the beginning of this chapter. Only a version of Confucian meritocracy such as Jiang’s can integrate the substantive Confucian view of human well-being (especially its familist way of life) into the constitution as well as implement it through appropriate governmental institutions. Of course Jiang’s version of Confucian meritocracy requires further justification than what he has offered in his book or what I outlined in Section V. However, it is my view that in initiating a plausible meritocratic Chinese constitution by drawing on Confucian resources, innovative and robust ideas like Jiang’s should be encouraged without worrying too much about justification. It is first necessary to offer a genuine Confucian version of meritocracy, in addition to non-Confucian versions, for the Chinese people to consider. For this purpose, Confucian substance should not be sacrificed at the price of a compatibility with certain fashionable modern Western values. It is Jiang’s belief that expedient “justification” for a recast or colonized version of Confucianism cannot establish authentic Confucian meritocracy, nor can it help China tackle its problems. What we need is much more serious Confucian considerations in relation to the particular situation of China as well as its specific culture and history, which differ from those of the West. At the end of the day, a Confucian meritocracy can only be justified through a well-lived Confucian way of life. VIII. CONCLUDING REMARKS

In this chapter, I have argued that any account of Confucian meritocracy cannot avoid engaging the substance of what a good Confucian polity looks like in practice. It contends that Confucian meritocracy must include a substantive Confucian view of human well-being to serve as constitutional guidance for political governance as well as to direct how government should appropriately be institutionalized to pursue that end. The chapter has explored why this Confucian substance is particularly important for contemporary China if it is to resist the detrimental temptation of specious modern ideologies that can be

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used by charismatic leaders to manipulate the people, supposedly in the name of their well-being or long-term interests. This normative proposal of the Confucian family-oriented meritocratic polity carves out a third position between state welfarism of the left and political warfarism of the right in the West: a family welfarism based on the mainstream Confucian culture in China.61 This is by no means to suggest that there are no family-oriented liberal scholars in the West worrying about the erosion of the family in the Western liberal democratic countries. I am aware that there have even been liberal scholars who recognize that liberty is not a moral end in itself but rather a means toward a higher end. Thus, depending on particular forms of liberalism, Confucian meritocracy is not necessarily antiliberal. Nevertheless, Confucian familist meritocracy, with its unique moral, metaphysical, and religious underpinnings as shown in Section VI, is and should be different from the dominant form of liberal democracy or meritocracy in today’s West. A genuine account of Confucian meritocracy may be offered by Jiang Qing. notes

1. My account of Confucian meritocracy (and especially the Confucian view of human well-being presented in Section VI) offered in this chapter is based primarily on pre-Qin classical Confucian sources, although I do not think there is any essential disagreement between the classical and later Confucian views regarding this theme. 2. See Fan, Ruiping, Reconstructionist Confucianism: Rethinking Morality after the West (Dordrecht: Springer, 2010). 3. By “liberal meritocracy,” I mean the dominant contemporary Western political order that is comprehensively liberal, meritocratic, and democratic. I believe that John Rawls’s account of political liberalism has best presented this order, although it is usually termed not “liberal meritocracy” but “liberal democracy.” Of course, each of these terms carries distinct basic meaning – “liberalism” primarily concerns with individual liberty or autonomy, “democracy” usually refers to the principle of popular sovereignty, and “meritocracy” typically describes a system of merit-based administration in which merits are determined through evaluations or examinations but not direct elections. John Skorupski, in his contribution to this book, has helpfully clarified the relation between liberalism and democracy. Elsewhere he criticized Rawls’s liberal account as not meritocratic enough and argued for a more adequate liberal meritocracy or elitism (Skorupski, Ethical Explorations [Oxford University Press, 1999], Part IV). Although I am sympathetic with his critique, this chapter has no space to address the debate. Nevertheless I suggest that the Western political order under Rawls’s account has no problem roughly meeting the aforementioned formal definition of political meritocracy (to think

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about the American political system, for example), so as to deserve the title of “liberal meritocracy,” granted that meritocracy can always be a matter of degree. As Stephen Macedo in his contribution to this book points out, meritocracy has always been at the core of liberal democratic constitutionalism and representative government, and it remains so. I limit the application of my account to China not because I wish to deny the universality of Confucian meritocracy in theory but because genuine application is always an issue of feasibility. In my experience, the Chinese people are still significantly influenced and shaped by the Confucian convictions, ideals, and values that I deploy in this chapter. This circumstance renders talking about the Chinese application feasible. Although these authors (especially Joseph Chan, who argues for moderate perfectionism rather than liberal neutrality) have more or less acknowledged the importance of ethical foundations for political meritocracy, they fail to recognize the cardinal importance of the substantive Confucian view of human well-being (especially the central moral place of the family as I show in Section VI) for Chinese politics. This failure blocks them from making sufficient reference to substantive Confucian thought to consider political meritocracy for the future of China. In light of my understanding of Confucian ethics as a type of virtue ethics, I think the Confucian view of human well-being is virtue-based, rather than rights-based or utility-based. This general characterization is sufficient to distinguish Confucian meritocracy from liberal meritocracy regarding the end of government because the latter would take the primary function of government to be protecting individual rights rather than pursuing people’s well-being. This chapter does not offer a full-scale Confucian account of human well-being, which is not required by a reconstructionist Confucian political meritocracy for contemporary China. Section VI does, however, lay out one central dimension of the Confucian view of human well-being, namely, living a family-oriented way of life. Similar problems are posed to everyone in ordinary lives, not only to political leaders, and they are discussed in the virtue ethics literature in terms of the issue of the unity of virtues. The issue is multifaceted. First, there is the danger that a generally virtuous person (who is qualified to be generally virtuous by meeting whatever threshold standard is set) may at times judge and act out of character, not in character. Second, in some cases, a generally virtuous person may turn out not to possess a specific virtue that is appropriate in a given case, although she or he possesses other virtues that are not appropriate here. Finally, a generally virtuous person cannot have expertise in all areas of endeavor. For example, a generally benevolent, just, and temperate person may not be experienced in medicine, law, child rearing, or caring for the elderly; he would lack practical wisdom to make relevant decisions in these areas. See Rosalind Hursthouse, “Normative Virtue Ethics,” in Roger Crisp (ed.), How Should One Live? Essays on the Virtues (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), pp. 19–36; Christian Swanton, Virtue Ethics: A Pluralistic View (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 228–31. I thank my colleague P. J. Ivanhoe for discussing the unity of virtues issue with me.

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8. Chan, Joseph, “A Confucian Perspective on Human Rights for Contemporary China,” in J. R. Bauer and D. Bell (Eds.), East Asian Challenge for Human Rights (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 212–37. In Jeremy Waldron’s initial account of the fallback concept of rights, a liberal “forward” position has been included that provides “a basis for new beginnings and for moral initiatives which challenge existing affections, . . . provide a dynamic for social progress by challenging the existing types of relationships with new ones”; Jeremy Waldron, Liberal Rights (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 376–7. The Confucian fallback concept of rights proposed by Joseph Chan rightly does not keep this “progressive” sense in it. 9. Fan, op. cit. 10. John Rawls, Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), p. 191. 11. Will Kymlicka, “Liberal Individualism and Liberal Neutrality,” Ethics, vol. 99 (1989), p. 248. 12. E.g., Tianjian Shi and Jie Lu, “The Shadow of Confucianism,” Journal of Democracy, vol. 21 (2010), pp. 125–6. See also Doh Chull Shin’s contribution to this book for relevant data on other Confucian countries in Asia. 13. E.g., Daniel Bell, Beyond Liberal Democracy: Political Thinking for an East Asian Context (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006), pp. 162–3; Tongdong Bai’s chapter in this book. 14. See Anna J. Schwartz, “Origins of the Financial Market Crisis of 2008,” Cato Journal, vol. 29 (2009), p. 23 (emphasis added). Here one might think that Greenspan is offering an excuse for his own poor judgment. Of course, he could not excuse away his own responsibility for the crisis. But the fact remains that he, like many other officials in contemporary liberal democratic institutions, had been unduly pressed and driven by the public mood. 15. At this point, how many people would be “autonomously” interested in reading a liberal masterpiece, say, John Locke’s Two Treatises of Government, versus a low-brow tell-all, say, Monica Lewinsky’s planned book about her secret affair with Bill Clinton? 16. See, e.g., Bell, op. cit., Ch. 6. 17. By “neutral liberal virtues” I do not mean that they are neutral to all moral values but only to certain different types of individualist ways of life in modern Western society, such as a hardworking life or a life dedicated to “count[ing] blades of grass in various geometrically shaped areas such as park squares and well-trimmed lawns” (cf. John Rawls, A Theory of Justice [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971], p. 432). Take, for example, some of the liberal virtues that Stephen Macedo has listed and admired: “broad sympathies, selfcritical reflectiveness, a willingness to experiment, to try and to accept new things, self-control and active, autonomous self-development, an appreciation of inherited social ideals, an attachment and even an altruist regard for one’s fellow liberal citizens” (Stephen Macedo, Liberal Virtues: Citizenship, Virtue, and Community in Liberal Constitutionalism [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990], pp. 271–2). I value his inclusion of “an appreciation of inherited social ideals” on the list. Nevertheless, this list may have intentionally missed the central virtues of any particular culture-based way of life lived by most people in the West and

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19.

20.

21. 22. 23. 24.

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thus not offer concrete guidance regarding their well-being. Accordingly, I am afraid these virtues might be informative of and beneficial to a small group of highly intelligent liberal elitists (but not to most ordinary people), suitable only to promote liberal social justice concerns. Is it easier to mislead a small circle of elite than millions of people? Like Tongdong Bai (Ch. 2, this volume), I do not have a perfect answer to this question. But to the extent that both millions of people and a small circle of elites could be misled by a charismatic leader, especially in China, the problem of the proposal recommended by Bell, Bai and Chan remains. In this regard, I am much less sanguine about the United States than China, given the former’s dramatic moral diversity. Those who have lived in both countries know that China is much less morally pluralistic than the United States. I believe this reflection on political authority is consistent with the rationale behind the Confucian constitution proposed by Jiang Qing, the most eminent and influential Confucian in contemporary mainland China; see Jiang, A Confucian Constitutional Order: How China’s Past Can Shape Its Political Future, eds. Daniel Bell and Ruiping Fan, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013). For more philosophical and political discussion of his proposal, see Fan, Ruiping, “Jiang Qing on Equality,” in Fan (ed.) (2011), pp. 55–73. Waldron, op. cit., p. 53. For a detailed account of how this way of life has been sustained and manifested by the Confucian virtues and rituals, see Fan 2010, op. cit. Rawls 1971, op. cit., p. 128. “The consistent application of the principle of fair opportunity requires us to view persons independently from the influences of their social position. But how far should this tendency be carried? It seems that even when fair opportunity (as it has been defined) is satisfied, the family will lead to unequal chances between individuals. Is the family to be abolished then? Taken by itself and given a certain primacy, the idea of equal opportunity inclines in this direction. But within the context of the theory of justice as a whole, there is much less urgency to take this course” (Rawls 1971, op. cit., §77, p. 511; emphasis added). Fan, Ruiping, “Jiang Qing on Equality,” in Fan (ed.), 2011, pp. 55–73. Fukuyama, Francis, America at the Crossroads: Democracy, Power, and the Neoconservative Legacy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006), p. 20. Figures in the United States are from National Vita Statistics Reports 60.1 (November 2011) and Stephanie J. Ventura, “Changing Patterns of Nonmarital Childbearing in the United States,” NCHS Data Brief, vol. 18 (2009), pp. 1–7. Figures in European countries are from Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development Family Database: www.oecd.org/social/family/ database. Zuozhuan: Xuangong Year 4, in Zuozhuan (The Ch’un Ts’ew with the Tso Chuan), James Legge, trans. (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1970), pp. 296–7; Analects 2:24, in Confucius, Confucian Analects, The Great Learning and The Doctrine of the Mean, James Legge, trans. (New York: Dover Publications, 1971).

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29. Mencius 4A: 26, in Mencius, The Works of Mencius, James Legge, trans. (New York: Dover Publications, 1970). 30. See D. S. Nivison, “ ‘Virtue’ in Bone and Bronze,” in The Ways of Confucianism (Chicago: Open Court, 1996), pp. 17–30. 31. Zang, Kehe, Chinese Language and Confucian Thought (zhongguo wenzi yu rujia sixiang) (Nanning: Guangxi Education Press, 1996). 32. In fact, much earlier than the yin-yang account developed in the Han dynasty, the Chinese classic of Yijing included such metaphysical convictions. Specifically, the thirty-seventh hexagram in the Yijing, jia ren (family members), indicates the basic Confucian symbol of the family: (Li lower, Xun upper; Jia Ren) – a stove (fire) used to cook food for family members to share, and virtue (wind) is emanated from, manifested in, and spread out of this way of life. Moreover, through sacrificial rituals, food is also shared with the family’s ancestors. 33. See Xiaojing 9. 34. Analects 12.1. 35. Analects 1.6. 36. Analects 2.21. There is a famous Chinese story in which 13 of Confucius’ students, upon Confucius’ advice, returned home from external political activities to take care of their parents, see Han Shi Wai Zhuan, Lai Yanyuan (ed.), (Taibei: Taiwan Shangwu, 1972), Chapter 9. 37. Analects 14:42. 38. Analects 13:6; 13:13; 12.17; 12.19. 39. Xuangong 15, in Zuozhuan op. cit., p. 329. 40. Analects 12.3. 41. Liji: Tangong B, in Li Chi: The Book of Rites, James Legge, trans. (New York: University Books, 1967), V.I, pp. 190–1. 42. Mencius 3A: 3. 43. Cf. “The Debate on Salt and Iron” (Yan Tian Lun). See Wm. T. De Bary et al. (eds.), Sources of Chinese Tradition, vol. I (New York: Columbia University Press, 1960), pp. 218–23. 44. Mencius 3A: 4. 45. Mencius 1A: 5. 46. Mencius 1B: 5; Liji, op. cit., Liyun. 47. Analects 2.3. 48. A series of articles representing the two sides of the debate have appeared in the issues of Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy VI.1 (March 2007), VII.1 (March 2008), VII.2 (June 2008), and VII.3 (September 2008). 49. For a brilliant contemporary philosophical exploration to disclose why equality is not, and should not be, an intrinsic value, see Henry Frankfurt, “Equality and Respect,” in Necessity, Volition, and Love (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 146–54. 50. Analects 14:42. 51. See Xiaojing 9. 52. Analects 12.20. 53. Analects 4.18. 54. Liji, op. cit., Ai Gong Wen; Legge 1967, op. cit., V.II, p. 266.

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55. Analects 14:42. 56. E.g., Analects 16.9. 57. Jiang’s proposal includes other institutions, such as a symbolic monarchy and a Confucian academy. For the sake of my argument, the tricameral parliament is roughly sufficient as an example. 58. Jiang, op. cit., p. 36. 59. Ibid., p. 41. 60. Chenyang Li, “Where Does Confucian Virtuous Leadership Stand?” Philosophy East & West, vol. 59 (2009), p. 533, emphases in original. 61. I thank my colleague Sungmoon Kim for discussing these variations with me.

4 The Liberal Critique of Democracy John Skorupski

I. DEMOCRACY, MERITOCRACY AND MERITARCHY

It is conventional to talk of the “liberal democracies” of the West. This phrase suggests an assumption – that democracy is one of liberalism’s fundamental tenets; the assumption now seems, by and large, to be taken for granted. Historically, however, liberals had grave reservations about democracy. In Europe, these reservations emerged particularly clearly soon after the French Revolution, in the form of a conflict between two ideals of the new order: that of liberals and that of a democratic, radical, or Jacobin opposition; in America, they were raised already in the Federalist papers. This chapter is about the critical assessment of democracy’s virtues and vices that can be made from a liberal point of view. I do not directly discuss criticisms of democracy that come from quarters that are not liberal. Also, my concern here is with liberal critiques of democracy rather than democratic or communitarian critiques of liberalism. I use the term “liberal” in a way that does not assume that democracy is one of the defining tenets of that view.1 Insofar as liberals have concluded that their favored political order is threatened under democracy, they have often reached for remedies that limit it. It is useful to distinguish, from the outset, two ways of limiting democracy that differ importantly in principle, although they may well blend in practice. With apologies for introducing new terminology, I call them the meritocratic and the meritarchic. By a pure meritocracy, I mean a political order with a constitution that vests ultimate sovereignty in a ruling group solely on the grounds that that group has relevant competence and virtue. The only constitutional requirement on the method by which members of the group are 116

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selected is that it should be defensible as leading to selection on merit. The members of the group may, for example, be selected by examinations administered by existing members or by examiners appointed by them. Precautions may be taken to ensure the impartiality of the examination. By a pure democracy, I mean a political order with a constitution that vests ultimate sovereignty in its members on the basis of one person, one vote. However, a democracy may be pure yet still delegate functions to mediating officeholders. Meritarchy, as the word is used in this chapter, is the principle of appointing officials, magistrates, and the like on the basis of merit. This is what is often meant by “meritocracy,” but here I am restricting that word to a form of sovereignty, not a principle of appointment. Meritarchy is consistent with pure democracy: appointments and terms of appointment may be made directly by the people or may be more or less indirect through a chain of elections and appointments. In a direct pure democracy there would be no such mediation: neither meritarchic officeholders nor mediating elected representatives. A small professional partnership might serve as an example of that, but no state remotely approximates to it. Importantly, however, divergence from direct democracy may be meritocratic, where a merit-based group that is neither directly or indirectly appointed by the people has ultimate sovereignty (or shares ultimate sovereignty) over some function of policy, law, and government, or it may be meritarchic, where offices are instituted with defined delegated powers but no sovereign authority of their own. Meritocratic divergences are divergences from both direct and pure democracy; meritarchic divergences are divergences only from direct democracy. A meritarchic pure democracy organizes its offices on the principle of merit but vests sovereignty entirely in the people. As an illustration of these distinctions, consider Mill’s proposals in Considerations on Representative Government. They give a large role to expert advisers and career civil servants.2 These strongly meritarchic recommendations clearly diverge from direct democracy. Yet Mill’s experts and officials are not meritocrats in the sense of this chapter: they, their appointment, and the terms of their appointment are constitutionally subject to the final sovereign authority of parliament and thus remain compatible with a purely democratic constitution, so long as elections to parliament observe the principle of one person, one vote.

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In contrast, Mill’s proposal to limit the franchise by an educational qualification and to give plural votes to those with higher education is a restriction on pure democracy, with clearly meritocratic intent.3 Furthermore Mill saw plural voting not as a practical safety device but as right in itself: I do not propose the plurality as a thing in itself undesirable, which, like the exclusion of part of the community from the suffrage, may be temporarily tolerated while necessary to prevent greater evils. I do not look upon equal voting as among the things which are in themselves good, provided they can be guarded against inconvenience. I look upon it as only relatively good; less objectionable than inequality of privilege grounded on irrelevant or adventitious circumstances, but in principle wrong, because recognizing a wrong standard. . . . It is not useful, but hurtful, that the constitution of the country should declare ignorance to be entitled to as much political power as knowledge . . . as it is for [the citizen’s] good that he should think that everyone is entitled to some influence, but the better and wiser to more than others, it is important that this conviction should be professed by the State, and embodied in the national institutions.4

Philosophically, meritocracy and meritarchy are very different, and trigger very different gut reactions. Probably a large majority of people in present-day liberal democracies would think that delegating administration to elected representatives and relevantly able appointees is a matter of sheer common sense (despite familiar problems); in contrast, they would think that allowing ultimate sovereignty to diverge from the one person, one vote of pure democracy – even to the extent of allowing plural voting – is a violation of democratic rights or of the civic equality that is liberal democracy’s most unchallenged tenet. We shall come back to this. But when and where is it a violation? Everywhere, at all times? How far should we agree with the strongly historicist framework that underlies Mill’s discussion of various forms of government in Considerations? Or with his assertion, in On Liberty,5 that before “mankind have become capable of being improved by free and equal discussion” a benevolent despotism is the best form of government to be hoped for? Or with his underlying view that the function of government is to increase the virtue of citizens? And what answers to these questions should a liberal give?

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II. LIBERAL ORDER AND LIBERAL PHILOSOPHY

At an intellectual level, liberalism is a set of ideas that hang together as a moral and political philosophy; at the political level, it is a political ethos or practice that provides a framework for policy. I shall refer to the policy-framing level of liberalism as the liberal order. It comprises (1) equal liberty under law for all citizens, of which an essential element is the right to act as one chooses subject to a law that protects the equal rights of others – “negative liberty”; (2) a distinctive and special protection of liberty of thought and discussion; and (3) the entrenchment of these principles, either in an effective legal framework that codifies them in basic laws or constitutional safeguards guaranteeing equality of every citizen under law or in a common law tradition that effectively does the same. Important elements of liberalism were present in early modern Europe; however, they came together in the specific philosophical form that I shall describe as classical liberalism6 only after the French Revolution. One important feature of this new outlook is that liberals took on board philosophical and romantic critiques of the Enlightenment. Another is that they came to recognize dangers on the left as well as on the right and to seek principled reasons on which to distinguish themselves from both: their fear of democratic tyranny provided one of these. We can take classical liberalism to comprise three tenets: (1) individualism in ethics – the view that all value and right reduces to value of or for individuals or to the rights of individuals; (2) a doctrine of equal respect for all human beings based on the belief that all are equally capable of self-governance; and (3) a doctrine of liberty of thought and discussion based on the conviction the sole and sufficient canon of objective truth is the rational capacity of free-thinking individual people engaged in unrestricted dialogue. Each these tenets is controversial.7 Although they provide a rationale for liberal order, they go beyond it. Some who accept the desirability of liberal order reject them. However, for present purposes, the relevant point is that neither liberal order nor the classical liberal vision include specific affirmation of democracy. I come to the connection between classical liberalism and democracy in the next sections. But clearly liberal order is conceptually consistent, at least, with pure meritocracy. Imagine a meritocracy in which the ruling class is selected on a

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self-perpetuating basis by open examination with no discrimination by class, gender, race, etc. It nonetheless runs a liberal state. It honours the tenet of equal liberty by placing no restriction on entry to the examination and promoting strictly according to talent, and it entrenches negative liberty and liberty of thought and discussion. That is the specification of a liberal meritocracy – how likely it is that any actual state could live up to it for very long is of course another matter. Within this broad picture of liberalism, it is useful to distinguish between classical liberalism and a less ambitious realist liberalism. In broad terms classical liberalism in the nineteenth century was teleological, perfectionist, elitist. The all-around mental and moral development of the individual, grounded on acceptance of the objectivity of high aesthetic and ethical values, was its core ideal – underlying the three tenets by which I characterized it above. With historical and social contexts in mind, one might also call this late modern liberalism, or high-bourgeois liberalism. It survives, but it is no longer the most influential kind of liberalism, as even those who care for it, like me, must agree. In contrast, the platform of realist liberalism is simply the liberal political order itself; it is realistic or pragmatic about everything else, including democracy. The realist’s emphasis is on the political importance of liberal order for individual liberty, rather than on any further philosophical articulation or defence. Realists are likely to hold that the value of liberal order is more obvious, as established by historical experience, than the divergent attempts to derive that value from ethical foundations. And they might develop a philosophical case against such philosophical foundations. Realist liberalism is probably widespread in the West today, not least among legal and political elites. Both kinds of liberal have worried about the potential for democracy to collapse into tyranny. Both have worried about the possibility of majoritarian despotism within democracy itself. Classical liberals, however, have an additional, and in my view cogent, worry about whether high aesthetic and spiritual values can be preserved under democracy or whether the inevitable effect of democracy on public culture is mediocritization. These are the liberal worries about democracy that I want to consider, taking as my background the question of whether meritocratic divergence from pure democracy, and not merely meritarchic divergence from direct democracy, might, from the standpoint of classicals and realists, constitute a better political settlement.

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Before proceeding, I should note that these are not the only forms of liberalism. In academic political philosophy, other kinds of philosophical liberalism are currently influential – a useful umbrella term for the kinds I have in mind is Michael Sandel’s “deontological liberalism.”8 Deontological liberals are strongly “rights” or “consent” based, going back in this respect to the tradition of Locke or Rousseau – just the traditions that nineteenth-century liberalism slighted. Furthermore, whether they take a right-libertarian or a left-liberal form, they tend to propose a requirement of ethical neutrality on the state. Not merely is “the right prior to the good”; the state should restrict itself to enforcing right as against promoting good. Classical liberalism, in contrast, is not a deontological doctrine. Classical liberals were liberal individualists, but they were not ethical neutralists about the state. They thought the state should promote the true good of the citizens. Nor is a requirement that the state should be ethically neutral a part of liberal order. Deontological liberalism covers various kinds of philosophical liberalism that all imply the state should be ethically neutral; but this restrictive doctrine does not seem to me to be a part of the wider consensus as to what constitutes liberal order.9 Although deontological liberalism has been extremely influential in academic political philosophy in the past decades, it has so far had little impact on the broader history of liberal theory and practice. In my view, this lack of wider influence is healthy. Its most influential versions, whether right-libertarian or left-liberal, are too narrow and dogmatic. The question of rights, important as it is, is not the only question in either ethics or politics in general, and it should not be the only question in liberal ethics or politics in particular. I do not think questions about right are reducible to questions about the good (in contrast to Mill and other teleological liberals), but I do think fundamental questions about the good of citizens should play as fundamental a role in politics as questions of right. Neither question is reducible to the other and both are important. I mention these broader issues because they make an important difference in assessing what a liberal should think about democracy versus meritocracy. If all considerations of general good are excluded from a deontological liberal theory of political sovereignty, then presumably the assessment of democracy from that point of view has to reduce to questions of right. The libertarian has to consider whether collective decisions must be, as of right, unanimous, and if not, how to derive the right to a vote from strictly libertarian premises. In the case of

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deontological left-liberals, liberalism and democracy seem to be so blended as to be hard to separate, so that important questions become correspondingly hard to pose clearly.10 Either way, many of the teleological issues about democracy that have interested liberals, and should still interest them, will not get on to the agenda. Although by all means taking into account questions of basic right, in considering the liberal critique of democracy, we should take a broader perspective that rules out nothing that is ethically germane. On that basis, I can see three considerations in favor of democracy that liberals should take seriously: (1) political participation is a route to development of the individual, (2) it is the best bulwark against “sinister interests,” and (3) it is an individual right. As to the case against, I believe it comes down to two critical questions. The first, important for any kind of liberal, is whether democracy undermines the liberal political order or places its stability in serious doubt. The second is whether it degrades the cultural and spiritual values of private and public life. The latter is not an issue for realist liberals, and it is presumably an issue that deontological liberals rule off the agenda, in as much as their focus is solely on right, not good – whether democracy is justified as of right and what effect it may have on other rights. But it is an important question for classical liberals (even those, like me, with realist tendencies). I do not consider here other, perfectly sensible, worries about democracy. Thus I do not consider, directly, whether the best democracies produce worse rates of material progress than the best meritocracies. Because most people put some positive intrinsic value on increases of material well-being, that proposition, if true, would worry most people, including liberals. Nonetheless, the issue here is not whether, in the long run, under a democratic liberal order people can afford less fancy cars or computers than under a meritocratic liberal order. Rather, the worry becomes relevant to a liberal critique of democracy only on the assumption that under democracy the rate of material progress is liable to fall far enough to put liberal political order itself under threat. That is a question worth raising, if it stops us from complacently assuming that liberal democracy is here to stay. But for my part, I don’t see how to answer it. It’s too early to say. Another issue I do not consider here is what vices of modern liberal democracy should be placed at the door of liberalism rather than that of democracy. The question is certainly relevant. Suppose, for example, that a liberal criticizes democracy as liable to lead to a breakdown of moral authority and social allegiance, and hence to a decline into

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unstable populism. A conservative might reply that it is not so much the institution of democracy as the underlying acceptance of liberal individualism and free thought that generates the danger. What the liberal thinks is a defect of democracy is rather, on this view, a defect of liberalism; there are forms of democracy other than the liberal form that are not subject to it.11 I shall take it that liberalism can be defended against this line of thought, but to assess it properly would take us too far afield.12 III. THE CASE FOR DEMOCRACY

So let us turn first to liberal arguments for democracy. A. The Argument from Personal Development Historically, liberals, as against radical democrats, rejected the doctrine that the will of the people is the sole source of political legitimacy. But they recognized that in the political practice of their time, the will of the people eventually had to prevail. In John Stuart Mill’s words: We know that the will of the people, even of the numerical majority, must in the end be supreme, for as Burke says, it would be monstrous that any power should exist capable of permanently defying it: but in spite of that, the test of what is right in politics is not the will of the people, but the good of the people, and our object is, not to compel but to persuade the people to impose, for the sake of their own good, some restraints on the immediate and unlimited exercise of their own will.13

The question could not be, either realistically or legitimately, how to avoid or prevent democracy, but rather how to persuade the people to adopt self-limiting principles for their own good. That was the point of Mill’s theory of representative government and of his defence of liberty on the basis of “utility in the largest sense, grounded on the permanent interests of man as a progressive being.”14 The classical liberal standpoint is the standpoint of liberal elitism. Liberal because it is opposed to authoritarianism; elitist because it assumes that some forms of living are higher than others and that it is the obligation and responsibility of intellectual and moral elites to propose and advance those forms.15 The basis of this elitism, in turn, is a theory of individual good according to which the good of human beings is advanced through

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the development or “actualization” of their potential excellences and virtues. It is the legitimate business of the state to promote the good of the people, and the good of the people includes the growth of its wisdom and virtue. From this classical liberalism can derive a positive argument in favor of democracy, as well as grounds for placing meritarchic limits on its pure form. Participation in public affairs develops the individual. It is a line of thought that goes back to Aristotle. Involvement in public affairs at any level brings responsibility, public spirit, independence, and thus self-actualization. Democratic participation does this in the fullest way: it develops the virtues of fearlessness and clarity in putting a public case and then of reasonable compromise. There are many ways of developing moral insight, self-confidence, and responsibility, but one very good way is through active participation in democratic affairs. Of course the down-to-earth limitations of this argument are all too evident. Does democracy develop self-confidence, disinterestedness, brave argument, and reasonable compromise, or clever networking, shady rhetoric, manipulative backroom deals, and unreasonable obstinacy? Both, we can perhaps agree. In any case, to what extent do people in a democracy want to involve themselves in politics? Rightly, politics is far from being the only thing, or the main thing, that matters to most people. They may feel quite strongly about attempts to pull them into it. A friend of mine used to say, “I’m prepared to fight for my right to be apathetic.” He thought his good led in directions other than the political. Political participation involved stressful dealings with people one does not wish to encounter. Liberals must respect such preferences. Even if they think, in their more republican moments, that participation is a civic obligation, they should also acknowledge that nonparticipation is a right. Still, these realities do not (to my mind anyway) detract altogether from the argument. And they introduce a second, more down-to-earth consideration. I do not say it is stronger, but it should interest those whose ideas of self-development have little to do with political action: if you don’t take part, others will – not necessarily to your advantage. B. The Argument from Sinister Interests Whether individuals know their own interests best, as liberals often argue, it can be safely assumed that they are more interested in their

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interests than other people are. A corollary is that any group with special interests that acquires power will pursue its own group interests (“sinister interests,” in Bentham’s and James Mill’s phrase), and the more its power is unchecked, the more it will pursue them. The only reliable remedy, or at least the one with most hope of being effective, is the possibility of having them removed from power, on a guaranteed regular basis, by the people as a whole. To quote a favorite passage from another clear-headed realist, Adam Smith: People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.16

This applies as much to political elites and their meetings as to commercial and professional bodies and their restrictive practices. Accepting, as I am happy to accept, that many politically active people have the best and soundest motives and aims and are either unlikely to engage in outright corruption or can be prevented by well-designed rules from doing so, it remains the case that political elites, by virtue of their regular activity in common, form a professional class. A professional class inevitably develops a distinct class-interest and class-consciousness. It easily confuses its interests with the interest of the people. In all cases, a variety of measures is required to diminish the bad effects of professional class-interest; in the specific case of politics, the people’s ability to dismiss a government is of first importance. It is simply unrealistic to think that a self-perpetuating meritocracy, however meritorious, could resist professional deformation, unless there was a mandate to “throw the rascals out” through democratic elections. This utilitarian line of thought is so familiar and so telling that I need not expand on it. C. The Moral Right to a Say in Matters That Affect You Both the foregoing arguments, the high and the low, base themselves on the best interests of the people, as opposed to their rights. As such, deontological liberals may object to them as philosophically inadequate. Is there then an argument for democracy from individual rights – one that can be accepted by liberals in general? A common claim is that any member of a collective has a right to be consulted on collective projects, just qua member of the collective. However, this is not an argument for democracy so much as a direct

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appeal to the moral intuition that members of a collective have democratic rights simply as members. Of course that does not rule it out or make it a claim to which liberals cannot appeal. Still, it is not an argument that derives democratic rights from individual rights that are likely to be uncontroversial among liberals. An argument that does that starts from the claim that if a collective decision is liable to affect your interests by placing a burden on you, then you have a moral right to have a fair say in it, along with everyone else affected. This is more promising, but tricky. Suppose my interests are affected by a decision made by the government of the United States, or of China. Does that mean that I should have a fair say in that decision? Do we have here an argument for world government on a democratic basis? Perhaps. However, the more common view is that if decisions by other governments impinge unjustly on my interests, my recourse should be through the mediation of my own government, or if necessary through international courts. The underlying principle is a principle of justice. In general, justice places various limits on the burdens on X, or harm to X’s interests, that Y can impose by his or her activity. Where the harm is unjust, X has a right to demand that Y desists or compensates. This abstract principle of justice is uncontroversial, although obviously the question of which specific harms are unjust may not be. However, on any interpretation, it does not imply that X has a general right to a say in deciding, or even to be consulted on, what Y should do whenever X’s interests might be affected. Where the harm is not unjust, X has no recourse at all. Thus if Y opens a good restaurant as a result of which X’s bad restaurant loses customers, X cannot legitimately demand closure of Y’s restaurant. Where the harm is unjust, as when Y opens a factory that pollutes X’s land, Y should have asked X’s permission and agreed to terms; if he has not, the proper recourse, in general, is to a due process that rectifies the injustice by closure or compensation. This is not the same as a right to “democratic participation” by X in Y’s decision. It is different where an individual belongs to a collective, which makes a collective decision affecting its members’ interests – for example, about where to site an airport. The principle that is involved in this case, unlike the one just considered, appeals to membership of a collective. If you are a member of some collective, you should have a fair say in the decisions of the collective inasmuch as they affect you. Call this the fair say principle. And note that it is in a way a relaxation

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of the principle of justice we have just been considering. According to that principle, if some private persons build a noisy airport next to my house without my permission, I can claim compensation. In contrast, if the government decides where to build an airport, the fair say principle holds that we should all have a say as to where it is built – but, it seems, provides for no compensation if we are the ones who end up being affected by the noise and voted against that location. Or if that point about compensation is disputed, consider the even more obvious case of payment of taxes. Taxation is a burden. The fair say principle then says that everyone should have a fair say in how taxes are levied (at least if they are burdened by the levy17 ). It does not say that each individual has a right to refuse the democratically agreed levy unless he or she has consented to pay it, or to demand compensation if it is enforced, say, by prior extraction from one’s pay packet. This is not say that no one person, one vote decisions are unjust, and when unjust legitimately resistable. The point is that some effects on me that I could legitimately resist if they were imposed by private persons I cannot legitimately resist if imposed by democratic decision of a collective “commonwealth” to which I belong. There is more to say about the fair say principle. But it seems to me to be broadly sound, and it is not an obviously extraneous – unexpected – addition to a list of rights that most liberals could agree to.18 However, it is not the only potentially relevant principle. If you are a pluralist, you hold that there is a plurality of underived, mutually irreducible normative sources. Unless you think that the fair say principle lexically dominates, you will think that it can be outweighed by others. In my view it can be outweighed, in particular, by considerations of general good. Appeal to individual rights is one basic source of normativity, and if those rights include, as is plausible, a right to participate in decisions of a collective to which one belongs, that constitutes a pro tanto case for democracy. However, appeal to the general good is another basic source of normativity. Neither lexically dominates the other. Thus the strength of the overall case for democracy will depend on empirical circumstances; in some such circumstances, it may be outweighed by considerations of general good. Note finally that these three arguments in favor of democracy will also constitute the case against meritocratic, as against democratic, government. Thus, (1) a meritocracy stunts the moral growth of its citizens; (2) elites, however meritorious, are likely to combine into vested interests; and (3) meritocratic government overrides the fair say

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principle. In my judgment, liberals have very strong reasons to favor democracy on a combination of these three grounds. That is not to say, however – as we have just accepted – that the case is so strong it can never be outweighed by a stronger one. So now we turn to reasons liberals might fear democracy. IV. LIBERAL WORRIES ABOUT DEMOCRACY

One basic worry is whether democracy provides a reliably stable platform for liberal order. It might arise from worries about the stability of democracy itself or from worries about the safety of liberal order within democracy. Rather separate from these two questions is a third worry that has particularly concerned classical liberals and seems to me to be very real: does democracy produce a moral and spiritual leveling down, or mediocritization, that corrupts the telos of liberal order, even if it does not destabilize liberal institutions? The prudent answer to these questions may be (to quote Zhou Enlai’s alleged comment on whether the French Revolution was a success) that it’s just too early to say.19 However, I’m going to be imprudent. A. Is Democracy Stable? Plenty of critics of Francis Fukuyama’s End of History seemed, despite their criticism of its claims, to assume blithely that liberal democracy is here to stay, at least in the West. But look at the history. At the end of the nineteenth century both liberal order and democracy were making some progress across Europe. They then collapsed in a series of horrific disasters. So that can certainly happen. Still, one can argue that European collapses between 1900 and 195020 were all caused by some combination of insurgent nationalism, revolutionary socialism, and capitalist crisis – a combination of forces that liberal democracy could not cope with, not least because it was not yet itself sufficiently entrenched. What is more, two of those factors – insurgent nationalism and revolutionary socialism – are in retreat in Europe, or at least in remission. And despite recurrent economic crises, material progress in liberal democracies over the second half of the twentieth century has been spectacular. Thus, it is really only since the Second World War that fully fledged liberal democracy, with all its distinctive features, can be observed

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in Europe. We can also call on evidence from the United States and other Anglophone democracies, as well as from the experience of recent postcolonial democracies. In the latter case, as in the European case, the story seems to me to highlight the specific conditions under which democracy is unstable, rather than to indicate chronic instability. Overall, I do not think it’s merely complacent to read the history so far as giving evidence that once liberal democracy has been given time to establish itself against competitors it has a strong tendency to maintain itself, not just against internal disruption but even against external shocks. More ambitiously and theoretically, one can argue that modernity is a package deal that necessarily includes both liberalism and democracy. It is not possible, in the long run, to have the technical mastery and material prosperity that modernity brings, without its naturalism in philosophy and its liberalism in every aspect of social organization – cultural, economic, and political. These features belong to the long-run mental and material equilibrium of modernity. Equally unavoidable, in that long-run equilibrium, is a widespread skepticism in epistemology, religion, and ethics; a tendency to reject intellectual and moral authority; and a corresponding spiritual homelessness. These are points I’ll come back to. The package deal thesis emerges most strongly, to my mind, not from a neo-Marxist way of putting the questions – as though the decisive issue was what superstructural social relations and ideologies optimize the growth of productive forces – but from the Weberian point of view, which recognizes the relevance of material relations but takes the decisive arena to be the arena of ideas. What then underpins it is a hypothesis of this kind: the virus of rational legitimation, in Max Weber’s sense, once inserted at any point in a cultural organism, reproduces itself spontaneously and spreads without limit. There is no lasting antidote, and there is no part of the body politic that it does not reach. It can be delayed or accelerated, but it cannot be stopped, because it gets positive feedback from the sheer exhilaration of free inquiry that it produces for elites, the material progress that it produces for society at large, and, not least, the demand for emancipation and inclusion that these forces generate. One can’t guarantee it, of course, against big enough exogenous shocks, but then nothing can guarantee against that. These points connect modernity and liberalism, but do they generate a connection between modernity and democracy? May not the same moral and material benefits be produced more surely by a social order

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that tends to meritocracy rather than democracy, with less likelihood of crises brought on by irresponsible decision making? If we look more carefully, someone may say, what we see is that it is not the demand for democracy, but the basic liberal idea that rational warrant is determined by free thought that gives rise to modernity (and the liberal conception of rational warrant does it before liberal order, let alone democracy, catches up). From Weber’s point of view, the main argument for democracy is that it provides a mechanism for competition among potential leaders. But if that is the main argument, a defender of meritocracy could try to devise a mechanism that would also do that.21 I believe that this rejoinder ignores the momentum toward democracy that rational legitimation itself produces. The package deal of modernity produces material progress; material progress gives rise to a demand for recognition and political inclusion. This, via such arguments as those considered in Section II, becomes a demand for democratic institutions – a demand that is, and is perceived to be, entirely legitimate. Furthermore, on the evidence so far, democracy in contemporary conditions is not so unstable as to lead liberals to favor a nondemocratic framework for liberal order as a precaution against democratic collapse. Of course this is not an either/or: either democracy with no meritocracy, or meritocracy with no democracy. The liberal democracy we actually have is representative democracy with a variety of meritarchic checks. They are not likely nowadays to include such Millian suggestions as public balloting and educational thresholds on the franchise,22 but they still involve much filtering through bicameral constitutions, constitutional laws, or charters interpreted by unelected judges, central banks with independent remits, technical advisers, and judicial reviews, for example. In Britain government has meritocratic as well as meritarchic elements: judicial appointments, for example, are subordinate to elected representatives only in a loose way, and the role of bishops in the House of Lords is not governed by democratic appointment at all (which still makes some undemocratic difference when such issues as legalization of assisted suicide are discussed). Indeed the question is not so much whether this indirect kind of democracy is unstable as whether it is too stable and, in reference to the arguments we’ve considered, too undemocratic – too out of touch with citizens, too dominated by vested interests, too structured by purely political routes of career advancement that bypass the citizenry. There is also the question, from a liberal point of view, of whether

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the bureaucracy of representative government too easily slides into well-meaning overregulation and even authoritarianism (identity cards, restrictions on information, and the like) – not least because the interest of bureaucratic and political elites is best served by regular compromises with other special interests and pressure groups. It is significant that the argument in Western liberal democracies is not about whether to introduce meritocratic dilutions of democratic sovereignty but about the pros and cons, especially the cons, of various kinds of meritarchic mediation. But we should turn to consider not the fortunes of democracy as such but the fortunes of liberal order and liberal culture under democracy. B. Can Liberal Order Command Sufficient Allegiance in a Democracy? This question has worried liberals from the beginning, that is, from the development of distinctively liberal standpoints at the turn of the eighteenth century. The democratic potential for majoritarian despotism – “tyranny of the majority” – is set out by Tocqueville. It is outlined in the introductory chapter of Mill’s On Liberty, where Mill argues that his principle of liberty is the only bulwark against conformist oppression. One does not have to be a liberal to see this possibility: critics of liberalism have often assumed, with satisfaction, that democracy is bound to develop in nonliberal directions. The dangers here are not the dramatic kind faced in Weimar Germany. Dramatically authoritarian populism remains observable around the world but is perhaps unlikely in fully developed and reasonably affluent democracies. The dangers are more insidious. On the one hand there is the constant temptation to chip away at liberties in the name of efficient government, public safety, and the good of the people.23 On the other there is the question of whether liberalism can command sufficient popular allegiance to resist these tendencies. At a practical level, petty restrictions on liberty are often popular. At a loftier level, the level at which grand ideals command allegiance by virtue of their meaningful content, it has to be recognized that the liberal ideal offers no salvation, either in this world or the next, no deeply meaningful praxis, no sacrosanct hierarchy in which one has a loyal and respected place. Its ways of providing self-respect are distinctly stressful ways. Still, there is force in the argument that just about any tradition acquires adherents and supporters the longer it remains firmly tied in

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to the various outlooks of civil society, and the better it is attuned to its social psychology. It is this – the pride people at large have come to take in it and its consonance with the way they want to live their lives – that gives an undramatic strength to liberal order and secures it in a democracy that has these traditions and this synergy with personal life. C. Does Democracy Produce a Moral and Spiritual Leveling Down? If convinced by these considerations, realist liberals can at this point rest content. A political order that is both liberal and reasonably democratic does not seem too insecure, at least in likely modern conditions, and that is good enough for them. But for classical liberals, there remains another worry, which has in the past caused them greater anxiety than any other.24 Can the public, dominant culture of a democracy be anything other than mediocritizing and conformist? It is not just classical liberals who have this worry about democracy. They arise for anyone who subscribes to really serious ideals that are public and not merely private in their implication, and yet transcend politics, in that their legitimacy is beyond merely political legitimacy. Religious ideals are the obvious case. They provide a sacred order of meaning and a rule of life that are beyond politics. Socialist ideals of egalitarian community, in origin at least, are another. Nietzschean ideals, were they to be taken seriously, would be another. All these ideals of greatness of spirit are threatened by the busy, compromising mediocrity of democratic decision making, together with the spiritually, if not institutionally, oppressive expectation that one should find those concerns and compromises important. For classical liberals, this worry about democracy arises from their ideal of liberal culture: an ideal of moral and aesthetic self-development perhaps represented most fully in Schiller’s Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man. That “Schillerian” ideal is a high-cultural ideal that is likely to seem, to those moved by it, to be more important than anything else, because it touches on one’s most serious moral and spiritual concerns, rather than on mere practicalities of institutional arrangement. If democracy degrades or diminishes the possibility of self-realization in this sense, either for oneself or the people one cares about, or indeed for anyone capable of it, that is serious indeed. Old-fashioned socialists had the same ideal. The Marxian vision was that the Schillerian ideal could be realized, and could only be

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realized, in an egalitarian community that abolished division of labor. From that point of view the liberal order of the bourgeois state was an impediment – or rather, even when progressive, it remained a mere stage on the road. Furthermore, in virtue of its Schillerian background, Marxist dislike of “actually existing” modern democracies overlaps with classical liberal dislike, as in Theodor Adorno’s criticism of mass culture. To be sure, the Marxist stance blames the commercialism of capitalist society, not the inherent nature of democracy.25 Yet the assumptions this overall view requires seem to contain an obvious tension between the lofty view of human nature that is assumed by Marxism’s communist ideal and a very different analysis of democratic actuality – an analysis that says that modern mass culture is the product of mass manipulation by commercial interests. If human beings have the inner strength to flourish autonomously in an equal community how come they are so easily manipulated? You need to assume that the potential for autonomous self-development is somehow locked in capitalist societies and can be unlocked only by socialist ones – and that a vanguard is needed to get from one state to the other. History shows both how unrealistic and how dangerous these assumptions are. What is true is that free market capitalism enables endlessly clever satisfaction (and to some degree, for sure, creation) of desires. Modern marketing techniques, public relations savvy, and advertising skill provide really effective insight into what people want – as against what their better selves want them to want – and great speed in providing it. That is because competitive commercial success depends on accuracy in identifying a potential market and swiftness in supplying it. We’re too nice to ourselves if we think this is “exploitation.” If there was money in appealing to our better selves, that’s what sellers on modern markets would appeal to. Free markets and commercial acumen make it easier to lead a pleasant and comfortable life, but I agree that they make it harder to lead a good one. Combine that effect with the populist pressure toward conformity that constitutes another all-too-human aspect of human nature and that democracy amplifies: you then have an environment that is by no means conducive to the classical liberal’s high cultural ideal of self-development. So classical liberals have a problem. It’s less of a problem, however, than is faced by religious or socialist idealists, even though it’s of the same kind. The reason is that the classical liberal’s ideal is less

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inextricably a public and collective ideal. You cannot live the ideal of egalitarian community, at least not fully, while remaining in a modern liberal democracy. Nor, for many religious believers, can you live the religious ideal fully in a society that does not prescribe, in accordance with that ideal, in its laws. Compromises are possible, of course, but they are hard and depressing. In contrast, the classical liberal’s ideal can be more easily confined to the private domain of individual sovereignty, and so long as democracy respects liberal order, classical liberalism is far more consonant with it. So should the classical liberal’s motto be liberal order in public life, the Schillerian ideal in private life? Or even a meritocracy imposing liberal order in public life, the Schillerian ideal in private life? But could one happily restrict this grand ideal to consenting adults in elite enclaves? That would be an unjustified pessimism. It lacks the very public spirit that is essential to the Schillerian ideal: recognition that a virtuous life must be realized, in a unified way, in public as well as private responsibility and that all citizens have a public duty to promote the virtue of citizens.26 To sum up. Liberal order could be threatened by democracy, and has been in a variety of situations, but not, or not seriously, when it has established itself as a tradition and found good ways to enable material progress. A realist liberal can reasonably conclude – however defeasibly – that modern democracies offer adequate ground and protection for liberal order. From the standpoint of classical liberals, democracy has the important ethical virtues, as well as the more pragmatic merits, that we have discussed. It also has a fearsome tendency to populism. Still, however much classical liberals may dream of an ideal society ordered by liberal philosopher-rulers and meritocratic elites, there is no safe basis for assuming that such figures could or would maintain their liberalism, and there never has been. So long as a democracy offers protection for liberal order, it provides scope for classical liberals to maintain a presence in public debate and to argue their case. This they have a duty to do. It is their responsibility not to be “neutral” but to argue for their ideals in both political and social forums. Finally, let me note again that this discussion has considered the relative merits of democracy and meritocracy exclusively from a liberal standpoint. Ethical foundations other than those on which liberals rely may offer more compelling arguments for meritocracy;27 I have not attempted to address that.

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notes

1. Further on the distinction between liberalism and democracy: Gordon Graham, “Liberalism and Democracy,” Journal of Applied Philosophy, vol. 9 (1992), pp. 149–60; Dudley Knowles, “Liberalism and Democracy Revisited,” Journal of Applied Philosophy, vol. 12 (1995), pp. 283–92; Fareed Zakaria, “The Rise of Illiberal Democracy,” Foreign Affairs (1997); Marc F. Plattner, “Liberalism and Democracy: Can’t Have One Without the Other,” Foreign Affairs, vol. 77 (1998), p. 172. 2. The latter appointed by examination along the lines of the Northcote-Trevelyan report of 1854. Mill wrote to Trevelyan hailing “the plan of throwing open the civil service to competition as one of the greatest improvements in public affairs ever proposed by a government. If the examination be so contrived as to be a real test of mental superiority, it is difficult to set limits to the effect which will be produced in raising the character not only of the public service but of Society itself ” (letter to Sir Charles E. Trevelyan, 1854, in Collected Works [hereafter “CW”] XIV, 178). He wrote in similar terms in a public letter supporting the report (“Reform of the Civil Service,” CW XVIII, 205–11). Note the appeal to improvement of character. 3. He also proposed restricting the vote to those who pay taxes, but in this case, the considerations in his mind were not meritocratic. 4. Considerations, CW XIX, 478. It is illuminating to compare Mill’s anxieties and proposals for representative government to those presented in this volume by Tongdong Bai on education and voting in “Confu-China” (see Ch. 2). 5. CW XVIII, 224. 6. By the word “classical,” I refer to the philosophical or ethical liberalism that emerged at this time, not to the economic theory of free markets (“neoliberalism” as it is now often called). The arguments for these two are to a considerable extent distinct. 7. I consider criticisms of them in Skorupski, “The Conservative Critique of Liberalism,” in Stephen Wall, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Liberalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming) and discuss how they may need to be modified in response. On the role of free thought in liberalism see John Skorupski, “Liberalism as Free Thought,” in Georgios Varouxakis and Paul Kelly, eds., John Stuart Mill – Thought and Influence (London: Routledge, 2010). 8. Michael Sandel, Liberalism and the Limits of Justice, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). 9. That the state should be permissively neutral – prohibit the pursuit of no conception of the good compatible with justice – is standard liberal doctrine. That it should be persuasively neutral – refrain from advancing any conception of the good – is not. 10. Amy Gutman says (approvingly) that “Rawls implicitly identifies democracy with the same broad ideal of political morality with which he identifies political liberalism: the ideal of all (sane and law-abiding) adult human beings as free and equal members of a fair system of social cooperation.” See Amy Gutman, “Rawls on the Relationship between Liberalism and Democracy,”

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11. 12. 13. 14. 15.

16. 17.

18.

19. 20.

21.

22.

23. 24. 25.

26.

John Skorupski in The Cambridge Companion to Rawls (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003). That seems true of Rawls – from the standpoint of a non-Rawlsian liberal, however, it makes his conception of the historically fraught relation between liberalism and democracy disappointingly glib. See Stephen Holmes’s discussion of Carl Schmitt on liberalism; Holmes, The Anatomy of Antiliberalism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993). Skorupski, ‘The Conservative Critique of Liberalism’. Mill, “Pledges (2),” in CW XXIII, 502. On Liberty, CW XVIII, 224. One might compare (and contrast) Millian elitism with Confucian elitism, as described, for example, in Joseph Chan, “Democracy and Meritocracy: Toward a Confucian Perspective,” Journal of Chinese Philosophy, vol. 34 (2007), pp. 179–93. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976 [1776]). This is one possible defence of Mill’s principle of no representation without taxation, mentioned in note 3. It is also one way in which the argument from general rights of the person to democratic rights is tricky, but the issue cannot be pursued further here. Because it does not make unanimous agreement a condition of legitimacy, that does not include all libertarians – but then should they be counted as liberals, or as anarchists? According to some, it is not certain whether he was referring to the revolution of 1789 or the “revolution” of 1968. I am including the various communist putsches in Eastern Europe in the 1940s. As to how these relied on manipulation of democratic constitutions, see Archie Brown, The Rise and Fall of Communism (London: The Bodley Head, an imprint of Random House Group, 2009). For an account of Weber’s view of liberalism and democracy, and of how it differed from the classical liberalism I have described here, see David Beetham, “Max Weber and the Liberal Political Tradition,” European Journal of Sociology, vol. 30 (1989), pp. 311–23. Why not? The best argument against, I suggest, is the argument from sinister interests. The educated constitute their own special interest group, not least in these globalizing times when they have a freedom of movement that others do not. Nor is it obvious what constitutes chipping away, and thus where to take a stand. The degree to which this particular worry about democracy was the main motive for Mill’s essay On Liberty is evident in his letters. Another line of cultural criticism blames liberalism itself: liberal individualism and liberal insistence on equal respect. Whether the mediocritizing agent is capitalism, democracy, or liberalism is obviously hard to disentangle. Compare MacIntyre: “What matters at this stage is the construction of local forms of community within which civility and the intellectual and moral life can be sustained through the new dark ages which are already upon us.” Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue (London: Duckworth, 1981). Classical liberals may not

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feel so strongly. Yet they may still be disenchanted by modern democracy and tempted by a similarly retreatist escape to high-cultural enclaves. But that would be a refusal to argue their case in public. An understandable refusal, but not in line with their ideal. 27. Such as the Confucian perspective presented by Ruiping Fan in this volume (Ch. 3).

5 Meritocratic Representation Philip Pettit

No individual or body can count as the representative of another unless selected or authorized to act in that role. The representative speaks and acts in the name of another individual or group, and this, unlike speaking or acting on another’s behalf – say, speaking or acting as a selfappointed advocate – requires authorization in the role. This authorization raises two questions. First, is it legitimate? Is the representative selected by a suitable agent or agency and under suitable rules? Second, is it motivated? Is the selection made on the grounds that the candidate is distinctively eligible or qualified for a representative role? Under electoral arrangements, authorization comes via the selection of the representative, directly or indirectly, on the basis of a popular vote. And it is the disposition to be responsive to the attitudes of electors, which that very mode of selection is designed to encourage, that qualifies the candidate to serve in a representative role.1 The candidate or deputy may be responsive at only a general level to the attitudes of electors – say, to their values or interests – or responsive to detailed wishes and instructions; in the first case, such a deputy will count as a trustee, in the second as a delegate.2 Suppose, however, that certain individuals are selected for public office on the basis of their merit: their professional and related credentials. Assuming that the mode of selection is legitimate – assuming, in effect, that there is no ground for complaining about the procedure of appointment – the question is whether it could count as conferring a representative status on them. Is there anything about such meritocratically selected personnel that might give us reason to think of them as representatives of the people rather than independent experts? Is there any ground for taking them to have popular authority, not just the authority of Weber’s legal-rational administrators? 138

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This question has practical significance. Suppose we think that meritocrats, no matter how suitably appointed, lack any qualifications as popular representatives. Can we regard the things they do in exercise of their office as things that are done in the name of the people? We may be able to take this view if they serve at the bidding of the government that appoints them and if the government is representative of the people, say, because of being popularly elected. But we will not be able to take this view if they are independent in any significant way from those who appoint them: if, in effect, they do not serve at the pleasure of government. And as we shall see, meritocratic appointees are routinely given such independence; the nature of their office requires it. Thus if we cannot make out a case for such officials having representative qualifications, we will have to think of them as playing a role that is hard to reconcile with any notion of popular control of government. I argue in this chapter that meritocratic selection is consistent with representative standing, looking in particular at meritocratic appointments within an electoral democracy. In the first section, I introduce a distinction between two different sorts of representation, which I describe respectively as responsive representation and indicative representation.3 In the second section, I show that the distinction is implicitly recognized in the traditional political practice of ascribing representative status to groups that mirror the population as a whole. In the third section, I show how that there is every reason why individuals as well as groups might serve as indicative representatives of a population. In the fourth, I argue that this gives us reason to think of certain meritocratically appointed officials and bodies as having the status of indicative representatives. In the fifth section, I look at the appeal of such meritocratic representation within an electoral democracy. And then in a short final section, I mention some problems that, as I see it, confront the possibility of establishing a credible, legitimate form of meritocratic representation in the absence of electoral democracy. The focus of the chapter, it should be noticed, is quite narrow. I am mainly concerned with whether meritocratic authorities can count as popular representatives, and I deal with this question out of an interest in the place they should have in an electoral democracy, drawing on a wider discussion of the role of democracy elsewhere.4 I begin to join issue with the case for and against a purely meritocratic regime – a regime that does not involve many electoral elements – only in the final section. The remarks I make there serve better as a prologue to further debate than an epilogue to the debate conducted here.

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I. REPRESENTATION, RESPONSIVE AND INDICATIVE

Imagine that I am invited by my university to take part in a committee – say, a committee to inquire into how philosophy may be made as attractive to female students as to male. And suppose that I am unable to serve on the committee myself and that the university authorities, accepting this, propose to install someone who can serve as my representative on the committee – someone who can reliably speak for the judgments or preferences, the principles or the general perspectives, that I am taken to embody. They want someone who can serve in my place to reflect the same attitudes, however concrete or abstract, and to speak or act in a way that is faithful to those attitudes. In this situation, the authorities may want to have someone on the committee who will be responsive to my wishes as to how the job should be done: someone who will serve in effect as my responsive deputy. In that case, they will look for a representative to whom I can make my wishes known, however episodically. The authorities may want to make the representer responsive to more or less constraining attitudes on my part. They may look for a faithful reflection of the abstract values, procedural or substantive, that they ascribe to me or for a reflection of my more concrete views on issues of policy. In either case, the representer will count as a deputy, but in the first case she will have the status of a trustee, in the second of a delegate. But this is not the only way in which I might be represented on the committee. Instead of seeking to install a responsive deputy, at whatever level of constraint, the authorities may opt for having someone on the committee who shares my general attitudes, whether on procedural or substantive matters, and is likely to vote accordingly. They will not expect this person to be responsive to me. They may be happy that she does not know what my attitudes are or even know that she is nominated to reflect those attitudes. They will choose her as a representer because her mentality is indicative of my own. Where she is led in her judgments and decisions, I would be likely to be led, if I were on the committee. Or so, at any rate, they believe. This form of representation, like the other variety, would give the views I am taken to embody a certain impact on the committee’s reflections and decisions. The representer will not be a responsive deputy, ready to track what I think, whether on general or particular issues. But, if the authorities have chosen well, she will be a reliable indicator of my general attitudes and of where or how I would go on particular

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issues, were I a member of the committee. My attitudes will exercise influence through her insofar as she is chosen for the prospect that she will reflect them. We might describe her as an indicative proxy rather than a responsive deputy. The essential difference between responsive and indicative representation is easily stated. In responsive representation, the fact that I am of a certain mind offers reason for expecting that my deputy will be of the same mind; after all, she will track what I think at the appropriate level. In indicative representation, things are exactly the other way around. The fact that my proxy is of a certain mind offers evidence for expecting that I will be of the same mind; that is what it means for her to serve as an indicator rather than a tracker. From the point of view of my being represented on the committee, having someone there who reflects my mind, it really does not matter whether the representer is a reliable tracker or indicator. Either figure can give me a presence on the committee, as we say; either can represent me. The distinction between responsive and indicative representation hasn’t been much invoked in the political domain, at least not in the terms in which I am drawing it. It parallels a distinction in epistemology between two ways in which my beliefs may be reliable: that is, reliable representers of the world they depict. They may be reliable trackers of facts about the world, so that if it is the case that such and such, then it is likely that I believe that such and such. Or they may be reliable indicators of worldly facts, so that if I believe that such and such then it is likely to be the case that such and such.5 Just as beliefs may relate in either way to the facts they purport to represent epistemically, so representers may relate in either way to the representees that they purport to represent in a political fashion. It may be the case that if a representee has such and such attitudes, at whatever level of grain, then the representer may be expected, in response, to speak and act on those attitudes. Or it may be the case that if the representer speaks and acts on certain attitudes, at whatever level of grain, then given the indicative status of the representer, the representee may be assumed to hold those attitudes. In the first case, the attitudes held by the representee are the causal source of the attitudes displayed by the representer; in the second, the attitudes displayed by the representer are an evidential sign of the attitudes held by the representee. The faithful representer in the first scenario will be reliably responsive to the representee; the faithful representer in the second will be reliably indicative of the representee.

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table 5.1

Representee attitudes Representee attitudes

←− Evidential −→ Causal

Representer attitudes Representer attitudes

Indicative or proxy representation Responsive or deputy representation

The two forms of representation are diagramed in Table 5.1. II. INDICATIVE REPRESENTATION IN TRADITIONAL AND EXISTING PRACTICE

Three metaphors have dominated the political tradition of thinking about the meaning of representation, as Quentin Skinner has recently argued.6 Two of these, associated respectively with the courts and the theater, answer to the responsive idea of representation. As the attorney acts under the explicit or implicit direction of a client, so the idea is that political representers might act as delegated deputies, under the explicit or implicit direction of their representees. And as the actor constructively interprets the mind of a character, so the idea is that representers might serve as trustee deputies in interpreting and enacting the mind of representees. But the third metaphor identified by Skinner is drawn from representation in the pictorial arts, and it maps onto indicative representation. As the painting is indicative of how the subject of the painting looks, so on this image should representers be indicative of representees; they should be fitted to serve as proxies, not – or not just – as deputies. Although not articulated as such, the idea of indicative representation figures early in democratic practice, because it is the sort of representation that is achieved or is likely to be achieved under the lottery system that was favored by the Athenians and that also played an important part in later regimes like those of the Italian city republics.7 This lottery system might be taken as a version of the technique of random sampling, but random sampling put to use in the service of advancing goals espoused by the people as a whole. Although it may have been motivated by a desire to have a regular turnover in the representer body, the important thing from our viewpoint is that it would have ensured a degree of proportional and indicative representation. The indicative idea also appears in the jury system that was developed in medieval Europe, although again without being articulated as such.8

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To be subjected to the judgment of one’s peers, whether in determining that there is a legal case to answer or that one is legally liable, is to be exposed not to a random arbiter – a chance enemy, perhaps – but to a body that stands in for the community as a whole. The idea is that the jurors should represent a cross-section of the community or at least of the fully enfranchised members: in medieval Europe, the mainstream, propertied males.9 The indicative image of representation melded with the responsive image in those writers who argued, from the sixteenth century on, that the elected, presumptively responsive legislature should also be an indicatively representative body. The idea is particularly evident in those parliamentarian writers in England of the mid-seventeenth century who look for a “speaking likeness” of the people in those who rule them, “describing Parliament as a ‘representation’ – a picture or portrait – of the body of the people.”10 Perhaps as a result of that precedent, it became an established element in the thinking of those associated with the American War of Independence and the French Revolution. Thus, Melanchton Smith could write in 1788, in opposing the American Constitution: “The idea that naturally suggests itself to our minds, when we speak of representatives is, that they resemble those they represent; they should be a true picture of the people.”11 Again, the idea was powerfully endorsed in a speech given by Mirabeau to the French Constituent Assembly in 1789, although he used the image of a map rather than a picture to get it across. According to this version of the model, “a representative body is to the nation what a chart is for the physical configuration of its soil: in all its parts, and as a whole, the representative body should at all times present a reduced picture of the people – their opinions, aspirations, and wishes, and that presentation should bear the relative proportion to the original precisely as a map brings before us mountains and dales, rivers and lakes, forests and plains, cities and towns.”12 The idea of combining an indicative with a responsive form of representation gave birth to the proposal, strongly supported by John Stuart Mill,13 to design the electoral system so as to make the legislature more and more proportional.14 Is it also behind the practice of organizing the legislature around geographically dispersed districts? It is hard to believe that it did not play some role in justifying that practice, but the evidence appears to be against it.15 Still, districting does induce a similarity in one dimension – nowadays a fairly unimportant

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one – between the population as a whole and the legislature that represents it. The indicative idea survives in the continuing enthusiasm for proportional representation and has been given new life in campaigns for supplementing electoral representation with novel, statistically representative bodies. It is there in the general policy of organizing citizens’ juries that would review various policy issues.16 And it is present in the notion of the deliberative opinion poll that is chosen as a random sample and then canvassed for its view on one or another issue at two separate times: first, before members of the sample make contact with one another, and, second, after they come together to receive background information, to hear different points of view, and to debate the right line to take on the issue under consideration.17 Indicatively representative bodies have been used in many other contexts too.18 A particularly striking example appears in the Citizens’ Assembly that was recently established in the Canadian province of British Columbia.19 A more or less representative sample of 160 citizens was assembled and given the task, over much of 2004, of reviewing the existing electoral system in the light of various hearings and discussions and making a recommendation on whether it should be amended. The group recommended a change that then went to referendum and won more about 58 percent support. The recommendation did not pass, however, because the government had decreed – without much explanation – that it would need 60 percent support to be put into law.20 III. INDICATIVE REPRESENTATION AT THE INDIVIDUAL LEVEL

The observations in the first section establish that it is conceptually appropriate to recognize two forms of representative relationship, one responsive, the other indicative. And the observations in the second show that political practice, traditional and contemporary, has recognized the value of indicative as well as responsive representation. Although the idea of indicative representation has not been a focus of political thought, it picks up something that has clearly been valued in past practice. But where discussion in the first section suggested that an individual might be indicatively represented by another individual, the political practice described in the second focused entirely on how one group, an assembly, can be indicatively representative of another: the population as a whole. And this raises a question as to whether an

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individual as distinct from an assembly might serve in political practice as the indicative representative of the population. In the case where a group plays the representative role, it is easy to see how it might count as indicatively representative of the represented population. It is composed, say, on the basis of random sampling, in a manner that is meant to ensure a suitable similarity or isomorphism with the population. Is there a similar basis for claiming that an individual might be fit to serve as an indicative representative of a population? There certainly may be in the case where the population to be represented is characterized by a set of distinctive beliefs or principles, like a religious congregation or a political movement. A randomly selected member of the church or association, or at least a member who is well versed in the group’s commitments, might have obvious qualifications to serve in an indicative role. But that is a rather special case, and the question is whether we might identify a basis for treating certain individuals as fit to serve as indicative representatives of less homogeneous groups like the typical population of a contemporary state. To approach this question, it is important to distinguish between what we may call the compositional and the operational likeness between an indicative representer and a represented group. The statistical sample is a compositional likeness of the larger population, and that is what makes it such an obvious candidate for indicative status. But the compositional likeness is important only because it promises an operational likeness. It provides a basis for thinking that if the smaller group comes to a certain decision in the light of information and discussion, then it is probable that the population would come to a similar decision were it able to process information and conduct discussion in the same way. This is what gives its appeal the idea of an indicatively representative assembly such as the British Columbia Citizens’ Assembly. The compositional likeness or proportionality between an assembly of this kind and the population as a whole would be of little or no significance, however, if it turned out that having been selected for their isomorphism with the population as a whole, the members of the sample received monetary rewards from various pressure groups for taking one or another line. Those special incentives would undermine the probability of the sample’s operating as the population would operate in similar conditions. And so the sample would lose its indicative credentials. What is important for indicative status is operational similarity and compositional likeness is significant only insofar as it makes operational more likely.

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This observation teaches an important lesson for the present inquiry, as we shall see in a moment. But before coming to that lesson it may be worth remarking that the observation has implications in another area as well. It suggests that the compositionally indicative legislature sought under proportional systems will fail to be operationally indicative to the extent that members are exposed to special electoral incentives. These will lead them individually and collectively to make decisions, unlike the decisions of a body like the British Columbia Citizens’ Assembly, that have a diminished claim to reflect how the population as a whole would decide. In 1810, Benjamin Constant21 already commented on the likely effect of electoral incentives. “You choose a man to represent you because he has the same interests as you. By the very fact of your choosing him, however, your choice of placing him in a different situation from yours gives him a different interest from the one he is charged with representing.” Let us return now to the question of whether any individuals could be fit to serve as indicative representers of a heterogeneous population. Suppose that it is operational rather than compositional similarity that is of importance to indicative status, as our observation suggests. That implies that even when there is no compositional similarity between any given individual and a heterogeneous population – unlike the case with a homogeneous group – it may still be possible for an individual to be operationally in tune with the population, whether generally or in a certain range of decision making. If we can find an individual who displays such an operational attunement, or an individual in whom such attunement can be elicited, then we will have found someone who is fit to be invested with an indicatively representative status. I argue in the next section that those appointed on a meritocratic basis can display precisely this sort of operational attunement and can indeed have an indicatively representative status. IV. INDICATIVE REPRESENTATION AND MERITOCRACY

In any electoral democracy, those selected by the people to hold office are bound to appoint a number of other officials in government. Let us suppose that they appoint them on a meritocratic basis, as distinct from rewarding electoral supporters; this assumption, which surely applies in some cases, will make our discussion more straightforward. Some of the meritocratic appointees will be functionaries who are given the task

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of enacting government will. But others will constitute autonomous centers of authority, with a tenure in office or terms of appointment that make them more or less independent of government: they will serve the community but not, as it used to be said, at the pleasure of those elected to power. Meritocratic functionaries cannot have an independent representative status because they are more or less bound to conform to the dictates of their masters. Whatever standing they have as representers of the people, it will be inherited from the responsively representative standing of the government itself, if indeed the government has such standing. In this discussion, therefore, I concentrate on the question of whether meritocratic authorities, as distinct from meritocratic functionaries, can be taken to have the status of popular representatives. I focus on meritocratic authorities that are characteristic of electoral democracies, but the argument may also have relevance for the meritocratic authorities that are established in other regimes; I turn to that issue in the final section. The authorities I have in mind in electoral democracies can be cast, broadly, in three categories: contestatory, adjudicative, and executive. 1. Contestatory authorities: those with the duty of raising or relaying complaints and charges against government. They include the auditor general who can raise questions about government finances; the attorney general who has the power to charge personnel in government with malfeasance; ombudsman officials who can hear and raise complaints about administration; and any agents who have the task of gauging offences and raising complaints about government breaches of agreed standards or quotas, say, in the area of diversity or equal opportunity. 2. Adjudicative authorities: those with responsibility for hearing and often adjudicating such complaints or any complaints in the same category that are raised directly by members of the public. They include the judges on the different courts where such charges can be brought as well as the members of any tribunals or hearings that are given suitable powers of adjudication. 3. Executive authorities: those who are charged with duties of a kind for which elected authorities are often deemed unsuitable, having electoral or other special incentives that would create conflicts of interest. These include election commissioners who draw district boundaries; central bankers who determine money supply and

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interest rates; sentencing commissioners who give advice on how effective penal sanctions are in deterring crime; statisticians who conduct a periodic census, release seasonal data on the economy, and report on other sensitive matters like crime rates; and experts such as those who grant patents, oversee drug trials and provide checks on food production. I believe that such meritocratic authorities can reasonably be cast as indicative representatives of the people. They are appointed to public office on such a basis, under such constraints, and with such a brief, that their dispositions to decide matters within their purview are likely to be indicative of how the people want such decisions to be made. The authorities listed, unlike elected legislative and administrative authorities, are each confined to resolving matters in a well-defined domain. And in that domain the criteria by reference to which people in general want those decisions to be made are pretty clear. Think about what we, the members of the public, are going to want insofar as we accept that we are required to live on equal terms with one another and not seek special privileges for ourselves. We will want complaints and charges to be laid against members of the government in any area where there is a question of a failure of even-handedness or a breach of conventional or constitutional guidelines. We will want the adjudication of such charges to be conducted in an impartial manner with reference to established laws and related expectations. And we will want the duties given to executive authorities to be discharged in accordance with salient benchmarks. The benchmarks to which we will hold executive authorities are readily illustrated. Electoral boundaries should facilitate party competition without damping the influence of any minority. Interest rates should be set at a level that keeps the long-term as well as the short-term in view. Sentencing commissioners should keep track of the deterrent effect, if any, of otherwise costly and punitive measures. Those in charge of the release and analysis of data should be accurate in the basic information supplied and nonpartisan in the spin that it is given. Those responsible for food and drug administration should make their judgments and impose their resolutions on the basis of impartial assessment without regard to the claims of special interests. It is important that the criteria at which I gesture in these contestatory, adjudicative, and executive areas are endorsed in the population at large. It is only if they have this endorsement that imposing them on

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public authorities can count as imposing a form of popular control on those individuals and bodies. But I think it is overwhelmingly plausible in most advanced societies today that the people do endorse such criteria. If you have any doubts about that claim, ask yourself whether the breach of such benchmarks would be likely to cause a scandal, and provoke outrage, if it became a matter of public knowledge. Clearly the answer is that it would. Can you imagine any informed population – or at least any that is not intimidated by fear of reprisal – remaining quiet and resigned in face of information about government corruption, judicial favoritism, or failures of impartiality in the performance of various executive authorities? Let it be granted, then, that there are popularly endorsed criteria, recognized on all sides, to which public, unelected authorities ought to be answerable. The next question is whether such authorities can be led by suitable constraints to abide by such criteria, thereby acting in a way that is indicative of how the people would want them to act. I believe that they can. Suppose that meritocratic authorities are appointed on the basis of their professional skills and standing or, where that is irrelevant, their presumptive detachment and impartiality. Suppose that they are subject to public comment and censure and, like elected authorities, to the possibility of being charged and punished for misconduct. And suppose that they are given clear briefs to implement, and clear benchmarks that they are expected to meet. If these assumptions hold, as they ought to do under most images of the well-functioning polity, then the factors they put in place will combine to ensure that meritocratic authorities live up to the standards or criteria supported by the public. Let meritocratic authorities fail to meet such standards, and the constraints described should ensure that they are exposed to public gaze, subjected to public shame, and punished according to the law. Faced with the prospect of such sanctions for malfeasance or even underperformance, we can reasonably suppose that they will live up in general to the standards that the public expects them to meet. The sanctions of public shame and legal punishment may vary in importance across cultures, but I note that in many societies, the penalty of public shame – and the reward of public acclaim – may be particularly important. The professionals who may be expected to hold many meritocratic offices will generally subscribe to professional standards of performance and ought to be susceptible to powerful incentives of professional and indeed public esteem.22 Such incentives will lead them to

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shirk the disgrace and penalty associated with being indicted for underperformance or misconduct, and it will provide a motive for avoiding laziness or apathy by holding out the prospect of honor and status. Or at least we may expect that this will be so insofar as the authorities are not bound by partisan ties. Otherwise they may be prone to the temptation to seek standing, not in their profession or community at large, but in the political party to which they belong. David Hume articulated this danger with characteristic edge.23 “Honour is a great check upon mankind: But where a considerable body of men act together, this check is, in a great measure, removed; since a man is sure to be approved of by his own party, for what promotes the common interest [of the party]; and he soon learns to despise the clamours of his adversaries.” And so to the denouement. If meritocratic authorities are suitably appointed, constrained, and briefed so that they are subject to suitable sanctions and incentives, then there is every reason to expect that their attitudes will be indicative of the attitudes, on matters within their domain, of the population in general. Members of the public will want decisions in that domain to be taken according to the sorts of criteria listed earlier. And the basis on which the authorities are appointed, the constraints to which they are subject, and the briefs that they are given ought to combine to support a concern to live up to those standards. V. THE ATTRACTIONS OF MERITOCRATIC REPRESENTATION WITHIN ELECTORAL DEMOCRACY

The argument so far suggests that if the conditions of appointment and performance are suitable – as, plausibly, they can be made to be – then the sorts of meritocratic authorities that figure in electoral democracies will count as indicative representatives of the people. It may be useful now to add a few remarks on the more obvious advantages of such representation in an electoral democracy. The most obvious point to make in support of meritocratic, indicative representatives is that they promise to do a lot better in the sorts of offices envisaged than elected, responsive representatives would do.24 If contestatory authorities had to seek election, then they would have an incentive to adopt policies in line with majority opinion and, ignoring the rationale for their existence, to neglect minority complaints. If adjudicative authorities had to seek election, then again they

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would often have incentives to appeal to passing, popular sentiment, and the concerns of those who help them attain office, rather than to the strict requirements of the law. And if the various executive authorities listed were subject to electoral pressures, then in most cases, they would be tempted to neglect the benchmarks that ought by all accounts to guide their performance. Electoral commissioners would be pressed to favor the party that supports them in drawing constituency boundaries; central bankers would be motivated to appeal to supporters by promising congenial short-term policies; and of course any officials in charge of presenting or analyzing data would have an incentive to tailor things to the party or group on which they rely for election. These considerations not only suggest that meritocratic authorities ought not to be elected but also that such officials ought indeed to be independent of those elected to office. They argue that democracy cannot rely on just the responsive credentials that elected representatives enjoy; it cannot live by election alone. Any government where things are reliably done in a manner that answers to the presumptive and legitimate expectations of the people must embody meritocratic representation. There is a powerful tradition of thinking that the power enjoyed by meritocratic authorities represents a constraint on the power of the people and that it is essentially antidemocratic.25 It is precisely because of opposing this tradition that I want to argue that such authorities can claim the status of popular representatives, indicative rather than responsive in character. The idea is that meritocratic authorities are not a means through which the people are thwarted but rather an essential part of the means through which the power of the people over government – this, rather than the power of a majority or indeed an elite – is most reliably ensured. Like elected authorities, they can claim in their area of expertise to speak and act in the people’s name. The category of indicative representative is not invented just for the purpose of supporting this claim about meritocratic authorities. As we saw, it applies equally with certain representative bodies. And, to add one further consideration, it is also required to make sense of the status of private individuals or movements that challenge government with underperformance or malfeasance in public forums and serve what by all accounts is a democratically important, contestatory role. These figures include the whistleblowers and complainants who expose abuses in public life or the individual citizens or watchdog bodies or nongovernmental organizations that challenge and expose the

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unconstitutional or otherwise questionable character of certain laws or policies. What gives such contesting parties – such private attorneys general – the right to speak,26 as they generally claim to do, in the name of the people? They are indicative representatives who are subject to such constraints that they are bound to enact a brief, as we might think of it, that they are popularly assigned. The brief is provided implicitly in the fact that an approved constitution or set of conventions allows them to mount arguments in the courts or other forums against new laws and other decrees. The rationale behind the brief is to ensure that those in any potentially disadvantaged sector of society can be represented by one of their kind, or someone sympathetic to them, in challenging and testing the measures at issue. And those private attorneys general are more or less bound to enact their brief, and honor its rationale, by being required to follow established channels, arguing their case in a publicly accessible forum on publicly available and contestable grounds. All of these remarks are designed to underline the acceptability and the merits of meritocratic representation in electoral democracies. But is there anything to be said on the other side? Are there dangers in giving meritocratic authorities the power that I have been envisaging for them? The main danger springs from the fact that whereas elected, responsive representers remain subject to popular control, being constantly exposed to the possibility of being thrown out of office, meritocratic, indicative representers enjoy a potentially greater autonomy. Once installed in office, they are there for the duration of their term. Thus there is a constant danger of their becoming a law unto themselves, usurping the power of the people. The danger is manifest with the Supreme Court of the United States, for example, where judges are nominated by a president in one or another party, they enjoy tenure for life, and they are subject to few, if any, constraints from without. It is unsurprising that the judicial review that the Supreme Court practices has come in for trenchant criticism among political theorists.27 But if the danger of meritocratic authority is salient, so are the safeguards required. It is essential that the mode of appointment in any area of meritocratic authority, the constraints under which appointees operate, and the briefs to which they are bound, guard effectively against the usurpation of popular power. And because experience is essential for the testing of how well such safeguards operate, it is important that they can be periodically reviewed and adjusted in the light of

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feedback. The American experience has clearly demonstrated that the system through which Supreme Court justices are appointed is flawed. It invites any would-be candidates for office to give themselves a partypolitical complexion and appeal, thereby reducing their credibility as impartial arbiters. And once installed in office, it leaves them there until their demise or until they voluntarily opt for retirement: it gives them power unlimited. VI. THE PROBLEMS WITH MERITOCRATIC REPRESENTATION WITHOUT ELECTORAL DEMOCRACY

The need to establish, maintain, and revise the conditions under which meritocratic authorities operate raises the question of whether we can expect them to perform satisfactorily outside the context of an electoral democracy. That question is at the center of current discussion about political meritocracy, figuring in many of the other contributions to this book. I cannot hope to address the various points that have been made on different sides to that debate, but it may be useful if, in conclusion, I briefly rehearse some considerations that make a case in my mind for embedding meritocratic structures within an electoral frame. Just as meritocratic representation is required to guard against the dangers of electoral representation, so I believe that electoral is needed to guard against the dangers of meritocratic. There are three considerations I would like to put on the table in support of this view, although I cannot properly expand on any and cannot register the points that others may make in response. The first is that it is hard to see how the issues surrounding appropriate modes of appointment, constraints of office, and official briefs could be satisfactorily debated and resolved, reopened and adjusted, outside an electoral context. The possibility of exploring those issues in electoral challenge, in debates between electorally responsive parties, and in the individual or group contestation that they invite is clearly useful for fine-tuning the requirements on meritocratic representatives. Could such fine-tuning be accomplished on a popularly supported basis – and credibly accomplished on such a basis – in the absence of a nonelectoral dispensation? Myself I doubt it, although I expect that debate will continue on that question. The second consideration that moves me to think that meritocratic representation needs to be supported by electoral is that elected,

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responsive representatives can themselves play an important role in contesting and checking the activities of meritocratic authorities. They can demand with effect that such authorities should properly explain certain judgments and decisions. And short of appearing to challenge the very regime under which such authorities exist, they cannot merely invoke party-political interest in making their demands. They will have to appeal to criteria of performance that are likely to be accepted as relevant benchmarks in the community as a whole. This consideration is no more conclusive than the first, because other bodies might serve a similar role: for example, the institution of Confucian intellectuals proposed by Jiang Qing.28 But still it seems to me to carry some considerable weight. The third consideration that I take to favor embedding meritocratic representation in an electoral context involves the notion of legitimacy and takes us back to an observation made at the beginning of the chapter. The authorization of individuals in a representative role, so we saw, raises two questions. First, the issue of whether the selection was made legitimately: that is, by a suitable agency, operating under suitable rules. And second, the issue of whether it was suitably motivated, being grounded in the eligibility for a representative role of the candidates selected. We have seen that representative eligibility may consist in the responsive or indicative status, existing or expected, of those candidates. But what is needed to establish the legitimacy with which the candidates are put in representative office? I suggest that electoral democracy may have to play an indispensable part. This issue of legitimacy takes us into deep waters and I must deal with it in too brief a compass. Government authorities impose coercively on people, in the nature of the case. And so, in looking at such authorities, we may not only ask about how well they perform in office, by whatever criterion of performance is supposed, but also about whether they have a legitimate claim to office that trumps that of others. A legitimate claim to office would entitle them to our acceptance, even when things are not going so well. It is important that authorities have such a claim because otherwise every downturn in the country’s fortunes would argue, other things being equal, for revolution and regime change. Authorities who are elected under a periodic, competitive, egalitarian system of election – and actual democracies often fail to satisfy such conditions properly – have a good claim to be legitimate officeholders. And unelected authorities who are appointed by those so elected, under an open, contestable system of appointment, have an equally good claim to hold office legitimately. But how is legitimacy going to be

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established in the absence of election? In particular, how is it going to be established for unelected figures like the meritocratic authorities on whom we have been focusing here? The meritocratic philosophy, developed in different ways in other contributions to this book, has an answer to that question. The core claim, as I understand it, is that legitimacy is going to be established under broadly two conditions: first, that those in office are meritorious in a relevant way – suitably talented and virtuous; and second, that they are selected over others on the basis of that merit. But I see two problems with that proposal as a theory of legitimacy, and I conclude with a brief mention of these. The first problem is that it is hard to see what feasible system of selection might pass muster as reliably meritocratic: reliably capable of selecting the talented and the virtuous. The ancient system of examinations to the mandarinate may have worked well as a way of selecting the talented and it could presumably be resurrected in today’s world. But could any such impersonal system be relied on to select for virtue as well as talent? I don’t see how it could. That suggests that we have to rely on a system that leaves room for more personal assessments of the candidates. Any such system, however, would have to depend on interviews and testimonials and, ultimately, personal relationships. And it is hard to see how it could command the credence of the population at large, convincing them that it operates without bias or favor. There may be cultural differences in this respect between East and West, as some have suggested, arguing that credence is more readily forthcoming in the East. But, without being an expert on such cultural matters, I am not convinced that they are as deep as they would have to be to settle my concerns. The second problem that I see with the antielectoral meritocratic proposal relates to the claim of those actually selected to be truly meritorious. If a system establishes the legitimacy of officeholders, it ought to establish their legitimacy even in the event that they do not apparently do so well in office: even in the event, for example, that the economy takes a downturn. An economic downturn in an electoral democracy would not necessarily jeopardize the claim of the authorities to legitimacy; it would put a question over their abilities and efforts instead. But a downturn in a pure meritocracy would surely suggest to many that those in office are not actually meritorious – not suitably talented or not suitably virtuous – and would therefore raise a question about their legitimate claims to office. I think that it is important that legitimacy should not be tied in this way to performance, because it is required to

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motivate popular acceptance of those in office, regardless of how well or badly they actually perform. On this front I am not convinced that the meritocratic philosophy offers a satisfactory account of legitimacy. The main argument of this chapter has been that not all those who can legitimately claim to represent us need to be elected. But it may still be the case, as these final remarks suggest, that some of our representatives have to be elected if those who aren’t elected can credibly claim to be legitimate representatives. These last remarks are all too brief, however, and open up a new discussion at the same time that they close down the discussion pursued here.29 notes

1. Under Thomas Hobbes’s theory of political representation (see Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, E. Curley, ed. [Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company, 1994]), to cite a contrasting alternative, authorization involves the individual acquiescence of all representees; this is not as demanding as may first appear, however, because submission under duress can count as voluntary acquiescence. Under this theory all that is required to make a candidate eligible for the role of political representative or spokesperson, be that candidate an individual or body, is the capacity to discharge the duties of a sovereign, see P. Pettit, Made with Words: Hobbes on Language, Mind and Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008). 2. H. Pitkin, The Concept of Representation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972). 3. See P. Pettit, “Varieties of Public Representation,” in Representation and Popular Rule, Ian Shapiro, Susan Stokes and E. J. Wood, eds. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009); P. Pettit, “Representation, Responsive and Indicative,” Constellations, vol. 3 (2010), pp. 426–34; and see J. Mansbrige, “A ‘Selection Model’ of Political Representation,” Journal of Political Philosophy, vol. 17 (2009), pp. 369–98. 4. P. Pettit, On the People’s Terms: A Republican Theory and Model of Democracy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012). 5. E. Sosa, A Virtue Epistemology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). 6. Q. Skinner, “Hobbes on Representation.” European Journal of Philosophy, vol. 13 (2005), pp. 155–84; M. B. Vieira and D. Runciman, Representation (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2008). 7. D. Waley, The Italian City-Republics, 3rd ed. (London: Longman, 1988); M. H. Hansen, The Athenian Democracy in the Age of Demosthenes (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991); O. Dowlen, The Political Potential of Sortition (Exeter: Imprint Academic, 2008). 8. J. Abramson, We, the Jury: The Jury System and the Ideal of Democracy (New York: Basic Books, 1994). 9. It is significant that a supporter of the anti-Federalist cause in 1787 could complain that in the enlarged United States there would not be a representative body in legislature or jury “which possesses the same interests, feelings,

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10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15.

16. 17. 18. 19. 20.

21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27.

28. 29.

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opinions, and views the people themselves would were they all assembled,” see R. Ketcham, ed., The Anti-Federalist Papers (New York: Signet Classic, 2003), p. 265. Skinner, op. cit., p. 163. Ketcham, op. cit., p. 342. H. F. Pitkin, ed., Representation (New York: Atherton Press, 1969), p. 77. J. S. Mill, Considerations on Representative Government (London: Everyman Books, 1964). T. Christiano, The Rule of the Many: Fundamental Issues in Democratic Theory (Boulder: Westview Press, 1996). A. Rehfield, The Concept of Constituency: Poltical Representation, Democratic Legitimacy, and Institutional Design (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005). J. Stewart, E. Kendall, and A. Coote, Citizens’ Juries (London: Institute of Public Policy Research, 1994). J. S. Fishkin, The Voice of the People: Public Opinion and Democracy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997). Y. Sintomer, Le Pouvoir au peuple: jurys citoyens, tirage au sort et democratie participative (Paris: Edition la Decouverte, 2007). M. E. Warren, and H. Pearse, eds., Designing Deliberative Democracy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008). Because everything is a perfect indicator of itself, a limit case of indicative representation is the participatory democracy in which the whole population is present to vote, not just a sample. Far from being cast as the contrast point for indicative representation, the compulsory, participatory arrangement can be seen as a special case. The case is so special, however, and so infeasible, that I ignore it in this discussion. B. Constant, Principles of Politics Applicable to All Governments (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2003). G. Brennan and P. Pettit, The Economy of Esteem: An Essay on Civil and Political Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). D. Hume, Political Essays (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994). P. Pettit, “Depoliticizing Democracy,” Ratio Juris, vol. 17 (2004), pp. 52–65. W. Riker, Liberalism against Populism (San Francisco: W. H. Freeman, 1982). J. A. Rabkin, “The Secret Life of the Private Attorney General,” Law and Contemporary Problems, vol. 61 (1998), pp. 179–203. J. Waldron, The Dignity of Legislation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999); J. Waldron, Law and Disagreement (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999). J. Qing, A Confucian Constitutional Order: How China’s Ancient Past Can Shape Its Political Future (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012). I was helped in revising this chapter by the marvelous discussion of this and other papers at the Singapore conference in January 2012; by the remarks of my commentators at the conference, Ian Chong and Chin Liew Ten; and by a searching set of queries and challenges from Daniel Bell.

section ii The History of Political Meritocracy

6 Between Merit and Pedigree Evolution of the Concept of “Elevating the Worthy” in Pre-imperial China Yuri Pines Western admirers of Chinese civilization – from the French intellectuals of the age of Enlightenment, to the doyen of modern Sinology, John K. Fairbank (1907–91), to countless current scholars – remain fascinated with China’s perceived ideology and practice of meritocracy.1 Doubtlessly, these admirers have the point. The idea of “elevating the worthy” (shang xian ) became one of the cornerstones of China’s political ideology ever since the Warring States period (Zhanguo , 453–221 b.c.e.); through much of the imperial period most of the males were technically legible for promotion into the government apparatus; and Chinese history provides not a few examples of persons from a relatively humble background who made their way to the top of the political ladder. In all these aspects, Chinese civilization differs markedly from aristocratic cultures elsewhere, such as medieval Europe, in which the pedigree normally played the decisive role in determining one’s future. This background makes it tempting to proclaim meritocracy to be an essential feature of Chinese civilization, such as, supposedly, the family-oriented ethics, ritual-based social hierarchy and the monarchic political system. Yet a closer look at Chinese history would disclose not only that meritocratic ideas and practices did not develop before the Warring States period, but also that their introduction was accompanied by multiple tensions. These tensions, for example, between the principle of “elevating the worthy” and the ongoing importance of family and of pedigree; between meritocratic government and the hereditary monarchy; and, most significantly, among conflicting views of “worth” (xian ) and “merits” (gong ) stand at the focus of my chapter. In what follows, through highlighting ideological debates over these issues during the Warring States period, the formative age of Chinese 161

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political tradition, and through contextualizing these debates in contemporaneous political practices, I hope to demonstrate the essentially contradictory nature of “elevating the worthy” discourse. Namely, behind the strongly pronounced support of social mobility and of granting an opportunity for every skilled male to enter the government service, we find a subtle yet discernible desire of the members of educated elite to monopolize power in their hands. This desire – and the ensuing tension between “worthiness” and “merit” – may explain some of the complexities and contradictions that accompanied implementation of meritocratic ideas under the imperial rule; and it may also be of some relevance for implementing the principles of meritocracy in our age. I. BACKGROUND: THE END OF THE ARISTOCRATIC AGE

I start my discussion not with the Western Zhou age (, 1046–771 b.c.e.), during which, according to some of its eminent researchers, seeds of meritocracy were sown,2 but rather with the demonstrably aristocratic Springs-and-Autumns period (Chunqiu , 770–453 b.c.e.). My choice is not incidental: whereas the evidence for the Western Zhou period appointment practices and ideological trends is too scant to allow definitive conclusions, for the Springs-and-Autumns period, in contrast, we have abundant data that allows meaningful discussion. The Zuo zhuan , our major source for the history of that period, provides valuable information about political, administrative, social, and, arguably, ideological life of major polities of that age; this information, supplemented whenever relevant with paleographic evidence, serves my discussion here.3 From the very beginning, it may be useful to summarize: the available evidence shows beyond doubt that the Springs-and-Autumns period was decidedly not meritocratic. The Springs-and-Autumns period was the golden age of hereditary aristocracy. Politically, members of this stratum occupied all positions of importance in each of the major states; and the system of hereditary offices, which had fully developed by the early sixth century b.c.e., effectively precluded outsiders from entering the top echelon of powerholders. Economically, aristocratic lineages relied on hereditary allotments, the size of which was at times comparable with the possessions of the ruling lineage itself. Socially, the elevated position of the aristocrats was reinforced by the elaborate ritual system, the major goal of which was to maintain hierarchy within the nobility and to preserve the

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nobles’ superiority over other social strata. Finally, the aristocrats also dominated the realm of ideology: if members of lower strata were ideologically active, then our sources did not preserve their voices. Through much of the period under discussion, the power of nobility appeared to be unassailable.4 The aristocratic monopoly on positions of power in the state hierarchy was not built in to the political system of the Springs-and-Autumns period from its inception. At the beginning of that age, regional lords (zhuhou ) were still able to maintain certain control over appointments,5 and although normally a new ruler was granting top positions to his closest kin, occasionally a member of the low nobility (i.e., a shi , discussed subsequently), could be elevated to the position of a ruler’s aide.6 Yet gradually, as ministerial (qing ) lineages consolidated their power in major states, they succeeded to effectively monopolize high positions in the state administration, either turning major offices into their hereditary possession or, alternatively, rotating these offices among a few most powerful lineages.7 Only exceptionally, in cases of major internal turmoil and subsequent overhaul of the state apparatus, could a shi ascend the administrative ladder to a position of substantial power.8 In contrast, should the ruler try to appoint his favorites from among the shi to a top position at the expense of the aristocrats, this could lead to a violent response from ministerial lineages.9 In the pedigree-based order, individual abilities of an appointee were not neglected, but they played a subordinate role in determining his future. This rationale can be seen from the following summary of the rules of designating a heir-apparent: When a heir-apparent dies, his younger brother from the same mother is appointed; if there is none, then the eldest [of other brothers] is appointed. If their age is equal, then the worthy is chosen. If the candidates are equally appropriate, then divination by making cracks is performed – this is the way of the ancients.10 ,  , ,  ,  



The worthiness of the candidate had to be taken into consideration – but its importance was miniscule when compared with his birthright.11 This view, mutatis mutandis, dominated the approach toward office holding in general. Statesmen of the Springs-and-Autumns period, whose

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voices we hear from the Zuo zhuan, hailed at times their colleagues who appointed the “good” people, but only insofar as these “good” were members of hereditary aristocracy: “goodness” was secondary to pedigree.12 Hence, rulers who were able to preserve well the interests of their kin and of old ministerial families were hailed,13 whereas those who appointed outsiders were criticized.14 One of the most brilliant sixth century b.c.e. thinkers, Yan Ying ( , c. 580–510), clarified that the proper social order is the one in which members of the lower nobility, the shi, would not “overflow” the high-ranking nobles.15 Political power – just as social and cultural power – was supposed to remain forever in the hands of the latter. This said, during the period under discussion, we may discern certain institutional and intellectual factors that contributed to the eventual demise of the pedigree-based political order and its replacement with the meritocratic system. Most significantly, the system of hereditary officeholding never gained ideological legitimacy: it was neither sanctified by canonical texts or historical practices of the early Western Zhou period nor was it justified in terms of political efficiency and good order. To the contrary, it was obvious for most observers that the system severely malfunctioned. First, by effectively depriving the rulers of the right to appoint their ministers, it contributed to the grave weakening of the regional lords’ authority, thereby exacerbating domestic crises that plagued most of the polities of the Springs-and-Autumns period.16 Second, the accumulating political experience made it clear that hereditary appointments often brought into government inept and intemperate men whose misbehavior could ruin their lineage and even their state.17 This understanding might have prevented the aristocratic statesmen, whose voices we hear from the Zuo zhuan from proposing full institutionalization of the system of hereditary officeholding. Although these statesmen, who were the major beneficiaries of this system, did not advocate its overhaul, they also did not attempt to legitimate it. Thus, the hereditary appointment system which stood at the core of the pedigree-based social order remained singularly lacking political vitality and was eventually easily dismantled in the wake of political reforms of the fifth and fourth centuries b.c.e. The second major factor that weakened the aristocratic order was gradual reconceptualization of the nature of the elite status. Rather than justifying their elevated positions in terms of pure pedigree, aristocrats of the Springs-and-Autumns period increasingly tended to emphasize abilities and morality as the true foundation of their power. This

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change is evident from the reinterpretation of the term “superior man” (junzi, ), the single most important elite designation during the aristocratic age. Initially, this term was clearly related to one’s belonging to hereditary aristocracy,18 but gradually it became imbued with ethical content. While the pedigree connotation of the term remained clear (hence, in the Zuo zhuan this designation is never applied to a shi), junzi was gradually reinterpreted as pertaining to one’s qualities rather than pure pedigree. Only the noble who was impeccably moral and intelligent deserved his elevated position; otherwise, he could be designated “a petty man” (xiao ren ), thereby indicating his unworthiness of the noble status. In the age of frequent downfall of powerful ministerial lineages, this emphasis on personal inadequacy of those who were supposed to be “superior men” provided contemporary aristocrats with convenient explanations of the ever-accelerating downward mobility of the members of their stratum.19 This shift away from one’s lineage and one’s pedigree to one’s individual qualities as a major determinant of one’s status is visible in the late Springs-and-Autumns period, both from textual and paleographic sources.20 Yet this “ethicization” of the “superior men’s” self-image had unexpected consequences for the nobles. In the short term it might have been designed to provide further legitimation for the aristocrats’ dominant position, but in the final account, it paved the way for the upward mobility of the shi stratum. As we shall see later in the chapter, the rising shi began emulating the behavior of superior men, thereby laying claim to their eligibility to junzi status. The aristocrats remained powerless in the face of this challenge. Ironically, those who imbued the term junzi with ethical meaning were unable to find ideological justifications to repel the shi attack on their hereditary privileges. Thus, by downplaying the importance of the pedigree in obtaining high political status, aristocrats of the Springs-and-Autumns period contributed to the dismantling of the very social order that had ensured their elevated position. The new age belonged to the new men. II. THE RISE OF THE SHI: BACKGROUND

From the fifth to fourth century b.c.e., the political system of the would-be Chinese world underwent tremendous change. Loose aristocratic polities of the Springs-and-Autumns period were replaced with centralized territorial states of the Warring States era; the expanded bureaucracy attained novel agro-managerial and military functions and

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penetrated the society down to its bottom, and the system of hereditary officeholding and hereditary allotments was largely replaced by flexible appointments that were increasingly determined by the appointee’s individual qualities and his merit. Of manifold developments of that age, the one that is of particular importance for the current discussion is the change in the elite composition, namely, the demise of hereditary aristocracy and its absorption into the new elite group, based on the shi stratum. The rise of the shi, in turn, was accompanied by major ideological changes, among which the introduction of the idea of meritocracy figures prominently. Originally, shi were the lowest stratum of hereditary aristocracy, which comprised primarily minor siblings of the nobles; as such, they made their living largely as retainers and stewards of the noble lineages and only under truly exceptional circumstances they could gain national prominence.21 Yet by the fifth century b.c.e., as the high nobility was decimated in bloody internecine feuds, some of the regional lords found it expedient to appoint more subservient and less threatening shi to fill in the gap in the ranks of high officials. Other shi benefited from the ascendancy of the heads of powerful ministerial lineages – namely, the Zhao , Wei , and Han  lineages in the state of Jin  and the Tian  lineage in the state of Qi . Heads of these lineages were among the first to experiment with centralized rule in their allotments, granting positions to their retainers not on the basis of the pedigree but rather due to one’s abilities; and when these allotments turned into fully independent polities, the practice of employing the shi rather than the high-ranking nobles continued, allowing members of the shi stratum to rise to the top of the political pyramid. Concomitantly, the expansion of the government apparatus in the wake of administrative and military reforms of the Warring States period created new employment opportunities for the shi.22 While details of these processes (as generally details of the fifth century b.c.e. history) are not clear due to dearth of reliable sources, the general trend of the rise of the shi during that century is undeniable.23 By the middle to late Warring States period, the term shi becomes a common appellation of the elite members. Parallel to the political ascendancy of the shi, no less remarkable was their attainment of ideological leadership. By the middle Warring States period, leading shi intellectuals (the Masters, zi ) – and by extension the shi stratum as a whole – succeeded in establishing their position as “possessors of the Way (Dao )” – that is, intellectual and moral leaders of the society. Although some aspects of this process

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are still unclear, its basic parameters can be outlined with sufficient clarity.24 In marked distinction from the Springs-and-Autumns period, when the courts were the only known loci of intellectual authority, by the Warring States period, this authority shifted to the members of the shi stratum, who owed it not to their exalted position (which they frequently lacked) but to their ideological expertise, namely, their putative access to the Way. To be sure, the nature of the Way, and the nature of the required ideological expertise, remained bitterly contested throughout that period and beyond; but it seems that there was consensus that the proper definition would come from among the ranks of the shi. Inexplicably, hereditary aristocrats made no traceable attempt to preserve their ideological authority, and while our sources are clearly biased in favor of the shi, there is no doubt that overall the picture they present is correct: the shi came to dominate the intellectual and not just political life of the two to three centuries before the imperial unification of 221 b.c.e. These simultaneous and mutually reinforcing processes of the rise of the shi to the forefront of political and ideological life have fuelled the new pro-shi discourse evident in both ethical and administrative thought of the Warring States period. It is on this background that proliferation of meritocratic ideas should be understood. Although these ideas were naturally related to the administrative reforms and to the ongoing search for enhanced government efficiency, their rapid spread reflected much broader social and ideological changes during the period under discussion. In particular, it reflected the growing selfconfidence of the shi as they rose first to the position of the noble’s peers and then to the position of the society’s undisputed moral and intellectual leaders. In what follows, I show how this distinctive shi ethos developed and how a new consensus ensued which had effectively eliminated, or at least substantially reduced, the pedigree as the major criterion for government employment. Yet I also demonstrate that proliferation of meritocratic discourse, with its ubiquitous emphasis on “elevating the worthy,” created a series of new social problems, bringing about eventual bifurcation between “worthiness” and “merit” as the major criteria in appointing government officials. III. “ELEVATING THE WORTHY”: THE BEGINNINGS

The rise of the shi and the rise of meritocratic discourse are commonly related to two major early thinkers of the age under discussion: Confucius (, 551–479 b.c.e.) and Mozi (, ca. 460–390 b.c.e.). Yet

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pace the common perception, Confucius’s contribution to the advance of meritocracy is far from direct. Living at the end of the Springs-andAutumns period, this thinker was reluctant to advocate radical departures from the extant sociopolitical practices, which favored hereditary aristocrats. Hence, although many of Confucius’s sayings disclose his high aspirations, and his recommendation to promote “the upright” persons is conducive to the upward mobility of the shi, he does not speak explicitly of shi as the aristocrats’ peers.25 At the very least, the text of the Lunyu , the major repository of Confucius’s ideas, contains no direct endorsement of the concept of social mobility, which is prominent in later writings of Confucius’s followers.26 This political reluctance notwithstanding, the Lunyu contribution to the rise of shi is undeniable, especially in terms of shaping the self-image of the rising elite. Confucius and his disciples unequivocally endorsed “ethicization” of the concept of junzi, which, as we have seen, was evident already in the Zuo zhuan. In the Lunyu, this term has much less pronounced hereditary connotations, being primarily a designation of benevolent, perspicacious and courageous men; and, in distinction from the Zuo zhuan, the Lunyu readily applies the term junzi to the shi. The Lunyu is also the first text in which the term shi itself becomes an object of inquiry, and it is treated in a way similar to the term junzi – primarily as ethical and not hereditary designation. Time and again, Confucius is asked by his disciples, who can be designated shi, and the answers strongly resemble his discussions of the “superior men.” Shi are “people with aspirations” (zhi ), and these aspirations, just as those of the Master himself, are directed at the Way, namely at the ideal of moral and political order. A shi is the person who “has a sense of shame” in his conduct and “will not disgrace his ruler’s orders when dispatched to the four directions”; or, minimally, he is a person, who is renowned for his filiality and fraternal behavior; or, at least, is a trustworthy and resolute man. Shi is “decisive, kind and gentle” with friends and relatives. And, most important, he is a person wholly dedicated to his high mission: “Shi who is addicted to leisure is not worthy of being considered shi.”27 What, then, is the mission of a shi? A clue may be supplied from the following dialogue: Zilu (, 542–480 b.c.e.) asked about the superior man. The Master said: “Rectify yourself to be reverent.” [Zilu] asked: “Is that all?”

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[The Master] said: “Rectify yourself to bring peace to others.” [Zilu] asked: “Is that all?” [The Master] said: “Rectify yourself to bring peace to the hundred clans. To rectify yourself thereby bringing peace to the hundred clans: even Yao and Shun considered this difficult!”28 ::?:  :?: 

, !

The ultimate goal of rectification is political: to bring peace to the hundred clans, presumably by restoring a kind of ideal rule akin to that of the paragon rulers, Yao  and Shun . This goal, however, is extraordinarily difficult, almost unattainable: even the ancient paragons would not easily accomplish it. The mission of a shi/superior man is therefore a heavy burden. Confucius’s disciples shared the Master’s view: thus, Zizhang (, 503–?) defined a shi as a person who “sacrifices his life when facing danger, thinks of righteousness when facing [possible] gains,”29 and Zengzi (, 502–435) spoke of the tasks of a shi in the following way: Shi cannot but be strong and resolute, as his task is heavy and his way is long. He considers benevolence as his task – is not it heavy? He stops only after death – is not [his way] long?30  , , ? , ?

Zengzi’s definition, one of the classical shi-related statements in preimperial literature, reflects the strong sense of self-respect by the members of the newly rising stratum, who accepted their mission to improve governance above and public mores below and who considered themselves spiritual leaders of the society. It indicates that although, politically speaking, the Lunyu does not treat the shi as the nobles’ equals, it does place them at the top of the moral and intellectual pyramid. This elevation is indicative of the coming of a new era of the shi dominance in both social and intellectual life. Whereas the Lunyu contributed decisively toward shaping the selfimage of intellectually active shi, the second major text of the Warring States period, the Mozi, added another dimension to the shi assertiveness, supplying ideological justifications for their ascendancy. Unlike

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the Lunyu, the Mozi appears free of hesitations or self-restraint insofar as the social standing of the shi is concerned. To the contrary, Mozi proudly proclaims that shi are indispensable for the state’s wellbeing: When the state has plenty of worthy and good shi, its orderly rule is abundant; when it has few of worthy and good shi, its orderly rule is meager; hence the task of the Grandees is to multiply worthies and that is all.31  ,  ,  ,    , 

In “Elevating the Worthy” (“Shang xian” ) chapters, from one of which the foregoing passage was cited, Mozi proposed a detailed list of measures aimed at attracting meritorious shi: “They must be enriched, honored, respected, and praised: then it will be possible to attain and multiply in the state worthy and good shi.”32 These proposals may sound simplistic and even demeaning to the shi: surely they differ markedly from Confucius’s emphasis on political service as a means of self-realization. Nonetheless, in the peculiar intellectual atmosphere of the Warring States world, which was at times interpreted as a huge “market of talent,” this awareness of economic interests of the shi did not undermine Mozi’s prestige. Many – probably most – shi were primarily interested in government career as a means of improving their economic status, and Mozi was a keen speaker on their behalf.33 Mozi unequivocally advocated not just employment of worthy shi and their enrichment and empowerment; he was also the most radical supporter of social mobility. Thus, after depicting the implementation of “elevating the worthy” policy by the sage kings of antiquity, according to which “neither the officials were perpetually esteemed, nor the people forever base,”34 Mozi specifies its blessed results: Thus, at that time, even among those ministers who enjoyed rich emoluments and respected position, none was irreverent and reckless, and each behaved accordingly; even among peasants and artisans, each was encouraged to enhance his aspirations. So, shi are those who become aides, chancellors and heads of officials. He who attains shi, his plans meet with no difficulties, the body is not exhausted, the fame is established and achievements are accomplished; his beauty

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is manifest and ugliness will not come into being: it is all thanks to attaining shi.35  ,  ,  ,  ,  , , , , ,  

Mozi is unequivocal: even among the low strata of peasants and artisans, some people may contribute to the state’s well-being; accordingly, there should be no limitations at all on social mobility, and one’s position should reflect exclusively his worthiness and righteousness. Simultaneously, those who occupy high positions in the present should beware of downward mobility. In Mozi’s idealized system, nobody remains secure in his position. Hence, he explains, that ancient sages in promoting the able and the worthy: . . . did not align themselves with uncles and brothers, were impartial toward rich and noble and did not cherish the beautiful-looking. They raised and promoted the worthy, enriched and ennobled them, making them officials and leaders; they deposed and degraded the unworthy, depossessed and demoted them, making them laborers and servants.36 . . . . . . ,  ,   ,  , ,  ,  ,  

The implications for the nobles are clear enough: they are no longer supposed to be secure at their position in the society where personal abilities alone determine the person’s future. What is astonishing is that Mozi’s attack on the centuries-old order apparently went unopposed, without traceable attempts to defend the pedigree-based social hierarchy. It is possible that the voices of the opponents of social mobility were simply silenced after the rise of the shi became fait accompli, but even if this is the case, the fact that none of these voices is discernible in either received or archeologically discovered texts is remarkable.Thus, even if Mozi’s remark that “shi and superior men from All under Heaven, wherever they dwell and whenever they talk, all [support] elevating the worthy”37 exaggerates the support for his views, it does reflect a clear change in the intellectual atmosphere from the time of the Zuo zhuan. “Elevating the worthy” became the paradigmatic rule of political life, while aristocrats quietly yielded their power and hereditary rights.

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IV. THE DISCOURSE OF WORTHINESS AND THE SHI PRIDE

In the middle to late Warring States period, meritocratic discourse came to dominate the vast majority of known texts. To show the power of this discourse, I start with a rare example of a thinker who voiced reservations with regard to uninhibited social mobility: one of the leading followers of Confucius, Mengzi (, ca. 380–304 b.c.e.). Mengzi urged the ruler to exercise maximum caution in deciding on promotions and demotions: “When the ruler promotes the able, if he has no choice [but to do so], this means he lets the humble overstep the respected and strangers overstep the kin. Can he but be cautious?”38 The thinker argued that violation of hereditary principles of rule is justifiable only insofar as the move is unanimously supported by “all the courtiers,” “all the nobles,” and “all the dwellers of the capital.” Yet do these reservations with regard to “promoting the worthy” justify identification of Mengzi as “reactionary” defendant of hereditary offices, as proposed by Angus C. Graham?39 I think a closer look at Mengzi’s writings invalidates Graham’s verdict.40 Mengzi’s self-identification was squarely with the members of the shi stratum; no less than Confucius himself, Mengzi can be identified as the speaker on behalf of the shi, and as such he remains decisively meritocratic. Through much of his writings, Mengzi proposes a vision of two parallel hierarchies: the political one, headed by hereditary rulers and their close aides, including the rulers’ closest kin,41 and the moral and intellectual one, headed by upright shi like Mengzi himself. Shi may come from the bottom of society; hence some of them suffer severe poverty to the point of “eating neither in the morning, nor in the evening, starving to the point of being unable to exit the gate.”42 Yet despite these adverse conditions, and despite their utter dependence on the rulers for their sustenance, the shi are actually the ruler’s equals: in a most daring and politically dangerous pronouncement, Mengzi claims that in terms of one’s virtue (de ) the ruler actually should “serve” (shi ) his meritorious aide, implying thereby the shi’s superiority over the sovereign!43 Moreover, the bifurcation between political and moral and intellectual authority is but a temporary aberration: normally, both should be unified, and the morally upright persons of whatever pedigree should rule the state. In the past, not a few paragon leaders led a humble life, which nonetheless did not prevent them from reaching the peak of power. Thus, the sage Thearch Shun  rose from among the alien

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tribesmen; he had to “dwell in the depth of the mountains, . . . having deer and pigs as friends,” and made his living from “toiling at the fields.” Similarly, King Wen of Zhou ( , d. c. 1047 b.c.e.) also rose from among the aliens, and a series of model ministers of the past started from the very bottom of the society.44 Their low starting point notwithstanding, each of these paragons ascended the top of the sociopolitical ladder; and Mengzi evidently expected that such a good fate would befall himself.45 In the final account, Mengzi’s aspirations were squarely on the meritocratic rather than aristocratic side! When we move from Mengzi to another self-proclaimed heir of Confucius, Xunzi (, ca. 310–230 b.c.e.), his meritocratic inclinations become much less equivocal. At first glance Xunzi appears an unlikely candidate to endorse social mobility: his commitment to strict observance of social hierarchy as embedded in the all-important concept of ritual (li ) might have placed him on par with thinkers of the Springs-and-Autumns period, for whom ritual was the major means of constraining unwelcome advent of the shi.46 Nonetheless, it is with regard to social mobility that Xunzi’s departure from earlier views of ritual becomes clear. The thinker clarifies: Although a man is the descendant of kings, lords, shi and nobles, if he does not observe the norms of ritual and propriety, he must be relegated to the status of the commoner; although he is a descendant of a commoner, if he accumulates learning of the texts, rectifies his behavior, and is able to observe the norms of ritual and propriety – then he must be elevated to the rank of high ministers, shi and nobles.47   , ,     ,  , , ,  

The statement is unequivocal: rather than using ritual as an impediment to social mobility, Xunzi employs ritual behavior as a substitute to pedigree, turning it into the single criterion of appropriate social status. Elsewhere, Xunzi explains why the pedigree cannot serve an adequate determinant of one’s position: it is because every human being – from the most revered paragons to the despicable “petty men” – possesses the same inborn qualities. It is only through learning and self-cultivation that one can transform himself into a “superior man.”48 Hence, one’s position should be determined exclusively by one’s learning and one’s conduct, that is, observation of the norms of ritual and propriety, not by one’s birthright. Without a proper behavior, even the son of a king

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cannot take his princely position for granted: thus, both downward and upward mobility are normal and normative in an orderly society. Elsewhere Xunzi clarifies: In the chaotic age . . . ranks and rewards exceed one’s virtue . . . worthies are promoted according to their pedigree. . . . If the ancestors were meritorious, the descendants must have distinction; even if they behave like [the paradigmatic tyrants] Jie and Zhou[xin], they must be placed among those who should be respected . . . [Yet] when one promotes the worthies according to the pedigree, then, even if he hopes to avoid calamity, will he be able to escape it?49  . . .  . . . . . . , ,  , . . . , , !

Xunzi again is unequivocal: the pedigree-based order is both morally wrong – because it allows scoundrels of Jie and Zhouxin’s ilk to remain at the top of the government apparatus – and politically unsustainable. An alternative is clear: a resolutely meritocratic system in which “one’s rank will not exceed one’s virtue” should replace the decadent aristocratic order. This resoluteness of Xunzi, compared with Mengzi’s zigzags, may reflect not just well-known individual differences between the two thinkers but also the impact of the new political realities in which meritocracy not just gained intellectual legitimacy but was also practically implemented (discussed in more detail later in the chapter). Let us pause to consider broader implications of Mengzi’s and Xunzi’s approaches. Their differences aside, both thinkers definitely endorse the idea that morally upright “worthy” shi should lead the society. But how to determine one’s worth? The answers are not clear: oddly enough, the term xian (, “worthy”) is never properly defined in these or other early texts, and its content is never systematically discussed. Sometimes the content can be deduced from the context: in the Mozi, for instance, “worthiness” is often employed as synonymous to “ability” (neng ), which evidently refers to one’s administrative skills; this emphasis on one’s specific skills is clear from Mozi’s comparison of “the worthies” with skillful archers or physicians.50 In the Mengzi, abilities are mentioned infrequently as an attribute of “worthiness,” but the focus is much stronger on one’s morality rather than on specific skills; on one occasion, Mengzi clarifies that one’s appointment should be determined primarily by his “goodness” (shan ) rather than knowledge or administrative experience.51 In many passages of the Xunzi, abilities figure as synonymous with worthiness, but elsewhere Xunzi

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clarifies that these are not sufficient attributes of a “superior man”: in terms of abilities, there is no real distinction between a superior man and a petty man, and the former excels only in terms of morality and ritually appropriate behavior.52 It seems then that insofar as for the followers of Confucius a truly worthy appointee should be a “superior man,” then one’s worth is determined primarily, even if not exclusively, by one’s moral qualities. Be it morality or skills, the question remained how to “recognize” one’s worth;53 and this was not an idle question in the society in which so many texts advocated “elevating the worthy.” One relatively easy solution to the problem of “recognition” appears in a variety of anecdotes that were incorporated into manifold compendia, such as the Stratagems of the Warring States (Zhanguo ce ) or into Sima Qian’s ( , c. 145–90 b.c.e.) Historical Records (Shiji ). These anecdotes focus on an ability of a potential employee to impress the ruler (or a high executive) during an interview, in which the job seeker either presents an appropriate policy proposal, or expounds deep philosophical truths, or at times just surprises the potential employer with eloquent argumentation; as a result, he gets the deserved appointment.54 The broad circulation of these stories in the transmitted literature suggests that either an interview was indeed the primary means of verifying one’s worth or at least that it was a preferred way for the shi who propagated these stories. Yet it was also abundantly clear to many thinkers that speech alone can be misleading and deceptive; hence much of the Masters’ literature expresses mistrust of “glib tongues” and “empty words” and cautions the ruler from being too attentive to eloquent persuaders.55 An alternative, more sophisticated means to ascertain the worthiness of a potential employee is suggested in a series of texts scattered through preimperial and early imperial compendia, which teach the ruler (or other employer) how to discern individual qualities of his underlings. In sharp (and possibly conscious) distinction from the anecdotes in which one brilliant speech ensures the person’s employment, these texts, which can be represented by such essays as “Appointments Explained” (“Guan ren jie” ) chapter of the Surviving Zhou Documents (Yi Zhou shu  ) and the parallel “Appointments of King Wen” (“Wen Wang guan ren” ) chapter from the Records of Rites of Dai the Elder (Da Dai Liji ) propose a way to diagnose an employee’s character through a series of observances and tests that would explore his sincerity, his will, external expressions of his

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feelings, his countenance, his hidden motivations, and the match between his words and deeds.56 Significantly, the focus of the observations is overwhelmingly on the candidate’s morality; miniscule if any attention is paid to his actual performances. The candidate is expected to be loyal and filial, benevolent and knowledgeable, modest and trustworthy, compliant and virtuous, righteous and observant of rituals. These recommendations closely follow the list of the features of a “superior man” common in the texts of the Confucian lore, and as aptly noticed by Matthias Richter, there is significant similarity between these texts aimed at diagnosing an employee’s fitness to office and others, such as the “Zengzi li shi”  chapter of the Da Dai Liji aimed at moral self-cultivation of the “superior men.”57 This means that one’s “worth” is determined primarily by one’s morality, as implied by Mengzi and Xunzi, among others. Ostensibly, the “characterological”58 texts should have established solid criteria for discerning one’s worth; yet the utility of these texts remained limited. The complex process of diagnosing the employee’s personality as suggested in these texts was extremely time-consuming; besides, it required of a ruler such an extraordinary insight and psychological sophistication that much of these recommendations remained utterly impractical. In the final account, proponents of moral interpretation of the worthiness did not elaborate – and perhaps could not elaborate – an adequate means of ascertaining one’s morality and of making reliable distinctions between a moral person and a hypocrite. In practice this meant that a ruler had to rely primarily on an employee’s reputation in ascertaining his worth, and this allowed manifold manipulations by unscrupulous shi. The potential manipulativeness of meritocratic discourse of the late Warring States period is fully visible in the last major text from that ¨ period, the Lushi chunqiu . This text, prepared jointly by thinkers of different ideological affiliations, who gathered on the eve of the imperial unification at the court of the rising power of Qin  under the auspices of the almighty prime minister Lu¨ Buwei ( , d. 235 b.c.e.), was devised as a careful synthesis of major ideologies of the Warring States era.59 Its authors frequently disagree on many political, philosophical, and moral issues, but they have certain common beliefs. Among these, the insistence on elevating the shi is so pervasive in the ¨ Lushi chunqiu that the entire text may well be read as a promotion campaign by Lu¨ Buwei’s “guests.” The text abounds with stories of wise rulers who attracted shi and benefited enormously from their services and those who failed to do so, bringing disaster on themselves.60

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It reminds a ruler of the difficulty of discovering truly worthy shi: not only should he diagnose their character through a means depicted in “characterological” texts, but he should invest even more time for the search of these rare talents, seeking them “between the four seas, amidst mountain valleys, at lonely and secluded locations – and thus he will be lucky to obtain them.”61 To illustrate the spirit of the text, a single citation would suffice: Shi are the men who, when acting in accord with [proper] patterns, do not escape the difficulties; when facing the troubles, forget the profits; they cast aside life to follow righteousness and consider death as returning home. If there are such men, the ruler of a state will not be able to befriend them, the Son of Heaven will not be able to make them servants. At best, stabilization of All under Heaven, or, second to it, stabilization of a single state must come from these men. Hence a ruler who wants to attain great achievements and fame cannot but devote himself to searching for these men. A worthy sovereign works hard looking for [proper] men and rests maintaining affairs.62  , ,  , ,  ,  , ,  ,     ,     , 

The messages of this passage – namely, effusive praise of the superior morality of the shi, of their loftiness which makes a mere ruler of a state unworthy to befriend them, and of their essential contribution ¨ to the state’s well-being – recur throughout the entire Lushi chunqiu, indicating thereby the power of the shi-centered meritocratic discourse by the end of the Warring States period. The self-confidence of the text’s authors is revealing: it suggests that by the time of the compilation of ¨ Lushi chunqiu, the rise of the shi was not just a desideratum but rather ¨ a fait accompli. Hence, in distinction from earlier texts, the Lushi chunqiu employs the term shi as an exclusive designation of the elite, while a common designation of the nobles – dafu  – is all but absent from this lengthy compilation. Yet the shi are not a closed elite: the text presents them as self-made men who can rise from the utmost poverty, as the following anecdote demonstrates: Ning Yue was a man from the outskirts of Zhongmou; he was bitter at the labor of tilling and sowing and said to his friend: “How can I escape this bitterness”? His friend replied: “The best is to learn. After learning for thirty years, you will fulfill [your goals].” Ning Yue said:

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“I pledge to make it within fifteen years. When others are to rest, I shall not dare to rest; when others are asleep, I shall not dare to sleep.” He learned for fifteen years and became the teacher of Lord Wei of Zhou.63 ,   ,  :  

?  : ,    : , ; ,     

The anecdote’s most important message is that there are no impenetrable social barriers: a shi can come from a poor peasant background, and this by no means should limit his advancement opportunities. ¨ Not incidentally, the common self-designation of the shi in the Lushi chunqiu is “plain-clothed” (buyi ), a term firmly associated with low income.64 An immediate impression would be of an entirely open and fair society, but at second glance, questions arose. Was it possible for a peasant to invest fifteen to thirty years in his education? How affordable were learning materials in the pre-paper age when text production might have been exceptionally cumbersome? Is it possible that the anecdote – just like many similar ones scattered throughout the texts of the late Warring States period65 – is just part of a misleading effort to present learning as the best and most secure way to improve one’s lot? And another, more important question: what were the practical manifestations of Ning Yue’s “worthiness”? Here, the text remains surprisingly silent. We are told that Ning Yue – an important thinker from the early Warring States period66 – made his career at the court of Lord Wei of Zhou (, fl. ca. 400 b.c.e.), the leader of a tiny principality established on the lands of the Zhou royal domain. The readers could not have been ignorant of the fact that Ning Yue failed to restore the fortunes of the soon-to-be-extinguished Zhou domain; yet this failure did not undermine Ning’s worthiness in the authors’ eyes. This dissociation of “worthiness” from practical achievements ¨ is characteristic of the Lushi chunqiu approach in general. Panegyrics for the abilities of worthy shi abound; but the authors carefully avoid definition of what real achievements – if any – prove the worthiness of these men. This understanding further strengthens my observation with regard to potentially self-serving nature of “elevating the worthy” discourse. This also explains why, despite the increasing acceptance of meritocratic employment practices, the discourse of

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“elevating the worthy” was coming increasingly under the opponents’ fire. V. “WORTHINESS” RECONSIDERED

The foregoing discussion, which emphasizes the power of meritocratic discourse during the late Warring States period, may create an impression of a smooth transformation of Chinese society from aristocratic into meritocratic one. This impression is not entirely wrong: indeed, in the next section, we see that on the eve of the imperial unification, an impressive degree of social mobility and openness existed at least in some parts of the would-be Chinese world. And yet, just when the meritocratic practices proliferated, the discourse of “elevating the worthy” came under attack. The reasons for this attack were manifold: some, like Mengzi, might have genuinely feared that widespread implementation of meritocratic principles would cause “strangers to overstep the kin,” undermining thereby family values; others, whose views are exposed below, were dissatisfied with negative political or social consequences of ubiquitous emphasis on “worthiness.” Yet by far the strongest opposition came from among those who opposed the manipulative and self-serving nature of “elevating the worthy” discourse. Politically, the problem of the meritocratic discourse was its potential threat to the very foundations of the monarch-centered political system. After all, the rulers were the only executives whose position depended exclusively on their pedigree rather on their merit. This understanding engendered immense tension in ruler-minister relations, with many ¨ thinkers, such as Mengzi or the Lushi chunqiu authors, beginning to adopt an increasingly haughty stance toward the sovereigns. Especially after the attempts to hasten the arrival of a virtuous sovereign through circumventing the system of the rulers’ hereditary succession failed miserably,67 the contradiction between the idea of meritocracy and the monarchic practice became all the more visible. To counterbalance the potentially disruptive impact of this contradiction, some of the eminent political theorists, most notably Shen Dao (, fl. late fourth century b.c.e.), came to reconfirm the priority of one’s political authority over one’s worthiness: When [the sage emperor] Yao was a commoner, he was not able to command his neighbors, but when he faced southward and became a king, his orders were implemented and restrictions heeded.

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Looking from this, [we know] that worthiness does not suffice to subdue unworthiness, but power and position suffice to bend the worthies.68 ,  , ,  ,   ,  ,  

Yao was a paragon of morality, yet his leadership derived not from his individual qualities but exclusively from his position as a sovereign. The nature of political hierarchy is such that morality and worthiness play a secondary, if any, role in determining one’s authority; hence, Shen Dao recommends the ruler to focus not on cultivating individual morality but rather on safeguarding his power, the maintenance of which is essential for preserving a functioning political system.69 Shen Dao and his ideological associates focused on the potential threat of “elevating the worthy” discourse to the principle of monarchism; others criticized this discourse because of its negative impact on the shi and on their relations with the state. Critics were particularly concerned with the notorious difficulty to ascertain one’s true worth. Insofar as being “worthy” meant primarily being a moral person, and insofar as it was not at all easy to distinguish a truly moral person from a shameless hypocrite, many thinkers came to consider meritocratic discourse as a self-serving device of despicable careerists. This view is evident in particular in the texts that adopted a critical stance toward the dominant discourse of their age, especially the Laozi  and the Zhuangzi . The former dismisses the common fascination with promoting the worthy: “Do not elevate the worthy: thereby you will cause the people not to contend.”70 Zhuangzi echoes the Laozi’s reservations: “when the worthies are promoted, the people will oust each other; when the knowledgeable are employed, the people will commit crimes against each other.”71 Zhuangzi furthermore argues that “at the age of perfect virtue, neither the worthies were promoted nor the able employed.”72 What are the reasons for this apparent rejection of meritocratic principles? Neither the Laozi nor the Zhuangzi elaborates, but it is evident that both texts are dissatisfied with the inadequate and misleading definition of “worthiness” rather than with meritocratic practices as such. Hence, the Laozi explains that the sage “does not want to be conceived of as a ‘worthy’,”73 whereas Zhuangzi ridicules paragons of worthiness, each of which appears singularly inept.74 The Zhuangzi warns that proliferation of fake worthies is detrimental to sociopolitical order:

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the people “crane their necks and stand on tiptoe, saying ‘Somewhere there is a worthy man!’” – and, bundling up their provisions, follow him, abandoning their families and their rulers.75 It is unclear who are the worthies that attract such a zealous following; but it is sure that the authors of the Zhuangzi do not consider these people as deserving such a reverence. Both the Laozi and Zhuangzi deride the term “worthy” as one of many misleading definitions which are abused and manipulated by brazen shi. Clearly, this term cannot serve for ordering the society. Their negation of “elevating the worthy” discourse notwithstanding, neither the Laozi nor the Zhuangzi authors proposed any practical alternative to “elevation of the worthy” as an administrative principle. A more pointed opposition came from pragmatic statesmen who are often dubbed “Legalists.”76 The Book of Lord Shang (Shang jun shu  ), the major representative text of this putative “school of thought,” clearly distinguishes between the meritocratic principle of rule of which the authors approve, and the notion of “worthiness,” which they reject. Shang Yang (, d. 338 b.c.e.) and other contributors to “his” book explain that “elevating the worthy” was applicable in the past, in the age which lacked clear political institutions; yet since “the worthy view overcoming one another as the [proper] Way . . . there . . . was turmoil.”77 To end this turmoil generated by the competition among the worthies, the sages “took the responsibility,” ordering distinctions between lands, property, men, and women; establishing prohibitions, officials, and, finally, the ruler. “When the ruler was established, elevation of the worthy declined and the esteem of nobility was established.”78 Why was the system of “elevating the worthy” doomed? Why did it engender inevitable competition and turmoil? Shang Yang clarifies that the problem lies in the intrinsic impossibility of defining who is truly “worthy”: an impossibility that encourages divisiveness and manipulations: Elevation of the worthy is what the generation calls “orderly rule”; that is why the orderly rule is in turmoil. What the generation calls a “worthy” is the one who is defined as upright; but those who define him upright are his associates (dang ). When you hear talking about him, you consider him able; when you ask his associates, they approve it. Hence, one is ennobled before he has any merits; one is punished before he committed a crime.79

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,   ;   ,  ; ,    , ; ,  , ; ,  

This passage exposes with the utmost clarity the intrinsic problem of “elevating the worthy” discourse. “Worthiness” is, in the final account, defined by one’s reputation, yet the reputation itself can be attained through manipulations of one’s partisans. What is the solution then? Should the entire concept of meritocracy be abandoned? Definitely not. Rather, one’s worth should be determined by the impartial Law and not by manipulative definitions and empty talk; only then the real worth will be clarified.80 This means, in turn, establishing clear and uncontestable routes of social advancement, as Shang Yang explains elsewhere: What I call “unifying awards” means that benefits, emoluments, offices and ranks derive exclusively from the military service without any alternative pursuits. Thus, the knowledgeable and the stupid, the noble and the base, the brave and the coward, the worthy and the unworthy: all will fully exert the knowledge from within their breasts, commit all the power of their limbs, and go to die for the sake of their ruler. The powerful and eminent, “the worthy and the good” from All under Heaven, will follow him like the flowing water.81 , ,   ,  , , , ,  ,  ,    

Shang Yang proposes here establishment of objective criteria of promotion instead of the inevitably contestable estimates of individual qualities. What matters is not whether a person is defined as “a worthy and a good” but rather what his real merits are. The definition of “merits” appears to be quite narrow: only attainments on the battlefield are counted for promotion. Later, Han Feizi ( d. 233 b.c.e.), who generally held Shang Yang in high esteem, ridiculed this suggestion: the state apparatus could not be staffed exclusively by valiant warriors.82 Yet Shang Yang’s idea of replacing vagueness of one’s “merit” with clear-cut criteria was much to Han Feizi’s liking, and it was up to him to elaborate further the meritocratic system that should be dissociated from the notion of “worthiness.” Han Feizi’s views of “worthiness” resemble those of Shang Yang. Like his eminent predecessor, he acknowledges the need in worthy aides

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to the throne, and like him, he decries the difficulty to verify one’s worthiness.83 In the world of mutual trickery and mistrust between the ruler and his aides, the world driven by pure self-interest,84 it is imprudent and dangerous to promote “the worthy” just due to their prestige or reputation. Han Feizi clarifies: The ruler has two worries: when he appoints the worthy, then the ministers will utilize “worthiness” in order to rob [the state] from their ruler; when he makes wanton promotions, then the undertakings will be irreparably damaged. Thus, when a ruler is fond of the worthy, then multiple ministers adorn their actions to satisfy the ruler’s expectations; hence, the real situation of the ministers cannot be verified; when the real situation of the ministers cannot be verified, then the ruler cannot distinguish between [the worthy and unworthy] ministers.85 : , ; ,   , ,   ;   , 

Han Feizi does not attack here the meritocratic principle as such but rather the ruler’s succumbing to meritocratic discourse that can be manipulated by scheming ministers to advance their sinister goals. To avoid being duped, the ruler should promote the able exclusively in accord with strict and uniform rules based not on verifying their morality but rather on assessing their performance: “discuss them according to their tasks, check them according to their performances, assess them according to their merits.”86 In Chapter 50, “Eminent Doctrines” (“Xian xue” ), Han Feizi cautions the rulers not to be mislead by talkative shi, whose lofty but nonimplementable doctrines damage the fundamentals of sociopolitical order. Promotions should be based not on one’s eloquence, nor on reputation, nor on the immediate impression one makes on the ruler; after all, even such a knowledgeable person as Confucius could not avoid mistakes when making subjective judgments. The solution is elsewhere: Thus, as for the officials of an enlightened ruler: chief ministers and chancellors must rise from among local officials; valiant generals must rise from among the ranks. One who has merit should be awarded: then ranks and emoluments are bountiful and they are ever more encouraging; one who is promoted and ascends to higher positions, his official responsibilities increase, and he performs his tasks ever more orderly. When ranks and emoluments are great, while official

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responsibilities are dealt with in an orderly way, this is the Way of the True Monarch.87  , ,  , ; , ,   

Like Shang Yang, Han Feizi seeks creating a meritocratic system that would not depend on the vague notion of “worthiness” but will function, instead, according to objective criteria of merit. Rather than focusing on military attainments alone, Han Feizi promotes an idea of double-track advancement: administrative and military officials will be promoted from the lower ranks of the bureaucracy and the army, will be judged according to their performance, and, if successful given ever more important offices. While the system is far from perfect (it does not explain how the people will join the administrative apparatus in the first place), it is much more sophisticated and implementable than anything proposed before. By the end of the Warring States period, a crucial suggestion had been made to rationalize and institutionalize the idea of meritocracy, while dissociating it once and forever from the self-serving “worthy”-oriented discourse of proud shi. VI. QIN AND BEYOND: MERIT VERSUS WORTHINESS

The foregoing discussion indicates that the history of meritocratic thought in China is more complex than is usually assumed. Although there is no doubt that thinkers of the Warring States period had decisively rejected the pedigree-based system of appointment in favor of a flexible system in which individual merits should be the major determinant of one’s position, the nature of these merits remained contestable. Whether identified as referring to one’s skills or one’s morality, or both, “worthiness” remained too difficult to measure, and in the final account it was determined either by one’s eloquence or one’s reputation, being prone, as a result, to continuous manipulations. This situation brought about appearance of counter-discourse promulgated in particular in the writings of the so-called Legalists. The critics rejected the discourse of “worthiness” as self-serving device of the shi; instead, they proposed establishing a working meritocratic system in which one’s advancement should be subjected to clear and uniform criteria. It is time to ask now three final questions. First, how do the two trends in meritocratic thought of the Warring States period relate to actual sociopolitical

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practices of that age? Second, how did the early tensions between “merit” and “worthiness” transpire during the later imperial history? And third, what can we learn from an early Chinese experience for current debates about meritocratic principles of government? The answer to the first question is not simple. As mentioned earlier, texts from the Warring States period routinely try to convey an impression that most if not all chief executives of that age were entirely self-made men who often came from the bottom of the society, for example, “a mere shi from poor environs, dwelling in a mud cave with mulberry branches and a bending lintel instead of a door.”88 Yet as I have argued in the foregoing discussion, these anecdotes should be read cum grano salis, as part of the promotion campaign of the “plain-clothed” shi rather than an accurate depiction of contemporaneous realities. Actually, we know that proliferation of meritocratic practices notwithstanding, many courts of the Warring States period – most notably in such states as Chu  and to a lesser extent Qi – might have still been dominated by members of the ruling lineage. Yet there were also notable exceptions, among which the state of Qin figures most prominently. Our current data on preimperial Qin is immeasurably richer than that on other Warring States because of a lucky combination of relatively reliable textual sources and abundant paleographic and material data.89 Systematic investigation of this information shows beyond doubt that Qin was a decisively meritocratic regime. First, since the reforms launched under lords Xian (, r. 384–362 b.c.e.) and Xiao (, r. 361–338 b.c.e.), Qin was routinely employing foreign advisors at the top of the government apparatus at the expense of the ruler’s agnates.90 Although some of these “guest ministers” (ke qing ) were related to the Qin queens, many others, most notably Shang Yang, were promoted exclusively because of their intellectual abilities, making Qin a particularly attractive destination for traveling persuaders.91 It seems, then, that the Qin employment patterns did to a certain extent implement “promoting the worthy” ideal, and that members of educated elite from the entire “Chinese” realm of that day could climb to the top of Qin’s sociopolitical ladder. Qin did promote the worthy shi, but what singles it out as an exceptionally meritocratic state is, arguably, the reform of the sociopolitical structure undertaken by Shang Yang and his followers. The reform brought about a new social order, based on twenty (initially less) ranks of merit for which most males were eligible, regardless of pedigree or

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economic status. The eight lowest ranks were distributed in exchange for military achievements, particularly decapitation of enemy soldiers, or could be purchased by wealthy individuals; successful rank-holders could be incorporated into the military or civilian administration and thereafter be promoted up the social ladder. Each rank granted its holder economic, social, and legal privileges.92 Although Qin remained a highly stratified society and ordinary commoners were normally not able to reach beyond the eighth rank in the hierarchy, the society became incomparably more mobile and “fair” than before. At the very least, insofar as large-scale warfare continued, a significant proportion of men could reasonably expect promotion due to their military performance.93 The new rank system, which eventually incorporated a majority of the male population, effectively transformed the society from one based on pedigree in which the individual’s position was determined primarily by his or her lineage affiliation, into an open one, in which individual merits, especially military merits, determined social position.94 The ranks were not fully inheritable; under normal circumstances, a man could designate one heir to his rank, but the heir received one or two ranks lower than his father, and the decrease was sharper for the holders of higher ranks (except for the one or two highest ones).95 This system therefore generated a much higher degree of social mobility than had prevailed in the aristocratic age. Predictions of a child’s future that appear in the Daybooks (ri shu ) discovered at Tomb 11, Shuihudi, Yunmeng   (Hubei), suggest the extraordinarily wide range of possibilities that faced a new born Qin baby: from becoming a high-ranking minister  or a noble , to becoming an official  or a local bravo , or, in the opposite direction, becoming a mere bondservant, a fugitive, or, in the case of females, a slave.96 Simultaneously, a strong downward mobility existed as well, as suggested by the regulations regarding unranked descendants of the ruling house.97 Most amazingly, even a bondservant could receive a rank of merit in exchange for his military achievements.98 Thus, although Qin retained several groups of hereditary occupations (most notably the scribes),99 on the overall the degree of social mobility in Qin appears to have exceeded that in other Warring States polities. This in turn may have made Qin an attractive destination for migrants100 and may have also generated considerable support of the Qin population for its government, despite the notoriously draconian aspects of Qin’s legal system.

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Preimperial Qin appears as being able to combine both avenues of advancement: the merit-based promotion that attracted significant proportion of the males and a narrower but still important promotion of the “worthy” – namely, of the educated individuals who could climb the top of Qin’s official ladder due to their intellectual abilities.101 This balanced approach was arguably one of the major strengths of Qin, but it ended soon after the imperial unification. Now, as the need to attract “worthy” advisors from competing polities ended, and the interstate market of talent was replaced with a solid imperial monopoly, the Qin rulers decided to redefine their relations with the educated elite. Through the infamous suppression of “private learning” (the socalled biblioclasm of 213 b.c.e.), the First Emperor of Qin ( , r. 246–221–210 b.c.e.) and his chancellor, Li Si (, d. 208 b.c.e.) tried to create a new situation in which all the intellectual activities will be “nationalized” and members of the educated elite would be fully incorporated into government service.102 The “worthiness” with its vagueness had no place in the Qin Empire, the founders of which were proud of the clarity of their laws and regulations. Meritocracy should be retained but the concept of “worthiness” had to be abandoned.103 The rest of the story is well known. During the lengthy Han dynasty (, 206 b.c.e.–220 c.e.), the pendulum gradually shifted from “merits” to “worth.” An ever larger percentage of officials became recruited from among men with proper behavioral mode (“filial and incorruptible” ) and with demonstrable classical education; alternative routes of entrance, such as those in exchange for military merit, became marginal next to nonexistent, especially since the cessation of mass military service.104 This brought about somewhat unexpected consequences. First, the state-sponsored encouragement of morality (filiality and incorruptibility) brought about behavioral excesses, such as selfdestructive funerals and unreasonable wastefulness, as elite members competed among themselves for fine reputation.105 Second, it allowed gradual closure of elite within a small class of wealthy landowners who perpetuated education and appropriate lifestyle within their families, establishing a web of local relations that was increasingly difficult to penetrate from without.106 Inattentive to early warnings by Shang Yang and Han Feizi, by the very end of the Han dynasty, its leaders, and eventual founders of the subsequent Cao Wei dynasty ( , 220–265) opted for the system of recommendations based on one’s local reputation as the major avenue of entrance into officialdom. The results were highly

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problematic. Well until the Sui dynasty (, 581–618), the discourse of “worthiness” served as a de-facto impediment of social mobility, being utilized by aristocratic lineages who manipulated the so-called “local ranks” (xiang pin ) system to prevent outsiders from joining the national elite.107 This situation eventually backfired, and after the Sui, the central government regained control over promotions, gradually replacing recommendation system, in which one’s reputation was the primary determinant of his worth, with an examination system, which tried to add objective criteria to one’s advancement into officialdom.108 Although the latter system, as it took shape in the late imperial period, was surely less fair and less conducive to male social mobility than, for example, the Qin system of promotion in exchange for military merits it did allow broader mobility, at least within the proprietary elites, than was possible under the pure recommendations system.109 VII. EPILOGUE: LESSONS FOR THE PRESENT

In the final account, the replacement of the pedigree-based appointment system with the one that promoted a person because of his qualities or merits appears as one of the major contributions of the Warring States period to the overall strength of China’s imperial enterprise. Yet difficulties accompanying the new practices and in particular differences between promotion according to objective, ideally quantifiable, merits and according to one’s reputation (“worth”) should not be overlooked. What lessons can be learned then from these difficulties – and from the system’s achievements – for our present? 1. Fairness There is no doubt that implementation of meritocratic principles of rule greatly enhanced social mobility during the Warring States period and made high positions accessible to greater segments of population than was ever possible under the aristocratic pedigree-based system. The very notion that learning and self-cultivation may allow even a poor peasant to ascend the social ladder, as epitomized in the anecdote about Ning Yue earlier in the chapter, was surely conducive to social fairness. This said, it should be reminded that “fairness” as such was never considered a goal of “elevating the worthy.” What mattered to the proponents of this policy was enhancement of administrative and military efficiency through full utilization of skilled manpower available to the ruler; the

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idea of “equal opportunities” or “equal access” to wealth or power was never proposed by Chinese thinkers. Not only was half of the population (i.e., women) firmly excluded from any considerations of promoting “the able” and “the worthy,” but even the idea that every male should have an equal chance for social or political advancement was never fully articulated. Clearly, an equation of meritocracy with fairness would be a gross simplification. Moreover, as the foregoing discussion suggests, and as is demonstrated by the experiences of the imperial age, meritocratic system was always prone to elite manipulations. By defining and redefining the nature of “worthiness” and “merit,” ruling elites could preserve their hard-won status in the hands of their social circle, effectively preventing other groups of population from joining the competition for positions at the top of the administrative system. For instance, under the Song dynasty (, 960–1279) and thereafter, the exclusion of clerical subbureaucracy from participating in the examinations had severely limited the clerks’ possibilities of social advancement and saved the officials from the competition by those administratively skillful men.110 The possibility that the idea of meritocracy would be manipulated to serve a few selected segments of society should be fully taken into consideration by modern proponents of meritocratic political systems. A possible remedy to this danger is making the system flexible and maintaining several avenues of advancement, as I suggest later in this epilogue (see part 3). 2. Morality and Efficiency The desire for public servants who will be both efficient and morally impeccable is as old as Chinese bureaucracy itself; but so is the understanding that such an ideal is rarely attainable. A controversy about the proper set of priorities continued for millennia, mostly in a subtle form but at times quite openly. Thus, on the one side of the spectrum we find blatant recommendation of Shang Yang to “employ scoundrels to rule the good people,” meaning that the officials’ morality means nothing in comparison with strict fulfillment of their tasks in accordance with the law.111 On the opposite side, we find an immensely more authoritative statement by Sima Guang ( , 1019–86), arguably the most brilliant political analyst in the imperial history. Sima opined that the “superior man” is the one “whose morality exceeds his skills” and that if one cannot find enough superior men, it is better to employ the stupid

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ones who lack either morality or skills, rather than employing skillful but immoral individuals.112 The practice, as usual, fluctuated between these two poles: usually, enlistment into bureaucracy was determined primarily by one’s perceived morality, whereas advancement within the bureaucratic apparatus was normally subordinated to one’s performance, in accordance with Han Feizi’s suggestions. But how did this combination influence Chinese political system? The answer is complex and may be disappointing from the point of view of supporters of the moral government in the present. The idea of promoting persons according to their moral behavior, such as “filiality and incorruptibility,” could of course encourage filial piety and modesty, but more often than not it encouraged public displays of “morality” (e.g., through lavish burials) but not necessarily true moral behavior. Even when moralizing discourse came to dominate overwhelmingly the officials’ selection, as it was, for instance, during the Ming dynasty (, 1368–1644), the result was not enhancement of morality and incorruptibility but rather increasing awareness of the gap between the public yang and the private yin, which brought about one of the most corrupt regimes in China’s long history.113 Using meritocratic principles to promote public morality was not entirely meaningless, but the results clearly fell much behind the expectations of the adherents of Confucius. The Chinese meritocratic system could achieve much more impressive results in terms of efficiency. When measurable criteria were employed to determine one’s career, they could be utilized to direct behavior of officials and of aspiring officials toward the desirable goals. For instance, the Qin idea of “per capita” grants of minor ranks of merit had clearly strengthened the Qin’s army; whereas later, when mastering the Classics became the major way of entering the officialdom, it greatly encouraged classical learning. Yet even more impressive results could be achieved when clearly definable criteria of “merit” were applied within the officialdom, determining one’s bureaucratic advancement. Through redefinition of the officials’ “merits,” the system could be directed at a variety of goals, ranging from massive land reclamation and afforestation to more prosaic enhancement of tax revenues. Yet although the results could be quite remarkable, they often came at a huge price of ruthlessly oppressing the peasants to attain one’s bureaucratic goals.114 Similarly in current China, imposing quantifiable goals on the officials (e.g., enhancing the GDP or promoting birth control)

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can produce remarkable results, at times, again, at a heavy human or environmental price. The observation that the meritocratic system can be highly efficient but is not necessarily conducive to increased morality of either officials or the public in general is highly relevant for the current quest for implementing meritocracy in China or elsewhere. Thus, that meritocratic principles rule the officials’ promotion in China today is undeniable and that this brings out impressive results in selected fields of development is self-evident. Yet whereas meritocratic system can at times be used to induce state-sponsored ideology or to promote certain modes of public behavior, it cannot be effective in creating a moral society. Solutions to China’s current quest for spiritual civilization should be searched for elsewhere. 3. Flexibility Meritocracy was one of the great inventions of Chinese statesmen of the Warring States period. It provided rulers of China for millennia to come with the pool of highly efficient public servants who maintained one of the largest and most complex empires in human history – and the most durable of all. Yet as it is well known, the system at times severely malfunctioned, causing great turmoil and undergoing lengthy periods of bitter domestic or external struggle until a new efficient regime could be established.115 It seems that the principle of meritocracy as such could not ensure the dynasty’s survivability. This may be related to a natural process of the system’s degradation and ossification, as ruling elites tried to manipulate it in their favor, closing access to outsiders and utilizing the meritocratic fac¸ade to preserve their vested interests. Conversely, as my brief discussion of preimperial and imperial Qin had shown, Qin’s success was in part related to its ability to maintain multiple avenues of social and political advancement, although the loss of this diversity might have hastened Qin’s collapse.116 I think this is an important lesson for proponents and architects of modern meritocracies. Insofar as manifold routes of individual advancement are maintained, the system may be expected to be fairer, more dynamic, and more adaptable overall to changes than a too perfectly organized one, which would always be prone to move toward ossification. Thus, it may be argued that insofar as the Communist Party of China (CPC) is able to attract both soldiers and students, migrant

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workers, and millionaires, it – and the CPC-led government apparatus – will remain an effective political organization and maintain its ruling momentum. To ensure further success, the Party should constantly seek expansion to other, currently marginalized social groups, attracting their ambitious representatives and co-opting them into the ruling apparatus. Lessons from China’s past and their adaptation to ever-changing present may then provide the Party with significant vitality, and these lessons may be of use for other supporters of meritocratic government worldwide. ACKNOWLEDGMENT

This research was supported by the Israel Science Foundation (grant no. 511/11) and by the Michael William Lipson Chair in Chinese Studies. It was first presented at a Nanyang Technological University Interdisciplinary Symposium “The Idea of Political Meritocracy” (January 2012). I am indebted to the symposium participants, especially to Benjamin Elman; to the volume’s editors, Daniel Bell and Li Chenyang; and to Paul R. Goldin for their insightful comments on the earlier version of this paper. notes

1. For the French intellectuals’ fascination with China as “a country where merit permitted one to attain to the highest dignitaries of the states, a country where each person was classed in the social hierarchy according to his merit,” see Herrlee G. Creel, The Origins of Statecraft in China (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970), pp. 22–3. For Fairbank’s views, see, e.g., John K. Fairbank and Edwin O. Reischauer, China: Transition and Transformation: Revised Edition (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1989), p. 69. 2. For supposedly meritocratic aspects in the appointment practices of the Western Zhou period, see Creel, The Origins of Statecraft, pp. 400–3; Li Feng, Bureaucracy and the State in Early China: Governing the Western Zhou (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), pp. 190–234. Edward L. Shaughnessy furthermore identifies already in the earliest chapters of the Venerated Documents (Shang shu  ) seeds of future debates over relative importance of merit vs. pedigree. See Shaughnessy, “Western Zhou History,” in Michael Loewe and Edward L. Shaughnessy, eds., The Cambridge History of Ancient China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 315– 17. 3. For various views of the dating and reliability of the Zuo zhuan, especially of its ideologically loaded sections, see David C. Schaberg, A Patterned Past: Form and Thought in Early Chinese Historiography (Cambridge, MA: Harvard

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5. 6.

7.

8.

9.

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University Asia Center, 2001); Yuri Pines, Foundations of Confucian Thought: Intellectual Life in the Chunqiu Period, 722–453 B.C.E. (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2002); Li Wai-yee, The Readability of the Past in Early Chinese Historiography (Harvard East Asian Monographs; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2007). Scholarly differences aside, it is clear that in terms of purely historical information, such as the composition of the ruling elites in major contemporaneous polities, the Zuo zhuan is a highly reliable source. As I shall demonstrate in this chapter, insofar as the speeches in the Zuo zhuan are reflective of distinctively aristocratic mindset of the protagonists, it is highly unlikely that they were fabricated during the Warring States period, when social values differed considerably from those of the aristocratic age. For the comprehensive discussion of the aristocratic society of the Springsand-Autumns period, see Zhu Fenghan , Shang Zhou jiazu xingtai yanjiu  (Tianjin: Guji chubanshe, 1990), pp. 450–593; for the ritual system and its social impact see Lothar von Falkenhausen, Chinese Society in the Age of Confucius (1050–250 B.C.): The Archeological Evidence (Los Angeles: Cotsen Institute of Archaeology at UCLA, 2006), pp. 29–73; Yuri Pines, “Disputers of the Li: Breakthroughs in the Concept of Ritual in Preimperial China,” Asia Major Third Series, vol. 13, no. 1 (2000), 1–41; for ideological power of the aristocrats, see Pines, Foundations of Confucian Thought. See Hsu Cho-yun, Ancient China in Transition: An Analysis of Social Mobility, 722–222 B.C. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1965), pp. 26–31. A rare but important example of promotion from outside the ranks of aristocracy is Cao Gui , whose strategic talents allowed him to become an aide of Lord Zhuang of Lu (, r. 693–662 b.c.e.); see Chunqiu Zuo zhuan zhu , annotated by Yang Bojun  (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1981, hereafter Zuo), Zhuang 10: 182; later texts depict him alternatively as a retainer-assassin in Lord Zhuang’s service (Chunqiu Gongyang zhuan zhushu  , annotated by He Xiu  and Xu Yan , rpt. in Ruan Yuan  , comp., Shisanjing zhushu  . [Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1991, vol. 2: 2189–2355, hereafter Gongyang zhuan], 7:2233, Zhuang 13) or as a military strategist and political advisor (see the newly unearthed Cao Mo zhi zhen  , transcribed and annotated by Li Ling  , in Ma Chengyuan , ed., Shanghai bowuguan cang Zhanguo Chu zhushu 

, vol. 4 [2004], pp. 239–85). See Qian Zongfan , “Xi Zhou Chunqiu shidai de shilu shiguan zhidu ji qi pohuai”   , Zhongguoshi yanjiu  , no. 3 (1989), pp. 20–30; Zhu Fenghan, Shang Zhou jiazu xingtai yanjiu, pp. 575–93. For instance, when Lord Wen of Jin   (r. 636–628 b.c.e.) had seized power in his state after a prolonged period of domestic turmoil, he elevated his supporters, allowing those to rise from the ranks of low nobility to the top of the political ladder. Thus, when Lord Li of Jin  (r. 580–573 b.c.e.) attempted to neutralize powerful aristocrats by appointing his favorites to top government positions, he

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12.

13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18.

19. 20.

21. 22.

23.

Yuri Pines was assassinated and posthumously humiliated by heads of major ministerial lineages. Notably, his murderers were not punished. Zuo, Xiang 31: 1185. For stories in the Zuo zhuan in which a heir’s worthiness could have an impact on his appointment, see, e.g., Zuo, Yin 3: 29; Wen 6: 550; Xuan 4: 679; Zhao 26: 1474; Zhao 26: 1478. This is most evident from the stories about Zichan (, d. 522 b.c.e.), who was lauded for making appropriate appointments in his state of Zheng ; yet all these appointments were invariably from the members of high-ranking lineages, the interests of which Zichan faithfully safeguarded. For further details, see Yuri Pines, “Aspects of Intellectual Developments in China in the Chunqiu Period (722–453 b.c.),” Ph.D. dissertation, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem (1998), pp. 325–9. Zuo, Xuan 12: 724. Zuo, Zhao 11: 1328; Zhao 20: 1417. Zuo, Zhao 26: 1480. See Pines, Foundations of Confucian Thought, pp. 136–63. See, e.g., Zuo, Zhao 10: 1319–20. It is tempting to translate the term junzi  according to its components as “the ruler’s sons” (e.g., Hsu, Ancient China in Transition, pp. 158–9), but in all likelihood, this popular translation is misleading, and zi should be read not as a “son” but as honorific suffix. The meaning will then be “a lordlike person” (actually, in some of the earliest appearances of the term junzi, e.g., in the Shi jing  odes, it refers to the ruler). In any case, the pedigree connotations of the term junzi are indisputable. See Pines, Foundations of Confucian Thought, pp. 165–71. Thus, as pointed by Gilbert L. Mattos (“Eastern Zhou Bronze Inscriptions,” in Edward L. Shaughnessy, ed., New Sources of Early Chinese History: An Introduction to Reading Inscriptions and Manuscripts [Berkeley: Society for Study of Early China, 1997], pp. 86–7), bronze inscriptions of the Springsand-Autumns period turn away from the ancestors and focus on the individual attainments of the donor. For similar analysis of the inscriptional evidence, see Pines Foundations of Confucian Thought, pp. 171–5. See notes 6 and 8 for these exceptional cases. See details in Hsu, Ancient China in Transition, pp. 92–105; Zhao Boxiong   , Zhoudai guojia xingtai yanjiu  (Changsha: Hunan jiaoyu, 1990), pp. 237–51. For the expansion of the administrative apparatus of the Warring States, see Mark E. Lewis, “Warring States: Political History,” in The Cambridge History of Ancient China, pp. 587–650. Archeological evidence lends further support to the picture of the rise of shi insofar as there are demonstrable changes in the nature of elite and subelite tombs. For details see Lothar von Falkenhausen, “Social Ranking in Chu Tombs: The Mortuary Background of the Warring States Manuscript Finds,” Monumenta Serica vol. 51 (2003), pp. 439–526; Chinese Society in the Age of Confucius, pp. 370–99; Yin Qun , Huanghe zhongxiayou diqu de Dong Zhou muzang zhidu   (Beijing: Shehui kexue chubanshe, 2001); see also discussion of these data in Yuri Pines,

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25.

26.

27. 28. 29.

30.

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Envisioning Eternal Empire: Chinese Political Thought of the Warring States Era (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2009), pp. 116–9. For different analyses concerning the emergence of independent intellectual authority of the shi thinkers, see Yu Yingshi , Shi yu Zhongguo wenhua   (Shanghai: Shanghai renmin chubanshe, 1987), pp. 26–33; Mark E. Lewis, Writing and Authority in Early China (Albany: State University Press of New York, 1999), pp. 53–97; Liu Zehua , Xian Qin shi ren yu shehui  , rev. ed. (Tianjin: Tianjin renmin chubanshe, 2004), pp. 22–39 and 113–19; Pines, Envisioning Eternal Empire, pp. 123–31. For promoting “the upright” and “the gifted,” see Lunyu yizhu , annotated by Yang Bojun  (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1992), “Wei zheng”  2.19:19; “Zilu”  13.2: 133. The Lunyu, however, directs the shi not necessarily at serving the regional lords (zhuhou ) but rather at serving unspecified “rulers” (jun ), a term that could refer also to powerful nobles. The nobles are specifically mentioned in the text as the shi superiors, whom the shi are supposed to serve (e.g., Lunyu, “Wei Ling Gong”  15.10: 163; “Zi han”  9.16: 93). As such, the Lunyu perpetuates rather than undermines the situation in which shi were inferior to high-ranking nobles. The dating of the Lunyu and its relevance to Confucius’s authentic thought are hotly disputed (see e.g., Yang Bojun  , “Dao yan” , in Lunyu yizhu pp. 1–37; John Makeham, “The Formation of Lunyu as a Book,” Monumenta Serica vol. 44, (1996), pp. 1–24; Bruce E. Brooks, and A. Taeko Brooks, The Original Analects: Sayings of Confucius and His Successors (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998); David C. Schaberg, “Confucius as Body and Text: On the Generation of Knowledge in Warring States and Han Anecdotal Literature,” Paper presented at the Princeton conference “Text and Ritual in Early China,” 2000 (unpublished). I concur with Paul R. Goldin (“Confucius and His Disciples in the Analects: Or, Why the Traditional Chronology is Right,” Paper presented at Princeton University, 2011) who views the Lunyu as an earlier text than those of Confucius-related lore of the Warring States period. It may be significant that Confucius’ followers from the Warring States period might have decided to “update” the Master’s views with regard to social mobility, turning him into a staunch supporter of the principle of “elevating the worthy.” This tendency is most clear in the newly discovered text Ji Gengzi [Kangzi] wen yu Kongzi  ( )  from the Shanghai Museum collection, where “elevating the worthy” becomes Confucius’s single most important policy recommendation (see Ji Gengzi [Kangzi] wen yu Kongzi  ( ) . Transcribed and annotated by Pu Maozuo , in Shanghai bowuguan cang Zhanguo Chu zhushu, vol. 5 [2006], pp. 193–235). For these citations, see respectively, Lunyu, “Li ren”  4.9: 37; “Yan Yuan”  12.20: 130; “Zilu” 13.20: 140; 13.28: 143; “Xian wen”  14.2: 145. Lunyu, “Xian wen” 14.42: 159. Shi also thinks of reverence when at sacrifice and of mourning when at the funeral (:, , ,  ,   Lunyu, “Zizhang”  19.1: 199). Lunyu, “Tai Bo”  8.7: 80.

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31. Mozi jiaozhu , compiled and annotated by Wu Yujiang

 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1994), “Shang xian  shang” II.8:66. 32.   ,   ,  ,   Mozi, “Shang xian shang” II.8: 66. 33. Pines, Envisioning Eternal Empire, pp. 136–45. 34.  ,  Mozi, “Shang xian shang” II.8: 67. 35. Mozi, “Shang xian shang” II.8: 67–8. 36. Mozi, “Shang xian zhong” II.9: 74. 37.  , Mozi, “Shang xian xia” II.10: 96. 38.  ,  , , ? Mengzi yizhu  , annotated by Yang Bojun  (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1992), “Liang Hui Wang  xia” 2.7: 41. 39. Angus C. Graham, Disputers of the Tao: Philosophical Argument in Ancient China (La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1989), p. 115. 40. Cf. Wang Xianghui , “Xian Qin Rujia shangxian guannian de fazhan qianxi”   , Shangluo xueyuan xuebao   , no. 1 (2008), pp. 59–60. 41. Mengzi identifies the ruler’s relatives as an exceptionally powerful stratum of courtiers (Mengzi, “Wan Zhang  xia” 10.9: 251–2). 42. , ,   Mengzi, “Gaozi  xia” 12.14: 298. 43. Mengzi, “Wan Zhang xia”10.7: 248; cf. “Gongsun Chou  xia” 4.2: 89; see more of Mengzi’s haughty attitude toward the rulers in Yuri Pines, “From Teachers to Subjects: Ministers Speaking to the Rulers from Yan Ying  to Li Si ,” in Garet Olberding, ed., Facing the Monarch: Modes of Advice in the Early Chinese Court (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press 2013), pp. 69–99. 44. See Mengzi, “Li Lou  xia” 8.1: 134; “Gaozi  xia” 12.15: 298; “Jin xin  shang” 13.16: 307. 45. Mengzi, “Gongsun Chou xia” 4.13: 109. 46. For Xunzi’s ideology, see Paul R. Goldin, Rituals of the Way: The Philosophy of Xunzi (Chicago: Open Court, 1999); Sato, Masayuki, The Confucian Quest for Order: The Origin and Formation of the Political Thought of Xun Zi (Leiden: Brill, 2003); for the concept of li in the Xunzi in comparison to earlier texts, see Pines “Disputers of the Li.” 47. Xunzi jijie   , compiled by Wang Xianqian    (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1992), “Wang zhi”  V.9: 148–9. 48. Xunzi “Rong ru”  II.4: 61. 49. Xunzi, “Junzi”  XVII.24: 452. 50. See, e.g., Mozi, “Shang xian shang” II.8: 67. 51. Mengzi, “Gaozi xia” 12.13: 296. See also Mengzi, “Li Lou  shang” 7.7:153, where worthiness is paralleled to virtue (de) and both are implied to be related to one’s benevolence (ren ). For Mengzi’s combination of worth and abilities, see Mengzi, “Gongsun Chou  shang” 3.4–3.5: 68–70. 52. Xunzi, “Bu gou”  II.3: 40; “Rong ru” II.4: 62. 53. For the topic of “recognizing” one’s worth, see Eric Henry, “The Motif of Recognition in Early China,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, vol. 47 (1987), pp. 5–30.

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54. See, e.g., the Shiji biographies of several Qin  leading statesmen, such as Shang Yang (, d. 338 b.c.e.), Fan Sui (, d. c. 250 b.c.e.) and Cai Ze (, d. c. 230 b.c.e.). An exaggerative nature of these anecdotes is clear from some of them, such as a story of an otherwise unknown Yan Chu (), who had first irritated King Xuan of Qi (, r. 319–301 b.c.e.) during an audience and then made a single point: the king should respect outstanding shi and that is all; this boldness and eloquence duly prompted the king to offer Yan Chu a position of the ruler’s teacher (Zhanguo ce zhushi , annotated by He Jianzhang  [Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1991], “Qi ce  4” 11.5: 395–6; see also Pines, Envisioning Eternal Empire, pp. 131–2). 55. See Albert Galvany, “Sly Mouths and Silver Tongues: The dynamics of psychological persuasion in ancient China,” Extrˆeme-Orient, Extrˆeme-Occident 34 (2012), pp. 15–40. 56. See Yi Zhou shu  , annotated by Zhang Wenyu  (Guiyang: Guizhou renmin chubanshe, 2000), “Guan ren jie”  VII.58: 251– 63; Da Dai liji jiegu , annotated by Wang Pinzhen  (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1992), “Wen Wang guan ren”  X.72: 187– 98. The dating of these texts is difficult to assess, but they were likely produced between the late Warring States and the early Han period. Both texts and their numerous parallels are insightfully analyzed by Matthias Richter, Guan ren: Texte der altchinesischen Literatur zur Charakterkunde und Beamtenrekrutierung (Welten Ostasiens 3; Bern: Peter Lang, 2005). 57. See Matthias Richter, “From shi  Status Anxiety to Ru  Ethics,” paper presented at the conference “Ideology of Power and Power of Ideology in Early China,” Jerusalem, May 2012. 58. Definition borrowed from Richter, “From shi  Status Anxiety to Ru  Ethics.” ¨ 59. See Scott Cook, “The Lushi chunqiu and the Resolution of Philosophical Dissonance,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, vol. 62 (2002), pp. 307–45. ¨ 60. See Lushi chunqiu jiaoshi , compiled and annotated by Chen Qiyou

 (Shanghai: Xuelin, 1990), “Ai shi”  8.5: 458–60; “Zhi shi”  9.3: 490–1; “Shi jie”  12.2: 622–4 et saepe. One of the chapters (“Jie li”  12.3: 627) plainly proclaims that the only reason for which Lord Wen of Jin ( , r. 636–628 b.c.e.) failed to become a True Monarch (i.e., failed to unify “All-under-Heaven”) is his maltreatment of the devoted aide, Jie Zitui . ¨ 61. Lushi chunqiu, “Jin ting”  13.5: 705; for a “characterological” chapter in ¨ chunqiu, see ibid., “Lun ren”  3.4: 159–60; see also Song Liheng the Lushi ¨ , “Lun Lushi chunqiu yi shu de ‘yong xian’ sixiang ji chansheng de shidai beijing”   “ ”    , Nei Menggu minzu daxue xuebao (shehui kexue ban)   ( ) no. 4 (2004), pp. 42–4. ¨ 62. Lushi chunqiu, “Shi jie”  12.2: 622–3. ¨ 63. Lushi chunqiu, “Bo zhi”  24.5: 1618. 64. See Yuri Pines, “Lexical changes in Zhanguo texts,” Journal of the American Oriental Society vol. 122, no. 4 (2002): 691–705, on pp. 701–2.

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65. The erstwhile poverty of the eminent leaders is a persistent topos in many anecdotes from the Warring States period, and the reliability of these anecdotes is almost invariably doubtful. Suffice it to give one example: the story of an eminent diplomat, Su Qin (, d. 284 b.c.e.), as narrated in the Zhanguo ce . Su Qin is hailed as a self-made men who initially “dwelled in a mud cave with mulberry branches and a bending lintel instead of a door”; it is through intensive learning that he gained his illustrious career. Yet we are also told in the same anecdote that even before his success, Su Qin was already able to spend a hundred catties of gold and possessed a sable fur coat, which suggests his belonging to proprietary classes (Zhanguo ce, “Qin ce   1” 3.2: 74–6). Clearly, the stories of Su Qin, Ning Yue, and other self-made men should be taken cum grano salis. 66. Ning Yue’s book in one pian (Ning Yuezi ) is recorded in the bibliographical section of the Han shu  , but it was lost before the Sui dynasty (, 581–618 c.e.). Recently, portions of the Ning Yuezi were discovered in the middle Warring States period Tomb M36 from Shibancun  village, Cili

county, Hunan. For the preliminary publication of the discovery, see Zhang Chunlong , “Cili Chu jian gaishu”

, in Xin chu jianbo yanjiu   , eds. Sarah Allan (Ailan ) and Xing Wen  (Beijing: Wenwu, 2004), pp. 4–11. 67. For this failure, see Yuri Pines, “Disputers of Abdication: Zhanguo Egalitarianism and the Sovereign’s Power,” T’oung Pao, vol. 91 (2005), pp. 243–300; idem, Envisioning Eternal Empire, pp. 54–81. 68. The Shen-tzu Fragments, compiled by P. M. Thompson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979), “Wei de”  , pp. 235–6. 69. See more in Shen-tzu, “De li” , 264–265, and discussion in Pines Envisioning Eternal Empire, pp. 47–8; for similar views of priority of the monarch’s power over his qualities, see Shang jun shu zhuizhi  , annotated by Jiang Lihong  (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1996), “Kai sai”  II.7: 52; Han Feizi xin jiaozhu , compiled by Chen Qiyou

 (Shanghai: Guji chubanshe, 2009), “Nan shi”  XVII.40: 939–46. 70. , Boshu Laozi jiaozhu  , compiled and annotated by Gao Ming  (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1996), 3: 235. This saying is not attested to in the proto-Laozi fragments from Tomb 1, Guodian  (Hubei); hence, it may belong to a later layer of the Laozi. 71.  ,   Zhuangzi jinzhu jinyi , Annotated by Chen Guying , (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1994), “Gengsang Chu”  23: 592. 72.  , ,  Zhuangzi, “Tian di” , 12: 327. 73.  . . . Boshu Laozi, 77: 206. 74. Zhuangzi, “Dao Zhi”  29: 779. 75.    ,  ,    ,  ,    

Zhuangzi, “Qu qie”  10: 262. 76. For problems around the much-abused term “Legalism,” see Paul R. Goldin, “Persistent Misconceptions about Chinese ‘Legalism,’ ” Journal of Chinese Philosophy, vol. 38 (2011), pp. 64–80. 77.   . . . Shang jun shu, “Kai sai” II.7: 52.

Between Merit and Pedigree 78. 79. 80. 81. 82. 83.

84.

85. 86. 87. 88. 89.

90.

91.

92.

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, , Shang jun shu, II.7: 53. Shang jun shu, “Shen fa”  V.25: 136–137. Shang jun shu, “Xiu quan”  III.14: 83. Shang jun shu, “Shang xing”  IV.17: 96–7. Han Feizi, “Ding fa”  XVII.43: 963. See Yuan Lihua , “Zhong xian bu shang xian, yong xian qie fang xian: Han Fei xiannengguan chutan”   –  , Nanchang daxue xuebao (renwen shehui kexueban)  (

 ), vol. 1 (2005), pp. 59–63; Jiang Zhongyue  , “Cong ciyu de butong neihan kan Zhongguo gudai de zhengzhi biange – shixi Han Feizi de zhong, xian, ren” !    – – –

, Hebei xuekan , vol. 5 (2010), pp. 63–6. See Paul R. Goldin, “Han Fei’s Doctrine of Self-Interest,” in idem, After Confucius: Studies in Early Chinese Philosophy (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2005), pp. 58–65. Han Feizi, “Er bing”  II.7: 116.  , ,  Han Feizi, “Nan san” XIV.38: 908. Han Feizi, “Xian xue”  XX.50: 1137. This is how Su Qin is depicted in a Zhanguo ce anecdote (“Qin ce 1” 3.2: 75). See note 65 above. Yuri Pines with Lothar von Falkenhausen, Gideon Shelach and Robin D.S. Yates, “General Introduction: Qin History Revisited,” in: Yuri Pines, Lothar von Falkenhausen, Gideon Shelach and Robin D.S. Yates, eds., Birth of an Empire: The State of Qin Revisited (Berkeley: University of California Press, forthcoming). It is worth reminding here that meritocracy in the Warring States period was commonly understood as “universal”: that is, the ruler should attract the best talents from “all-under-Heaven” and not just from his state. For an interesting proposal by Yan Xuetong (, 1952–) to resurrect this principle in current China, see Daniel Bell’s introduction to Yan Xuetong, Ancient Chinese Thought, Modern Chinese Power, Daniel A. Bell and Sun Zhe, eds., Edmund Ryden, trans. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011), p. 14. For the guest ministers at the court of Qin, see Moriya Kazuki , “Senkoku Shin no soh ¯ o¯ ni tsuite”   , T¯oy¯oshi kenkyu¯   , vol. 60 (2001), pp. 1–29; Huang Liuzhu  , Qin Han lishi wenhua lungao   (Xi’an: San Qin chubanshe, 2002), pp. 41–50. Qin’s efforts to attract travelling persuaders peaked under the leadership of chief minister, Lu¨ Buwei, who assembled scholars from the eastern states ¨ to compile the Lushi chunqiu. For manifold aspects of the Qin social structure and of its impact on the early Han practices, see Michael Loewe, “The Orders of Aristocratic Rank of Han China,” T’oung Pao, vol. 48 (1960), pp. 97–174; Gao Min , “Qin de cijue zhidu shitan”  

, in idem, Qin Han shi lunji   (Zhengzhou: Zhongzhou shuhuashe, 1982), pp. 1–32; Michael Loewe, “Social Distinctions, Groups and Privileges,” in China’s Early Empires: A Reappraisal, Michael Nylan and Michael Loewe eds. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp. 296–307.

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93. Two recently published Qin population registers discovered at the site of Liye , Hunan, indicate that the majority of households were headed by ranked individuals, approximately one-quarter of whom were identified as “nobles” , i.e., holders of rank five and higher; Chen Wei , ed., Liye Qin jiandu jiaoshi (di yi juan)   () (Wuhan: Wuhan daxue chubanshe, 2012), slips 8–19; 8–1236+8–1791, pp. 32–33 and 297; Robin D. S. Yates, “Bureaucratic Organization of the Qin County of Qianling  in the Light of the Newly Published Liye Qin jian (yi) and Liye Qin jiandu jiaoshi (diyi juan)” paper presented at the Fourth International Conference on Sinology, Institute for History and Philology, Academia Sinica, 20–22 June, 2012. This high proportion of ranked individuals may reflect particularly high possibilities of individual advancement in the wake of wars of unification, but in any case it is indicative of the availability of low and medium-level ranks of merit to most Qin males. Females, of course, were excluded from this system of promotion, making it fundamentally unfair from the modern point of view; it is worth noticing, however, that women could inherit the husband’s rank and some of its privileges. 94. See Robin D. S. Yates, “Social Status in the Ch’in: Evidence from the Yun¨ meng Legal Documents. Part One: Commoners,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, vol. 47 (1987), pp. 197–236; Teng Mingyu, “From Vassal State to Empire: An Archaeological Examination of Qin Culture,” Susanna Lam, trans., in Pines et al., eds., Birth of an Empire. ¨ 95. See details in the Statutes and Ordinances of the Second Year (Ernian luling ) text, unearthed at the early Han Tomb 247, Zhangjiashan, Jiangling  (Hubei); see Zhangjiashan Hanmu zhujian (er si qi hao mu)     ("), published by Zhangjiashan Hanmu zhujian zhengli xiaozu    (Beijing: Wenwu chubanshe, 2001), “Fulu” ¨ , slips 259–62, p. 182. 96. See Wu Xiaoqiang , ed., Qin jian Ri shu jishi   (Changsha: Yuelu, 2000); Robin D.S. Yates “Slavery in Early China: A Socio-cultural Perspective,” Journal of East Asian Archaeology, vol. 3, nos. 1–2 (2002), 283–331, on p. 310. 97. A. F. P. Hulsew´e, Remnants of Ch’in Law: An Annotated Translation of the Ch’in Legal and Administrative Rules of the 3rd Century B.C. Discovered in ¨ Yun-meng Prefecture, Hu-pei Province, in 1975 (Leiden: Brill, 1985), D164, p. 174. 98. Hulsew´e Remnants of Ch’in Law, A91, p. 83; Yates, “Slavery in Early China,” p. 313. 99. See Robin D.S. Yates, “Introduction: The Empire of the Scribes,” in Pines et al., eds., Birth of an Empire. 100. For archeological confirmation of the influx of immigrants into Qin, see Teng, “From Vassal State to Empire.” 101. For these examples, see, for example, careers of Shang Yang, Fan Sui, and Cai Ze (see note 54). 102. This interpretation of the biblioclasm is based on Pines Envisioning Eternal Empire, pp. 180–3; for other views, see, e.g., Jens Østergard Petersen, “Which Books Did the First Emperor of Ch’in Burn? On the Meaning of Pai Chia in

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103. 104.

105. 106.

107.

108.

109.

110.

111.

112.

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Early Chinese Sources,” Monumenta Serica, vol. 43 (1995), pp. 1–52; Martin Kern, The Stele Inscriptions of Ch’in Shih-huang: Text and Ritual in Early Chinese Imperial Representation (New Haven: American Oriental Society, 2000), pp. 183–96. It may not be incidental that the term “worthiness” is conspicuously absent from the Qin stele inscriptions (for which, see Kern, The Stele Inscriptions). For the latter, see Mark E. Lewis, “The Han Abolition of Universal Military Service,” in Hans Van de Ven, ed., Warfare in Chinese History (Leiden: Brill, 2000), pp. 33–76. See Michael Nylan, “Confucian Piety and Individualism in Han China,” Journal of the American Oriental Society, vol. 116 (1996), pp. 1–27. See Patricia B. Ebrey, “Toward a Better Understanding of the Later Han Upper Class,” in Albert E. Dien, ed., State and Society in Early Medieval China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990), pp. 49–72. See Dennis Graffin, “Reinventing China: Pseudobureaucracy in the Early Southern Dynasties,” in Dien, ed., State and Society in Early Medieval China, pp. 145–55. For the functioning of the renewed examination system under the Tang (, 618–907) dynasty, see Penelope A. Herbert, Examine the Honest, Appraise the Able: Contemporary Assessments of Civil Service Selection in Early T’ang China (Canberra: Faculty of Asian Studies, Australian National University Press, 1998). Herbert shows how the tension between one’s “worth” (literary talents) and “merits” (administrative skills) transpired as a tension between those examinations aimed at determining one’s theoretical legibility to an office and those aimed at fixing one’s real appointment. See Benjamin A. Elman, A Cultural History of Civil Examinations in Late Imperial China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000) and his chapter for this volume (Ch. 7). See William T. Rowe, Saving the World: Chen Hongmou and Elite Consciousness in Eighteenth-Century China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001), pp. 339–44; Bradly W. Reed, Talons and Teeth: County Clerks and Runners in the Qing Dynasty (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000). Shang jun shu, “Qu qiang”  I.4: 29–30; for the analysis of this statement and its role in the Book of Lord Shang, see Yuri Pines, “Alienating rhetoric in the Book of Lord Shang and its moderation,” Extrˆeme-Orient, ExtrˆemeOccident, vol. 34 (2012), pp. 79–110. Zizhi tongjian , by Sima Guang , annotated by Hu Sanxing  (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1992), 1: 14–15. Sima Guang’s statement should be understood in the context of his lasting polemics against Wang Anshi ( , 1021–86), in particular against Wang’s readiness to employ highly efficient but morally questionable individuals in financial institutions. For the polemics, see Peter K. Bol, “Government, Society and State: On the Political Visions of Ssu-ma Kuang and Wang An-shih,” in Robert R. Hymes and Conrad Schirokauer, eds., Ordering the World: Approaches to State and Society in Sung Dynasty China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), pp. 128–92; for Wang’s employment practices, see Paul J. Smith, “State Power and Economic Activism during the New Policies, 1068–1085: The Tea and

202

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115. 116.

Yuri Pines Horse Trade and the ‘Green Sprouts’ Loan Policy,” in Ordering the World, pp. 76–127. See Huang, Ray. 1587: A Year of No Significance (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981). A huge success of land reclamation and afforestation campaigns under the Ming founder, Zhu Yuanzhang ( , r. 1368–98) came in part due to the subjugation of officials’ promotion to their successful attainment of these goals. See Natalia P. Svistunova, Agrarnaia Politika Dinastii Min, XIV vek (Moscow: Nauka, 1996); cf. Edward L. Dreyer, Early Ming China: A Political History, 1355–1435 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1982), pp. 122–31. For an attempt to utilize the administrative system for increasing tax revenues and for its human price, see, e.g., Smith, “State Power and Economic Activism”; Huang, 1587, pp. 60–7. See Pines, The Everlasting Empire: Traditional Chinese Political Culture and Its Enduring Legacy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012). See also Pines, Envisioning Eternal Empire, pp. 214–18.

7 A Society in Motion Unexpected Consequences of Political Meritocracy in Late Imperial China, 1400–1900 Benjamin Elman I. INTRODUCTION

Late imperial Chinese were on the move from 1400 to 1900. They regularly traveled along the waterways and roads of their extensive empire, moving up from villages to counties, townships, prefectures, provinces, and the capital. Why? To take the dynasty-wide civil service examinations! Once licensed by a local qualifying examination, millions of candidates traveled far and wide to take higher examinations. They relied on the fairness of the testing process to rise from the bottom up and share political power as civil servants within the state bureaucracy. Eligibility for the civil examinations required classical literacy, mastery of the orthodox content of the classical canon, and minimally commoner status. The dynasty legitimated those who passed the examinations to hold office and wield political, cultural, and legal power. Once in office, they became meritocratically appointed authorities.1 Officials (guan ) serving in the Ming-Qing bureaucracy claimed their “merit” (shixi  , lit., “cultivation of character”) entitled them to represent the people (min ). Their merit derived from a classical education and passing examinations. Their education was premised on long-naturalized but still idealized social distinctions between literati (shi ), peasants (nong ), artisans (gong ), and merchants (shang ) in descending order of rank and prestige. Under the Ming dynasty, for example, sons of merchants were for the first time legally permitted to take the civil examinations. The longstanding Confucian fear that wealth trumped politics slowly eroded, and Ming authorities increasingly moralized wealth during a “silver age” of unprecedented commercialization, 1550–1650. Remaining occupational prohibitions still extended to Buddhist monks, Daoist clerics, and “mean peoples” 203

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(those engaged in “unclean” occupations). An unstated gender bias applied to all women and eunuchs. The classical grounds for seeing meritocratically selected officials “in a representative role,” to use Philip Pettit’s terms, were primarily social, favoring the landholding literati rhetorically as properly trained “gentlemen” (junzi ) and wealthy merchants as successfully “Confucianized” nouveau riches. The interests of the represented masses were rhetorically Confucianized to inform the public what was acceptable based on a set of classics drawn directly or indirectly from the alleged teachings of Confucius and his disciples. Yuri Pines’s chapter in this volume shows that Mencius put it best: “heaven speaks as the people speak.” Officials represented the interests of the state only after it tested and appointed them. They could only secondarily and remotely represent the people at large because no one could be appointed to an office in his home province. The ruler perceived the official who had risen from the bottom up to be his nonelected/self-selected partner in ruling the country through political means from the top down, which is why many today find political meritocracy democratically suspect (see Joseph Chen’s chapter in this volume). What was unique about this effort to develop institutions for classical consensus and political efficacy was its remarkable success in accomplishing goals for which it was designed, not the democratic goals for which it was not. Education restructured the complex relations between social status, political power, and cultural prestige. A classical education based on nontechnical moral and statecraft theory was as suitable for selection of elites in China to serve the imperial state at its highest echelons of power as humanism and a classical education served elites in the nation-states of early-modern Europe. The examination life, like death and taxes, became one of the fixtures of elite education and popular culture. Examinations represented the focal point through which imperial interests, family strategies, and individual hopes and aspirations were directed. The education ethos carried over to medicine, law, fiscal policy, and military affairs. The Ming dynasty was internally the most mobile empire in the early modern world. Already a massive society of at least 150 million by 1600, 1 percent of them (some 1.5 million local Chinese) gathered biennially in one of 1,350 Ming counties for the privilege to be locked up inside testing grounds to take civil examinations, which would select them as officials and empower them as local, provincial, or metropolitan representatives of imperial governance. Those who passed, some 75,000,

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registered in one of seventeen provincial capitals to take the heavily policed triennial provincial examinations the next year. The six thousand who survived that cut traveled every three years to the capital in Beijing for the dynasty-wide metropolitan and palace examinations for the right to become palace graduates. The best and the brightest served in the imperial court as Hanlin academicians or the emperor’s “grand secretaries.” Under the sprawling Qing empire, the number of Chinese moving through these hierarchical gates by 1850, tripled to 4.5 million at the local level. From these millions, 150,000 survived to take the provincial examinations. Civil examinations in late imperial China thus marked one of the most traveled – and policed – intersections among politics, society, economy, and Chinese intellectual life. This chapter is about premodern Chinese society and civilization in motion – upward and downward – from 1400 to 1850. The power of classical learning and statecraft to motivate millions of Chinese to want to become public officials serving far from home and family is one part of the story. Only 5 percent would see their hopes realized, however. Success was at a premium. A more important part of the story of civil examinations is the one about the 95 percent who failed to become officials. The authority of the classical language empowered the civil examinations to gain traction as a cultural gyroscope even in the minds of the millions who failed. More than the thousands of classically literate officials, the orthodox knowledge system produced millions of literates who after repeated failures became doctors, Buddhist or Daoist priests, pettifoggers, teachers, notaries, merchants, and lineage managers, not to mention astronomers, mathematicians, printers, and publishers. The general tendency to focus on social mobility since the Tang dynasty (618–907) by P’ing-ti Ho and others, who researched the social status of graduates of the civil examinations, has meant that scholars have misunderstood how the monopolization of cultural resources by literati and merchant elites actually worked. Premised on a system of inclusion and exclusion based on tests of classical literacy that restricted the access of those in the lower classes, and whose levels of literacy were too vernacular to master the classical frames of language and writing required in the local licensing examinations, the civil examinations concealed the process of social selection. By requiring linguistic mastery of nonvernacular classical texts, imperial examinations created a written linguistic barrier that stood between those allowed into the

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empire’s examinations compounds and those classically illiterate who were kept out.2 When we consider that millions of examination candidates congregated biennially at counties, townships, and prefectures, and triennially in provincial and national capitals, we realize that such goings-on took on local significance simultaneously as social, economic, cultural, and political events. Cultural paraphernalia, books of examination essays, charms from temples for good luck, soothsayers with otherworldly powers of intercession, parades of examiners, and policing checkpoints for candidates were all part of the market-fair atmosphere that accompanied the examinations when candidates marched into and out of the prisonlike examination compounds after each session. Because it was virtually compulsory to participate in the civil examinations to remain a member of the local elite, the examination hall was a way station to success for a small minority of graduates. The circulation of elites began via periodic examination tournaments, when most candidates were locked inside examination cells for several days until they were well into their thirties or forties. Particularly in the provincial examinations of the south, where five to ten (and by the eighteenth century) more than fifteen thousand candidates would gather every three years in the local capital of Nanking or Hangzhou, with the likelihood that only one in a hundred would pass, the intersections of commerce, political status, and social prestige would yield an atmosphere of expectation and dread matched only by crowds at famous temples and shrines. Examination protests and riots were not uncommon when candidates were given their only legal opportunity by the government to gather together in large groups. Fires, heavy rains, and corruption were periodic additions to the already terrible pressure on candidates who ranged typically from less than twenty to more than sixty years of age. Not trusted by the dynasty, which created and maintained an architecture of surveillance that housed many guards alongside the candidates and their examiners in each compound, the candidates themselves were a hodgepodge of high and low, young sons of the famous and old men on their last try, savvy urban southerners and country bumpkins from northern small towns and villages. What they shared in common was years of preparation to compete for the few places that would separate them in their disparate futures. Success was alluring. Failure was humiliating. Cheating became a cottage industry. “Male anxiety” delineated through the candidates’ dreams, visions, and mental breakdowns

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were byproducts of this unrelenting cycle of tests and competitions. So much a part of Chinese society after centuries of implementation, both the bureaucracy and society, elites and commoners viewed the entire spectacle as a “natural” state of affairs, the inequities of which were refracted through the lens of fate as much as corruption. One could finish first in the difficult southern provincial examinations and plummet to the bottom in less competitive metropolitan examinations in Beijing. Most failed several times at each level before achieving success. When the Qing dynasty abrogated the civil and military examinations in the name of “Westernization” in 1904–5, it was effectively losing one of its key tools of social, political, and cultural influence. In the absence of viable educational replacements, the abrogation of civil examinations accelerated the demise of the Manchu dynasty and its eventual replacement by Han Chinese urban elites who championed republicanism. In other words, what had in the past been taken for granted as the long overdue elimination of an outmoded and inefficient “late imperial” civil selection process in favor of a reformed educational system based on “modern” schools and educational models should be turned on its head.3 The abrupt demise of the civil examinations also suggests that recurring elite criticism of the system since the Song dynasties had remained an important undercurrent before the system was abrogated. The undoing of the traditional civil examination system in China in 1904–5 was not a simple substitution of the modern for the outmoded. Prasenjit Duara has described the failure of reformers in China to replace the traditional forms of political legitimacy in rural Chinese society at the end of the Qing dynasty.4 Others have noted the unforeseen consequences of colonial zeal to replace “superstitious” religious beliefs in India and elsewhere.5 Until modern forms of schooling and education took hold and penetrated as deeply into traditional society as the civil examinations had in the previous five centuries, and until the new schools were as widely understood and accepted as “natural” by millions of examination candidates, the sudden abrogation of the selection process was for conservative Chinese gentry and Manchus a blow from the outside that subverted and dismantled the cultural system built around the dynasty. The fall of the Qing thus unleashed a parallel crisis in the established creedal system and compromised the social and political credentials the system had enforced. Destruction of civil examinations, and the Ministry of Rites that supervised them, outpaced the construction of a replacement Ministry of Education and its recentering of the social, political, and cultural

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functions that civil examinations had fulfilled for elite families through new schools. The new cultural and political institutions associated with the West and its “modernity” had less symbolic relevance and fewer cultural uses in the early twentieth century. In the end, premodern institutions had achieved a proven utility that was widely accepted for so long that they were naturalized into viable organizational forms. Unrealistic modern educational reforms that sounded so inevitable were unable to prevent the unforeseen and unintended consequences of decanonization and delegitimation after 1898. Civil examinations reflected the larger literati culture because state institutions were already penetrated by that culture through a political and social partnership between imperial interests and local elites since 1400. Together they had formed and promulgated a classical curriculum of unprecedented scope and magnitude for the selection of officials and the production of classically literate failures. Both local elites and the imperial court continually influenced the dynastic government to reexamine and adjust the classical curriculum and to entertain new ways to improve the institutional system for selecting civil officials. As a result, civil examinations, as a test of educational merit, tied the dynasty and its elites together bureaucratically via elite culture. In the realm of culture, a broader secret lay hidden. The state, the ruler, and his ministers were dimly aware that Chinese elites encompassed not only those who passed the final palace examination and became high officials, some fifty thousand total for both the Ming and Qing dynasties. The fate of the millions of failures, the “lesser lights” in the classically educated strata of the society, worried the emperors and their courts. Would they become rebels and outlaws and challenge the legitimacy of their rulers? Or would they find suitable social niches for their lives, which a classical education both enabled and encouraged? Emperors also worried when the numbers of old men over eighty sui (Chinese added a year at a newborn’s first new year celebration) taking local examinations went up precipitously. Was it really an honor for a grandfather and father, who had failed for decades, to accompany their younger grandson/son into the local examination halls to take the same licensing examination? II. A BRIEF HISTORY OF CLASSICAL EDUCATION AND CIVIL EXAMINATIONS

Compared with other civilizations, China placed a high value on education from the ancient classical era (600–250 b.c.e.). Yuri Pines in

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his chapter shows how influential Chinese thinkers from the moralists Confucius (551–479 b.c.e) and Mencius (372–289 b.c.e), to the realistic Mozi (ca. 470–ca. 391 b.c.e) and ritualist Xunzi (ca. 298–238 b.c.e), advanced the unprecedented notion that merit and ability measured by training should take precedence over race or birth in state appointments. Since the early empire (Qin-Han, 200 b.c.e.–200 a.c.e.), clans and families had mobilized their resources to provide young boys (and in some cases girls) with the tools of classical literacy. For the most part, however, a society based on merit remained an unattained ideal, and for much of the early empire, an education remained the privilege of landed aristocrats and, to a lesser degree, prosperous merchants.6 Beginning in the middle empire (Sui-Tang, 600–900), the Chinese state dramatically increased its expenditures on education and created the first large-scale examination system for selecting civil officials in the world. Such developments, which challenged the medieval educational monopoly for advancement in official life held by northwestern aristocratic clans, climaxed during the Northern and Southern Song dynasties (960–1280), when the government erected a dynasty-wide school system at the county level to mainstream bright young men from commoner families into public service. In addition, Buddhist monasteries in medieval China created new local institutions for education, educating many commoners – male and female. Thereafter, state and society, except for the occasional Daoist eccentric, agreed that education, particularly a classical education, was one of the foundations of public order and civilized life. Large-scale examination compounds, an odd sort of “cultural prison,” dotted the landscape since the Song dynasties. “Actual prisons” for lawbreakers were scarce. Small-scale jails in the county yamens sufficed for criminals. The language of social order and moral rehabilitation was largely cultural.7 These pioneering educational achievements gathered momentum during the Song dynasties, when various strands of classical statecraft and moral thought were reinvigorated, particularly the metaphysical strands that Cheng Yi (1033–1107) and Zhu Xi (1130–1200) derived in part from classical responses to Buddhist challenges. These literati views later were synthesized under the name of “Way learning” (Daoxue, what others translate as “neo-Confucianism”). The latter became orthodox – in name more than in practice – when the Mongol Yuan dynasty (1280–1368) belatedly renewed the civil service curriculum at a controlled level in 1313. Only 1,100 high degrees were conferred under the Mongols, compared with more than 25,000 palace graduates under the following Ming, however. But the Mongol cooption of “Way learning”

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served as important models for the both the Ming and Manchu Qing dynasty, which again made the Cheng-Zhu persuasion the cornerstone of classical orthodoxy.8 After the restricted Mongol era, Ming China tried to reinvent a meritocracy in which social prestige and political appointment depended for the most part on written classical examinations to establish legitimate public credentials. Elite political status and social prerogatives were corroborated through more extensive trials by examination, which in turn produced new literati social groups that endured from 1400 to the twentieth century. Classical learning became the empirewide examination curriculum, which reached into 1,350 counties and tens of thousands of villages for the first time. The Song-Yuan “Way learning” orthodoxy was mastered by millions of civil service examination candidates from 1400 until 1900. In the first Ming provincial and metropolitan examinations of 1370 and 1371, the medieval emphasis on poetry was ended based on Cheng Yi’s and Zhu Xi’s Song dynasty criticism that learning poetry or good calligraphy actually decreased one’s ability to make morally informed political judgments. The new curriculum still required classical essays on the Four Books and Five Classics. The complete removal of poetry by the examination bureaucracy lasted from 1370 to 1756, when the examination curriculum pendulum swung decisively back to balance the essay with a poetry question again. But examination policy never hindered the popularity of poetry and literary flair among literati groups, which decisively demonstrates the cultural limits of the classical curriculum in influencing intellectual life.9 In Ming times, the Song dynasty “Way learning” tradition became an empirewide orthodoxy both geographically and demographically among upper- and middle-level literati. Later followers created an imperial curriculum of learning at all levels of society that could be linked to the elitist civil examination system. Although the classically educated were marked by a characteristic set of moralistic predispositions favored in the civil examinations, alternative and dissenting views proliferated.10 Natural studies, particularly medical learning, became a legitimate focus of private study when literati sought alternatives to official careers under a Mongol rule that disdained sweeping civil examinations. Such occupational alternatives continued to be available when the odds of success for the many on the Ming examinations became prohibitive after 1500. The wider scope of policy questions on the civil examinations dating from the early fifteenth century often

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reflected state and public interest in astrology, calendrical precision, mathematical harmonics, and natural anomalies. The “first” Western learning that entered Ming China via the Jesuits after 1600 enhanced focus on these technical fields of natural studies.11 Most Chinese agreed that learning was guided by examples of past worthies and sages and encouraged by good companions and teachers. In traditional schools, learning led to far more regimentation than many literati might have wished, but this was always tempered by the numerous local traditions of learning outside the control of the bureaucratically limited state. Many members of literary schools held that because literature and governing were not separate, writers should avoid Buddhist and Daoist vocabulary, or rustic and colloquial phrases, or the stylistic anarchy of popular novels. Knowledge of numbers in taxrelated economic transactions, debates about “hot” and “cold” medical therapies to deal with epidemics, and discussion of reforms of the official calendar by the mid-sixteenth century were also common. Europeans first marveled at the educational achievements of the Chinese in the sixteenth century when Catholic missionaries, especially the Jesuits wrote approvingly of the civil examinations then regularly held under Ming-Qing government auspices. Such admiration carried over into the accounts of China prepared by eighteenth-century philosophes, who praised the “Mightie Kingdome” for its enlightened education. In the absence of alternative careers of comparable social status and political prestige, the goal of becoming an official took priority. The civil service recruitment system achieved for imperial education in China a degree of standardization and local importance unprecedented in the early modern world.12 This ethos carried over into the domains of medicine, law, fiscal policy, and military affairs. Imperial rulers and Chinese elites believed that ancient wisdom, properly inculcated, tempered men as leaders and prepared them for wielding political power. Both the Ming and Qing dynasties encouraged the widespread publication and circulation of acceptable materials dealing with the Four Books, Five Classics, and Dynastic Histories because the latter were the basis of the civil service curriculum and literati learning empire-wide. Throughout the Ming and Qing dynasties, more classically literate Chinese read or had access to the literati canon than literate Europeans had access to the Bible’s Old and New Testaments.13 Imperial support of elite cultural symbols, which were defined in terms of classical learning, painting, literature, and calligraphy, enabled

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the civil service hierarchy to reproduce acceptable social hierarchies by redirecting wealth and power derived from commerce or military success into education to prepare for the civil and military service. The selection of a “writing elite,” not the enlargement of a “reading public,” was the government’s goal in using civil examinations to select officials. By producing too many candidates, however, the civil service market also yielded a broader pool of failed literates who turned to producing legal plaints, novellas, medical tracts, and bawdy plays for a de facto and enlarging reading public. Teaching in late imperial times generally meant the reproduction of classically literate elites, and the socialization by means of exhortations and rituals of the far less literate, or even illiterate, common people. The civilizing goal of “teaching and transforming” (jiaohua ) never hardened into a tidy formula, given the dissatisfactions with the educational status quo that characterized Chinese history. Wang Yangming (1472–1528) and his late Ming followers, for example, opened schools and academies for commoners on a wider scale than ever before. On the other hand, the line between elites and commoners could also be blurred by political turmoil. When emperors feared that heterodox popular religions were spreading because of the excessive numbers of unlearned people in the empire, they often conflated learning with indoctrination from above. Consequently, many literati accused Wang Yangming and his more radical followers of heterodoxy and deceiving the people.14 Separate from official studies, “schools” of learning among literati included poetry societies, private academies, or lineages of teachings associated with classical, medical, or statecraft traditions peculiar to a particular region. Medical and statecraft traditions, in particular, were usually tied to a specific master, who bequeathed his teachings to his disciples. Without “public” schools, a classical education took place in private lineage schools, charity and temple schools, or at home, not in the solitary official county, township, provincial or capital school that licentiates tested into. Large numbers of teachers, often examination failures, transmitted the classical or technical training needed by young men to pass local civil or military examinations or practice their trades in counties, townships, or prefectures. III. MERITOCRACY AND EXAMINATIONS

After the mid-seventeenth-century fall of the Ming to Manchu armies, civil service examinations were immediately instituted by the

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succeeding Qing dynasty and its savvier Manchu rulers without skipping a beat. Unlike the Mongol Yuan government, the Manchu state regularly held Ming-style classical examinations in 140 prefectures and approximately 1,350 counties. Medieval examinations were held only in the capital, whereas from 1000 to 1360, regular examinations, when held, took place only in the provincial and imperial capitals. Fearing repetition of the Mongol failure to remain in power for long, Manchu emperors favored civil service examinations to cope with ruling an empire of extraordinary economic strength undergoing resurgent demographic change. Qing emperors put in place an empirewide examination system that occupied a central educational position in Chinese government and society until 1905, when the examinations were abolished. The examinations engendered an empirewide school system down to the county level. Several centuries before Europe, the Chinese imperial state committed itself financially to support a county level school network. Despite their initial success, dynastic schools, one per county or township, were eventually absorbed into the examination system and remained schools in name only. Because the classical curriculum was routinized, little actual teaching took place in such schools. Dynastic schools became way stations, that is, “testing centers,” for students preparing for the more prestigious civil service examinations. Imagine if American students seeking to enter medical school only needed to pass the Medical Boards prepared by the Princeton Educational Testing Service (ETS) and were not required to attend college before entering medical school! Song and later Ming-Qing schools of classical learning were trumped by the civil examinations. The schools became “waiting stations” for those who had not passed. Training in vernacular and classical literacy was left to the private domain. Dynastic schools in China never entertained goals of mass education. Designed to recruit talent into the “ladder of success,” a classical education became the sine qua non for social and political prestige in empirewide and local affairs. Imperial rulers recognized testing their elites on their mastery of a classical education was an essential task of government, and Chinese elites perceived a classical education as the correct measure of their moral and social worth.15 When the autonomy of education from political and social control at times became a bone of contention, this revealed the limits of imperial power in the Ming or Qing empires. But both rulers and elites generally equated social and political order with moral and political indoctrination through a civilizing education. High-minded officials often

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appealed for the relative autonomy of education in private academies as an antidote to the warping of classical educational goals by the cutthroat examination process. Such private academies frequently became centers for dissenting political views, but they often paid a political price for such activism, for example, the late Ming Donglin Academy. Such academies also served as important educational venues for literati who preferred teaching and lecturing to passing on classical learning to their students. When compared with some five hundred Song and four hundred Yuan dynasty private academies, the Ming overall had in place from one thousand to two thousand such academies by its end. The Qing had upward of four thousand empire-wide, a small number considering that population reached 300 million by 1800, but in aggregate an influential force.16 A. Social Reproduction Civil examination success required substantial investments of time, effort, and training. Because the dynastic school system was limited to candidates already literate in classical Chinese, initial stages in training and preparing a son for the civil service became the private responsibility of “commoner” families seeking to attain or those simply hoping to maintain elite status as “official” or “military” families. Careerism usually won out over idealism among talented young men who occasionally were forced to choose between their social obligations to their parents and relatives and their personal aspirations. Failures, however, because of their classical literacy could choose teaching, pettifoggery, or medicine as alternate careers. Once legally enfranchised to compete, merchant families also saw in the civil service the route to greater wealth and orthodox success and power. Unlike contemporary Europe and Japan where absolute social barriers between nobility and commoners prevented the translation of commercial wealth into elite status, landed affluence and commercial wealth during the Ming dynasty were intertwined with high educational status. Because of the literary requirements, artisans, peasants, and clerks were poorly equipped to take advantage of the hypothetical openness of the civil service. Frequently the rites of passage from child to young adult in wealthy families were measured by the number of ancient texts that were mastered at a particular age. Capping of a young boy between the ages of sixteen and twenty-one, for example, implied that he had mastered

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all of the Four Books and one of the Five Classics, the minimum requirement for any aspirant to compete in the civil service examinations up to 1756. Clear boundaries were also erected to demarcate male education from female upbringing, which remained intact until the seventeenth century when education of women in elite families became more common. Nevertheless, when compared with the fatalistic ideologies common among Buddhist or Hindu peasants in South and Southeast Asia, for example, the Chinese ideology of teaching and learning did affect beliefs in the usefulness of education and created a climate of rising expectations. Those who dreamed of glory at times rebelled when their hopes were dashed.17 Looking beyond the official meritocracy of the graduates, we see the larger place of the civil examinations in Chinese society and not just for elite families. One of the unintended consequences of the civil examinations was the creation of legions of classically literate men (and women), who used their linguistic talents for a variety of nonofficial purposes. If there was much social “mobility,” that is, the opportunity for members of the lower classes to rise in the social hierarchy, it was likely here. The archives indicate that peasants, traders, and artisans, who made up 90 percent of the population, were not among the highest graduates. Nor were they a significant part of approximately 1.4 million (late Ming) to 2.6 million (mid-Qing) local candidates who failed at lower levels every two years. Occupational fluidity among merchants, military families and gentry, however, translated into a substantial “circulation” of lower and upper elites in the examination market. Overall, licentiates were not peasants, traders, artisans, clergy, or women. They were gentry and merchants, who were “commoners,” or military men. To reach this level, peasants, traders, and artisans had to begin an economic climb that eventually allowed them to earn enough to provide classical educations for their sons. B. Political Reproduction Education in Ming China was recognized as one of several tools in the repertoire of the dynasty to maintain public order and political efficacy. Imperial support of education and examinations was contingent on the examination process in supplying talented and loyal men, some 20,000 to 25,000 officials empirewide, for the bureaucracy to employ. The dynasty’s minimum requirement that the educational system reinforce

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and inculcate political, social, and moral values, which would maintain the dynasty in its present form, was inseparable from classical rhetoric exalting learning and prioritizing civilian values. Political legitimacy was an assumed and worthy byproduct of preparation for the civil and military service. The legions of local clerks who worked in 1,350 county and 140 prefectural yamens were banned from the civil service, although they passed on their home sinecures to their sons or close relations.18 In a tightly woven ideological canvas of loyalties, even emperors became politically educated in, and thus reproduced about, the orthodox rationale for their imperial legitimacy – by special tutors selected from the civil service examinations. A byproduct was that the number of classically literate elites able to produce essays, poetry, stories, novels, medical treatises, and scholarly works also increased dramatically. They fed the wood-block printing industry and the rapid growth of a dynamic print culture in South China with classical and vernacular texts read widely in the late Ming.19 Imperial support of literati-inspired cultural symbols, which were defined in terms of classical learning, painting, literature, and calligraphy, enabled the dynasty in concert with its elites to reproduce the institutional conditions necessary for their survival. The examination hierarchy reproduced acceptable social hierarchies by redirecting wealth derived from commerce or military success into a classical education. Competitive tensions in the examination market explain the police-like rigor of the civil service examinations as a systematic and stylized educational form of cultural practice that Han Chinese insiders and Manchu warrior outsiders could both support. There were political forces and cultural fears pushing Han Chinese and their non-Han rulers to agree publicly how imperial and bureaucratic authority was conveyed through the accredited cultural institutions of the Ministry of Rites, the Hanlin Academy, and civil examinations. Political legitimation transmitted through education succeeded because enhanced social status and legal privileges were an important byproduct of the examination competition, especially for the civil service. Establishing quotas based on the ratio between successful and failed candidates further demonstrated that the state saw access to the civil service as an educational means to regulate the power of elites. Government control of civil and military selection quotas was most keenly felt at the initial stages of the examination competition: licensing at the county levels for the privilege to enter the examination selection

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process. By 1400, for example, it is estimated that there were thirty thousand classical literate licentiates out of an approximate population of 65 million, a ratio of almost 1 licentiate per 2,200 persons. In 1600, there were perhaps 500,000 licentiates in a total population of some 150 million, or a ratio of 1 licentiate per 300 persons. The examination hall became a contested site, where the political interests of the dynasty, the social interests of its elites, and the cultural ideals of classical learning were all compromised. Moreover, examination halls empirewide were supervised by literati officials, who were in charge of the military and police apparatus when so many men were brought together to be tested at a single place. Forms of resistance to imperial prerogative emerged among examiners, and widespread dissatisfaction and corruption among the candidates at times triumphed over the didactic goals of some of the examiners in charge of the classical examinations. C. Overlaps between Economic and Cultural Reproduction Well-organized local lineages translated social and economic advantages into educational success, which correlated with their control of local cultural resources. Such lineages were usually built around corporate estates, which required classically literate and highly placed leaders who moved easily in elite circles and could mediate on behalf of the kin group. Economic surpluses produced by wealthy lineages, particularly in prosperous areas, enabled members of rich segments to have better access to a classical education and success on state examinations, which in turn lead to new sources of political and economic power outside the lineage. Here, economic reproduction lent its traction to social and political forms for the accumulation of power and stature. If one “followed the money,” economic resources translated into cultural resources for classical learning.20 Because education of elites entailed long-term internalization of orthodox thought, perception, appreciation, and action, the simultaneous processes of social and political reproduction in Ming China yielded both “literati culture” and the literatus as a “man of culture.” Classical literacy, that is, the ability to write elegant essays and poetry, was the crowning achievement for educated men and increasingly for elite women in the seventeenth century. This learning process began with rote memorization during childhood, continued with youthful reading, and concluded with mature writing. Literati believed that the

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memory was strongest at an early age, whereas mature understanding was a gradual achievement that derived from mastering the literary language and its moral and historical content. Educated men, and some women, became a “writing elite” whose essays would mark them as classically trained. The educated man was able to write his way to fame, fortune, and power, and even if unsuccessful in his quest for an official career, he could still publish essays, poetry, novels, medical handbooks, and other works. The limitation, control, and selection of the “writing elite,” not the enlargement of the “reading public,” were the dynasty’s goals in using civil examinations to select officials. By enticing too many candidates, however, the civil examination market also yielded a broader pool of literate writers who, upon failing, turned their talents to producing other texts, novellas (pornography included), and medical tracts.21 They compiled genealogies, prepared deeds, provided medical expertise, and wrote settlements for adoption contracts and mortgages. These acts required expertise and contacts that only the elite within a descent group could provide. Merchants in late imperial China also became known as cultured patrons of scholarship and publishing. The result was a merging of literati and merchant social strategies and interests. Classical scholarship flourished due to merchant patronage, and books were printed and collected in larger numbers than ever before. Despite the classical prestige of the civil examinations, precisely because more than 90 percent of the candidates failed, the latter kept the society dynamic in various ways by focusing their careers on alternatives such as medicine, pharmacy, mathematics, and astronomy-astrology.22 Dominant lineages and nouveau riche families maintained their high local status through the lineage schools, medical traditions, and merchant academies they funded. Elite education stressed classical erudition, historical knowledge, medical expertise, literary style, and poetry. Classical literacy and proficiency in the literary arts were requirements to socialize with the political elite. The strict enforcement of requirements for civil examination essays further cemented literary culture. The well-publicized rituals for properly writing classical Chinese included cultural paraphernalia long associated with literati culture: the writing brush, ink stick, ink slab, stone monuments, fine silk for writing and wearing, and special paper. Literati prestige, however, more than met its match inside the actual testing sites, which operated as de facto, if curious, “cultural prisons” that elites sought to break into rather than out of. Despite the role of

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police surveillance in the selection process, such “prisons” elicited the voluntary participation of millions of men – women were excluded – and attracted the attention of elites and commoners at all levels of society. Think of such cultural prisons as educational havens that elites sought to break into, so that they could eventually break out of them. Political and social reproduction through public and private institutions of teaching required the transference of economic resources into education and entailed a degree of cultural and linguistic uniformity among elites that only a classical education could provide. Such uniformity was significantly muted in practice. The classical curriculum represented a cultural repertoire of linguistic signs and conceptual categories that reinforced elite political power and social status. Education in dynastic schools and private academies was a fundamental factor in determining cultural consensus and conditioned the forms of reasoning and rhetoric prevailing in elite literary life of the period.23 The reform of education after 1865 and the elimination of examinations in China after 1905 defined new national goals of Western-style change that superseded the conservative imperial goals of reproducing dynastic power, granting gentry prestige, and affirming the classical orthodoxy. National unity replaced dynastic solidarity, as the Manchu empire became a struggling Chinese republic that was later refashioned as a multiethnic communist nation in 1949. Since the Song-Yuan-Ming transition, 1250 to 1450, the struggle between insiders and outsiders in “China” to unite the empire had resulted in what was more than four hundred years of so-called barbarian rule over the Han Chinese by first Mongols and then Manchus. With the Republican Revolution of 1911, that historical narrative ended. IV. POWER, POLITICS, AND EXAMINATIONS

The mark of the late imperial civil system was its elaboration of earlier civil examination models through the impact of commercialization and demographic growth when the reach of the process expanded from metropolitan and provincial capitals to all 1,350 counties. In addition, the upsurge in numbers of candidates was marked by the dominance of palace graduate degree-holders in high office starting in the late sixteenth century. Officialdom was the prerogative of a slim minority. As the door to official appointment closed, civil examinations still conferred social and cultural status on families seeking to become or maintain their status as local elites.

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Occupational fluidity among merchants, military families, and gentry translated into a substantial circulation of lower and upper elites in the examination marketplace. “Commoners” became elites before they became degree holders. We have seen that the pool of candidates was exclusively literati and male. When we add to this competition, the educational requirement to master non-vernacular classical texts, we can grasp the educational barrier between those licensed to take examinations and those who could not because they were classically illiterate. Overall, even local licentiates were not peasants, traders, artisans, clergy, or women. Taking into account the circulation of partially literate non-elites, who were the unintended byproducts of the civil examination’s educational process, allows us to better understand the meanings of meritocratic examinations for the many and not just the few in late imperial China. Competitive tensions in the examination market explain the policelike rigor of the civil service examinations as a systematic and stylized educational form of cultural practice that Han Chinese insiders and Manchu warrior outsiders could both support. There were political forces and cultural fears pushing Han Chinese and their non-Han rulers to agree publicly how imperial and bureaucratic authority was conveyed through the accredited cultural institutions of the Ministry of Rites, the Hanlin Academy, and civil examinations. Political legitimation transmitted through education succeeded because enhanced social status and legal privileges guaranteed by code were an important byproduct of the examination competition for the civil service.24 Establishing quotas based on the ratio between successful and failed candidates further demonstrated that the state saw control of access via quotas to the civil service as an educational means to regulate the power of elites. Government control of civil and military quotas was most keenly felt at the initial stages of the competition: licensing at the county levels for the privilege to enter the examination selection process. Once they were commonplace, local degrees became victims of cultural inflation. Only a higher degree conferred an official position. Because of economic advantages in South China (especially the Yangzi delta but including coastal Fujian and Guangdong provinces), candidates from the south performed better on the civil examinations than candidates from less prosperous regions in the north (North China plain), northwest (Wei River valley), and southwest (Yunnan and Guizhou). To keep the south’s domination of the examinations within acceptable bounds, Ming education officials eventually settled

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in 1425 on an official ratio of 60:40 for allocations of appointments for the highest palace graduates from the south versus the north, which was slightly modified to 55:10:35 a year later by adding a central region.25 Despite – or perhaps because of – the state-society partnership that undergirded civil examinations, the examination hall was a contested site, where the political interests of the dynasty, the social interests of its elites, and the cultural ideals of classical learning were meshed. Moreover, literati officials who supervised examination halls empirewide also were in charge of the military and police apparatus when so many men were brought together to be tested at a single place. Forms of resistance to imperial prerogative emerged among examiners, and widespread dissatisfaction and corruption among the candidates at times triumphed over the high-minded goals of some of the examiners in charge of the classical examinations.26 A. Literacy and Social Dimensions Imperial examinations created a written linguistic barrier that stood between those who were allowed into the empire’s examination “prisons” and those classical illiterates who were kept out. In a society where there were no genuine “public” schools, the partnership between the court and the bureaucracy was monopolized by gentry-merchant literati who organized into lineages and clans to maximize the value of their economic investments via superior classical educations. Language and classical literacy were central in culturally defining high and low social status in late imperial Chinese society. The selection process permitted some circulation of elites in and out of the total pool, but the educational curriculum and its formidable linguistic requirements effectively eliminated the lower classes from the selection process. We have already noted that an unstated gender ideology eliminated women.27 Literati regularly turned to religion and the mantic arts in their efforts to understand and rationalize their emotional responses to the competitive local, provincial, and metropolitan examinations. Examination dreams and popular lore spawned a remarkable literature about the temples candidates visited, the dreams that they or members of their family had, and the magical events in their early lives that were premonitions of their later success. Both elites and popular culture tempered their own understanding of the forces of “fate” that operated in the examination marketplace by encoding them in cultural glosses with unconscious ties to a common culture and religion. The

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anxiety produced by examinations was experienced most personally and deeply by boys and men. Fathers and mothers, sisters and extended relatives shared in the experience and offered comfort, solace, and encouragement, but the direct, personal experience of examination success or failure belonged to the millions of male examination candidates who competed with each other against increasingly difficult odds.28 The civil service competition created a dynastic curriculum that consolidated gentry, military, and merchant families into a culturally defined status group of degree-holders that shared (1) a common classical language, (2) memorization of a shared canon of classics, and (3) a literary style of writing known as the 8-legged essay. Internalization of elite literary culture was in part defined by the civil examination curriculum, but that curriculum also showed the impact of literati opinion on imperial interests. The moral cultivation of the literatus was a perennial concern of the imperial court as it sought to ensure that the officials it chose in the examination market would loyally serve the ruling family. The internalization of a literary culture that was in part defined by the civil examination curriculum also influenced the public and private definition of moral character and social conscience. A view of government, society, and the individual’s role as an elite servant of the dynasty was continually reinforced in the memorization process leading up to the examinations. For the literatus, it was important that the dynasty conformed to classical ideals and upheld the classical orthodoxy that literati themselves formulated. Otherwise the ruling family was illegitimate. The bureaucracy made an enormous financial commitment to staffing and operating the empirewide examination regime. Ironically, the chief consequence was that examiners eventually could not take the time to read each individual essay carefully. The final rankings, even for the 8-legged essay, were haphazard. Although acknowledging the educational impact of the curriculum in force, we must guard against overinterpreting the classical standards of weary examiners inside examination halls as a consistent or coherent attempt to impose mindless orthodoxy from above. An interpretive community, canonical standards, and institutional control of formal knowledge became key features of the civil examination system and its halls empirewide. Scrutiny of the continuities and changes in linguistic structures and syllogistic chains of moral argument in the examination system revealed an explicit logic for the

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formulation of questions and answers and an implicit logic for building semantic and thematic categories of learning. These enabled examiners and students to mark and divide their cognitive world according to the moral attitudes, social dispositions, and political compulsions of their day.29 B. Fields of Classical Learning Literati fields of learning, such as natural studies and history, were also represented in late imperial civil examinations. Such inclusion resulted from the court’s influence, which for political reasons debated the scope of policy questions on examinations in light of the efficacy of history, literature, classicism, music, poetry, and painting as preparing grounds for government problem solving. The classical knowledge of the assigned examiners echoed the intellectual trends of their time. In the mideighteenth century, new guidelines were applied to the civil examination curriculum. As a result, the Song rejection of medieval belles lettres in civil examinations was turned back. In the late eighteenth century, the examination curriculum started to conform to the philological and evidential research currents popular among southern literati. Poetry, music, and literature were again valued for their moral purpose. The scope and content of the policy questions on session three increasingly reflected the academic inroads of newer classical scholarship among examiners. Beginning in the 1740s, high officials debated new initiatives that challenged the classical curriculum in place. They restored earlier aspects of the civil examinations that had been eliminated in the Yuan and Ming dynasties, such as classical poetry. In the mid-eighteenth century, the Qing dynasty initiated “ancient learning” curricular reforms to make the examinations more difficult for the increasing numbers of candidates by requiring all Five Classics in 1787. In addition, the formalistic requirements of the poetry question gave examiners an additional tool, along with the 8-legged essay “grid,” to grade papers more efficiently. The Qianlong emperor in particular recognized that an important characteristic of the civil examinations was the periodic questioning of the system from within to suit the times.30 V. DELEGITIMATION AND DECANONIZATION

The radical reforms after 1860 to meet the challenges of the Taiping Rebellion (1850–1864) and Western imperialism are beyond the scope

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of this essay.31 Even the Taipings instituted their own Christian-based civil examinations. In the last years of the Qing dynasty, however, literati-officials ridiculed the civil examinations as an “unnatural” educational regime that should be discarded. During the transition to the Republic of China, new political, institutional, and cultural forms emerged that challenged the creedal system of the late empire and refracted its political institutions. The emperor, his bureaucracy, and literati cultural forms quickly became symbols of backwardness, especially after the 1894–5 SinoJapanese War, in which the Qing army and navy were humiliated in battle.32 Traditional forms of knowledge were uncritically labeled as “superstition,” and “modern science” in its European and American forms was championed by new intellectuals as the path to knowledge, enlightenment, and national power. Perhaps the most representative change occurred in the dismantling of the political, social, and cultural functions of the civil examination regime that had lasted from 1370 to 1905. By dismantling imperial institutions such as the civil examination system so rapidly, the Chinese reformers and early republican revolutionaries underestimated the public reach of historical institutions that had taken two dynasties and five hundred years to build. When they delegitimized them all within the space of two decades starting in 1895, Han Chinese literati helped bring down both the Manchu dynasty and the imperial system of classically based governance. Their joint fall concluded a millennium of elite belief in literati values and five hundred years of an empire-wide imperial orthodoxy.33 VI. REFORM AND REVOLUTION

The demise of traditional education and the rise of modern schools in China was more complicated than just the demise of imperial examinations and the rise of modern education, which would subordinate examinations to new forms of schooling. A social, political, and cultural nexus of classical literati values, dynastic imperial power, and elite gentry status unraveled. The dynamism of late imperial civilization in motion was lost. Rather, stagnation ensued. Manchu rulers meekly gave up one of their major weapons of cultural control that had for centuries successfully induced literati acceptance of the imperial system and herded them into examination compounds. The radical reforms in favor of new schools initially failed because they could not readily replace public institutions for mobilizing

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millions of literati in examination compounds based on a classical education. Traditionalists who tried to reform classical learning as “Confucianism” after 1898 paid a form of “symbolic compensation” to classical literati thought by unilaterally declaring its moral superiority as a reward for its historical failure. The modern reinvention of “Confucianism” was completed in the twentieth century despite the decline of classical learning in public schools after 1905. In China and the West, “Confucianism” became instead a new venue for traditional scholarship, when the “modern Chinese intellectual” irrevocably replaced the late Qing literatus in the early Republic.34 The rise of “Chinese learning” as a counterpart to “Western learning” indicated that classical learning was translated into a form of native studies that amalgamated ancient and modern China under the banner of reform. Traditional learning was equivalent to “Chinese learning.” The English translation that resulted from this linguistic change was “sinology,” which became the standard term referring to a “China specialist” in the twentieth century. Increasingly, traditional education was dissolving within a Westernizing reformist project. Shu Xincheng (1892–1960), an early republican educator and historian, recalled the pressure of the times to change: “The changeover to a new system of education at the end of the Qing appeared on the surface to be a voluntary move by educational circles, but in reality what happened was that foreign relations and domestic pressures were everywhere running up against dead ends. Unless reforms were undertaken, China would have no basis for survival. Education simply happened to be caught up in a situation in which there was no choice.”35 The floodgates broke open wide in the aftermath of the RussoJapanese War of 1904–5, which was largely fought on Chinese soil in Manchuria. Given the frantic, political climate of the time, the dynamism of the classical educational system was a convenient scapegoat for stagnation. Court and provincial officials submitted a common memorial calling for the immediate abolition of the civil examinations at all levels. The civil examinations in particular were perceived as an insuperable obstacle to new schools because a classical degree still outweighed new Western school degrees and prevented the ideal of universal education. New schools became the focus of educational and political reformers after 1905, but examinations remained an important feature of a student’s life. Others, however, saw the shift from civil examinations

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to the new schools as simply a displacement from the late imperial form of examination control to school-based examinations. A separate Education Board was established in December 1905 to administer the new schools and oversee the many semiofficial educational associations that emerged at the local, provincial, and regional levels. The board reflected the increasing influence of Han Chinese officials in lieu of Manchus. A deep educational chasm was emerging between literati traditionalists and new educators about the role of classical learning in twentieth century China. Increasingly, the Education Board served the interests of the modernists in first forgetting the carefully formulated cultural dynamism of a late imperial classical education and then undoing the schooling mechanisms under which classical literacy and essay writing had been achieved. A vital component was still missing, however: the need to address the dominating role of the written classical language and the invention of an alternative vernacular spoken language for school instruction and in written examinations. Full-scale educational reform would require champions of a “literary revolution” who became vocal during the early Republic. Once the Republican Ministry of Education bought into the need to address the written language of education, the new government could increasingly invoke popular education as a move from ideal to practical reality in instruction. To confirm a school’s performance and to measure a student’s abilities according to a national standard, the Education Board from the beginning used examinations to test all levels of schools. Private and public school entrance examinations were already ubiquitous, as were graduation examinations. Many unofficial organizations and groups entered the fray of education and school reform at all levels, which further eroded the Manchu court’s control over education policy. Increasingly, unofficial elites took over the dynasty’s control of educational institutions, thereby gaining the upper hand in determining the future of education after 1905. As the Qing court and its upper levels of bureaucratic power grew weaker, regional and local tiers of power began to create the educational institutions that would accelerate the demise of the dynasty and form the educational motor of the Republic in motion after 1911. The Education Board established in 1905 continued into the Republican period, although renamed as a “Ministry,” and remained on

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the side of new schools and a new curriculum.36 The educational institutions of the Republic of China after 1911 were the direct legacy of the late Qing reforms. Sun Yat-sen’s (1866–1925) creation of the Examination Bureau as part of the Republic’s 1920s “five-power constitution” was also a twentieth-century echo of traditional institutions. The twentieth-century “examination life,” which became associated with university and public school entrance examinations in Republican China and later in Taiwan is the cultural heir of a life in motion under the imperial examination regime. So too are the People’s Republic of China’s recent emphasis on Communist Party examinations, as well as the closely followed nationwide college entrance examinations (gaokao).37 Despite these continuities, a complete break occurred between longstanding, internalized expectations of Chinese families for prestige based on traditional educational preparation for sons and the dynasty’s new objective political institutions. The new institutions were increasingly reformed based on Western and Japanese models. The devaluation of classical degrees when compared with those from new schools in China or from foreign schools precipitated a generalized down classing of most traditional education and the classical curriculum. Growing disparity between old expectations and new objective opportunities increasingly meant the failure of many conservative families to convert their inherited educational and literary cultural resources into new academic degrees for their children. A revolutionary transformation in student dispositions toward education accompanied the radical change in the conditions of recruitment of public officials after 1905. The ancient regime, virtually lifeless after 1900, stopped dead in its tracks by 1911, and was reconstituted as a republican state whose hardware ran new programs for a modern civilization.38 Before its 1904–5 demise and after its 1990s revival under the People’s Republic of China/Chinese Communist Party, civil examinations exhibited the potential of a political meritocracy to reproduce a state and society on terms that balanced the unilateral power of royal aristocracies in imperial China. The civil service examination system, a method of recruiting civil officials based on merit, at least in theory, was compromised by elite commercial wealth and family political connections. Despite these caveats, the system played an especially central role in Chinese social and intellectual life until 1905. Passing the rigorous exams, which were based on classical learning, literature, and

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history, conferred a highly sought after status, and a rich literati culture in imperial China ensued. Classical learning, when coupled with the civil examination, served as a dynamic catalyst for the emergence of a political meritocracy that was favorable in China for the emergence of new forms of shared governance between aristocratic rulers and their scholar-officials. Classicism was not in service of democracy per se, but that is not to say that its stress on meritocratic selection is fully inconsistent with representative standing, in Phillip Pettit’s terms. (See his chapter in this volume.) In the absence of electoral arrangements, however, the defenders of the classical legitimacy of the late imperial state tragically invoked the virtue of an aristocratic ruler, a dubious claim borne out, with major exceptions, by the historical record. But the state also appealed to the ideological propriety of the meritocratically selected scholar-official, a somewhat less dubious phenomenon but one in search of a new politics to thrive under. The postwar Singapore city-state has to date not yet delivered on its claims to have wedded democracy and meritocracy. Neither the Ming nor Qing dynasty ever construed its politics that way, but it is not a priori impossible that electoral credentials and meritbased selection are compatible. There is no longer an East-West divide that would make the idea unthinkable either. notes

1. The term “meritocracy” in this chapter is used to refer to a merit system, such as a political system based on “meritocratic representation” in Philip Pettit’s chapter for this volume. But the term originally had another sense – namely, the way in which the merit class established its heirs and its social replicants as the ruling caste (displacing an aristocracy or theocracy, etc.). The term was coined to describe the transition in the United States from the rule of landowners and aristocratic heirs to the professional classes. A “meritocracy” in this sense is not a system in which every individual is elevated based on a merit system. We will see that the Chinese civil service was not a completely open merit system either. 2. See the reigning consensus about social mobility in Ping-ti Ho, The Ladder of Success in Imperial China (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1962), and E. A. Kracke, Civil Service in Early Sung China (Cambridge, MA: HarvardYenching Institute, 1968). 3. For the traditional view, see Wolfgang Franke, The Reform and Abolition of the Traditional Chinese Examination System (Cambridge, MA: Harvard East Asian Monograph, 1960). 4. Duara, Culture, Power, and the State: Rural North China, 1900–1942 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988), pp. 242–57, notes that the state-building

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8.

9.

10. 11. 12.

13.

14.

15. 16.

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process modeled on Westernization in the late Qing destroyed the traditional bases of legitimation and was overwhelmed by the forces of delegitimation it unleashed. Nicholas Dirks, The Hollow Crown: Ethnohistory of an Indian Kingdom (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987). Benjamin A. Elman, Civil Examinations and Meritocracy in Late Imperial China (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013). Robert des Rotours, Le traite des examens traduit de la nouvelle histoire des T’ang (Paris: Librairie Ernest Leroux, 1932); P. A. Herbert, Examine the Honest, Appraise the Able: Contemporary Assessments of Civil Service Selection in Early T’ang China (Canberra: Faculty of Asian Studies, Australian National University, 1988); and E. A. Kracke, Jr., Civil Service in Early Sung China, 960–1067 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1968). Compare Frank Dikotter, “Crime and Punishment in Early Republican China: Beijing’s First Model Prison, 1912–1922,” Late Imperial China, vol. 21 (2000), pp. 140– 62. Wm. T. de Bary and John Chaffee, eds., Neo-Confucian Education: The Formative Stage (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), and Elman, “Education in Sung China,” Journal of the American Oriental Society, vol. 111 (1991), pp. 83–93. Etienne Zi, Pratiques des Examens Litteraires en Chine (Shanghai: Imprimerie de la Mission Catholique, 1894). See also Pauline Yu, “Canon Formation in Late Imperial China,” in Theodore Huters et al., eds., Culture & State in Chinese History: Conventions, Accommodations, and Critiques (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997), pp. 83–104; and Benjamin Elman and Alexander Woodside, eds., Education and Society in Late Imperial China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994). Cf. Alexander Woodside, Lost Modernities: China, Vietnam, Korea, and the Hazards of World History (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006). Hoyt Tillman, Confucian Discourse and Chu Hsi’s Ascendancy (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1992). Benjamin A. Elman, On Their Own Terms: Science in China, 1550–1900 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005). Donald Lach, Asia in the Making of Europe, Vol. 1: A Century of Discovery, Book 2 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965); and Elman, On Their Own Terms. Cf. Stephen Ozment, The Age of Reform 1250–1550 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1980), p. 202; and Elman, From Philosophy to Philology, pp. 140–69. Philip A. Kuhn, Soulstealers: The Chinese Sorcery Scare of 1768 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990); and William T. Rowe, Saving the World: Cheng Hongmou and Elite Consciousness in Eighteenth-Century China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001). P’ing-ti Ho, The Ladder of Success in Late Imperial China (New York: Science Editions, 1964). Bai Xinliang, Zhongguo gudai shuyuan fazhan shi (A History of Academy Development in Ancient China; Tianjin: Tianjin daxue chubanshe, 1995).

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17. Dorothy Ko, Teachers of the Inner Chambers: Women and Culture in Seventeenth Century China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994); and David Gardner, “Transmitting the Way: Chu Hsi and His Program of Learning,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, vol. 49 (1989), pp. 141–72. 18. Etienne Zi (1894); Ichisada Miyazaki, China’s Examination Hell, Conrad Shirokauer, trans. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981). Compare Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: the Birth of the Prison, Alan Sheridan, trans. (New York: Vintage, 1977), pp. 170–228. 19. Cynthia Brokaw and Kaiwing Chow, eds., Printing and Book Culture in Late Imperial China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005). 20. Elman, Classicism, Politics, and Kinship: The Ch’ang-chou School of New Text Confucianism in Late Imperial China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990). 21. Wei Shang, “Jin Ping Mei Cihua and Late Ming Print Culture,” in Judith Zeitlin and Lydia Liu, eds., Writing and Materiality in China: Essays in Honor of Patrick Hanan (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2003), pp. 187–231. 22. Elman, From Philosophy to Philology, and On Their Own Terms. 23. Elman, Civil Examinations and Meritocracy, Ch. 3. 24. John W. Chaffee, The Thorny Gates of Learning in Sung China, new edition (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995). 25. Elman, Civil Examinations and Meritocracy, Ch. 1. 26. Ibid., Ch. 2. 27. Elman, Classicism, Politics, and Kinship. Compare Pierre Bourdieu and JeanClaude Passeron, Reproduction in Education, Society and Culture, Richard Nice, trans. (London and Beverley Hills: Sage, 1977). 28. Elman, Civil Examinations and Meritocracy, Ch. 5. 29. David Johnson, “Communication, Class, and Consciousness in Late Imperial China,” in David Johnson, Andrew J. Nathan, and Evelyn Rawski, eds. Popular Culture in Late Imperial China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), pp. 34–72. Compare Frank Kermode, “Institutional Control of Interpretation,” Salmagundi, vol. 43 (1979), pp. 72–86. 30. Elman, Civil Examinations and Meritocracy, Ch. 8. 31. Ibid. 32. Elman, “Naval Warfare and the Refraction of China’s Self-Strengthening Reforms into Scientific and Technological Failure,” Modern Asian Studies, vol. 38 (2003), pp. 283–326. 33. Elman, Civil Examinations and Meritocracy, Ch. 8. 34. Benjamin A. Elman, “Rethinking ‘Confucianism’ and ‘Neo-Confucianism’ in Modern Chinese History,” in Benjamin A. Elman, John B. Duncan, and Herman Ooms, eds., Rethinking Confucianism: Past and Present in China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam (Los Angeles: UCLA Asian Pacific Monograph Series, University of California, 2002), pp. 518–54. 35. Shu Xincheng, Jindai zhongguo jiaoyu sixiang shi (Intellectual History of Modern Chinese Education; Shanghai: Zhonghua shuju, 1932), pp. 6–7. 36. Elman, Civil Examinations and Meritocracy, Ch. 8.

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37. Julia Strauss, “Symbol and Reflection of the Reconstituting State: The Examination Yuan in the 1930s,” Modern China, vol. 20, no. 2 (April, 1994), pp. 211–38. 38. Roland Depierre, “Maoism in Recent French Educational Thought and Practice,” in Ruth Hayhoe and Marianne Bastid, eds., China’s Education and the Industrialized World: Studies in Cultural Transfer (Armonk: M. E. Sharpe, 1987), pp. 199–224.

8 Meritocratic Democracy Learning from the American Constitution Stephen Macedo

The aim of this chapter is to discuss the enduring relevance of the American founding debates to today’s controversies concerning the possibility of reconciling democracy and meritocracy. America’s founders were keenly aware of the problem of securing competent rule in a republic (or what we would call a constitutional democracy based on political representation), and they proposed imaginative ways of addressing it. Although I think the project of democracy in the modern world was greatly advanced by the debates surrounding the U.S. Constitution and the subsequent development of America’s constitutional institutions, I do not argue that these provide a blueprint for other nations: national circumstances differ widely, and constitution makers now have far more experience to draw on than was available in 1787. I want here to emphasize one salient point for today’s debates: the founders were fundamentally correct in judging that popular selfgovernment permits and can benefit from considerable delegation of power to officeholders insulated from direct electoral accountability to the people. So long as unelected officials are held accountable in other ways – for example, by being required to give reasons in public for their decisions – they may help us combine the virtues of democratic and meritocratic rule. Indeed, so pervasive in modern constitutional systems are mechanisms designed to elicit competent government – via representation, delegation, insulation from direct accountability, and requirements of public reason-giving – that it makes no sense to regard democracy and meritocracy as necessarily opposed.

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I. DEMOCRACY VERSUS MERITOCRACY?

Like others in this volume, I treat political meritocracy as rule by the meritorious (those with superior ability and virtue) along with a selection mechanism that aims at selecting those with merit. I shall identify “democracy” with political systems of collective self-government based on the principle of political equality: democratic governments are understood to rest on the ultimate sovereignty of the people as a whole, and citizens are treated as political equals. Power holders are accountable to the people in appropriate, albeit often complex, ways. I say more about this later. Let us begin with what strikes many nowadays as an especially acute moral and practical dilemma, one that the American founders also confronted. On the one hand, by making government accountable to the people, democracy helps solve the problems of both normative and descriptive legitimacy, but, on the other hand, accountability to mass electorates creates an equally troubling problem of competence. The leading public markers of democratic legitimacy are mass elections with a universal adult franchise, but regular mass elections in no way guarantee capable government. Indeed, it often seems that instituting competent authorities to deal with mounting problems requires technocratic and bureaucratic institutions constituted on the basis of expertise or merit, insulated from democratic accountability. Many observers of mature democracies seem to doubt that democratic institutions are capable of responding adequately to our problems, including the looming catastrophe of climate change and even more immediate economic and political crises. Dealing effectively with climate change seems to require the further empowerment of nation-based and international bureaucracies, staffed by scientific and administrative elites, able to plan for the long term in coordination with other elites in multinational forums. Bureaucracies such as these may be able to address long-term environmental problems precisely because they are not directly accountable to the electorate. The financial crisis in Europe similarly seems to require a transfer of power from “democratically elected” legislatures to unelected technocrats at the European Central Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and elsewhere. In Italy and other critical nodes in the European financial crisis (which continues to unfold as I write), a crucial ongoing question has been whether national electorates and electorally accountable officials can devise, enact, and adhere to fiscal policies capable of ending the

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crisis, or whether resort must be had to unelected governments of technocrats, such as that led by Mario Monte, a former EU commissioner and academic, who served for a time as both prime minister and finance minister in Italy. The apparent inability of elected leaders to enact legislation with an eye to long-term problems causes many to question whether democracy is itself consistent with good government. Elected leaders may be accountable and responsive to electorates (or at least the politically active and mobilized) but not act responsibly to address long-term problems. So must we conclude that rule on the basis of democratic equality is necessarily opposed to rule on the basis of competence and virtue? Ought we to prefer the rule of merit or, more moderately, strike a compromise between the principle of democratic equality and the principle of merit, thereby favoring a “mixed” or hybrid regime? These questions, and the suspicions that fuel them, are as old as democracy itself. John Stuart Mill argued in favor of giving “plural votes” to the highly educated. Political theorists such as Bryan Caplan and Jason Brennan have recently suggested that there ought to be a competency test for voting.1 Indeed, the fact that voting involves the exercise of political power over others suggests to some that competency tests for voting are not only permissible but necessary. One problem with voter competency tests is that they often seem arbitrary. An example would be the proposal by professors of political theory to test citizens in political theory. While a capacity to exercise good moral and political judgment is a pre-requisite of good citizenship, it is doubtful that these can be tested for. Insofar as we aim to empower the meritorious in politics, that should mean that we are empowering not simply the talented but the virtuous: those with good moral and practical judgment, who will put their talents to use on behalf of the public good and justice. How would we test for that? Possessing a college degree or more advanced degrees would, at best, correspond very imperfectly with the qualifications and qualities that we want citizens to possess, and for that reason such tests will justifiably be seen as palpably invidious by those who are thereby disadvantaged.2 Enjoying the privilege of a specially weighted vote based on educational qualifications is less arbitrary than enjoying it based on lineage or birth, arguably, but many of those who are thereby disadvantaged in this basic aspect of citizenship will have reasonable grounds for objecting in my view. Democracy is now understood, properly, not simply as a mode of collective self-governance but as a social ideal according

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to which citizens relate to one another as equals: equal not merely in formal rights, but as social equals who enjoy a fair opportunity to succeed regardless of conditions of birth, and who do not defer to one another on arbitrary grounds, such as supposed nobility of lineage. It is possible that special age-based or education-based privileges with respect to political participation – “plural” or specially-weighted voting privileges for those who are older (and so, arguably, wiser) or who have higher educational attainments – would be more generally acceptable in some Confucian societies than in their Western counterparts.3 It is especially difficult to speak reliably of public opinion in societies that do not yet enjoy freedom of speech and association, a free press, and multiparty competition. It is a further question whether those specially empowered elites would pursue the good of all or the narrow interests of themselves, their families, and their class. Many forms of privilege that purport to be based on merit serve mainly to give unmerited privileges to self-serving elites, and particular group-based biases (older voters are predictably more conservative on various social issues and also more sympathetic to public spending on old-age pensions). So we need to beware of the abuses of the idea of meritocracy.4 Irrespective of how one judges specific proposals such as those I have just discussed, the framing of “democracy versus meritocracy” is unhelpful and misleading. “Democracy” comes in many varieties, but leading forms of contemporary liberal, democratic, representative government (republican government, as the American founders would have said, or constitutional democracy) incorporate strong meritocratic elements. The whole point of political representation, according to James Madison and many others since, is “to refine and enlarge the public views by passing them through the medium of a chosen body of citizens, whose wisdom may best discern the true interest of their country and whose patriotism and love of justice will be least likely to sacrifice it to temporary or partial considerations.”5 Indeed, he argued that “it may well happen that the public voice, pronounced by the representatives of the people, will be more consonant to the public good than if pronounced by the people themselves.”6 These sorts of observations, indeed, lead Bernard Manin to go so far as to question whether systems involving political participation should be regarded as “democratic” or whether that term should be reserved for systems more like that of the ancient Athenians, where, as Madison put it, “a small number of citizens . . . assemble and administer the government in person.”7 The Athenians also employed representation to administer

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some of the functions of government, but the distinctiveness of the American system, and many of the other constitutional democracies that have followed, is, as Madison put it, “the total exclusion of the people in their collective capacity from any share in” the direct exercise of governance.8 Nowadays, we regard constitutional systems based on political representation as species of democracy, and for good reason, as I explain subsequently. Of course, the framers of the American Constitution were not confident that popular elections would always elevate the fittest to govern; some were extremely pessimistic on this score, and many became more so over time. Institutions had to be arranged so as to elicit the qualities desired in office holders, and to give office holders incentives to behave well. Moreover, accountability mechanisms (sometimes in the form of “checks and balances”) had to be put in place to curb abuses of power. Accountability would operate horizontally, or across elites, one to another, and not only vertically, from elites to the people. So it seems to me that framing the issue as “democracy versus meritocracy” is misleading and unhelpful. The important practical question is how can we improve the meritocratic quality of our governing institutions consistent with democratic principles. The lesson of the American founding is: very far indeed. That is, there are many ways in which systems of government that rest on popular sovereignty can and do empower institutions insulated from direct electoral accountability, not to compromise democratic values but to realize in practice a system of deliberate and competent collective self-government. Among the crucial features of constitutional systems for reconciling democracy and competence are representation, delegation, and forms of accountability other than by popular election. The specific institutions of American democracy are, obviously, frequently flawed. The American party system is deeply polarized at the elite level, and this is especially true of Republicans in Congress who are far to the right of the general public and unwilling to compromise to address pressing problems.9 The selection process for Supreme Court justices is poorly conducted, with the Senate failing to play its proper role and the system of lifetime tenure for justices now resulting in too little turnover on the Court. And of course American politics is awash in private money, making a mockery of political equality. Nevertheless, with some significant amendments, the American constitution has sustained a system of representative democracy for well over two hundred years.

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Rather than defending the U.S. Constitution’s particular features, I draw on it to make the more general point that democracy in its modern constitutional form is compatible with a host of mechanisms that seek to enhance the role of competence in government. In this spirit, I defend the enterprise of modern liberal democratic constitutionalism, which the American founding did a great deal to help inaugurate. I do not argue, here or elsewhere, that American institutions should be copied in detail by others. II. THE CONSTITUTIONAL CONCEPTION OF DEMOCRACY

The constitutional conception of democracy builds on the insights of the American founding.10 This view opposes a variety of alternative conceptions of democracy that can be characterized as majoritarian, aggregative, plebiscitary, populist or participatory, views that sometimes bear similarity to the political views of the Antifederalist opponents of the Constitution. Those latter views, which I reject, tend to identify democracy with directly participatory institutions, with the exercise of power by the people’s directly elected representatives, or with strictly majoritarian institutions.11 These views typically reject the democratic credentials of institutions designed to operate at some remove from direct electoral accountability, such as courts armed with the power to review legislation for its conformity with the constitution. So, on this view, a central bank insulated from electoral pressures may be necessary for good government, but it departs from democratic principles and exacts a cost in the currency of democracy. Thus, it is fairly easy to tell when democracy is realized: we look for the right procedures, which typically involve the electorate directly, the exercise of power by the immediate representatives of the electorate, or via majority rule voting. On the view I favor, democracy is understood to be a system of collective self-rule on the basis of political equality, but the underlying principles of popular sovereignty and political equality are consistent with a variety of institutional forms, including institutions that are insulated from direct electoral accountability. This general approach to thinking about democracy builds complex judgments into questions of democratic design and assessment: it sets higher and more abstract but more defensible moral standards for assessing institutional performance than the views that are rejected (which reintroduce the complexity by

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saying that we want both democracy and “good government”). So, for example, majoritarian or participatory conceptions of democracy (described earlier) conclude readily that judicial review makes a system less democratic. But on the constitutional conception, the issue can’t be settled so quickly. Judicial review, as its defenders insist, is consistent with the principle of political equality, it may be authorized by a popular constitution, and it may have the ongoing support of electorates. Judges may have a sufficient democratic pedigree if the power of the judges is understood to flow ultimately from the people and judges are selected by elected officials or by some other publicly acceptable process.12 Also crucial is that the judges themselves are appropriately accountable, not directly via elections necessarily but indirectly, because of the need to justify their decisions in written opinions that are scrutinized and debated in public. Finally, we can consider whether judicial review operates in a way that leads to better protection for fundamental rights or other guarantees of basic justice and increases the reasonableness or competence of legislation, in ways that the public eventually endorses, then we may say that judicial review improves substantive public justifiability. Now that last criterion – of substantive public justifiability – might seem to suggest only that the Supreme Court increases the justice or merits of governance, but not in a way that improves its democratic credentials. So this criterion may seem to one side of democratic values specifically. I don’t want to settle anything by conceptual fiat. However, when the third element is combined with the first two, then I think we can understand it to be an aspect of democratic value. The Court has to explain its decisions in public, and its politically salient decisions will only stand if the other branches and the public is persuaded, if not immediately, in due course. So we should view Supreme Court decisions and the justifying written opinions not simply as judicial fiat asserting understandings of rights or justice deemed superior to the legislatures, but rather as arguments addressed to the other branches of government and the public, who in turn have ways of pushing back and seeking to have Supreme Court decisions overturned. In fact, I think the president and members of Congress should contest more actively Supreme Court decisions with which they disagree.13 In addition, and most important from a democratic standpoint, is that judicial review can help protect the equal rights and equal standing of political minorities, whose fundamental interests might otherwise be infringed on in more majoritarian branches of government.

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Constitutional courts, by enhancing the protection of minority rights and helping make sure that minority views are taken seriously in legislative settings, can and do make government more democratic rather than less.14 On this more complex, constitutional conception, there is an interpretive gap between the abstract principles of democracy and particular institutional forms. That gap means that we cannot conclude automatically that some particular practice or institution is undemocratic simply because it places power at some remove from direct accountability to the people (via election or acclamation at a public meeting or in some other direct way). The U.S. Supreme Court may well be a democracy-enhancing institution if it has an acceptable democratic pedigree, is appropriately democratically accountable, and tends to increase our capacity to collectively realize democratic values of collective self-government on the basis of political equality. Indeed, as Christopher L. Eisgruber argues, the Supreme Court should be understood as a representative institution: the office of Supreme Court Justice is designed to represent the public’s capacity for impartial moral judgment.15 Supreme Court justices are insulated from direct electoral accountability, but this only sharpens the justices’ need to defend their decisions publicly and in opinions that are subject to intense scrutiny and criticism. Life tenure means that judges need aspire to no other or higher office, and this can help protect their capacity for impartiality (they have no need to curry favor with others). These and other features can be understood as attempts to craft an institution capable of representing the people’s capacity for impartial moral judgment. And ultimately, the capacity of this institution to make its decision stick, especially when they are highly salient and controversial – such as the limitations imposed in national legislative power in the early decades of the twentieth century (which eventually failed), or the efforts to advance racial equality in the mid-twentieth century (which eventually succeeded, at least in part) – depend on its capacity to win over the public mind and thereby to secure the support of the elected branches of government. It may seem overly sanguine to cast constitutional courts as representative institutions and to say that they represent the people’s capacity to for impartial judgment. It is true that the public often fails to display a capacity for reasoned reflection. But the fact is that since World War II, most popularly ratified constitutions have included judicial review. And publics typically place a high degree of confidence in their

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constitutional courts – very often, more than they do in their elected legislatures. Part of the reason, I think, is that constitutional decisions are not really outside of but rather form part of a larger political process that unfolds over time. As Barry Friedman puts it toward the end of his impressive study, aptly titled The Will of the People: How Public Opinion Has Influenced the Supreme Court and Shaped the Meaning of the Constitution: “It simply is the case that the judiciary’s capacity to give the Constitution meaning, to protect minority rights, has always been limited by popular support for those decisions.”16 Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg also rightly insists that judges “do not alone shape legal doctrine”; rather, “they participate in a dialogue with other organs of government, and with the people as well.”17 The point here is not to defend the specific institutional form of the American Supreme Court. Indeed, I am persuaded by Mark Tushnet that other constitutional systems may do a better job of promoting legislative and popular deliberation on constitutional questions and of protecting social welfare rights.18 My point is broader than the specifics of the U.S. Constitution: a constitutional conception of democracy is especially well suited to incorporating within our understanding of democracy those values associated with meritocracy. Simpler conceptions of democracy, whether majoritarian, electoral, aggregative, or participatory, tend to flatten and simplify the democratic landscape, placing tremendous emphasis on popular elections and elected representatives. But when mass publics address constitutional design, they recognize that a richer and more complex set of institutional arrangements are needed to realize in practice the values of self-government by all and in the name of all. III. CONSTITUTIONAL DEMOCRACY’S ACCOUNTABILITY SPECTRUM: FROM RESPONSIVENESS TO RESPONSIBILITY

Democracy is about a lot more than mass elections, but that does not mean periodic mass elections do not matter to democracy. To the contrary, mass elections are big dramatic moments in the lives of modern democracies, where the ruling element, or important parts of it, is directly accountable to the mass public. These moments maximize horizontal equality and inclusion: all adults within the appropriate constituency get an equal vote or votes and the decision as to who wins depends on a tally. The period of campaigning leading up to and

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culminating in major elections is typically a period of sustained and intense mobilization and engagement, in which contending sides reach out to and seek the support of every last voter. But elections also have tremendous limitations. For one thing, voters are typically confronted with a limited range of choices, which may not allow them to register their actual judgments. Moreover, the fact that in a mass democracy of many millions, one’s personal influence is so dilute means, as Schumpeter observed, that voters have no strong incentive to prepare to vote in a well-informed and responsible way (he likened the franchise to being a member of a committee so unimaginably huge that no one has any incentive to prepare for the meeting).19 And so we can see that accountability to the public takes many forms in modern mass constitutional democracies. These forms might, as John Ferejohn has observed, be laid out across a spectrum.20 Toward one end are those institutions and holders of public office whose authority flows from mass elections and direct and frequent electoral accountability to mass publics. At the other end are institutions remote from direct and frequent accountability, but these institutions typically have heightened reason-giving requirements. We can think of the ends of the spectrum as ranging between poles of pure electoral and pure justificatory accountability. At the electoral end, when voters enter the polling booth and get behind the curtain, they can vote for whoever they damnwell please. And, at the other end, we expect Supreme Court justice to offer elaborate written opinions citing precedents and principles that constitute a soundly reasoned public justification. Modern democracies routinely create institutions that span the spectrum, and the whole range ought to be thought of as ways of constituting a system of collective self-rule. Elections help ensure that periodically, as Ferejohn puts it, the public simply gets to “yank the chain” and make those wielding power pay attention, by rejecting those in office (“throwing the bums out”). On the other hand, the members of the Federal Reserve Board, the Supreme Court (as well as the federal judiciary generally and most state judiciaries), and the many regulatory agencies that operate on the basis of elaborate administrative procedures, are insulated from direct electoral accountability. It is not that they are unaccountable, but their accountability operates via procedures and the need to give reasons and evidence in public: these insulated offices act on behalf of the American public; their work is assessed by other elites, elected legislatures, and the public. They have, as I said earlier, a sufficient democratic pedigree: they are appointed by elected

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officials, often for limited terms. They often enjoy a high level of public confidence and legitimacy. We may say that they seem to represent, for the public, the public’s capacity for responsible and deliberate judgment. Institutions arrayed across this spectrum tend to reflect both ends to a degree. Members of the House of Representatives (directly elected every two years) are still expected to justify their votes in public. And if the public and their direct representatives get upset enough, they can overturn decisions of the Supreme Court or the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve. These institutions are hard to reverse – public opinion must be concerted, broad, and sustained – but they can be (and have been) reversed and so they do not have the final word.21 And as I have said, other constitutional systems have found ways of improving on the American model. I endorse the Australian practice of mandatory voting, for example, and I am sympathetic to the idea – advanced by John Stuart Mill once again – that citizens should vote in public, which would do more to encourage them to defend their votes.22 IV. AMERICAN CONSTITUTIONAL DEMOCRACY: RESPONSIVE AND RESPONSIBLE REPRESENTATION

I offer these remarks, and what follows, only for the sake of illustration. My aim is not to argue that the American constitutional order is functioning well or that it should be copied by others. There is a lot of room for criticism of many features of the American system. I make a broader point: delegations of power to institutions insulated from direct electoral accountability to the people for the sake of improving merit-based performance is perfectly consistent with democratic legitimacy; indeed, such insulation frequently represents democratic improvement. This means that the problem of meritocracy can be addressed within the framework of constitutional democracy and that problems of democratic constitutional design should not be viewed as “democracy versus meritocracy.” The American Founders were deeply concerned about the problem of democratic incompetence. They worried that institutions too responsive to the public – with short terms of office – would tend to be fickle, unwise, and irresponsible. They thought, in fact, that this was precisely the experience of popular self-rule under the Articles of Confederation, the confederation of states that lasted from 1781–9. Under the Articles, the national government was extremely weak. It lacked,

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for example, the power of direct taxation and had to request funds from the states whose compliance was essentially voluntary.23 What is more, the state governments were also strikingly populist or plebiscitary, as we would say now, and unstable. The destabilizing features of state governments included such things as plural executives (executive councils) that made it hard to assign responsibility or engage in vigorous execution of the laws, unicameral legislatures with short terms, and provisions for popular recall of elected officials. The weakness of state governments under the Articles reflected one legacy of the revolution’s struggle against British rule: a deep suspicion of executive power and all remote power, and a desire to keep government close to the people. The “Antifederalist” opponents of the new Constitution (who favored more moderate adjustments to the Articles of Confederation) were aptly called by historian Cecelia Kenyon “men of little faith.”24 The framers of the American Constitution did not favor “democracy,” which they understood in terms of direct democracy with a strong tendency toward instability, lack of wisdom, and majority tyranny. But they endorsed the republican principle according to which all political authority was understood to flow from the people (women, slaves, and, in many states, propertyless males were excluded, but the franchise was unusually wide by the standards of the time). In the language of the Declaration of Independence (and in these respects following John Locke, among others), governments are “instituted” among men to secure their rights, and all governments derive their “just powers from the consent of the governed.” Thus, we can say that the American founders accepted the principle of “government of the people.” They also endorsed the principle of “government for the people”: all political offices were understood as having authority to govern only for the public good, the good of all arrived at after due reflection. The object of government was, as Federalist #10 put it, “the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.” But what about “government by the people?” The framers did not endorse highly participatory democracy, or plebiscitary democracy, and so we must leave a question mark there for now. Notably, the Constitution not only employed representation but, Madison emphasized, totally excluded “the people in their collective capacity” from the government.25 All power was exercised at arm’s length and by representatives who could only lay partial claim to representing the will of the people. In some sense, the system as a whole, in all its parts, represented the people. The public’s formal direct power under

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the constitution consisted mainly of electing representatives to the lower house of the national legislature. In addition, the people could participate in amending the Constitution, which was difficult but far from impossible (the first ten amendments were passed soon after constitutional ratification and two more within a couple of decades; but the U.S. Constitution is now regarded as the hardest to amend in the world). A great deal of power was to be exercised at the national level by public office holders neither selected nor accountable in direct popular elections, including the president, vice president and other members of the executive branch, senators, and justices of the Supreme Court. The president was selected by an “electoral college,” which itself was originally composed of electors selected by methods left up to the various state legislatures. The idea was that this specially constituted electoral college was to make an independent judgment in selecting the nation’s chief executive. The particular provisions made were a flop, and the presidential selection process was amended in 1804, retaining an electoral college that has become simply a rubber stamp for the state’s popular vote.26 The language through which the original mode of presidential selection was defended, in Federalist #68, gives a flavor of the founders’ attempts to “refine and enlarge the public views by passing them through the medium of a chosen body of citizens” – namely, representatives: “It was desirable that the sense of the people should operate in the choice of” the president, and this was adequately assured by confiding the power to choose presidential electors to the state legislatures. However, the actual selection of a chief executive should be made by men most capable of analyzing the qualities adapted to the station, and acting under circumstances favorable to deliberation, and to a judicious combination of all the reasons and inducements which were proper to govern their choice. A small number of persons, selected by their fellow-citizens from the general mass, will be most likely to possess the information and discernment requisite to such complicated investigations.27

So the mode of selection was intended to insulate the chief executive from the whims, caprice, and unreflective judgments of the public, but not from their reflective judgment, which would be better assayed indirectly: by representatives chosen by their representatives. In his contribution to this volume, Philip Pettit seems to have something like this mode of representation in mind in describing his category

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of “indicative” representation. So he says of an “indicative” representative, “her mentality is indicative of my own. Where she is led in her judgments and decisions, I would be likely to be led.” Or later, “given the indicative status of the representer, the representee may be assumed to hold those attitudes.”28 Of course, we ought not to simply cast the indicative representative as a reliable barometer of public judgment, leaving out the qualitative element that I have associated with responsible representation. The responsible representative represents our better judgment: what we might be led to think after sober reflection, or at our best. He or she is not simply a reliable indicator or anticipator of what we will think or are likely to think. Responsible representation is a fully bona fide form of popular representation. The Antifederalists also opposed several specific features of the strong executive outlined in Article II of the U.S. Constitution, including the president’s eligibility for reelection and the general grant of “the executive power.” The Antifederalists strongly preferred strict term limits, carefully delimited executive powers, and a plural executive council in place of the unitary executive established by the Constitution. They worried that the chief executive would acquire tyrannical power over time.29 Hamilton boldly replied that a feebly executed government could not be good government, and if a choice had to be made between a strong executive and republican government, the former would have to be chosen: “Energy in the executive is a leading character in the definition of good government. It is essential to the protection of the community against foreign attacks . . . to the steady administration of the laws; to the protection of property . . . to the security of liberty.”30 However, he hastened to insist that, happily, a unitary executive would be both more competent and more accountable. Unity in the executive branch is essential to both energy in government and executive branch accountability. When one person alone occupies the office, responsibility is concentrated and cannot be evaded by finger-pointing and blaming another. Moreover, the unity of the executive branch, and reeligibility for the president to stand for reelection, not only concentrates responsibility but provides scope for large ambitions, and that too is conducive to safety rather than danger. Term limits would, perversely, have the effect of diminishing “the inducements to good behavior.” The safest course, he warned, was to make the “interest” of office holders “coincide with their duty.” And in the case of the president, at the pinnacle of an extended republic, a motive worth engaging was “the

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love of fame, the ruling passion of the noblest minds, which would prompt a man to plan to undertake extensive and arduous enterprises for the public benefit,” if provided with sufficient time and powers to undertake them.31 Reputation is invoked in The Federalist as an important accountability mechanism: one that melds self-interest and the desire to serve the public good. That did not mean that reputation was regarded as sufficient: the president could be impeached for “high crimes and misdemeanors,” and serious forms of governmental corruption are subject to criminal prosecution. And so also with respect to the Senate, the upper house of the bicameral national legislature, by which the Constitution’s framers sought to supply another crucial institutional mechanism for curbing the instability and incompetence of simpler, highly participatory system. Originally, members of the Senate (allocated two per state with six-year terms of office and unlimited eligibility for reelection, then as now) were chosen by state legislatures. A practice later developed in many states of having popular referenda, which state legislatures ratified. Direct popular election of senators was finally achieved by constitutional amendment only in 1913, with the Seventeenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Antifederalists warned that only members of the elite would manage to secure election to the Senate, by means of their personal influence in state legislatures. Moreover, Antifederalist opponents of the Constitution argued that a body so removed from direct electoral accountability to the people would lack public confidence and so be incapable of exercising any genuine authority. Madison responded, in Federalist #62, that the point of the Senate was not to set the interests of an elite against those of the common people but rather to represent “the cool and deliberate sense of the community” against the “temporary errors and delusions” of the people’s own more immediate representatives in the House of Representatives: “how salutary will be the interference of some temperate and respectable body of citizens, in order to check the career” of some ill-conceived proposal “until reason, justice, and truth can regain their authority over the public mind.” This is an excellent description of responsible representation: not merely predictive about what people will come to think but hopeful about what people might come to think after being exposed to the reasons offered in public by meritorious holders of public office.

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But, Madison asked, given its remoteness from direct electoral accountability, how would the Senate maintain its authority with the public? Madison’s reply (in the Federalist #63) illustrates a point that runs through the Federalist Papers and that furnishes lessons for us: “Against the force of the immediate representatives of the people nothing will be able to maintain even the constitutional authority of the Senate, but such a display of enlightened policy, and attachment to the public good, as will divide with . . . [the House of Representatives] the affections and support of the entire body of the people themselves.” So the framers certainly believed in government based on merit: those holding office should be meritorious. But they sought to reconcile merit with the principle of popular sovereignty, rather than institute a government based on a compromise of the two principles. One point needs to be noted in this regard. Although the Constitution did not impose qualifications for voting (it prohibited “religious tests” for officeholding), it left the determination of the qualifications for voting to the states. In practice, at the time of the ratification of the Constitution, this generally meant white male suffrage with property qualifications, although in four states, free black men could vote. Several states also had religious tests for voting.32 By the standards of the time, the franchise in the early United States was broad, as I mentioned earlier, but the franchise was far from the universal adult suffrage that is now identified with democracy. American constitutional institutions were designed to draw on and shape the public’s capacity for reasoned judgments by means other than elections. Admittedly, the relevant judgments would need to be eventually ratified in elections. But in the short run, an institution removed from immediate electoral accountability to the public might do a far superior job of representing the public good on reflection in a way that it is hoped the public itself will eventually endorse. If so, we would expect those institutions that are remote from electoral accountability, but that succeed in this task – giving voice to the public good on behalf of the people – to enjoy a high level of public legitimacy and authority. And in fact the Supreme Court consistently ranks far higher than Congress in polls of public confidence. This desire to elicit and strengthen what we might describe as a deliberative public opinion – or public reason – runs through the Federalist Papers. It is present in Madison’s defense of the Constitution’s embrace of an “extended republic” in Federalist #10, which is often

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cast as based on a political “realistic” acceptance of the self-interested nature of human motivations in politics. The realist interpretation is not altogether wrong: Madison does say that, rather than trying to eliminate “factions,” we must accept their existence and design a polity in which they will tend to cancel each other out. However, he also hoped that the need to communicate across an extended plain would tend to elevate the collective conversation, and so he observed that “where there is consciousness of unjust or dishonorable motives, communication is always checked by distrust in proportion to the number whose concurrence is necessary.” Thus, an extended republic would tend to select against “unjust and interested” majorities in favor of those whose honorable aims are more easily communicated in the open. Of course, this begs various questions that need to be addressed concerning the sincerity of public discussions and advocacy and the capacity of the public to see through self-serving proposals dressed up in high principle. I certainly would not claim that larger political communities always do better than smaller political communities: there are many differences that would need to be taken into account. I mean these remarks only to testify to the justifying aspirations of the Federalist advocates of the Constitution: they sought, with partial although not complete success, to use various features of constitutional design to serve the cause of popular control of government and also the cause of merit or competence in government. Even if one thinks that the specific institutional recommendations of 1787 have been bettered – and how could they not be, given both the limited experience with modern popular constitutionalism at that time and the intense need for compromise to secure ratification – the broader point remains: merit and democracy are not fundamentally or inherently opposed. The two can be pursued together. The current problems of American constitutional democracy are many. We have an antique constitution, which is a sign of its success in one important respect. Some of its features – including the extent to which government powers are divided and shared – likely do contribute to the current polarization of political elites, and their unwillingness and inability to grapple cooperatively and constructively with long-term problems, including the long-term deficit, climate change, and other matters. Problems of government accountability also furnish opportunities for well-funded and well-positioned factions to distort and derail public deliberation.33

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V. POPULAR SOVEREIGNTY AND COMPETENCE?

The framers hoped that popular voting would tend to put relatively qualified persons into office – distinguished persons with extensive connections and reputations – and that the quality of office holders would rise as one moved higher from local to state to national politics. Education, refinement, and a proper occupation would help people acquire qualifications; and the property qualification for voting was also thought to help bolster people’s capacity for independent judgment. It was a staple of the 18th century that landowning was especially favorable to the exercise of independent judgment (commerce was seen as comparatively unstable).34 In an interesting exchange of letters in 1813, former presidents John Adams and Thomas Jefferson considered the question of whether there is a “natural aristocracy” – an aristocracy of merit – and whether the voting public could be counted on to select members of this class for office. The conversation was initiated by Jefferson, who allowed that the “moral and physical qualities of man, whether good or evil, are transmissible in a certain degree from father to son,” and so there was bound to be both a natural aristocracy of “virtue and talent” and also a “pseudo Aristoi” of wealth. And he continued, optimistically, I think the best remedy is exactly that provided by all our constitutions, to leave to the citizens the free election and separation of the aristoi from the pseudo-aristoi, of the wheat from the chaff. In general they will elect the real good and wise. In some instances, wealth may corrupt, and birth blind them; but not in sufficient degree to endanger the society.35

Jefferson went further, not simply trusting in nature but laying on government an affirmative obligation to promote the conditions under which the truly meritorious, from all ranks of society, could rise. He applauded Virginia’s abolition, in the wake of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence, of primogeniture and entail. And he recalled, in his exchanges with Adams, his proposal: to divide every county into wards of 5. or 6. miles square, like your [New England] townships; to establish in each ward a free school for reading, writing and common arithmetic; to provide for the annual selection of the best subjects from these schools who might receive at the public expense a higher degree of education at a district school; and from these district schools to select a certain number of the

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most promising subjects to be completed at an University, where all the useful sciences should be taught. Worth and genius would thus have been sought out from every condition of life, and completely prepared by education for defeating the competition of wealth and birth for public trusts.36

Further, anticipating Alexis de Tocqueville’s now-famous argument in Democracy in America, he argued that bringing the practice of government within the reach ordinary people would help prepare them for self-government: My proposition had for a further object to impart to these wards those portions of self-government for which they are best qualified, by confiding to them the care of their poor, their roads, police, elections, the nomination of jurors, administration of justice in small cases, elementary exercises of militia, in short, to have made them little republics, with a Warden at the head of each, for all those concerns which, being under their eye, they would better manage than the larger republics of the county or state.37

On this basis, he expressed confidence in the popular capacity to exercise the franchise responsibly: The law for religious freedom, which made a part of this system, having put down the aristocracy of the clergy, and restored to the citizen the freedom of the mind, and those of entails and descents nurturing an equality of condition among them, this on Education would have raised the mass of the people to the high ground of moral respectability necessary to their own safety, and to orderly government; and would have completed the great object of qualifying them to select the veritable aristoi [aristocracy of merit].38

Adams insisted that he had no love of hereditary aristocracy but was far less optimistic that elections would tend to favor the genuinely meritorious. He thought that the public would not reliably choose the genuinely learned and virtuous but equally likely rich, witty, and wellborn demagogues – “all respected for their names and connections and whenever they fall in with the popular Sentiments” – who would pander to popular whims and prejudices.39 And even were the virtuous and talented chosen to lead, Adams asserted, the allure of office, the temptations of power, and the spirit of party or faction would prove

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corrupting: “By corruption, here I mean a sacrifice of every national Interest and honour, to private and party Objects.”40 VI. DEMOCRACY AND MERITOCRACY TODAY

In addressing today’s severe problems of governance, we can make use of America’s meritocratic and constitutional conception of democracy, including its openness to a variety of forms of accountability that include the electoral and the publicly justificatory. It is at this level of principle that I would most heartily defend the insights of the American Founding. When it comes to the specifics of institutional design, it must be remembered that the modern state was still in its infancy when the U.S. Constitution was launched 225 years ago. Much has been learned since then, and it would be foolish to regard the U.S. Constitution as a model slavishly to be followed. Modern statecraft since the time of the Founding generation has yielded insights about the ways in which scientific and expert judgment can be brought to bear in democratic governments. Administrative agencies, or public bureaucracies, are a product of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Such agencies are typically insulated from direct electoral accountability, but they are created by legislative statute and subject to various forms of legislative and public oversight. Their legislative origins give them a sufficient democratic pedigree. And, although they are insulated from direct electoral accountability to the public, they are nevertheless typically subject to high expectations of justificatory accountability in public: administrative law specifies the need for publication of supporting evidence, the circulation of draft rules for public comment, hearings with contending testimony, and revision and republication of rules.41 Administrative procedures thus represent high standards for decision making based on due process, and public evidence and reason-giving. Knowledge elites at universities and research centers and specialized media pay especially close attention. But these deliberations are also open to the public, and sometimes the public acquires a fairly clear sense of agency mission and method. High-profile agencies that attract high levels of public confidence may acquire additional power based on those reputational resources. This seems especially true, in the United States, of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Daniel Carpenter’s book Reputation and Power makes the case that the public has some genuine

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understanding of the FDA’s mission and methods with respect to drug testing: to ascertain the safety and efficacy of new drugs by subjecting them to premarket scientific testing. Famous episodes in which the FDA played a lead role, including banning an elixir that proved toxic in the 1930s (just as FDA enabling legislation was being considered in Congress), and thalidomide, the drug prescribed in Europe to pregnant mothers (which caused many hundreds of severe birth defects in infants in the late 1950s and early 1960s). These and other episodes received intense press coverage, enhancing public understanding and burnishing the agency’s reputation. And so, the public has long placed considerable trust in the FDA, and this gives the agency, in turn, an incentive to protect its reputation, adhering to scientific standards for safety and efficacy, but sometime also shifting its standards in response to perceived public preferences (for example, concerning access to risky drugs).42 There have, of course, been regulatory failures, and the agency has been subject to considerable controversy and charges of politicization. Still, Carpenter argues that, despite its small staff and budget, the FDA has managed to induce “the production of far more information (and higher quality information) from drug companies and medical researchers than would otherwise have occurred.”43 Agencies that are insulated from direct electoral accountability may serve the public good by adhering to demanding standards of evidence and reason-giving, in ways that elicit public understanding (in some measure at least) and confidence. Evidence suggests that despite the malign attitude of many U.S. politicians toward international institutions such as the United Nations, the American public places confidence in them. So, in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, the public strongly favored going to the United Nations Security Council to seek a second resolution, authorizing the use of military force. Moreover, evidence suggests that the American public has more confidence in foreign aid when it is delivered through multilateral organizations, rather than bilaterally.44 The public seems to appreciate in instances such as these that remote institutions, staffed by officials drawn from global elites, may help correct for biases in domestic institutions that are more directly subject to their electoral control. Domestic and international bureaucracies, operating on the basis of expertise, reason-giving, and horizontal accountability to other global and domestic elites, are among the institutional mechanisms through

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which democracy and meritocracy may be reconciled. Of course, politics is a difficult and complex business, and institutions often fall short of their ideal aims. Nevertheless, electorally insulated institutions can and do improve the working of constitutional democracies reliably enough to have secured an important place in the lives of all contemporary democracies. These institutions are extensions, in important ways, of the sorts of institutional design strategies that were deployed and advanced by the founders of the American constitutional order. Globalization and the proliferation of transnational forms of governance present further challenges and opportunities for new forms of delegation, at least if the public is willing to accept the necessity for such institutions, and effective accountability mechanisms can be devised. In practice, democratic publics often fail to think far enough ahead to anticipate problems or they reject the warnings of those leaders who prescribe unpleasant medicine; witness the current stalemate concerning the design of effective responses to global climate change. Meanwhile, many of the elites who wield power and prosper find it not in their interest to participate in crafting constructive solutions. This sometimes seems especially true in the United States, perhaps because its great power and relative geographic isolation mean that it has had the luxury of ignoring problems, at least in the short run. Reconciling collective self-determination by the people with meritocratic competence and virtue among officeholders is an enduring problem. Some claim that “Confucian” political cultures, including China’s, do a better job than their Western counterparts of combining government for the people with the virtues of a publicly spirited and competent elite. Perhaps, but complaints about corruption are rife in China; recent news reports contain extensive coverage of the great wealth that is being amassed by Chinese political and military elites and their extended families.45 China, moreover, is a country in transition, economically and politically, and it faces the challenge of crafting more effective means to make public officials accountable to the public as a whole. My claim is only that some valuable insights can be gleaned from the American founding debates and its subsequent constitutional experience. Elections help provide for one form of systematic accountability of government to the people. A broad popular franchise helps promote a fairer sharing in the gains of social cooperation.46 But electoral

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mechanisms are far from sufficient for promoting good government. Constitutional democracies also make ample use of institutions insulated from electoral accountability but operating on the basis of reasons and evidence presented and debated in public. The future of democracy would seem to depend on the further development of such institutions, along with the improvement of electoral contestation. notes

1. John Stuart Mill, Representative Government, available online at http://www. constitution.org/jsm/rep gov.htm; Bryan Caplan, The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007); Jason Brennan, The Ethics of Voting (Princeton: Princeton University press, 2011). 2. As Charles R. Beitz argues in his excellent Political Equality: An Essay in Democratic Theory (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990). 3. John Stuart Mill famously called for “plural voting” privileges – extra votes – for the highly educated, an idea that Charles Beitz has suggested, quite plausibly, would represent a socially invidious form of preference in the Western context. See Mill, Representative Government ch.VIII; and Charles Beitz, Political Equality (38–40). 4. See the conclusion to this chapter. 5. Madison, Federalist #10, in Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay, The Federalist Papers [1787], Clinton Rossiter, ed. (New York: Penguin, 1961), p. 82. 6. Ibid. 7. Ibid., p. 81. 8. Madison, Federalist #63, Rossiter, p. 387. I have benefited from the discussion in Bernard Manin, The Principles of Representative Government (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), p. 2. 9. See Thomas E. Mann and Norman J. Ornstein, It’s Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided with the New Politics of Extremism (New York: Basic Books, 2012), arguing that elite polarization is asymmetrical, worse on the political right than the left. 10. For a related account from which I have benefitted, see Christopher L. Eisgruber, Constitutional Self-Government (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001). 11. Jeremy Waldron is an apparent example. 12. Obviously there are lots of possibilities: there could be tests for competence and selection by lot from a pool of competent candidates or election by a pool of qualified delegates. 13. I am defending what is known as a generally “departmentalist” understanding of the distribution of interpretive authority under the constitution; for a more extended treatment, see Stephen Macedo, Liberal Virtues: Citizenship, Virtue,

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15. 16. 17. 18.

19. 20.

21.

22. 23.

24.

25. 26.

27. 28. 29.

30.

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and Community in Liberal Constitutionalism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990); and Friedman, Will of the People. This is the argument of John Hart Ely’s well-known book, Democracy and Distrust: A Theory of Judicial Review (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1980). Eisgruber, Constitutional Self-Government. Barry Friedman, The Will of the People (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2009), pp. 380–1. Ruth Bader Ginsburg, “Speaking in a Judicial Voice,” N.Y.U. Law Review, vol. 67 (1992): p. 1198; discussed in Friedman, Will of the People, p. 384. Mark Tushnet, Weak Courts, Strong Rights: Judicial Review and Social Welfare Rights in Comparative Constitutional Law (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009). Joseph Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy, 3rd ed. [1950] (New York: Harper, 1976). One version of this is John Ferejohn, “Accountability in a Global Context,” available at http://www.princeton.edu/pcglobal/conferences/normative/ papers/Session1_Ferejohn.pdf. I explore these issues at greater length in Liberal Virtues: Citizenship, Virtue and Community in Liberal Constitutionalism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990); Chinese translation, 2010, Yillin Press. Mill, Representative Government. Each state had one vote in Congress, regardless of size; Congress had no power to levy direct taxes (it depended on requisitions which it counted on states to supply); there was no national power to regulate foreign and interstate commerce; no national executive or national courts; Amendments to the Articles of required a unanimous vote. Cecelia M. Kenyon, “Men of Little Faith: The Anti-Federalists on the Nature of Representative Government,” The William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Ser., vol. 12 (1955), pp. 3–43. Federalist #63. The electors are now selected by popular vote (in forty-eight of the fifty states, the presidential candidate winning a plurality of the state’s popular vote wins all of that state’s electoral votes). Federalist #68. See Pettit (Ch. 5 of this volume), in the section titled “Representation, Responsive and Indicative.” See Herbert J. Storing, What the Antifederalists Were For: The Political Thought of the Opponents of the Constitution (Chicago: University of Chicago press, 1981), p. 49. Federalist #70. He digs to the heart of the matter by declaring, “There is an idea, which is not without its advocates, that a vigorous executive is inconsistent with the genius of republican government.” The next several numbers set out to address this question, which could be reframed as the question of the compatibility of competence and democracy. His answer is an unequivocal affirmation of the priority of competence (which he casts in terms of a fully

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31. 32. 33. 34.

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36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44.

45.

46.

Stephen Macedo energetic executive): supporters of republicanism “can never admit the truth” of the incompatibility “without at the same time admitting the condemnation of their own principles.” Hamilton’s defense of a strong executive branch in Federalist Papers #66–77 are powerful and worth reading. Federalist #72. Religious tests and property qualifications fell aside as a consequence of state constitutional reforms in the early decades of the nineteenth century. For a sobering account, see Mann and Ornstein, Worse Than It Looks. See for example, Stanley Elkins and Eric McKitrick, The Age of Federalism: The Early American Republic, 1788–1800 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995). Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, October 28, 1813; The Adams-Jefferson Letters: The Complete Correspondence between Thomas Jefferson and Abigail and John Adams, ed. by Lester J. Cappon [1959] (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988), vol. 2, pp. 387–92. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. John Adams to Thomas Jefferson, November 15, 1813, The Adams-Jefferson Letters, vol. 2, pp. 397–402. Ibid. Richard B. Stewart, “The Reformation of American Administrative Law,” 88 Harv. L. Rev. 1667 (1975). Carpenter, Reputation, pp. 733–4. Ibid., p. 751. See Helen Milner, “Why Multilateralism? Foreign Aid and Domestic Principal-Agent Problems,” in Delegation and Agency in International Organizations, Darren G. Hawkins, David A. Lake, Daniel L. Nielson, and Michael J. Tierney, eds. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), pp. 107–39. For further citations and a broader account, see Robert O. Keohane, Stephen Macedo, and Andrew Moravcsik, “Democracy Enhancing Multilateralism,” International Organizations (Winter 2010), 1–31. See Jane Perlez, “Corruption in the Military Poses a Test for China,” New York Times, November 14, 2012, available at http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/15/ world/asia/corruption-in-china-military-poses-test.html?_r=0&pagewanted= print; Edward Wong, “Family Ties and Hobnobbing Trump Merit at China Helm,” New York Times, November 17, 2012, available at http://www.nytimes. com/2012/11/18/world/asia/family-ties-and-hobnobbing-are-keys-to-power-inchina.html; and Andrew Jacobs, “Chinese Trial Reveals Vast Web of Corruption,” New York Times, November 3, 2009, online at http://www.nytimes .com/2009/11/04/world/asia/04crimewave.html?pagewanted=all. Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson, “Why the West Extended the Franchise,” The Quarterly Journal of Economics, vol. 115 (2000), pp. 1167–99.

section iii Realizing Political Meritocracy Today

9 How East Asians View Meritocracy A Confucian Perspective Doh Chull Shin

HOW EAST ASIANS VIEW MERITOCRACY: A CONFUCIAN PERSPECTIVE

Since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, numerous public opinion surveys have been conducted to monitor and compare how ordinary citizens react to the ideals of democratic politics and its practices.1 These surveys have revealed that an overwhelming majority of citizenries report preferring democracy to nondemocratic regimes. In ascertaining the relative preference of democracy to its alternatives, however, these previous studies have limited the alternatives to oppressive regime types, such as civilian and military dictatorship and one-party rule, and have failed to consider nonoppressive alternatives to democracy, such as meritocracy. Consequently, virtually nothing is known about how ordinary citizens, particularly those in authoritarian and new democracies, compare democracy with nonoppressive meritocratic government, which involves a variety of nonoppressive principles of governance, such as skill, wisdom, and virtue. This study is designed to examine how the people of Confucian Asia compare the desirability of democracy with that of ethical meritocracy, a nonoppressive alternative to democracy. This is the system of government Confucius, Mencius, and their followers advocated more than two-and-a-half millennia ago as a means of building a peaceful and prosperous community known as datong shehui. Do most Confucian Asians remain attached to the principles of ethical meritocracy? If so, do they consider it to be a system of government inherently incompatible with democracy, the view held by proponents of the Asian Values Thesis? Or do they perceive some compatibility between principles of

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Confucian meritocracy and those of democratic government, and so support the counterclaim of the thesis’s opponents? This study addresses these questions with the third wave of the Asian Barometer surveys, conducted in 2010, in six historically Confucian countries – China, Japan, South Korea (Korea hereafter), Taiwan, Singapore, and Vietnam – and five non-Confucian countries – Indonesia, Malaysia, Mongolia, the Philippines, and Thailand. By addressing these and other related questions, I seek to critically reassess the central claim of the age-old Asian Values Thesis linking Confucian culture to a lack of democratic development in historically Confucian Asia. I also pursue a critical examination of the increasingly popular claim that liberal democracy can and should become “the only game worth playing” in every region of the world, including Confucian East Asia.2 THE CONFUCIAN ASIAN VALUES DEBATE

For decades, scholars and political leaders in East Asia have debated whether Confucian cultural legacies are compatible with democracy. Samuel P. Huntington,3 Lucian Pye,4 Lee Kuan Yew,5 and many other proponents of the Asian Values Thesis have argued that Confucian political values and norms are basically authoritarian and incompatible with those of democracy. Specifically, these thinkers posit that the government that Confucius and his disciples advocated for the building of datong shehui is a form of political guardianship or stewardship conferred on the elite, who become the elite by obtaining wisdom and virtue.6 To these advocates of the Confucian Asian Values Thesis, therefore, the Confucian model of government, often called ethical or moral meritocracy, does not meet the widely accepted definition of democracy as government by the people, although it is government for the people. Therefore, these advocates have espoused the idea that the dominance of authoritarian Confucian values precludes the democratization of countries in historically Confucian Asia. In striking contrast, Tu Wei-ming,7 William de Bary,8 Kim Dae Jung,9 Lee Teng Hui,10 and other opponents of the Values Thesis reject the portrayal of democracy and Confucianism as antithetical doctrines. In their view, categorizing Confucianism as inherently opposed to democracy disregards a number of important pro-democratic values and norms, such as minben and zhongyong, embedded in Confucianism, which they believe can promote the ultimate goals of democracy.

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Zhongyong, or the Doctrine of the Mean, for example, is a political decision-making rule. According to Confucius, who advocated it, Emperor Shun “took hold of the two extremes, determined the Mean, and employed it in his government of the people.”11 Similarly, Mencius declared, “Holding on to the middle is closer to being right.”12 This Confucian doctrine can be considered as predating the contemporary median voter theory, which holds that politicians should commit to a middle-of-the-road policy position preferred by the electorate to maximize the satisfaction of their preferences.13 In principle, Confucianism also emphasizes universal education for citizens from all walks of life, which is compatible with the principle of democratic citizenship that requires the development of an informed citizenry. The Confucian practice of recruiting government officials through public and open examinations can be considered as equivalent to an institutional alternative to the free and competitive elections of political leaders. The historical Confucian practice of tolerating multiple religions can also promote the democratic tradition of tolerating and aggregating diverse interests in the political process. Containing such “democratic seeds”, these values and traditions of Confucian governance are, therefore, viewed as compatible with democracy. In addition to these two opposing views that Confucianism either precludes or promotes democratization is a third view that although Confucian ideals and democratic principles are not exactly compatible, it is possible to make them so with a little retrofitting of each tradition for the result of an innovative hybrid system.14 Although holding that democracy and Confucianism have significant points of conflict, scholars ascribing to this third view have identified means of reconciling them. Daniel A. Bell15 and Joseph Chan,16 for example,propose a system combining the Confucian ideal of government by intellectual elites with the liberal ideal of electoral accountability of government to its citizens. Those in this third camp, therefore, suggest that Confucianism and democracy can be adapted to form a hybrid system that is uniquely suitable for historically and culturally Confucian societies. To date, the debate on the relationship between Confucianism and democracy has been based mostly on conjecture and has lacked empirical validation; however, it has helped identify the important components that underlie each of the three theories of their relationship. To rise above speculation, theoretical interpretations must be tested against

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the actual impact Confucian legacies are having on the orientations that the people of historically Confucian societies hold toward democracy and democratization.17 Unlike previous empirical studies, this inquiry is designed to test the three contrasting theoretical interpretations – incompatibility, compatibility, and convergence – of Confucian legacies by exploring citizen attachment to Confucian meritocracy and its relationship with support for democracy. None of the previous studies has recognized this native system of government based on virtue and wisdom as a viable alternative to democracy. THE CONFUCIAN NOTION OF MERITOCRACY

Meritocracy is one of the most important features in Confucian political thought. As a means to select government officials, it was practiced in ancient China many centuries before Confucius was born in Central China in the sixth century b.c. Yet Confucius developed the notion further as a political means to build datong shehui, a community of grand unity or harmony, in which people live in peace and prosperity. In Confucian political thought, meritocracy is defined by much more than the practice of recruiting virtuous and wise government officials instead of appointing rulers based on nobility of blood: the Confucian notion of meritocracy, as a system of government, involves issues of governing far more fundamental than political recruitment.18 Specifically, the meritocratic system entails the ultimate goals and necessary means to establish good government. What constitutes good government? Who should become rulers? How should they be selected? What specific role should the mass public play in the political process? How should rulers and the ruled interact with each other to build a community of political peace and economic prosperity? By addressing these questions directly and coherently, the Confucian notion of meritocracy offers a full system of government, not just an administrative procedure for recruiting government officials through competitive examinations. It is, therefore, a system of government with multiple characteristics. GOOD GOVERNMENT

Confucius (551–479 b.c.) lived during one of the most turbulent political and social periods in Chinese history, a time known as the Spring and Autumn period (722–481 b.c.). During this period, China, once

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united under the Zhou dynasty (1046–256 b.c.), was divided into small feudal states, and these states were engaged in recurring cycles of civil war and political turmoil. The people of Confucius’s time desired to build a peaceful and harmonious community, but struggled to restore social order and maintain political stability. For Confucius and his followers, their main concern, unlike that of Western Enlightenment thinkers, was not to “limit the power of established political authority, or secure a protected realm for individual conduct free from arbitrary coercion.”19 Instead, their concern was to establish a government that could promote and secure a peaceful and prosperous life for its people.20 To achieve such a government for the people, early Confucians advocated the principle of minben as the most important principle of governing. Minben, which originates from the pre-Confucian period, means treating “people” (min) as “roots” (ben). Mencius endorses this view when he says, “The people are more important than the state and the state is more important than the king.”21 Thus people, not the sovereign, form the foundation of the state. To govern according to this principle is, therefore, to govern for the people (min), for their economic prosperity, and for their physical security, just as someone caring for a tree (ben) would need to ensure the health of its roots. Accordingly, Confucius and his disciples embraced the promotion of citizen welfare as an ultimate end of good government and approached it from a utilitarian perspective. For example, in The Book of History, one of the classics of Confucianism, Confucius is quoted as asserting that government is instituted to “secure for men the five blessings and secure them against the six calamities. . . . The five blessings are: ample means, long life, health, virtuous character, and an agreeable personal appearance; the six calamities, early death, sickness, misery, poverty, a repulsive appearance, and weakness.”22 In Confucianism, as in the Western utilitarianism of the nineteenth century, it was considered the ultimate object of good government to maximize welfare and minimize suffering among people. For this reason, Confucius proclaimed that “Good government obtains when those who are near are made happy, and those who are far, attracted.”23 Further, Mencius equated governmental failure to prevent starvation with murder and argued that the government, morally responsible for the people, must make it a basic mission to provide help to those

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unable to help themselves and without family to help them.24 Concerning the question of who should receive governmental help, Mencius said that “old men without wives, old women without husbands, old people without children, young children without fathers – these four types of people are the most destitute and have no one to turn to for help.”25 Therefore, to be a good government, a government must make secure provision for these people’s welfare because they need a constant livelihood in order to have a constant heart.26 In a nutshell, early Confucians embraced government as the “the most important” institution for human welfare.27 VIRTUOUS LEADERSHIP

In Confucianism, good governance begins with a virtuous ruler because, as Confucius’ reasoning goes, the quality of government depends exclusively upon the quality of people in the government.28 Confucius said, “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.”29 Accordingly, he advocated an open system of meritocracy,30 saying, “Even among the sons of the emperor, the princes, and the great officials, if they were not qualified to rites and justices, they should be put down to the class of common people; even among the sons of the common people, if they have good education and character and are qualified to rites and justice, they should be elevated to the class of ministers and nobles.”31 For all early Confucians, people, not policies, made good governments; thus they had little use for such political tools as the distribution of power and institutional reforms. They contributed to the development of the keju system,32 which, in principle, allowed every citizen to take competitive examinations testing virtues and knowledge. Although it had a variety of limits, as discussed in Elman’s chapter in this volume, this system enabled the talented and worthy to rise to the highest offices. This merit-based system of government replaced the rule by hereditary aristocracy in Confucian Asia long before such aristocracy was abandoned in the West.33 For the implementation of the meritocratic system, Confucius divided people into classes according to the level of their intelligence and the quality of their inner minds.34 Of the classes, he judged only the virtuous and wise with superior intelligence as qualified to become rulers. Similarly, Mencius also advocated for the doctrine of the

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division of labor by sorting people into two categories of governors and the governed: “There are those who use their minds and there are those who use their muscles. The former govern; the latter are governed. Those who govern are supported by those who are governed.”35 In defining what it takes to be a good leader, Confucius was specific; throughout The Analects, he identified a variety of leadership qualities, including sincerity and truthfulness in words and deeds, the ability to maintain a sense of shame, the ability to learn quickly and eagerly, a willingness to seek the advice of the governed, being respectful in manner, being reverent in the service of their lord, and being generous and just in caring for the common people. Of all these qualities, Confucians endorsed the possession of virtue – understanding of and commitment to the common good – as the only proper basis for a claim to governmental authority.36 In a conversation with the ruler of Lu, Confucius advised: “The moral character of the ruler is the wind; the moral character of those beneath him is the grass. When the wind blows, the grass bends.”37 For Confucius, therefore, virtuous leaders were like “the North polar star, which keeps its place and all the stars turn towards it.”38 Mencius also emphasized the power of virtue as follows: “In the empire there are three things universally acknowledged to be honorable. Nobility is one of them; age is one of them. In the courts, nobility holds first place; in village, age; and for usefulness to one’s generation and controlling the people, neither is equal to virtue.”39 In Confucian meritocracy, virtue literally rules. Confucian meritocracy is, therefore, qualitatively different from technocratic rule, which hires experts as political leaders and government officials to formulate public policy solely on the basis of expert knowledge. A meritocracy places a premium on virtue over technical expertise. In The Analects, Confucius notes: “If a person has talents as fine as the Duke of Zhou, but is arrogant and mean-spirited, the other qualities are not worth notice.”40 Confucius articulates virtue as the most important characteristic of meritocracy and dismissed talents, or technical expertise, as worthless, if not directed by virtue. Recognizing that virtue is an asset that can be found even among the masses, he advocated for the expansion of political recruitment beyond aristocracy to the general population. Why did Confucians emphasize virtue as the most important quality of governmental leadership? For them, the exercise of authority is an interactive or reciprocal process: it always requires the cooperation of

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all those involved.41 In The Great Learning, virtue is called “the root,” which enables the ruler to win the cooperation of the people. Consider these quotes from Confucius: “If a man is righteous, governance will follow without commandments. But if a man is not righteous, nobody will heed your orders,”42 and “If the rulers are honest, the people will naturally oblige.”43 Also consider this thought from Mencius: “Only the benevolent man is fit to be in high position. For a cruel man to be in high position is for him to disseminate his wickedness among the people.”44 Believing all of this about virtue’s power in politics, Confucians called for government by the extraordinarily virtuous and wise, and not by ordinary people. POLITICALLY PASSIVE CITIZENRY

Confucius and Mencius depicted ordinary people as “the root of the state” to indicate the necessity of their well-being.45 This view of the people as “the root” did not mean governance should originate with the masses. Neither Confucius nor Mencius ever talked about self-rule, nor did they support direct participation of the masses in decision making. Unlike gentlemen called junzi, who can serve as moral guides to the rest of society, the masses lack the capacity to grasp the Way (ethical living) and put it into practice. In principle, the common people, therefore, are viewed as incapable of governing themselves and thus not to be entrusted with governance.46 Instead, Confucius taught that the common people should be made to follow virtuous leaders as “the grass bends to the wind.”47 Confucianism rejects the democratic notion of government by the people because in the Confucian view, “the people” are not cognitively capable of understanding the complexity of public affairs. In The Analects, Confucius disapproved of government by the people for the reason that “the common people can be made to follow it, they cannot be made to understand it.”48 For the same reason, Mencius advocated a division of labor between rulers and the ruled.49 In The Analects, Confucius admonished the ruled: “Do not concern yourself with the matter of government unless they are the responsibility of your office.”50 In the Confucian world of meritocracy there are strong divisions in which the common people should remain passive and refrain from interfering in the process of government. In short, the Confucian model of meritocratic government contrasts sharply with the liberal democratic model of good government in both

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their ends and their means. In Confucianism, good government is equated exclusively with government that secures the common good for the people. Therefore, Confucius and his disciples emphasized the material welfare and moral education of the people as the most important principle of good government and disregarded the modern democratic political ideals of the West such as liberty, equality, and fraternity.51 Concerning the means for establishing such a benevolent government, early Confucians called not for a government by the people, but for a government run by a virtuous and meritocratic leadership. POPULAR ATTACHMENT TO MERITOCRACY

The Confucian notion of meritocracy, as explicated in the previous sections, is not a unidimensional construct defined solely by the selection process for political leaders. Instead, it represents a multidimensional system of government with three distinctive characteristics: (1) it prescribes the selection of political leaders on the basis of virtue and ability, (2) it discourages ordinary people from participating in the policymaking process on the basis that they are cognitively incapable of understanding public affairs, and (3) it insists the government provide for the economic welfare of the people for the reason that people can behave morally only after their basic needs are met. To what extent do the contemporary mass publics of Confucian Asia endorse these principles of meritocratic government, which Confucius and Mencius advocated for small-scale agrarian communities more than two thousand years ago? Do today’s citizens of Confucian Asia support virtuous leadership? Are they willing to refrain from the policy-making process, as Confucius admonished in The Analects?52 Are they also willing to have their government provide for the welfare of those in need? In this section, I address these questions with the latest Asian Barometer Surveys (ABS) conducted in six Confucian and five non-Confucian countries in 2010 and 2011. VIRTUOUS AND CAPABLE LEADERSHIP

Who should rule? Early Confucians claimed that only those who have cultivated virtue and wisdom, no matter their station at birth, are qualified to participate in governmental affairs. What do people in Confucian Asia today think of choosing political leaders on the basis of

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table 9.1. The relative preference of democratic and meritocratic methods of choosing political leaders Country Japan Korea Taiwan China Singapore Vietnam (Pooled)

Democratic

Meritocratic

(No Answer)

79.6% 81.2 79.0 63.3 80.3 69.5 75.5

17.7% 14.6 15.4 23.3 18.0 13.6 17.1

2.7% 4.2 5.6 13.4 1.7 16.9 7.4

both virtue and ability? To explore this question, the ABS offered respondents a pair of statements (Q78), each of which represents, respectively, the meritocratic and democratic systems of selecting political leaders, and asked them to choose the one that they would agree with most. Specifically, the survey asked them to select between the democratic system of choosing leaders “by the people through competitive elections” and the meritocratic system of choosing them “on the basis of their virtue and capability even without election.” Table 9.1 shows that in the all six Confucian countries surveyed, people are far more favorably disposed to the democratic system than to the meritocratic system, which Confucius and his followers advocated. In all these countries, a small minority of less than one-quarter preferred the Confucian system of government featuring both virtuous and able leadership to the democratic system of government elected by the people. In the entire region of Confucian Asia today, supporters of electoral democracy outnumber those of Confucian ethical meritocracy by a large margin of more than four to one (17 vs. 76 percent). Another notable feature of the table concerns the distribution of Confucian supporters. Between the two subregions of Confucian Asia, supporters are slightly less numerous in the democratic subregion, and they also vary much less across the three countries in this subregion. In the democratic Confucian Asia where less than one-fifth (17 percent) support Confucian meritocracy, Confucian supporters vary little from 15 percent in Korea, to 18 percent in Japan. In the nondemocratic subregion where more than one-fifth (22 percent) support it, however, those supporters vary from a low of 14 percent in Vietnam, to a high of 23 percent in China. In other words, the magnitude of subregional

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table 9.2. Orientations to government by experts Country Japan Korea Taiwan China Singapore Vietnam (Pooled)

Unfavorable

Favorable

(No answer)

87.9% 84.3 68.3 82.4 89.7 69.6 80.4

9.8% 13.5 18.1 13.3 8.1 8.0 11.8

2.3% 2.2 13.6 4.3 2.2 22.4 7.8

variation in meritocratic support is three times greater in the nondemocratic subregion of the historically Confucian Asia than that in the democratic subregion (14 percent vs. 23 percent; 15 percent vs. 18 percent). Do the people of Confucian Asia also approve of meritocratic rule based solely on technical expertise? If they do, which type of meritocratic rule are they more supportive of, moral or technical? To explore the relative preference for two kinds of meritocratic rules, we analyzed responses to the ABS question (Q132), “We should get rid of elections and parliaments and have experts make decisions on behalf of the people.” In the six Confucian countries surveyed as a whole, people are far more unfavorably than favorably disposed to the idea of technical meritocracy (see Table 9.2). Although a small minority (12 percent) of about one in eight in Confucian Asia as a whole is favorably disposed to the idea of technical meritocracy, a large majority of four in five (80 percent) is unfavorably disposed to it. This pattern is similar to the one in which a small minority of the historically Confucian Asian population prefers the government led by virtuous and able leaders to the government elected by the ordinary people, whereas a large majority prefers the latter to the former. Evidently, neither ethical nor technocratic meritocracy is the most favored system of government among a majority of the Confucian Asian population these days. Nonetheless, a comparison of the percentages reported in Tables 9.1 and 9.2 indicates that people in Confucian Asia are more in favor of moral meritocracy than technical meritocracy (17 percent vs. 12 percent). In every country, those attached to the former are more numerous than those attached to the latter. These findings make it clear that the

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25%

24% 0.20

18% 13%

0.10

0.00

Moral Meritocracy Confucian Asia

Technical Meritocracy Non-Confucian Asia

figure 9.1. Levels of Support for Moral and Technical Meritocracy in Confucian

and Non-Confucian Asia.

type of meritocratic rule that Confucian Asians favor most is not technical meritocracy but ethical meritocracy, the one which Confucians and his disciples advocated. The relative preference of the former to the latter, however, varies considerably across the countries. In democratic Korea and Taiwan, there is relatively little difference between the two types of meritocratic supporters. In authoritarian Singapore, however, twice as many people support ethical meritocracy than technical meritocracy. As a result, the relative preference of Confucian meritocracy to technocratic meritocracy is greater among citizens of the nondemocratic subregion than among their peers of the democratic subregion (18 percent vs. 11 percent; 16 percent vs. 12 percent). Are the people of Confucian Asia more attached to moral meritocracy than are their peers in Southeast Asia? Are the former also more in favor of technical meritocracy than the latter? Between the two regions, which region favors moral meritocracy more than technical meritocracy? Figure 9.1 compares the two regions in terms of percentages expressing attachment to the two types of meritocracy. In both types, Confucian East Asians trail significantly behind Southeast Asians. Whereas less than one-fifth of the former is attached to either type, more than one-fifth of the latter is attached to both types.

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Equally notable is that Confucian Asians prefer Confucian moral meritocracy to technical meritocracy (17 percent vs. 12 percent), whereas non-Confucian Asians prefer the latter to the former (24 percent vs. 22 percent). This seems to indicate that meritocracy, either moral or technical, may not be a unique characteristic of Confucian political culture, but the preference of ethical meritocracy to technical meritocracy is one of its enduring legacies. POLITICALLY PASSIVE CITIZENRY

The Confucian notion of meritocracy does not allow ordinary people to participate in the political process. According to Confucius, Mencius, and other early Confucians, good government can be achieved only when virtuous and able leaders occupy governmental positions of responsibility, and these leaders do what they think is the best for the people. Therefore, traditional Confucians leave little room for the involvement of the masses in the political process, and they reject the democratic notion of government by the people. In the Confucian notion of meritocratic government, ordinary people are deemed neither virtuous nor cognitively competent enough to comprehend public affairs. They are, therefore, supposed to refrain from the political process, and follow the decisions made by their moral leaders, as long as the leaders treat them benevolently. Are people in Confucian Asia willing to remain passive and allow their virtuous leaders to decide and pursue whatever those leaders think is the best for them, as Confucius admonished more than two millennia and a half ago? To explore this question, the ABS asked respondents to what extent they agreed or disagreed with this statement (Q146): “If we have political leaders who are morally upright, we can let them decide everything.” Table 9.3 shows that in three – Korea, Singapore, and Vietnam – of the six historically Confucian countries surveyed, majorities, ranging from 52 to 60 percent, are attached to the Confucian idea of the politically inactive or passive citizenry, agreeing with this statement tapping support for the desirability of delegating policy making to virtuous leaders. Only in Taiwan, did a small minority – less than a quarter (22 percent) – endorse the principle of the passive citizenry, whereas over three times as many (74 percent) opposed it. Why are people in Taiwan much less likely to endorse the idea of excluding the masses from the political process? One plausible reason is

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table 9.3. Orientations to the principle of politically passive citizenry Country Japan Korea Taiwan China Singapore Vietnam (Pooled)

Unfavorable

Favorable

(No answer)

56.1% 40.7 73.8 50.5 37.5 24.2 47.2

40.5% 56.8 22.3 42.4 60.3 52.3 45.8

3.4% 2.5 3.9 7.1 2.2 23.5 7.1

that the one-party regime dominated by the Kuomintang introduced a Confucian agenda to the island population in a highly repressive manner.53 Table 9.3 shows considerable variation in the levels and patterns of responses to the aforementioned statement across the two subregions – democratic and nondemocratic – of Confucian Asia. In two of the three countries – Japan and Taiwan – in the democratic subregion, those who disagree with the statement constitute a substantial majority. In two of the three countries – Singapore and Vietnam – of the nondemocratic subregion, those who agreed with it form a substantial majority. In all three democratic countries, moreover, more than 40 percent of their respective population disagreed with the statement, and in all three nondemocratic countries, more than 40 percent agreed with it. In democratic Confucian Asia, therefore, those unwilling to allow political leaders alone to take part in the policymaking process and to decide on every important issue constitute a majority of 57 percent. In authoritarian Confucian Asia, the pattern is the exactly opposite; those willing to do so constitute a majority of 52 percent. This finding raises the question of whether democratic politics orients citizens away from the political legacy of Confucianism, or whether such legacy orients them away from democratic politics. In the real world of democratic transformation, it is more likely that the two forces influence each other instead of just one influencing the other. When all six countries surveyed are considered together, those willing and unwilling to endorse the Confucian meritocratic principle of excluding the masses from the political process are equally numerous (46 vs. 47 percent). When this figure of 47 percent is compared with that of 17 percent endorsing the Confucian principle of virtuous leadership, it is evident that between those two principles of Confucian

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meritocracy, the principle of the politically passive citizenry is far more popular than that of virtuous leadership. Among those who are willing to remain passive in the political process, nearly three-quarters (75 percent) are unwilling to accept the practice of selecting political leaders solely on the basis of their virtue and capacity without holding elections. Evidently, many Confucian Asians want to take part in electing their leaders, although they do not want to get involved in the process of policy making. How do people in Confucian Asia compare with their peers in nonConfucian Asia in embracing the Confucian meritocratic principle of excluding the masses from the political process? As with the principle of virtuous leadership, supporters of this principle are more numerous in non-Confucian Asia than in Confucian Asia. Although supporters constitute a minority (44 percent) in the latter, they constitute a majority (52 percent) in the former. The margin of the subregional difference in supporting this principle of political exclusion is, however, smaller than that in supporting that of virtuous leadership (8 percent vs. 13 percent). In other words, the two subregions of Asia are much more similar in embracing this meritocratic principle prescribing the passive role of the masses in the political process than in endorsing that of virtuous leadership. CITIZEN WELFARE

Early Confucians emphasized the importance of providing for the physical welfare of the needy as one of the most important tasks of meritocratic government. Unlike liberal thinkers of the West, moreover, they emphasized that the satisfaction of physical and educational needs should take priority over the provision of political and civil rights. For these Confucians who posited a notion of a human needs hierarchy more than two millennia before Abraham Maslow (1943) popularized it,54 however, economic livelihood constituted an indispensable precondition for moral education.55 Do people in Confucian East Asia remain attached to the meritocratic principle that requires the government to provide for the wellbeing of the needy? To explore this question, we selected an item (Q77) from the ABS, which asked respondents to choose whether individual citizens themselves should look after themselves or “the government should bear the main responsibility for taking care of the well-being of the people.”

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table 9.4. Who Should bear the main responsibility for citizen welfare Country Japan Korea Taiwan China Singapore Vietnam (Pooled)

Citizens

Government

(No answer)

77.1% 46.6 60.9 61.0 73.6 54.7 62.4

20.6% 47.4 32.8 29.2 24.9 25.1 29.9

2.3% 6.0 6.3 9.8 1.5 20.2 7.7

Table 9.4 reports percentages choosing each of these two contrasting approaches to the promotion of citizen welfare. In five of six Confucian countries, self-reliance was more popular than government care. Only in Korea do slightly more people prefer the latter to the former. Yet even in this country, less than half (47 percent) the population is supportive of the governmental approach. When all six countries are considered together, a solid majority of 62 percent endorses the self-reliance approach, whereas less than one-third (30 percent) opts for the government-provision approach, which early Confucians advocated for meritocratic government. Unlike the two other meritocratic principles discussed above, however, this approach is more popular in the democratic subregion than in the nondemocratic subregion (34 percent vs. 26 percent). This finding raises the question of whether living in a democracy makes people more compassionate to the less fortunate. Is Confucian Asia more Confucian than in non-Confucian Asia by having the government assume the main responsibility for taking care of citizen well-being? Even in supporting this principle, Confucian Asia is much less Confucian than in non-Confucian Asia (30 percent vs. 50 percent). Of these three principles, the two subregions differ most in this principle (20 percent), followed by passive citizenry (12 percent), and virtuous leadership (2 percent). Despite these differences in the levels of citizen support, however, the two regions are similar in the pattern of such support with passive citizenry having the most support, the provision of well-being somewhat less, and virtuous leadership much less. In short, the two regions of Asia differ in the level of supporting three meritocratic principles, but alike in the pattern of supporting those.

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table 9.5. Levels of overall attachment to Confucian meritocracy Country

Lowest

Low

High

Highest

(Index mean)

Japan Korea Taiwan China Singapore Vietnam (Pooled)

37.9% 14.8 37.4 24.2 21.2 13.8 24.9

38.9% 43.7 36.7 33.8 51.6 30.8 39.3

13.1% 27.3 11.9 19.7 19.5 12.3 17.3

3.2% 4.4 1.8 3.9 3.4 4.1 3.5

0.80 1.24 0.75 1.04 1.05 1.11 0.99

OVERALL LEVEL OF SUPPORT FOR CONFUCIAN MERITOCRACY

To estimate the overall level of attachment to Confucian meritocracy, responses affirming each of the three meritocratic principles discussed earlier are combined into a 4-point index, on which scores of 0 and 3 indicate, respectively, being fully detached and fully attached to meritocratic government. For each and all of the six Confucian countries, Table 9.5 shows percentages placed at each level and index mean scores. The lowest two and the highest two points on this index are collapsed into two categories, the unattached and attached to Confucian meritocracy. In historically Confucian Asia as a whole, one-quarter (25 percent) is attached to none of the three principles of Confucian meritocracy. Those fully detached from the principles are six times as many as those fully attached to them (25 percent vs. 4 percent). In five of six countries, moreover, the detached, either fully or mostly, who scored the two lowest points (0 and 1), constitute solid or substantial majorities, ranging from 58 percent in China and Korea to 77 in Japan. Even in Vietnam where nearly two-fifths (39 percent) did not rate all three Confucian principles, a plurality of 45 percent is either fully or mostly detached from those. In every country, those detached outnumber those attached by a large margin of more than 20 percent. The preponderance of the former over the latter are most pronounced in Japan and Taiwan with a Percentage Differential Index (PDI)56 score of 50 percentage points, and is least pronounced in Korea with a PDI score of 27 percentage points. According to the index means reported in Table 9.5, all six countries scored below the index midpoint of 1.5, which indicates a low level of attachment. In every Confucian country, the legacy of Confucian

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ethical meritocracy is no longer deeply ingrained in the minds of its citizens. Yet Korea stands out from the rest with the highest mean score of 1.24. This third-wave democracy is followed by the three authoritarian countries of Vietnam (1.11), Singapore (1.05), and China (1.04), and the two democracies of Japan (0.80) and Taiwan (0.75). Between the two subregions of Confucian Asia, the mean level of meritocratic regime support is slightly higher in the nondemocratic region than the democratic region (1.1 vs. 0.9). A further comparison of these mean ratings within each subregion reveals little difference across the three countries within authoritarian Confucian Asia but a great deal of difference within democratic Confucian Asia. In the former, for example, the average Chinese (1.0), Singaporean (1.1), and Vietnamese (1.1) are equally attached to about one of the three Confucian meritocratic principles considered. In the latter, the average Korean (1.2) is, on the other hand, over one-and-ahalf times more attached to those than the average Taiwanese (0.7) or Japanese (0.8). From this finding, it appears that attachment to Confucian meritocracy has more to do with the way Confucianism was introduced and practiced in each country than the extent to which it was modernized politically or socioeconomically. Of the six historically Confucian countries, Korea has been known as the most Confucian since Confucianism was adopted as the country’s ruling ideology in the Yi dynasty (1392–1897).57 As expected from the analyses presented above, people in nonConfucian Asia remain more attached to Confucian meritocracy than those in Confucian Asia. Those who are mostly or fully attached to it, for example, constitute nearly twice as many among the former than the latter (37 percent vs. 21 percent). Even in terms of the average level of such overall attachment tapped on a 4-point index, the former scored nearly 40 percent higher than the latter (1.4 vs. 1.0). It is ironic that in Asia today, the historically Confucian region remains less Confucian than the non-Confucian region. Evidently, the principles of meritocratic government that Confucius and his followers advocated in ancient China are also valued in other types of traditional societies. POPULAR SUPPORT FOR DEMOCRACY

Does attachment to the legacies of Confucian meritocracy affect the way people in Confucian East Asia react to democracy? If it does,

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table 9.6. Support for democracy Domains Country

Japan Korea Taiwan China Singapore Vietnam (Pooled)

Overall attachment level

Desirability Suitability Preferability Lowest Low

61.1% 92.9 85.6 76.9 93.5 91.3 83.6

71.9% 82.3 74.7 64.4 90.7 83.3 77.9

63.3% 65.6 50.9 52.3 47.4 65.4 57.5

High

9.4% 15.7% 26.9% 0.7 5.1 30.2 4.0 10.7 34.0 0.8 7.6 22.6 1.5 6.1 41.0 0.2 2.7 10.9 2.8 8.0 27.6

Highest (Index mean)

39.6% 53.4 41.0 37.4 44.3 55.6 45.2

2.05 2.52 2.25 2.41 2.38 2.76 2.38

does it discourage them from embracing and supporting democracy as the preferred system of government, as the proponents of the Asian Values Thesis claim? To explore these questions, we first need to measure popular support for democracy, and then examine its connection with attachment to Confucian meritocracy. This section measures the extent to which people in six Confucian countries support democracy. The next section then explores whether there is any significant connection, either positive or negative, between their favorable orientations to democracy and meritocracy. To estimate the general level of support for a democratic regime, we selected a set of three questions from the ABS surveys. These questions investigate, respectively, the desirability of democracy, the suitability of democracy, and the preferability of democracy. We consider positive or pro-democratic responses to the questions individually and collectively to measure democratic attachment at the regime level. The first question asked respondents to indicate on a 10-point scale the sort of regime they found most desirable. A score of 1 indicates a desire for a “complete dictatorship,” and a score of 10 indicates preference for a “complete democracy.” The results in Table 9.6 indicate that an absolute majority of the people in each of the six Confucian Asian countries expressed a desire for democracy by choosing a score of 6 or higher. From 61 percent in Japan, to over 94 percent in Singapore expressed a desire for democracy. Evidently, most people in Confucian Asia (84 percent) prefer, at least in principle, to live in a democratic regime. The second ABS question asked respondents to rate the suitability of democracy on a similar 10-point scale. A score of 1 on this scale indicates “completely unsuitable,” and a score of 10 indicates “completely suitable.” A smaller majority in every country except Japan indicated

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that they considered democracy suitable by choosing a rating of 6 or higher on this scale. In Confucian Asia as a whole, citizens’ perceptions of democracy’s suitability are somewhat lower than their desire for democracy (78 percent vs. 84 percent). When they were asked whether democracy, as the system of government for their country, is always preferable to any other kind of government, a much smaller majority of less than three-fifths (58 percent) expressed a preference for democracy. As with the desirability and suitability of democracy, percentages expressing unqualified preference for it vary considerably from a low of 47 percent in Singapore, to 66 percent in Korea. Singapore stands out from the rest in two respects. It is the only country where a minority always prefers democracy to its alternatives. It is also the only country where more than one-third (34 percent) of those who desire, in principle, to live in a democracy does not always prefer it to its alternatives in practice. The well-functioning authoritarian regime appears to keep many Singaporeans from embracing democracy unconditionally. In addition to evaluating these items individually, we combined affirmative responses to the three questions into a 4-point index to measure the overall level of support for a democratic regime. On this index, the two extreme scores of 0 and 3 indicate, respectively, being unsupportive and full supportive of democracy. Scores of 2 and 3, on the other hand, indicate being partially and mostly supportive. For each country, Table 9.6 reports percentages placed at each of the four different levels of democratic support and the mean level of such support. All Confucian Asian countries are alike in that a small minority, less than one-tenth of the population in each country, is completely unattached to democracy (ranging from less than 1 percent in China, Korea, and Vietnam to 9 percent in Japan). They are also alike in that in every country, those fully attached to it are most numerous. Yet the fully attached vary considerably from a low of less than 40 percent in China and Japan, to a high of more than 50 percent in Korea and Vietnam. Only in two out of the six countries, a majority is unqualified in endorsing democracy as the preferred regime. Even in these two countries, Korea (53 percent) and Vietnam (56 percent), unqualified democratic supporters fail to form a large majority of more than three-quarters, one of the benchmarks proposed to confirm the claim that “democracy has become the only game in town” (Diamond 1999). When all six Confucian countries are considered

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together, they fail to form even a bare majority. And they are outnumbered by those who are yet to embrace it unconditionally (45 percent vs. 55 percent). All these findings directly dispute the validity of the global democratization thesis that democracy is universally valued. Another notable feature of Table 9.6 concerns the mean level of avowed democratic support for each of the six countries in Confucian Asia, and each of its two subregions. Such support level, which is measured on a 4-point (0–3) scale, is highest in Vietnam with 2.75, followed by Korea with 2.52, China with 2.41, Singapore with 2.38, Taiwan with 2.25, and lowest in Japan with 2.05. When these countries are grouped into two subregions, the mean level of democratic support is higher in the nondemocratic subregion than in the democratic region (2.5 vs. 2.3). Why is the average level of citizen support for democracy lowest in the oldest democracy in Confucian Asia (Japan) and highest in its most repressive communist country (Vietnam)? Why is such a support level higher in nondemocratic Confucian Asia than in democratic Confucian Asia? One plausible reason is that democracy means different things in different countries and different things to different people even in the same country. To many citizens in the nondemocratic world, it is likely to represent a political ideal yet to be experienced, whereas to those in the democratic world, it means political practices, either successful or unsuccessful.58 Whatever the reasons are, Confucian Asia does not support the democratic learning theory linking the experience of democratic rule to greater support for democracy.59

CONFUCIAN MERITOCRACY AND CULTURAL DEMOCRATIZATION

How do the legacies of Confucian meritocracy affect cultural democratization in historically Confucian Asia? Does it, as proponents of the Asian Values Thesis suggest, discourage people in the region from embracing democracy as “the only game in town”? Figure 9.2 explores these questions by comparing the overall levels of democratic support across four different levels of attachment to meritocracy. In every country, a higher level of meritocratic attachment is always or nearly

Doh Chull Shin

280 3.1

2.7

Japan Korea China Taiwan Singapore Vietnam

2.3

1.9

1.5

0

1

2

3

figure 9.2. Levels of Democratic Support by Levels of Attachment to Confucian Meritocracy.

always accompanied by a lower level of democratic support. This can be interpreted as a piece of evidence confirming the Asian Values Thesis attributing democratic underdevelopment in Confucian Asia to the legacies of Confucianism. However, it should be noted that the magnitude of this negative relationship is weak, as indicated by Pearson’s correlation coefficients, which range from a low of –.05 in China and Taiwan, to a high of –.10 in Japan. These coefficients indicate that upholding Confucian meritocratic legacies accounts for a small amount (less than 5 percent) of the variation in democratic support. Most of them are not statistically significant either. In short, the relationships between the two attitudinal variables are negative in direction, as proponents of the Asian Values Thesis claim. But their relationship is too weak to be the main force behind the region’s slow democratization Table 9.7 reports additional evidence that the two variables are not strongly connected with each other. In the region as a whole, those fully supportive of democracy, who scored the highest score of 3 on the 4-point index of democratic support, are most numerous among those unattached to meritocracy (54 percent), and least numerous among the fully attached to it (45 percent). Among the unattached, however, full supporters of democracy constitute a bare majority (54 percent) the Confucian Asian population. Nearly equally as many, therefore, refuse

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table 9.7. Percentages of the willing and unwilling to support democracy at each level of attachment to Confucian meritocracy Willing to support democracy Fully Unwilling Somewhat Unwilling Somewhat Willing Fully Willing

Levels of attachment to confucian meritocracy 0

1

2

3

3.2% 9.9 33.3 53.6

2.7% 9.6 31.8 55.9

2.8% 11.4 35.7 50.1

3.8% 11.6 39.9 44.7

to support democracy unconditionally, although they no longer adhere to any of the Confucian meritocratic principles. Among the fully attached to Confucian meritocracy also, those unwilling to support democracy do not constitute a majority. Instead, they form a small minority of 4 percent among the Confucian Asian population. In four countries – Korea, China, Singapore, and Vietnam, moreover, none of those fully attached to Confucian meritocracy refuse to support democracy. Among the fully attached to Confucian meritocracy in Confucian Asia as a whole, unqualified supporters of democracy are more than ten times more numerous than unqualified opponents of democracy (45 percent vs. 4 percent). Evidently, Confucian meritocracy has little to do with avowed support for democracy. In short, even among those who are fully attached to Confucianism, those willing to support democracy outnumber those unwilling to do so (85 percent vs. 15 percent). Among those who are fully detached from Confucian tradition, on the other hand, those willing to support democracy unconditionally are not significantly more numerous than those unwilling to do so (54 percent vs. 46 percent). Consequently, a solid majority (72 percent) of the people in the six countries register attachment to the principles of both meritocracy and democracy concurrently. The consistently negative relationship between citizen orientations to meritocratic and democratic governments appears to accord with the central claim of the Asian Values Thesis. Nonetheless, the propensity of citizens who remain fully attached to Confucian legacies to support democracy and of the citizens who exhibit full detachment from these legacies to be less than full supporters of democracy undermines the validity of the thesis.

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In the minds of most people in Confucian Asia today, no strict choice has been made between meritocracy and democracy, contrary to what the Incompatibility Thesis suggests. Neither are Confucian principles leading to an embrace of democracy, as upholders of the Compatibility Thesis would predict. Instead, ordinary citizens find good and bad in both traditions and seem willing to blend them into a hybrid system, as proponents of the Convergence Thesis suggest. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION

Throughout the world, Confucian Asia is widely recognized as the region where meritocracy was invented and practiced as a system of government for the longest period of time. Confucius (551–479 b.c.) advocated meritocratic government by virtuous and able leaders as the most preferred of various governmental systems more than 100 years before Plato (424–348 b.c.) did in the West. Beginning with the Han period (206 b.c.e.–220 a.d.), the Confucian notion of ethical meritocracy is known to have served as one of the most important and enduring principles of good government in the region. Does this legacy of Confucian meritocracy still prevail as the proper norms or principles of achieving good government throughout Confucian Asia? If it does, how does it affect the process of democratization in the region? Does the legacy deter people in Confucian Asia from embracing democracy, as proponents of the Asian Values Thesis have claimed? Or does it have little or no adverse effect on the process as proponents of the global democratization thesis have begun to claim? Substantively, this study sought to address these questions concerning the prevalence of Confucian meritocratic legacy and its connection with democratization in Confucian Asia with the latest, third wave of the Asian Barometer Surveys conducted in six Confucian and five non-Confucian Asian countries. Theoretically, this study sought to test two mutually contradicting claims on the prospect of democratization in Confucian Asia. For the past two decades, proponents of the Asian Values Thesis have claimed that Confucianism as a system of political and social ethics is incompatible with democracy and thus poses a serious obstacle to the democratization of countries in Confucian Asia. In stark contrast, advocates of global democratization proclaim that democracy has become not only a universal value but also the universally preferred system of government.

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Analyses of the ABS conducted in six Confucian countries reveal that none of the three key Confucian meritocratic principles analyzed in this chapter is either deeply nor broadly ingrained in the minds of their citizens. About one-fifth of them remains favorably disposed to all or most of these principles. Although those favorably disposed to Confucian meritocracy in general are equally numerous across democratic and nondemocratic Confucian Asia, those attached to two of its specific principles vary considerably across the two subregions. The principle of passive citizenry is more prevalent in the nondemocratic subregion where the masses are not allowed to participate and compete in the political process freely. The principle prescribing the government to provide for citizen welfare is, on the other hand, more popular in the democratic subregion, which tends to be socioeconomically more developed. On the basis of this finding, I propose that the availability of political and socioeconomic resources in a given country determines the prevalence of a particular cultural tradition in that country. When six countries in Confucian Asia are compared with five countries in non-Confucian Southeast Asia, the latter are attached to every meritocratic principle to a significantly greater extent than the former. When all the three principles are considered together, those attached to Confucian meritocracy are nearly two times more numerous in nonConfucian Asia. This finding cast a serious doubt on the Confucian Asian Values Thesis linking democratic underdevelopment in Confucian Asia to the legacies of Confucianism. Moreover, the same finding suggests that meritocracy is not a unique political legacy confined to Confucian Asia; instead, it is a customary practice of all traditional societies. What makes Confucian Asia distinctive from other regions is that people in this region, unlike their peers in non-Confucian Asia, prefer ethical meritocracy based on virtue and ability to technical meritocracy based solely on expertise. This can be considered one of the most enduring legacies of Confucianism. It also cast a serious doubt on the Confucian Asian Values Thesis linking democratic underdevelopment in Confucian Asia to the legacies of Confucianism. In all Confucian countries today, a majority of democratic supporters, whether qualified or unqualified in their support, is not detached from meritocracy. Nor does a majority of those attached to Confucian meritocracy refuse to support democracy. In the minds of the Confucian Asian population, therefore, there is little empirical evidence to

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support the Asian Values Thesis that the Confucian principles of meritocracy are not inherently compatible with those of democracy, and attachment to those principles stymie democratic development in the region. In Confucian Asia, moreover, a large majority has yet to embrace democracy as the only political game worth playing. Among the Confucian Asians, there are more qualified supporters than unqualified supporters of democracy. In their minds, therefore, there is little evidence supportive of the increasingly popular claim that democracy is becoming a universal value. For those favorably oriented to meritocracy and democracy, there is an opportunity to overcome the limitations of liberal democracy by blending the characteristics of both regimes. notes

1. Anthony Heath et al., “The Globalization of Public Opinion Research,” Annual Review of Political Science, vol. 8 (2005), 297–333; Robert Mattes, “Public Opinion Research in Emerging Democracies,” in The Sage Handbook of Public Opinion Research, Wolfgang Donsbach and Michael W. Traugott, eds. (London: Sage, 2007), 113–22; Doh Chull Shin, “Democratization: Perspectives from Global Citizenry,” in The Oxford Handbook of Political Behavior, Russell Dalton and Hans-Dieter Klingemann, eds. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 259–82. 2. Larry Diamond, The Spirit of Democracy: The Struggle to Build Free Societies Throughout the World (New York: Times Books, 2008); Amartya Sen, “Democracy as a Universal Value,” Journal of Democracy, vol. 10, no. 3 (1999), 3–17. 3. Samuel P. Huntington, The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991). 4. Lucian W. Pye, Asian Power and Politics: The Cultural Dimensions of Authority (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985). 5. Kuan Yew Lee, The Singapore Story: Memoirs of Lee Kuan Yew (Singapore: Prentice Hall, 1998). 6. Joseph Chan, “Democracy and Meritocracy: Toward a Confucian Perspective,” Journal of Chinese Philosophy 34, no. 2 (2007), 179–93. 7. Wei-ming Tu, “Epilogue,” in Confucian Traditions in East Asian Modernity, Wei-ming Tu, ed. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996), 343–9. 8. William de Bary, Asian Values and Human Rights: A Confucian Communitarian Perspective (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998). 9. Dae Jung Kim, “Is Culture Destiny? The Myth of Asia’s Anti-Democratic Values,” Foreign Affairs, vol. 73, no. 6 (1994), 189–94. 10. Teng-hui Lee, “Confucian Democracy: Modernization, Culture, and the State in East Asia.” Harvard International Review, vol. 21, no. 4 (2006), 16–8. 11. Keqian Xu, “Early Confucian Principles: The Potential Theoretic Foundation of Democracy in Modern China,” Asian Philosophy: An International Journal of the Philosophical Traditions of the East, vol. 16, no 2. (2006), 142.

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12. Mencius, Mencius, Din Cheuk Lau, trans. (New York: Penquin Books, 1970), 7A:26. 13. Anthony Downs, An Economic Theory of Democracy (New York: Addison Wesley, 1957). 14. Tongdong Bai, “A Mencian Version of Limited Democracy,” Res Publica, vol. 14, no. 1 (2008), 19–34, and “A Confucian Improvement of Democracy,” New Perspectives Quarterly, vol. 20, no. 3 (2012), 12–39; Daniel A. Bell, Beyond Liberal Democracy: Political Thinking for an East Asian Context (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006); Chan, “Democracy and Meritocracy,” 179– 93; Sungmoon Kim, “The Virtue of Incivility: Confucian Communitarianism beyond Docility,” Philosophy & Social Criticism, vol. 37, no. 1 (2011), 25–48; Sor-hoon Tan, Confucian Democracy: A Deweyan Reconstruction (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003); see also the chapters by Tongdong Bai and Joseph Chan in this volume. 15. Bell, Beyond Liberal Democracy. 16. Joseph Chan, “Confucian Political Philosophy: A Critical Reformulation for Modern Times” (unpublished book manuscript, March 2012). 17. Yu-Tzung Chang et al., “Confucianism and Democratic Values in Three Chinese Societies.” Issues & Studies 41, no. 4 (2005), 1–33; Russell Dalton and Nhu-Ngoc T. Ong, “Authority Orientations and Democratic Attitudes: A Test of the ‘Asian Values’ Hypothesis,” Japanese Journal of Political Science 6, no. 2 (2005): 1–21; So Young Kim, “Do Asian Values Exist? Empirical Tests of the Four Dimensions of Asian Values,” Journal of East Asian Studies 10, no. 2 (2010): 315–44; Chong-Min Park and Doh Chull Shin, “Do Asian Values Deter Popular Support for Democracy in South Korea?” Asian Survey 46, no. 3 (2006): 341–61; Christian Welzel, “The Asian Values Thesis Revisited: Evidence from the World Values Survey,” Japanese Journal of Political Science 12, no. 1 (2011): 1–31. 18. Miles Menander Dawson, The Basic Teachings of Confucius (New York: New Home Library, 1942); Leonard Shihlien Hsu, The Political Philosophy of Confucianism: An Interpretation of the Social and Political Ideas of Confucius, His Forerunners, and His Early Disciples (London: Curzon Press, 1975). 19. Shaun O’Dwyer, “Democracy and Confucian Values,” Philosophy East and West, vol. 53, no. 1 (2003), 43. 20. Xinzhong Yao, An Introduction to Confucianism (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 275. 21. Mencius, Mencius, 7B:14. 22. Miles Menander Dawson, The Ethics of Confucius (New York: Cosmos, 2005). 23. Confucius, The Analects, Din Cheuk Lau, trans. (New York: Penquin Books, 1979), 13:16. 24. Mencius, Mencius, 1A:3. 25. Ibid., 1B:5. 26. Mencius, Mencius, 4A:7.2. 27. Confucius, Analects, 24:6. 28. Benjamin Isadore Schwartz, The World of Thought in Ancient China (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985), 97. 29. Confucius, Analects, 13:11. 30. Ibid., 4:14.

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31. Dawson, The Ethics of Confucius, 222. In his chapter in this volume, Elman offers a critical examination of the civil service examination system and its limited effect on social mobility in practice. 32. The earliest form of the keju system was introduced in the Han period, but it become systematic in the Tang period. For further details, see Elman in this volume. 33. Michael Collins, “China’s Confucius and Western Democracy,” Contemporary Review 290, no. 1689 (2008), 167. 34. Confucius, Analects, 7:3. 35. Mencius, Mencius, 3A:4. 36. Schwartz, The World of Thought in Ancient China, 76. 37. Confucius, Analects, 12:19. 38. Ibid., 2:1. 39. Mencius, Mencius, 2B:2. 40. Confucius, Analects, 8:11. 41. Russell Arben Fox, “Confucian and Communitarian Responses to Liberal Democracy,” Review of Politics, vol. 59, no. 3 (1997); Taku Tamaki, “Confusing Confucius in Asian Values? A Constructivist Critique,” International Relations, vol. 21, no. 3 (2007), 296. 42. Confucius, Analects, 13:6. 43. Ibid., 14:43. 44. Mencius, Mencius, 4A:1. 45. Ibid., 7:9, 9:5. 46. Confucius would have favored the political participation of the masses if they were educated and morally rectified as much as their leaders were. Daniel A. Bell (2012) elaborates on this point in greater detail. Daniel A. Bell, “Political Legitimacy: A Normative Approach,” presented at workshop on East Asian Perspective on Political Legitimacy,” held at the University of Hong Kong on August 18–20, 2011. 47. Confucius, Analects, 12:19; Robert A. Dahl, Democracy and Its Critics (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), 65. 48. Confucius, Analects, 8:9 49. Mencius, Mencius, 3A:4. 50. Confucius, Analects, 8:14, 14:26. 51. Chan, “Democracy and Meritocracy,” 191; Hsu, The Political Philosophy of Confucianism, 114–15. It should be noted that Confucius emphasized the importance of educating people as soon as they satisfy their physical needs (see Analects 13:9). 52. Confucius, Analects, 8:14, 14:26. 53. This reason was offered by Daniel A. Bell, coeditor of this volume. 54. Abraham H. Maslow, Motivation and Personality (New York: Harper, 1943). 55. Schwartz, The World of Thought in Ancient China, 105. 56. This index measures the preponderance of positive responses over negative ones by subtracting the latter from the former. Its scores vary from a low of −100 to a high of +100. 57. Doh C. Shin, Confucianism and Democratization in East Asia: Reassessing the Asian Values Debate (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012), Ch. 1.

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58. Ibid., Ch. 7. 59. Dieter Fuchs and Edeltaud Roller, “Learned Democracy? Support of Democracy in Central and Eastern Europe,” International Journal of Sociology 36, No. 2 (2006): 70–96; Herbert McClosky and John Zaller, The American Ethos: Public Attitudes Toward Capitalism and Democracy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984); Richard Rose and William Mishler, “Learning and Re-Learning Regime Support,” European Journal of Political Research 41 (2002): 5–35.

10 Political Meritocracy in Singapore Lessons from the PAP Government Benjamin Wong

The PAP (People’s Action Party) government has ruled Singapore since its independence in 1965. Power has been concentrated in the hands of a small group of men who have governed the country in an authoritarian and paternalistic manner. Hailed as a model of the developmental state, Singapore today is one of the most advanced and richest countries in the world. Although the state lacks conventional institutions of check and balances, the government is widely admired for its integrity and efficiency. Singapore ranks consistently high among the least corrupt countries of the world on Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) and the World Bank’s control of corruption governance indicator.1 Moreover, in the Global Competitiveness Report published by the World Economic Forum, Singapore has also been consistent in being at the top in terms of public sector competence as well as public trust in politicians’ honesty.2 The performance record of the PAP government is far from perfect. But Singaporeans today are enjoying increasing personal as well as political freedoms. There is now less fear of the government and more open criticisms of it. The government in turn appears to be more responsive to public grievances. The PAP government could be held as a model of political meritocracy understood as a form of government whose leaders are selected on the basis of their character and abilities. Singapore, moreover, is distinguished by the fact that meritocracy has been institutionalized as a fundamental principle of governance. It is perhaps the only country in the world that applies meritocracy “rigorously and consistently” to its entire political leadership.3 The government places great emphasis on talent as it believes that “the single decisive factor that made for Singapore’s development was the ability of its ministers and the high quality of its civil servants who supported them.”4 288

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But the principle of meritocracy has been used for a further purpose that is somewhat more controversial. Since 1994, it has been has been used as a means to justify the market-based salaries of ministers and top civil servants, who are the highest paid in the world. The government believes that those who contribute most to the well-being of the nation should be duly rewarded, and that high salaries – comparable to those paid to successful leaders and professionals in the private sector – are necessary to retain top talent in the government and to prevent corruption. This chapter first outlines the systematic way in which leaders are identified and groomed for public office. It then relates how the marketbased salary system reflects the strengths and drawbacks of the model of political meritocracy practiced in Singapore. The salary system is the natural culmination of the instrumental logic that governs economic development and informs much of policy making in Singapore. However, its implementation has effectively transformed the understanding of political life and consequently the way government and the public relates to one another. The salary system has contributed to the perception of a “great affective divide” between the government and the people.5 This has led to a reaction in the last general election that shows the importance of democracy as a means to moderate the excesses of a political meritocracy. The Singapore experience reveals that the problem of political meritocracy in Singapore has much to do with a narrow conception of merit and the particular elitist attitude that it spawns. Paradoxically, this indicates that a major shortcoming of the PAP government is that it may not be elitist enough. I. SCHOLARS AND THE SELECTION OF THE POLITICAL ELITE

The government, according to former prime minister Goh Chok Tong, systematically sets out to identify “the best people who can govern the country in terms of competence, character, commitment and compassion.”6 Much emphasis is placed on academic excellence because the country “needs a core of its ablest citizens, those with both intellectual and social acumen, to play leadership roles in the economy, the administration, and the political leadership.”7 Because academic qualification is an essential component of leadership, the search for top talent begins in the school system, where promising students are identified and cultivated for future leadership

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roles in government. Considerable sums are invested in public education so that budget for education is second only to that of defense. The education system is highly competitive with major national examinations conducted at key stages of students’ school life.8 High stakes examinations are held to be an efficient means of assessing talent and effort. The school system is structured to ensure that the best students are consistently challenged to produce good results. Repeated success in academic performance presupposes the presence of a combination of ability and effort (with luck usually being discounted). Lee Kuan Yew has observed that the qualities of a leader would “eventually manifest themselves” in the successes of his profession or business.9 Similarly, those who score high grades in school are held to be “more disciplined, more driven to excel, more deserving of reward” than those who do not do as well.10 The examinations are extremely demanding and are intended to test for the best students competing for prestigious government scholarships to study at the best universities in the world. The scholarship process is said to have “a bearing on the quality of Singapore’s political leadership as scholarship winners tend to dominate the front bench.”11 Indeed, the majority of cabinet members have been scholars. In the 2010 cabinet, there were thirteen scholars among the twenty-one ministers, and six of them were President’s Scholars. In the current cabinet, thirteen out of eighteen ministers are scholars. Several of these ministers also served in the elite Administrative Service, with most being trained in either engineering or economics. Scholarships are offered every year by the various ministries, statutory boards, and government-linked companies (GLCs). The most prestigious are the top Public Service Commission (PSC) scholarships and Singapore Armed Forces (SAF) Overseas Scholarships. Scholarship holders are usually sent to pursue their first degree at top universities mainly in Britain and the United States, and on their return, they are expected to serve the government for between four and six years. In university, their academic progress is closely monitored to ensure that they excel in their studies. At junior college, top students are identified, scrutinized, and ranked by the principal, and tutors who have to write extensive reports on these students’ school activities and personal attributes. Applicants for scholarships have to undertake a battery of psychological tests to determine their intellectual abilities and personality traits. Each of them has to write an essay on his “core beliefs and values.” A further test requires

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the applicant to reflect on a stressful episode, and this is followed by an interview with a psychologist on his goals, family, relationships, and attitudes. By the time an applicant is called up for interview with the selection board, a thick dossier on him would have been compiled.12 The former chairman of the PSC, Eddie Teo, maintains that the scholarship selection process is “impartial, robust, and meritocratic.”13 In addition to intellectual ability, the tests and interviews seek to establish qualities of integrity, commitment, leadership skills, and EQ [Emotional Quotient].14 There were 15,000 A level students in Singapore in 2009. Of the 2,500 of these students who applied for PSC scholarships, 350 were called up for interview with the selection panel, and eventually 84 scholarships were awarded.15 If we assume that about 50,000 students enter the school system each year and round up the number of scholarships to 100, the scholars would then constitute the top 0.2 percent of the cohort. Furthermore, only a minority of these scholars would then be selected to join the elite Administrative Service. Quah reports that of the 64,539 employees in the Singapore Civil Service in 2006, only 184 were in the Administrative Service.16 The process of selecting ministers is as systematic and even more rigorous, although details of the process remain hidden from public view.17 The search for ministers is part of the process of succession planning and party renewal.18 As it takes a long time to groom a minister, a good one is expected to stay for three to five terms in office. On the basis of his experience, Lee Kuan Yew says that it takes about two terms in office for a minister to become good at his job.19 The career of Goh Chok Tong would seem to exemplify the systematic way in which talent is identified and groomed for top leadership in the PAP government. Of humble background, Goh managed to gain admission to the elite Raffles Institution on the basis of his academic results. With a government scholarship, he then went on to university where he graduated at the top of his class in economics. In 1967, he entered the elite Administrative Service. In 1969, he was seconded to a government linked enterprise, the Neptune Orient Lines (NOL), where he rose to become managing director. His achievements at NOL led to his invitation to join the government as a Member of Parliament in 1976. On his election to Parliament, he was appointed as Senior Minister of State for Finance. As a new minister, he was mentored by the Finance minister Hon Sui Sen. In 1979, Goh was promoted to a full minister and was deployed in various ministries before rising to become first

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deputy prime minister in 1985. In 1990, fourteen years after entering government, he became prime minister. Succession renewal takes place on the assumption that the PAP will remain the dominant party and would be in a position to engage in long-term planning. The search for new talent, mainly high flyers from the public and private sector, begins early, usually after each election. Candidates for political office have to be invited. Those who put themselves forward for consideration would be viewed with suspicion.20 In 1983, the government adopted the Shell personnel management system to assess the leadership potential of candidates. What the government seeks in potential candidates are the so-called HAIR qualities: H for helicopter, or broad perspective on key issues; A for analytical ability; I for imagination; and R for sense of reality.21 High IQ is absolutely necessary, but so are a host of other qualities like leadership skills, EQ, determination, and commitment.22 The most promising ones are “invited to tea,” a euphemism for a grueling schedule of interviews with different committees.23 Those found suitable would be subjected to further psychological tests and more intensive interviews. The few that survive this stage would then be interviewed by the prime minister and his cabinet. Those judged to be suitable for ministerial positions would then embark on a rigorous learning process supervised by the prime minister and other senior cabinet ministers. Those not found suitable will be gently eased out of office. The system of selection and advancement that the PAP government has put in place is one that constantly challenges and tests its ministers and top officials.24 Not surprisingly the system has been described as “probably the most exacting process of political selection in the world.”25 Political life is like a nonstop high-stakes examination process for ministers in the PAP government. All public officers are graded each year on the basis of their performance. There are altogether five grades from A to E. A grade D means that the officer has only performed to expectations, and an E means the officer has not met expectations. A yearly performance bonus is given out to officers based on these grades. The performance of ministers is also reviewed each year by the prime minister. Under the previous salary scheme, the maximum performance bonus for a minister is fourteen months. To underscore the demanding nature of the performance system, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong revealed that in 2007, only 2 of his 21 ministers received a bonus of between eight to ten months. For the remaining nineteen,

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eleven received between five and a half and seven months, and the rest received between zero and five months.26 This system of compensation is, of course, unique to Singapore. It has made Singapore’s ministers and top public servants the highest paid in the world. It is also in keeping with its model of political meritocracy as the government firmly believes those who contribute the most to the country deserve to be adequately compensated. To Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong the issue of pay “goes to one of the core requirements for Singapore – to assemble the best team to serve Singapore. If you have the wrong system of pay, you will have the wrong team.”27 II. REWARDING MERITOCRATIC ELITES: THE MARKET-BASED SYSTEM OF MINISTERIAL PAY

As the economy improved over the years, the government found it increasingly difficult to attract and retain its ministers and top public service officers. Various policies to close the gap between private and public sector salaries were explored and implemented. In 1994, the government decided to benchmark the salaries of ministers and top civil servants to the salaries of top earners in the private sector. The formula was revised in 2007 to peg the salaries of ministers and permanent secretaries to two-thirds the median salary of the top eight earners in six professions – namely, bankers, lawyers, accountants, engineers, top employees of multinational corporations, and local manufacturers. The latter revision was prompted by realization that economic globalization had “created a single worldwide market for talent.”28 According to the government, talented Singaporeans and government scholars in particular were keenly sought after by top global companies like Mckinsey & Co. and Goldman Sachs. With the salary revision the annual pay of entry level ministers and senior permanent secretaries went up from $1.2 million to $1.6 million, whereas that of the prime minister went from $2.5 million to $3.1 million. Top performing Administrative Service Officers at age thirty-two would be paid up to $361,000 a year. The government has all along been aware that the policy was politically sensitive, but it has held on to the belief that it has been the right policy. Moreover, the policy has been widely cited by Western journalists, academics and business people as a sound one. In his 2000 National Day Rally, then–Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong said, “[M]any Western leaders have told me in private that they envied our system of Ministers’ pay. But they also said that if they tried to implement it in

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their own countries, they would be booted out.”29 In his defense of the salary revisions in 2007, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong referred to a letter written to him by a former Dean of the Kennedy School of Government: “The notion that the Minister making $1.2 million might be underpaid will strike most Americans as incredible. But I would say right on.”30 Even though it has been staunchly defended by the prime minister and his cabinet, the policy has been so unpopular that it became a major issue during the general elections in 2011. Following the elections, and in response to widespread unhappiness of the public, Prime Minister Lee ordered a review of the salary system as the first initiative of his new cabinet.31 The new formula introduced in 2012 pegs the salary of ministers to the median income of the top 1,000 Singaporean earners with a “discount” of 40 percent “to reflect the ethos of political service and sacrifice.”32 This will set the bench mark for entry-level ministers and serve as the base on which all other salaries of ministers are derived. So the prime minister’s salary will be set at twice the base salary. On the basis of 2010 data on salaries, this formula will reduce the pay of ministers from between 33% to 39%. The prime ministers annual salary will be reduced from $3,072,200 to $2,200,000, and the annual pay of entry-level ministers will fall from $1,583,900 to $1,100,000.33 Bonuses will also be reduced from a maximum of 23.5 months to a maximum of 13.5 months.34 Even with these revisions in salary, Singapore ministers will be the highest paid in the world. In his speech on the current formula Prime Minister Lee has noted that it would not be the last time he has to address this contentious issue. Indeed, some PAP backbenchers continue to harbor reservations about the salary scheme. According to one PAP MP the current benchmark may be an improvement over the previous base of 48 top earners but the scheme is nevertheless “arbitrary and smacks of elitism.”35 And in view of the government’s past defense of the salary system, it is difficult to see how the issue of ministers’ pay will be resolved (more on this later in the chapter). As Chua Beng Huat has observed: “[T]hat the logic of government is the logic of big business is an unavoidable consequence of the salary system: this mode of reasoning has become an integral part of the PAP’s economy-driven political and administrative pragmatism.”36 The new salary formula does not fundamentally alter this logic: it has merely mandated a pay cut for ministers. At most it compels the PAP government to behave like a business enterprise that has become more socially responsible. But why has the logic of business been so compelling for the PAP government?

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The answer may have to do with the influence of neoliberal thought on Singapore’s political leadership. As Kenneth Paul Tan points out in this volume, the PAP has enthusiastically adopted market-based reforms along neoliberal lines.37 Neoliberalism is a theory of political economy that proposes that “human well-being can best be advanced by liberating individual entrepreneurial freedoms and skills within an institutional framework characterised by strong property rights, free markets, and free trade.”38 The theory also holds that “the social world will be maximised by maximising the reach and frequency of market transactions, and it seeks to bring all human action into the domain of the market.”39 The ascendency of neoliberal thought is usually traced to the Reagan-Thatcher era. Recalling his younger days, Kishore Mahbubani, current Dean of Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, said: “In 1971 I was more socialist than capitalist. . . . Over time, I became more capitalist than socialist as I was swept along by the prevailing Reagan-Thatcher ideology of the 1980s. I came to believe that efficient markets could help reduce poverty by generating economic growth and creating jobs.”40 In the case of Lee Kuan Yew, the works of Frederick Hayek played an important role in reinforcing his beliefs about the free market. Hayek is arguably the leading intellectual figure in neoliberal thought. According to Lee Kuan Yew, Hayek’s book The Fatal Conceit: Errors of Socialism, “expressed with clarity and authority what I had long felt but was unable to express, namely the unwisdom of powerful intellectuals, including Albert Einstein, when they believed that a powerful brain can devise a better system and bring about more ‘social justice’ than what historical evolution, or economic Darwinism, has been able to work out over the centuries.”41 If economic Darwinism were true, then economic man understood as the rational maximizer of his self-interest would seem to be the most evolved form of the human species. Furthermore the new or knowledge economy has encouraged the belief that a nation’s survival in the global economy depends on its ability “to mobilise talent, attract, and retain human creative talent.”42 It could be said that the political thinking of the PAP government reflects this economic imperative. The political and administrative leadership sees itself as part of an exclusive class of global meritocratic elites engaged in an intensely competitive knowledge driven economy. In terms of wealth generation, there is no difference between running a successful corporation or a country. A 2000 report revealed that “51 of the world’s largest economies were corporations; just 49 were countries.”43 Singapore government leaders have on occasion made reference to the country as “Singapore Inc.”

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Thus, the market-based salary system is the natural culmination of the instrumental logic that governs economic development and informs much of policy making in Singapore. Within the neoliberal context the salary system raises the question: why should those who create wealth or bring economic benefit to others not be duly rewarded or materially benefitted, especially since all humans are fundamentally economic beings motivated by their selfish material interests? Indeed this appears to be the reason why the new formula is not applied to top public officers, some of whom earn more than a junior minister. The reason according to government is that top public officers “are professionals and hence should not be subjected to the same degree of sacrifice as political appointment holders.”44 That being the case, there is now concern that top public servants may not be motivated to take up political office because of the sacrifice it entails. But the marketbased logic also makes it difficult to understand why it is necessary for the element of sacrifice to be imposed on ministers, and this difficulty continues to generate controversy about the nature and implications of the salary system. III. NEW AUTHORITARIANISM AND MERITOCRATIC ELITISM

Lee Kuan Yew has been an imposing figure in Singapore politics, and although he stepped down from government many of his view and beliefs continue to influence the thinking of the government. He has always believed that the role of the talented elite was decisive in transforming Singapore. It is ultimately up to the talented few to decide “the shape of things to come.”45 For a long time Lee stood at the pinnacle of the elite hierarchy, empowering his ministers and top public officers to effect fundamental transformation of the city state. To accomplish this goal “no limits were set on state action, intervention and regulation.” Lee would go on to say that Singapore “would not have made the economic progress if we had not intervened in every personal matter-who your neighbor is, how you live, the noise you make, how you spit, or what language you use.”46 As far back as 1962, he had said: “If I were in Singapore indefinitely, without having to ask those who are governed whether they like what is being done, then I have not the slightest doubt that I could govern more effectively in their own interests.47 Echoing a similar sentiment, Goh as prime minister in 1999 said: “[you] must believe that the PAP knows best. If you don’t believe

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in that, then we have no business being in government. Having said that, it doesn’t mean we have a monopoly of views. We know best, but we listen to views from elsewhere. If the views are sensible, we co-opt them as our own-or make them into our policies. So that’s also part of knowing best. But in the end, I believe that we are the people who can make the best judgment of where Singapore should go.”48 This unshakeable faith in its ability is based on the government’s successful management and development of the economy since independence. The Singapore government is considered one of the pioneers of state capitalism, which is currently held to be the better alternative to free-market capitalism.49 But it is important to recall that the dominant role that the government plays in the economy and politics has much to do with circumstances surrounding Singapore’s independence in 1965. The dire conditions at that time – economic uncertainty, communal tensions, and social unrest – were exploited by the PAP government to engage in policies to neutralize opposition politics and to circumscribe the power of trade unions, all in the name of stability and economic development. For a city-state with limited natural resources to survive in an uncertain geopolitical environment, rapid economic development was an imperative. Accordingly, the PAP government along with a reformed civil service embarked on a coordinated and comprehensive strategy to modernize and industrialize the country. The aggressive and high-handed way in which it went about transforming the country contributed to its reputation as an authoritarian regime. However, improvements in the employment situation as well as the government’s provision of basic services in housing, education, and health care helped over time to mitigate discontent among the people. In addition to policies designed to attract multinational corporations, the government also engaged in business development through GLCs to grow the economy. It is estimated that GLCs contribute up to 60 percent of the national GDP. With the emergence of the new economy and more intense global competition, the government gradually liberalized the economy. In response to the global competition for talent policies were introduced to make the country an attractive place for talented foreigners to work and play in. The government gradually eased up on restrictive social policies. Rules governing censorship and homosexuality, for example, were relaxed. These liberalization policies helped to soften the authoritarian image of the regime. Despite these improvements, opposition politics continues to be seen as a threat if not a distraction to the long-term developmental

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goals of the state. Although ostensibly a parliamentary democracy, the PAP government has policies in place that severely impede the activities of the opposition and civil society groups. Cherian George has noted that coercion continues to be one of the instruments that the PAP government uses to regulate dissent and to ensure its political dominance. Coercion, however, is used in an intelligent or calibrated manner to ensure that it does not provoke widespread public outrage.50 David Kampfner in turn characterizes Singapore as the model of “new authoritarianism” which he describes in the following terms: Repression was selective, confined to those who openly challenged the status quo. The number of people who fell into that category was actually very few. . . . The rest of the population could enjoy freedom to travel, to live more or less as they wished and to make and spend their money. This was the difference between public freedoms and private, or privatised, freedoms. For many people this presented an attractive proposition. After all, how many members of the public going about their daily lives, wish to challenge the structures of power? One can more easily than one realises be lulled into thinking that one is sufficiently free.51

This understanding of the character of the new authoritarianism is meant as an attempt by Kampfner to answer the question: “Why is it that so many people around the world appear willing to give up freedoms in return for either security or prosperity?”52 According to Kampfner, many people living in Western liberal democracies are attracted to the model of governance pioneered by Singapore. David Harvey has drawn attention to “how neoliberalization in authoritarian states such as China and Singapore seems to be converging with the increasing authoritarianism evident in neoliberal states such as the US and Britain.”53 What neoliberal states have in common is a distrust of democracy, a preference for the rule of elites and the maintenance of market freedoms. In the case of the PAP government, the importance of this apparent convergence should not be underestimated as it serves as a further vindication and hence legitimation of its mode of elite governance. In recent years, many scholars, officials as well as journalists and public intellectuals from both East and West, have sought to play down the authoritarian character of the Singapore regime while extolling its model of economic growth and political stability. Matt Miller writing for the Washington Post says:

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Yes, I know, Singapore still denies press and assembly freedoms we take for granted. . . . But a few days spent talking with officials, business people, students and government critics in the city-state that now boasts one of the world’s highest per capita incomes have deepened my admiration for Singapore’s accomplishments. . . . The place is a policy’s wonk’s paradise. Thanks to what may be a historically unique blend of dedicated, highly educated technocrats and the “luxury” of decades of one-party rule, the Government has always taken the long view. Pragmatic problem-solving is its creed. Benevolent dictatorship never looked so good.54

An article in The Economist notes that “Singapore is important to any study of government just now, both in the West and in Asia . . . because there is an emerging theory about a superior Asian model of government.”55 The article then goes on to add that the PAP governments “authoritarianism and its industrial policy . . . are less vital to its success than two more humdrum virtues: a good civil service and a competitively small state.” Singapore’s civil service stands out because unlike “the egalitarian Western public sector, Singapore follows an elitist model, paying those at the top $2 m a year or more. It spots talented youngsters early, lures them with scholarships and keeps investing in them.” Many of these articles trace the success of the Singapore model to its market-based system of rewarding its ministers and top public officers. As a recent Bloomberg editorial puts it: “[lets] applaud Singapore for what it’s trying to achieve by paying top salaries to leaders and ministers: attracting the best and brightest to public service and reducing the temptation to engage in graft.”56 But writers who praise the system seldom report how controversial the policy has been and what it may have done to transform the nature of the relationship between government and people, and how it has had an impact on the perception of the moral character of the ruling elite. IV. PROBLEMS WITH THE NEOLIBERAL MERITOCRATIC ELITES

A. Darwinian Economic Warriors As neoliberalism encourages the distrust of democracy and privileges the rule of experts, it also contributes to the attitude of elitism among the leaders in Singapore. Former top civil servant Ngiam Tong Dow has noticed “a particular brand of Singapore elite arrogance creeping in.

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Some civil servants behave like they have a mandate from the emperor. We think we are little Lee Kuan Yews.”57 Eddie Teo who recently retired as head of the civil service has acknowledged concerns about the elitist attitudes of scholars. He admits that some of them have “allowed success to go to their heads” and have given the service a bad name.58 He has also noticed some reluctance among scholars to take up ground postings, raising the fear that “more and more of them may become divorced from ground issues and will start to lose empathy for ordinary Singaporeans.” He felt it was necessary to remind scholars not to look down on non-scholars. Ministers too have been accused of arrogance and failing to be in touch with the people. Talented Singaporeans are told that they are sought after by the top global companies in the relentless war for talent. As top public servants are constantly compared with successful professionals in the private sector, they come to believe that they are part of a global elite. Members of this exclusive group are “hardworking, highly educated, jet-setting meritocrats who feel that they are the deserving winners of a tough, worldwide economic competition – and many of them, as a result, have an ambivalent attitude towards those of us who didn’t succeed so spectacularly.”59 The infamous case of Wee Shu Min serves as a telling instance of the disdainful attitude toward ordinary people. Writing in her blog in 2006 Ms. Wee, then a humanities scholar at an elite junior college, criticized a young executive who expressed concerns in his blog about competition from foreigners and the lack of job opportunities for older workers: mom’s friend sent her some blog post by some bleeding stupid 40-year old singaporean called derek wee . . . whining about how singapore is such an insecure place . . . too often singaporeans . . . kid themselves into believing that our society, like most others, is compartmentalized by breeding. ridiculous. we are a tyranny of the capable and the clever, and the only other class is the complement . . . derek, derek, derek darling, how can you expect to have an iron ricebowl or a solid future if you cannot spell? . . . if you’re not good enough, life will kick you in the balls. that’s just how things go. there’s no point in lambasting the government for making our society one that is, i quote, “far too survival of fittest” . . . then again, it’s easy for me to say. my future isn’t certain but i guess right now it’s a lot brighter than most people’s. derek will read this and brand me as an 18-year old elite, one of the sinners who will inherit the country and run his stock to the gutter. go ahead. the world is about winners and losers . . . dear derek is one of many

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wretched, undermotivated, overassuming leeches in our country, and in this world. One of those who would prefer to be unemployed and wax lyrical about how his myriad talents are being abandoned for the foreigner’s . . . please, get out of my elite uncaring face.60

When the newspaper brought this blog to light, it created a public uproar. Ms. Wee’s father was obliged to intervene on behalf of his beleaguered daughter. In an interview he said: I think if you cut through the insensitivity of the language, her basic point is reasonable, that is a well-educated university graduate who works for a multinational company should not be bemoaning the Government and get on with the challenges of life. Nonetheless, I have counselled her to learn from it. Some people cannot take the brutal truth and that sort of language, so she ought to learn from it.61

The publication of the interview caused even more general unhappiness, leading the father to issue a public apology: “I am sorry that my statements . . . offended some readers. I should not have said what I did about people’s inability to take the brutal truth and strong language. . . . I have also counselled my daughter . . . she is fully aware and remorseful over her tone, insensitivity and lack of empathy.”62 The reason the Wee Shu Min case became such a huge scandal was that her father, Mr. Wee Siew Kim, was not only a scholar, but the head of a GLC and a member of parliament. His notion of the brutal truth is no doubt made in reference to the remarks “the world is about winners and losers” and “if you’re not good enough, life will kick you in the balls.” And in stating that he should not have said what he said about the brutal truth, he implied that he continued to believe in it. The statement thus implies that scholars of his caliber have the character and ability to deal with the brutal truths about the world. The elder Wee’s view of himself is strikingly similar to those of successful and highly competitive professionals and business people around the world, especially in the United States. Take, for instance, Donald Trump’s somewhat facetious description of his baby boy: “He’s strong, he’s smart, he’s tough, he’s vicious, he’s violent . . . all of the ingredients you need to be an entrepreneur.”63 Another, more serious, example is found in one of the recovered tapes of phone conversations between Enron traders about the value of economic competition: “It weeds out the weak people in the market. Get rid of ’em and you know what? The people who are strong will stick around.”64 It is also

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noteworthy that a recent book consisting of interviews with Lee Kuan Yew is titled Hard Truths. There thus appears to be a tendency among successful people, including powerful political elites in Singapore, to portray themselves as winners in an exaggerated Darwinian struggle for economic survival. Belief in their own superiority makes them prone to anger, or, more precisely, moral indignation, when they are challenged or criticized by their inferiors. Moreover, the petty concerns of the common people distract from the more urgent affairs of state. In this regard, the youthful rantings of Ms. Wee may not be all that innocent. She is genuinely angry with weak and stupid people making unreasonable demands on people like her. Not so much their arrogance but their righteous anger and the corresponding desire to punish are the more troubling flaws of such elites. In the recent election Lee Kuan Yew sternly admonished those who supported the opposition that they would have “five years to live and repent.” The remark implied that “it was a ‘sin’ and that it was ‘wrong’” not to vote for the PAP, and that those who voted for the opposition would eventually be punished.65 Needless to say, that remark only served to provoke the anger of the public. However, only time will tell if that remark is one of those hard truths or harsh realities of political life in Singapore.66 B. The Denigration of Honour and Sacrifice The notion of sacrifice has always emerged as a contentious point in the debate on ministerial salaries. K. Shanmugam, the current Minister of Foreign Affairs and the Minister of Law, argued in 2007 that it was unreasonable for ministers to make any financial sacrifice: Why do we demand financial sacrifice from those going into public service? Is that the most sensible way of showing one’s commitment to the country? It is surely more logical to make sure money is a neutral factor. Qualified people should be able to make the choice of public service based solely on whether they have the ability, character and commitment to make a difference to society – not whether they have to make a financial sacrifice. Taking the arguments made by the critics at face value, a minister has to have all the analytical qualities and energy of a top private sector performer, and on top of that a strong sense of public spiritedness. That is, ministers should be more capable and more all rounded than private sector high-flyers. Where then is

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the logic in saying ministers should get less than private sector top performers?67

But Shanmugam has not only argued against the need for making a financial sacrifice, he has questioned the very idea of sacrifice itself: [A] point that is often made – that public office involves substantial public service and must therefore be a sacrifice. If you look at how this concept of public service came about, you will see how much it is bound by hypocrisy. This concept was developed at a time when one had to be an aristocrat to be in power. The somewhat patronising approach was that the aristocrats had to do their bit for society by taking on political office. Office holding in truth meant power and through power, serious wealth.68

In defending the salary system, Lee Kuan Yew has also denigrated the notion of honour in political life . He questions the popular belief that office is for honour: “it is not. To do it for one term is an honour”.69 He is fond of citing American examples to prove the point that politicians are motivated by material self-interest. In America those who serve in office for longer than one term are invariably doing so for private gain: “Alan Greenspan (former Federal Reserve chairman) – he made his fortune as a financial analyst. He did his three, four terms, made a tremendous name for himself. He’s making a fortune outside because of his varied experiences and the network he made while he was Fed chairman.” Bob Rubin, Hank Paulson, Lawrence Summers and Tim Geithner are all similarly motivated. The only exception is Paul Volcker “an unusual man. He’s a very able man. He had a very small salary. I once asked him, ‘Why do you do this?’ He said, ‘In Princeton, we were nurtured to be of value to society.’ And even when he retired, he didn’t go and make money.” Lee Kuan Yew has said that if he were 30 years old today he would not be inclined to join the government: “Why should I? I lose my privacy. What do I get out of it? Brickbats. I can go into a profession. My brother, as a lawyer, made over $100 million dollars.”70 This surprising remark has profound implications for the character of political life in Singapore. What is so unattractive about the current state of political life that Lee Kuan Yew would be willing to sacrifice being the statesman Lee Kuan Yew to become like his brother and amass a modest fortune of $100 million dollars? Ironically this would be a sacrifice of huge

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proportions. After all Lee Kuan Yew is known and widely respected by the wealthiest and most powerful people in the world and his place in history is assured. Why would he give that all up to become an unexceptional lawyer and businessman? Political life has surely given Lee Kuan Yew unique opportunities to realise aspects of his character and abilities that would otherwise not show if he were a mere businessman, banker, or lawyer. So the puzzle is why Lee Kuan Yew would preclude the possibility that the current state of politics would provide opportunities for a person of exceptional ability to realise and manifest the rare and admirable qualities of an excellent statesman? One possible explanation is that the salary system has so altered the political landscape that it has become increasingly difficult if not impossible for political leaders to convince the public of their noble intentions: [Many] Singaporeans (apart from the few hundred who earn milliondollar salaries themselves) have ceased thinking about ministers’ pay as involving “sacrifice.” Instead, they have come to see the salaries as market-based compensation to reduce the career opportunity cost of those who choose political office. This is a rational principle, defensible intellectually as well as morally . . . What is harder to accept is when the PAP Government wants to have its cake and eat it too: Peg ministers’ pay to top private sector executives, and in the same breadth desire the same kind of moral authority an older generation of leaders enjoyed. . . . As a post-Independence Singaporean, I don’t expect ministers to be paupers. . . . But I also do not consider ministers superior moral beings before whose altar citizens should bow in gratitude for their “sacrifice.” . . . The rhetoric of “sacrifice” was for a different era. Talk about performance – and commensurate pay – today.71

The person who wrote these words is a well-regarded journalist with The Straits Times. She too is a former scholar. What is interesting about her remarks, written in 2007, was the attempt to contrast the older and younger generation of ministers. Her views reflect those of a retired top civil servant who regards Lee Kuan Yew and his cabinet as “selfless men, sacrificing promising careers for an uncertain future in politics” and who considers the salary system as one that is “selfserving.”72 Chua’s attitude toward the new generation of ministers has obviously been coloured by the salary issue. But in this case, the context suggests that she cannot exclude Lee Kuan Yew from those ministers she does not consider to be “superior in moral virtue.”73 The salary system effectively reduces Lee Kuan Yew’s stature in the eyes of citizens. This

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might also explain why many of them have become increasingly bold and open in criticizing him. The same leveling attitude is noted in the Bloomberg editorial mentioned earlier: “Singapore’s prime minister Lee Hsien Loong isn’t often taken publicly to task. But when you make $3.1 million dollars a year to run a country, people tend to expect results. When they don’t get them, the aggrieved masses turn to that lowest-of-common-denominator gripes: Hey, how much are we paying this guy?” One problem with the salary system is that it has not been successful in attracting entrepreneurs or top professionals from the public sector. It may even discourage these if its underlying assumptions were true. For if pay is a motivation then even the high level of minister’s salary would seem modest from a private sector perspective. The other related problem is that it may actually discourage those of a more public-spirited or noble-minded disposition, for it would be difficult for such people to dispel suspicion that money was a motivation for public service. The salary system thus shrinks the pool from which the most talented and promising leaders can be found. The more serious problem may have to do with the fact that the salary system clearly limits the moral authority of political leader: for they are treated no differently from honest and skillful business or economic actors. Moreover, the salary system encourages the people to relate to the government on the basis of mutual self-interest rather than on some lofty notion of the common good. V. DEMOCRATIC REACTION TO MERITOCRATIC ELITES

The General Election of 2011 has been widely regarded as a watershed event in Singapore politics. The PAP garnered 60.1 percent of the votes and secured 81 out of 87 seats in Parliament. In the context of Western democracies, this would be hailed as a landslide victory. Yet for the PAP government, this was a humbling if not humiliating result. The share of votes it won was the lowest since independence. This was also the first time that the government lost a Group Representative Constituency (GRC). Introduced in 1988, a GRC comprises a team of parliamentarians with at least one member from a minority ethnic group. For the PAP government, the loss of the GRC in question was particularly costly because the team included three ministers, including the highly regarded Minister of Foreign Affairs, George Yeo.74 On the other hand, the election gave the opposition the most number of

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seats since independence. This was a hotly contested election with the opposition fielding many credible and highly qualified candidates, including a few scholars.75 The election brought into the open widespread anger and resentment at the policies and attitude of the government. The government was compelled to acknowledge mistakes it had made in the recent past including the escape of a terrorist from a high-security facility, the city’s susceptibility to flash floods because of rapid urbanization, as well as high home prices and the overcrowding of trains and buses. Several of these problems were consequences of economic policies that led to sharp increases in the numbers of foreign workers, which depressed wages of low-income workers and contributed to a widening income gap. In the course of campaigning, the prime minister took the unprecedented step of making a public apology to the people, promising that the government would learn from its mistakes and change its attitude in relating to the people. The first policy initiative that the new cabinet undertook was to order a review of minsters’ salary, which led to a substantial pay cut for all ministers. The government then moved quickly to address problems with public housing and transport and announced more measures to help low income workers. Following the elections, ministers could be seen assessing the situation on the ground whenever there was a serious flood or a train disruption. On a number of occasions, the minister of transport was photographed joining ordinary Singaporeans on the bus and on the train as they commuted to and from work. Other ministers would make unannounced visits to schools, hospitals, nursing homes, and even foreign worker dormitories. To further reinforce its efforts to reconnect with the people, the government has launched an initiative to conduct a national conversation on the future of the country. To assure the people that the government means to be inclusive, the committee overseeing includes a representative from the disabled community, a student, and a taxi driver.76 Two events following the elections indicate that the government would need to sustain its efforts at engaging the public to regain the trust and confidence of a significant segment of the population. The first is the presidential elections that took place three months after the general election in 2011. There were four candidates contesting the post, three of whom were associated with the PAP. The fourth was a candidate from the opposition Singapore Democratic Party. The two candidates that stood out were Tony Tan and Tan Cheng Bock. As a

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former long-standing minister, Tony Tan represented the elitist side of the PAP, and his rival, a former PAP member of parliament popular with grassroots leaders, represented ordinary citizens. Tony Tan was the preferred choice of the government. But he became president by winning only 35.2 percent of votes. Tan Cheng Bock received 34.8 percent of votes. In other words, almost as many pro-PAP voters voted against the government’s preferred candidate. The second event was a by election that occurred some months later. This election was held in an opposition ward after its MP was sacked over allegations of marital infidelity. The ensuing campaign also saw the opposition party in some disarray. Yet the Workers’ Party candidate eventually prevailed with a strong return in the polls, an outcome that caught analysts by surprise. Although many credited the victory to the loyalty voters had for the leader of the Workers’ Party, others noted that the aggressive questioning of the opposition candidate’s character may have been counterproductive: “It reminded voters that the PAP has not changed.”77 These three elections reveal the depth and extent of unhappiness with a government that has lost touch with its people. They are all the more important in view of the many obstacles the PAP government has placed on the opposition and on the development of democratic politics in Singapore. Despite these difficulties, the opposition managed to make impressive gains in the elections. The recent elections demonstrate how democracy can help to restore a sense of reality to an elite that may have been carried away by its own perceived notions of success – in this case, economic success validated by powerful and influential international actors and organizations. In the case of Singapore, it has forced an elitist government to be more sensitive and responsive to the needs and concerns of ordinary citizens. But it is well worth noting in this regard that even as he apologized to the people for the mistakes of government, the prime minister was compelled to remind them that “[o]verall, the Singapore government has been right more often than wrong, and the PAP has been right more than it has been wrong, because otherwise we would not be here today. Singapore would not be here today.”78 VI. CONCLUSION

The model of political meritocracy practiced in Singapore ensures a clean and efficient government. Its effectiveness in promoting

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economic growth shows that the system of selecting the right people for the job is robust and reliable. But the Singapore case also shows that honest and competent leaders are not immune to the seductions of an exaggerated sense of self and a distorted sense of reality. More worryingly, they can be so distracted by success as to lose touch with the people. The “Achilles heel of a meritocratic system,” according to retired top civil servant Ngaim Tong Dow, “is that over time, the elite becomes inward-looking and disdainful of the people they lead.”79 Having honest and competent leaders is not a guarantee that government would be sensitive and responsive to the needs and concerns of citizens, especially in the context of a dominant party system.80 The general elections of 2011 thus demonstrate the importance of democracy as a mechanism to check the excesses of a self-absorbed and overachieving political meritocracy. The sobering experience of the recent elections has also led the government to caution that “extreme meritocracy and competition can lead to a winner-take-all society, with the winners thinking little of others. We need to restore a balance to hard-nosed material pragmatism.”81 In Singapore, there is no group that is more hard-nosed in its “material pragmatism” than the PAP government. It is precisely this pragmatism that dictates that the government “should pay whatever is necessary to assemble the best team for Singapore.”82 The consequence of this salary system is that it has altered the fundamental nature of the relation between the government and the people. It does not help that in promoting the virtues of the salary system the government has undermined belief in traditional notions of honour and sacrifice. This not only limits its moral authority, it also constrains its ability to exhort or inspire the people to transcend its narrow, materialistic selfinterest. That the government continues to believe it has been more right than wrong is also a source of concern. It betrays a sense of complacency among skilled technocrats who seem to have the enviable task of managing the problems of success rather than the problems of failure.83 But the problems of success may prove to be more intractable to purely technical solutions. In the context of a country still engaged in the monumental task of nation-building these problems may require a less pragmatic and more idealistic orientation. Already the present leaders are handicapped in that they can neither reach nor inspire others to reach the peaks of excellence of the “founding fathers” of the country. The very pragmatism of the regime has limited the possibilities of

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human excellence and hence of human flourishing. In this regard, it could be said that although it has been and continues to be elitist, the PAP government may not be elitist enough for the more challenging and noble task of building a nation worthy of the respect and admiration of the wise and virtuous. notes

1. For further accounts of the lack of corruption in Singapore, see Jeffrey A. Winters, Oligarchy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011); Natasha Hamilton-Hart, “The Singapore State Re-visited,” The Pacific Review, vol. 13 (2000), pp. 195–216. Also Alfred Oehlers, “Corruption: the peculiarities of Singapore,” Corruption and Good Governance, in Asia edited by Nicholas Tarling (London: Routledge, 2005), pp. 149–64. 2. Jon Quah, Public Administration Singapore Style (Bingley: Emerald Group, 2010). 3. T. J. Bellows, “Meritocracy and the Singapore Political System,” Asian Journal of Political Science, vol. 17 (2009), p. 26. 4. Lee Kuan Yew, From Third World to First: The Singapore Story, 1965–2000 (Singapore: Times Editions, 2000), p. 736. 5. The phrase was coined by writer Catherine Lim in an article that called attention to the estrangement between the government and the people. The article provoked an unusually strong government response, see Kenneth Paul Tan, “Who’s Afraid of Catherine Lim? The State in Patriarchal Singapore,” Asian Studies Review, vol. 33 (2009), pp. 43–62. 6. Khai Leong Ho, Shared Responsibilities, Unshared Power: The Politics of PolicyMaking in Singapore (Singapore: Eastern University Press, 2003), pp. 44. 7. Lee Hsien Loong, “Education as the Hook to Reel In, Retain Talent.” The Straits Times, April 12, 2011, S12. 8. There are three major examinations: the Primary School Leaving Examination (PSLE) and the Cambridge General Certificate of Examination (GCE) at the O (ordinary) and A (advanced) levels. The PSLE is taken at the end of six years of primary education when most of the pupils are about 12 years old. The GCE O level is taken at the end of a four- or five-year secondary education, mostly by pupils who are 16 years of age. The GCE A level is taken at the end of junior college by pupils who are 18 years old. 9. Fook Kwang Han et al., Lee Kuan Yew: Hard Truths to Keep Singapore Going (Singapore: The Straits Times Press, 2011), p. 110. 10. Chua Mui Hoong, “How Meritocracy Can Breed Intellectual Elitism,” The Straits Times, November 10, 2006, p. 37. 11. Han, op. cit., p. 132. 12. Ibid., pp. 132–3. 13. Goh Chin Lian, “Want a PSC Scholarship? Be Yourself,” The Straits Times, July 25, 2009, A3. 14. Cf. Joseph Chan’s discussion of the selection of the talented and virtuous through competitive examinations in Ch. 1 of this volume.

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15. See Teo, Eddie, “What the PSC Wants in Its Scholars” The Straits Times, July 25, 2009B, A37. 16. Quah, op. cit., p. 93. 17. See Han et al. 2011, op. cit. 18. See Diane K. Mauzy and R. S. Milne, Singapore’s Politics under the People’s Action Party (London: Routledge, 2002). 19. Han 2011, op. cit., p. 121. 20. See Hamilton-Hart, op. cit. 21. The system of assessing individuals was based on Shell’s personnel management system, including its staff appraisal system; see Quah, op. cit., pp. 79–82. 22. See Han 2011, op. cit.; Mauzy & Milne, op. cit. 23. Han 2011, op. cit., pp. 100–1. 24. Michael D. Barr and Zlatko Skrbiˇs, Constructing Singapore: Elitism, Ethnicity and the Nation-Building Project (Denmark: Nordic Institute of Asian Studies Press, 2010), p. 66. 25. Worthington, Ross, Governance in Singapore (London: Routledge Curzon, 2003), p. 275. 26. Lynn Lee, “Ministers Graded Stringently, Only Two Got Full Bonus,” The Straits Times, April 12, 2007, H7. 27. Lee Hsien Loong, “A Very Difficult, Emotional Issue,” The Straits Times, January 18, 2012, A11. Elsewhere Prime Minister Lee has said that “in a meritocratic society, earning power corresponds to ability” (cited in Michael Barr and Zlatko Skrbiˇs, op. cit., p. 208). 28. Lee Hsien Loong, “Maintaining a First-Class Public Service,” The Straits Times, March 23, 2007, H12. 29. Quah 2010, op. cit., p. 124. 30. Lee Hsien Loong, “It’s Not Just About Pay, It’s About Securing Bright Future,” The Straits Times, April 12, 2007, p. 31. 31. The salary review applies to the president, prime minister, political appointment holders, and members of Parliament. It does not apply to top civil service officers. 32. Janice Heng, “Salaries to be Based on Larger Pool of Top Income Earners,” The Straits Times, January 5, 2012, A6. 33. These figures are close to salary levels prior to the 2007 revisions. 34. The New National Bonus will comprise four measures: (1) real growth rate of citizens’ median income, (2) real growth rates of incomes of the bottom 20 percent of citizens, (3) unemployment rate of citizens, and (4) real GDP growth rate. 35. Andrea Ong, “Pay Review Both Half Full and Half Empty,” The Straits Times, January 17, 2012A, A13. 36. Beng Huat Chua, “Singapore in 2007: High Wage Ministers and the Management of Gays and Elderly,” Asian Survey, vol. 48 (2008), p. 55. 37. See Ch. 11 of this volume. 38. Harvey, David, A Brief History of NeoLiberalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 2. 39. Ibid., p. 3. 40. He is listed by Foreign Policy magazine as one of the one hundred global thinkers of 2010 and 2011.

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41. Fook Kwang Han et al., Lee Kuan Yew: The Man and His Ideas (Singapore: The Straits Times Press, 1998), p. 159. Hayek too is an elitist, although he would not have approved of Lee Kuan Yew’s version of it. Nonetheless, like Lee Kuan Yew, Hayek believed that “most things of value in the development of civilization were the work of minorities” (Sor-hoon Tan, “Beyong Elitism: A Community Ideal for a Modern East Asia,” Philosophy East and West, vol. 59 (2009), p. 540; cf. Michael D. Barr, Lee Kuan Yew: The Beliefs Behind the Man (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2000), p. 112. 42. Richard Florida, The Flight of the Creative Class (New York: Harper Business, 2005), p. 3. 43. Ian Bremmer, The End of the Free Market: Who Wins the War between States and Corporations? (New York: Portfolio, 2010), p. 17. 44. Andrea Ong, “Should Civil Servants Be Paid More Than Ministers?” The Straits Times, January 17, 2012B, A13. 45. Barr 2000, op. cit., p. 97. 46. Raj Vasil, Governing Singapore: A History of National Development and Democracy (St Leonards: Allen & Unwin, 2000), p. 51. 47. Han 1998, op. cit., p. 131. 48. Ho, op. cit., p 126. It might be useful to compare this with Tongdong Bai’s criticism of democracy in this volume, in particular the view that voters may not be the best judge of their own interests, see chapter 00. 49. See ‘The Rise of State Capitalism’ in The Economist 21 January 2012. 50. George, Cherian, “Consolidating authoritarian rule: calibrated coercion in Singapore,” The Pacific Review, vol. 20 (2007), pp. 127–45. 51. John Kampfner, Freedom for Sale: How We Made Money and Lost Our Liberty (London: Simon & Shuster, 2009), p. 5. 52. Ibid., p. 1. 53. Harvey, op. cit., p. 81. 54. Matt Miller, “The S’pore Take Away for Uncle Sam,” The Straits Times, May 5, 2012, A38. 55. The Economist, “Go East, young bureaucrat: emerging Asia can teach the West a lot about government,” May 17, 2011. http://www.economist.com/node/ 18359852. 56. “S’pore Has the Cleanest Govt Citizens Can Buy,” Bloomberg editorial reprinted in The Straits Times, January 27, 2012, A24. 57. Ngiam, Tong Dow, A Mandarin and the Making of Public Policy: Reflections by Ngiam Tong Dow, introduced and edited by Simon Tay (Singapore NUS Press, 2006), p. 24. 58. Defending Scholarships but Not All Scholars, address by Eddie Teo, Chairman, Public Service Commission at the Singapore Seminar in London on October 31, 2009. Available at http://www.pscscholarships.gov.sg/content/pscsch/ default/outreach/media/speeches/singsem 23Oct20101.html. 59. Chrystia Freeland, The Rise of the New Global Elite, The Atlantic (Jan/Feb 2011). Available at http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/01/therise-of-the-new-global-elite/308343/. 60. See http://www.thefullwiki.org/Wee Shu Min elitism scandal. 61. Siew Kim Wee, “A Lesson Learnt, Says MP and Dad Wee Siew Kim,” The Straits Times, October 4, 2006, H5.

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62. Ken Kwek, “Wee Siew Kim Apologises for Remarks,” The Straits Times, October 26, 2006, H4. 63. See http://www.usatoday.com/life/people/2007–01–16-trump_x.htm. 64. Alex Gibney (director and producer), Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room [Documentary] (Magnolia Pictures, 2005). 65. Peng Er Lam, “The Voters Speak: Voices, Choices and Implications,” in Voting in Change: Politics of Singapore’s 2011 General Elections, edited by Kevin YL Tan and Terence Lee (Singapore: Ethos Books, 2011), p. 183. 66. Following a recent by-election in May 2012, the leader of the Workers’ Party accused the government of engaging in “baseless attacks, distractions, character assassinations, and veiled threats of using government resources as a carrot and stick to coerce voters.” Available at http://www.asiaone.com/ News/Latest%2BNews/Singapore/Story/A1Story20120527-348648.html. 67. K. Shanmugam, “Why Do We Demand Financial Sacrifice From Those Going Into Public Service?” The Straits Times, April 11, 2007, H5. More recently Lee Kuan Yew has argued that Singapore society has changed: “the political scenario in going forward has altered. They [the new generation of leaders] see no reason why they should make this [financial] sacrifice” (Han 2011, op. cit., p. 127). 68. Shanmugam 2007, op. cit. 69. Han et al., 2011, op. cit., p. 122. 70. Ibid., p. 126. 71. Chua, 2007, op. cit., H9. 72. Ngaim Tong Dow, “Winning Back Public Trust after the GE.” The Straits Times, July 2, 2011, A36. 73. Writing about a recent policy initiative Chua says that it would “a good start, if this generation of PAP leaders recognizes that citizens are indeed equal to the government and act as though respect cuts both ways.” Chua Mui Hoong, “I Want to Attend Our SG Dialogue in Teochew,” The Sunday Times, September 9, 2012, p. 41. 74. Following the elections of 2011, both Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew and Senior Minister Goh Chok Tong resigned from cabinet. 75. The caliber of these candidates undermined the government’s vaunted claims about its ability to find and recruit the best candidates. 76. Ministers and PAP MPs are represented in the committee, but no member of the opposition was included. 77. Jessica Cheam, “Analysts Surprised at WP’s margin,” The Sunday Times, May 27, 2012, p. 4. 78. Lydia Lim, “PM Says Sorry,” The Straits Times, May 4, 2011, A6. This is perhaps the main reason the idea of a second chamber of the wise and virtuous proposed by Daniel Bell may not work in the Singapore context. Singapore leaders are not likely to accept the idea of a class of persons that is superior or more enlightened than the government; see Daniel Bell, Beyond Liberal Democracy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006); also sections in Joseph Chan as well as Tongong Bai’s chapters in this volume that address Bell’s idea of the second chamber. 79. Janice Heng, “Elite Should Trust Electorate, Says Retired Top Civil Servant,” The Straits Times, September 16, 2012B, B14. He also believes that fears that

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82. 83.

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politics might take a populist turn in Singapore are unwarranted on the grounds that “our population is more hard-headed than what the elite gives them credit for.” See Ruiping Fan’s chapter of this volume on the importance of the question of how leaders should lead society. Heng 2012B, op. cit. Speech by Mr. Heng Swee Keat, minister for education, at the National Day Rally on August 26, 2012, at the University Cultural Centre, available at: http://www.moe.gov.sg/media/speeches/2012/08/26/ speech-by-mr-heng-swee-keat-mi.php. Lee 2012: op. cit., A11. See Eddie Teo, “Idealistic Citizens Help Push the Bar for Public Servants,” The Sunday Times, October 24, 2010, p. 34.

11 Meritocracy and Political Liberalization in Singapore Kenneth Paul Tan

Along with a pragmatic approach to policy making1 and a deep intolerance for corruption,2 meritocracy has featured prominently in the codification of Singapore’s model of governance.3 Over the course of Singapore’s short history since gaining full independence in 1965, this evolving model has served as a self-conscious consolidation of governmental assumptions, techniques, and relationships identified as essential for Singapore’s survival and success. However, it has also served as an ideologically defensive weapon for countering the liberal-democratic criticisms of a West in need of finding new demons to battle in the post– Cold War world4 as well as a soft power resource that has made some aspects of Singapore’s development experience attractive to increasing numbers of influential admirers in developing as well as advanced countries.5 The basic definition of political meritocracy that underlies most of the essays in this book refers to political leadership by persons with above-average ability to make morally informed political judgments and a process that is designed to select such leaders. But this makes political meritocracy little more than a baggy concept, the intuitive attractiveness of which can obfuscate the problem of what actually counts as merit, who gets to decide what counts as merit, and how it is to be identified and rewarded. Amartya Sen notes that merit is normatively defined by “the preferred view of a good society.”6 In democratic systems of representative government, political elections are viewed – at least in theory – as the means through which “the people” are empowered to decide what counts as “merit” and who possesses enough of it to make them the best leaders. Representativeness is, here, viewed not so much in terms of leaders who say what the people want them to say, but of leaders who have superior ability to make decisions that 314

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are in the best interest of the people they represent, without of course excessively contradicting what the people think they know to be in their best interest. Democratic responsiveness and accountability have never been a straightforward matter, even for staunch liberals wary of the masses.7 Nevertheless, the idea that democracy and meritocracy are compatible is entirely conceivable. On the other hand, Singapore’s political and public service leaders are characterized as having merit in the sense that they have undergone a thorough and competitive process of selection, cultivation, and continual assessment, a process in which the people have, in effect, played only a superficial part, if any at all. Whether viewed in terms of political elections, public participation, or mechanisms of accountability and transparency, democracy has not been regarded as necessary for facilitating, much less safeguarding, Singapore’s meritocracy.8 Instead, the leadership often characterizes democracy as imposing an unnecessary or even dangerous constraint on meritocracy, usually by pointing to caricatured examples of democracies in both the developing and advanced worlds that feature irrational policy making, bureaucratic bloat, high levels of systemic corruption, political deadlock, and debilitating implementation problems. For decades, the People’s Action Party’s (PAP) consistently successful electoral performance, a subtly activist civil society that is highly regulated, and a materially contented citizenry that complies as much as it complains all suggest that this characterization of democracy and meritocracy has attained hegemonic status in the Gramscian sense,9 circumscribing the desire for political liberalization and change anticipated by democratization theorists.10 Diane K. Mauzy and R. S. Milne characterize Singapore’s first prime minister Lee Kuan Yew,11 who retired from the cabinet in 2011 but continues to be an influential parliamentarian and elder statesman, as someone who strongly believes in the importance of meritocracy and talent. . . . Indeed, he regards political talent as the very pinnacle of talent, surpassing any other kind of importance.

Studies on “meritocracy” in Singapore unavoidably focus on Lee: his strong personality and achievements, what he has said (in speeches and interviews), and what he has done (through cultural management, policies, institutional development, legislation, and leadership selection). Admirers often credit Lee’s paternalist and elitist approach as necessary

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for managing Singapore’s development, in the context of what they regard to be unique circumstances.12 More critical studies13 point to specific examples – such as the fact that Lee’s son is the current prime minister and that several members of his family have been in positions of economic and political power – as evidence of how he himself has fallen short of the meritocratic ideal. They also tend to be broadly critical of his harshly elitist, eugenicist, and even racialist understanding of meritocracy. Elsewhere, I have written about Singapore’s institutions of meritocracy such as competitive bonded scholarships and salaries for talent management in the public sector, and the PAP’s methods of selecting and coopting talent for political leadership.14 There have also been studies of Singapore’s meritocratic social institutions, for instance in the education system,15 which also help to explain the institutions of political meritocracy. These are all important parts of the story. But this chapter does not focus on Lee Kuan Yew or the sociopolitical institutions of meritocracy. It instead treats meritocracy as a wider ideological formation (which Lee, in his prime, obviously had a great part in shaping). Meritocracy has served as a powerful ideological resource to maintain the PAP establishment’s hegemony, particularly over the decades of national survival and rapid development. However, in more recent years, evolving circumstances and new social formations bearing alternative perspectives that have come to be more audible and persuasive to a larger segment of Singaporeans savvy with new media have gradually challenged this hegemonic achievement. Capable, until recently, of articulating “equal opportunity” concerns with concerns about “efficiency,” “incentive,” and “reward,” for instance, Singapore’s meritocracy had been characterized by a plasticity that enabled it to contain contradictory tendencies in ways that supported nation building and political legitimacy, including the moral authority of the PAP in government. However, the internal contradictions that seem to be less easily containable due in large part to Singapore’s deepening participation in neoliberal globalization have given rise to new challenges while intensifying older ones in ways that directly confront the discourse and practice of meritocracy. More sophisticated oppositional politics have begun to form around antagonistic social fault lines caused by a more variegated and even divided society. The government’s initial response to these developments hardened a once-plastic ideological hegemony into brittle elitism that has already started to show signs of cracking under pressure. In this regard,

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meritocracy is becoming a dirty word in Singapore. The competition over the meaning of political meritocracy is slowly evolving into a popular challenge against meritocracy itself, understood in purely elitist tones. In this chapter, I discuss how meritocracy in the state’s ideological hegemony has hardened and begun to crack in recent years. But as an ideology that can also evolve and shift as a dynamic result of struggle, cooptation, negotiation, compromise, and reinvention among different classes and social forces, meritocracy is also a reclaimable ideological resource for producing new consensus, redrawing lines of antagonism, reconfiguring power relations, and rebalancing political prospects. In this regard, I examine the role of counter-hegemonic leadership and alternative ideological formations that have congealed around parliamentary elections in May 2011, a watershed moment in which the impact was amplified by the energetic activities in an expanded and politicized new media environment. Although the PAP establishment has also taken steps to catch up in this new media environment, I argue that oppositional politics have, thus, gained significant ground. I. MERITOCRACY AND IDEOLOGICAL HEGEMONY: FROM SURVIVALISM TO DEVELOPMENTALISM

To analyze how the PAP government establishment assumes and maintains moral leadership in Singapore, I use the Gramscian notion of ideological hegemony that focuses not on state coercion but on the continuous persuasive work needed to cultivate intellectuals and organizations in civil society to forge national consensus among diverse classes and social forces.16 Gramscian approaches to hegemony speak of an unending struggle, a dynamic “process of creating and maintaining consensus or of co-ordinating interests” within shifting relations of domination and subordination.17 Contradictory assertions and beliefs are connected and contained in a complex articulation, rendering hegemony inherently unstable, fragile, and dependent on continuous ideological work. Importantly, Gramsci’s thought retains the economy’s relative autonomy, without insisting on the rigid dualism of base and superstructure, associated with orthodox Marxism. This seems appropriate for thinking critically about Singapore, where the economy has always been privileged over, and treated as prior to, other spheres of human and social activity.

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The PAP government’s express proclivity for pragmatism coupled with continual efforts to effect a depoliticization of national leadership, public administration, and the citizenry, have both enabled the various reconstitutions of meritocracy over the decades to connect the egalitarian and social-developmental orientations of socialist modes of thought with concerns about allocative efficiency, incentive to work, and reward for success that conduce to capitalist modes of thought. A pragmatic approach to policy making and governance has meant that elements of both socialist and capitalist orientations can be identified in Singapore’s policy mix and institutional design. The relationship between the two ideologies has not been straightforward, but I argue that the socialist aspect has become more determinedly eclipsed by the capitalist aspect with the deepening of Singapore’s globalization and acceptance of neoliberal capitalist imperatives. In general, both socialism and capitalism (left-liberal varieties in particular) value relative equality of opportunity; but only socialism seriously takes relative inequality of outcomes (for example, income, rank, social position) as a barrier to fair and genuine opportunities, whereas capitalism values a reasonable level of inequality of outcomes as an indicator for efficient resource allocation, an incentive for healthy competition, and a reward for personal effort and achievement. Capitalism, it could be argued, focuses on negative freedom, whereas socialism takes positive freedom seriously.18 One distinct tension in practices of meritocracy involves the notion of nondiscrimination in which people are selected or rewarded without any regard given to differences based on their race, gender, sexuality, age, class, bodies, or life circumstances. Although this may sound appealing on the surface, it becomes clear that ignoring differences that matter only serves to obfuscate their real influence on people’s prospects. If people from fundamentally unequal backgrounds are treated as the same in superficial terms, then a whole invisible edifice of unequal advantages and disadvantages will be concealed even more deeply, thus perpetuating inequality. The losers in such a game are persuaded to blame only themselves for their lack of effort and talent. In multiracial Singapore, this tension presents itself in the highly racialized and colonially inspired understanding of society that undergirds public policies and rhetoric, but also in the way that the racial communities – Chinese (75 percent), Malays (15 percent), Indians (7 percent), and others (3 percent) – are supposed to be treated equally (i.e., as undifferentiated) in the public sphere. Balancing

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nondiscrimination and affirmative action (although this term is never used in Singapore) has been tricky. The social compact seems to have been based on a situation in which the government encourages the most able Singaporeans to excel, while making sure that those at the bottom are leveled up to an acceptable quality of life from which they can be productive members of society. In this way, in theory at least, the pool of human resource talent in resource-scarce Singapore can be widened and continually refreshed, and competition among the top and from the bottom can discourage complacency. In the immediate years following Singapore’s attainment of political independence, the PAP government made a push to consolidate its nation-building and national-development strategy according to a survivalist rationale that was based on an acute sensitivity to the kind of vulnerability afflicting a newly postcolonial and multiethnic small state – in particular, the threat of radical trade unionism, communist subversion, and racial strife.19 Taking over many of the functions that had been left to indigenous community leaders and social organizations during the relatively liberal administration of the colonial government, the PAP government quickly assembled a fully indigenized civil administration that centralized the high-quality provision of housing, education, and health care services, among others. The aim was to raise the standard of living and form a national identity for all Singaporeans who – in accordance with the “social engineering” tendencies of socialist governance – were regarded as socially perfectible.20 The aim, from a political perspective, was also to generate institutions and discourses that could legitimize what would become a solidly hegemonic dominant-party state, on which the citizenry would become dependent. To secure obedience, the government also made public use of the instruments of state repression such as the Internal Security Act that allows for detentions without trial, putting on this armor of coercion to put away its opponents, mainly at the time from the radical left, and generate a lasting climate of fear that stymied political opposition to its rule. The PAP itself identified explicitly with social democracy as its credo, until its resignation from the Socialist International in 1976, following the Dutch Labour Party’s motion to expel the party for its repressive practices.21 Other than political arrests, these repressive practices also broadly included control over the media and limits on press freedoms, suppression of trade union activity and cooptation of trade unions, and the cooptation of grassroots organizations and their proliferation.

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Ironically, the ostensibly socialist state, it could be argued, was also in the business of proletarianizing the masses to be in the service of foreign capital and creating political and social stability that was conducive to foreign investment as well as the PAP’s political longevity. Singapore’s economic development strategy was to rely strongly on multinational companies and government-linked companies, two economic pillars that effectively crowded out domestic capital that was already relatively weak and a potential support for political opposition.22 Singapore’s survivalist state in the late-1960s evolved into a developmental state by the mid-1970s, equipped with an economic bureaucracy that was, typically, embedded in the economy but insulated from social pressures. The bureaucracy demonstrably directed and piloted the economy towards high economic growth, high incomes, and international competitiveness, thus acquiring high levels of performance legitimacy. The strong state’s autonomy, wide scope, and capacity to effect desired outcomes were in large part achieved through interagency coordination as well as a growing cadre of talented political leaders and public servants. Talent was signalled in large part by academic and technical qualifications. The significantly higher regard for academic achievements in science and technology, compared to the arts and humanities, may have contributed to the formation of a technocratic government that viewed governance and policymaking as technical activities, needing protection from the irrational forces of politics and, in particular, democratic politics. Chan Heng Chee described Singapore’s early developmental state as an “administrative state” and its citizenry as “depoliticized.”23 Richard Stubbs notes how Singapore’s strong state capacity continues into the present to be regarded as necessary for continued economic success.24 I argue that these socialist and capitalist tendencies have always been present in Singapore’s discourse and practice of meritocracy, but the historical trajectory – in particular, the transition from survivalist to developmental state – has seen the capitalist tendency assume dominance. Concerns about scarcity and the imperative of making the best use of limited resources grew strongly out of Singapore’s survivalist phase and, in fact, continue to inform public discourse even in the present. More generally, Matt Cavanagh notes how meritocracy as a concept refers to the importance of not only giving “everyone a chance to earn the right to a job” (a focus on fairness)25 but also “revealing” the best person for the job. In this way, meritocracy can serve as an efficient system of identifying individuals who have the right qualities

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that key positions require. Kishore Mahbubani, along similar lines, notes how Singapore’s “leaders decided that Singapore’s only resources were human resources. None should be wasted. Any talent anywhere in society would have an opportunity to grow and flourish.”26 In survivalist mode, meritocracy was valuable as an efficient resource allocation mechanism that minimized wastage. In developmental state mode, meritocracy was further valued for its ability to encourage individual and national competitiveness. With economic growth and development, the stakes were raised in the meritocracy game, thus incentivizing Singaporeans to work harder and smarter to achieve personal success that, in aggregate, would contribute to an amplification of national success. Thus, meritocracy not only attracted the best people for the most important positions but also brought out their best as they competed ambitiously for these positions and, while in these positions, extended themselves to stay ahead of the competition. In the most positive view, this motivated social mobility but also encouraged limited resources to be at their most productive. At this stage, too, the state’s rhetoric directed against comprehensive state welfare was most strident and uncompromising. The language of “rugged individualism” indicated clearly that individuals should not expect permanent and direct public assistance from the state but must be self-reliant and – in a twist on Asian values, before the idea was popularized – responsible for looking after their own families. The government built on the colonial legacy of a basic system of social security, where individuals would compulsorily put aside a proportion of their monthly wages as savings that, together with joint contributions from their employers and occasional government top-ups, would create a state-managed fund from which Singaporeans could expect to withdraw a large sum of money when they retired. This Central Provident Fund has become a complicated system that also allows Singaporeans to withdraw funds for medical and housing loan payments as well as approved investments. Apart from a modest and low-profile slate of social assistance schemes for the neediest Singaporeans, the state financially and administratively supports hundreds of voluntary welfare organizations serving the needs of community, as part of what it calls a “many helping hands” approach to welfare. This approach performs an ideological function of dealing with the unavoidable presence of needy Singaporeans while concealing the availability of “easy” welfare that would create – according to the government’s pessimistic assumptions about human motivations – a disincentive for staying employed and

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working productively. Goh Chok Tong, to mark his term as Singapore’s new prime minister in 1990, summed this up well in his government’s vision statement of the “next lap”: In pursuing excellence, we should not forget the less fortunate in our midst. Our guiding principle is to help them stand on their own feet with dignity and pride, with many hands helping. The government will play its part, but we must avoid the pitfalls of a welfare state.27 II. THE INSTITUTIONALIZATION OF POLITICAL MERITOCRACY

The anatomy of the authoritarian dominant-party state, whose muscularity was especially firmed up during the developmental state phase, is undoubtedly complex. Political meritocracy, from its preeminent position in ideological hegemony, has become institutionalized in a number of ways, including the PAP’s parliamentary candidate selection mechanism, prestigious public sector scholarships, and elite public service salaries. In 1984, then Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew openly mused about the possibility of modifying the one man, one vote system, to correct for what he regarded as an irrational outcome: the general election that year had actually brought two opposition candidates into parliament, following four general elections since Singapore’s independence when only PAP candidates were successful. The PAP government, extending survivalist arguments surrounding resource scarcity, has consistently insisted that Singapore cannot afford the luxury of competitive multiparty politics. Lee argued, for instance, that if “all the 300 [top civil servants and political elite] were to crash in one Jumbo jet, then Singapore will disintegrate.”28 More recently, he argued against a multiparty system for Singapore using a similar logic: Ideally we should have Team A, Team B, equally balanced, so that we can have a swap and the system will run. We have not been able to do this in Singapore because our population is only 4 million, and the people at the top, with proven track records not just in ability, but in character, determination, commitment will not be more than 2,000. You can put their biodata in a thumbdrive.29

In accordance with the view of political meritocracy as an efficient resource-allocating mechanism that can “reveal” the best people for government, the party identifies, interviews, and recruits high achievers from the civil service, military sector, legal and medical professions,

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academia, and business community. Not at first members of the PAP rank-and-file, most are co-opted into the party not long before a general election and given some brief experience of constituency work. They are then put up as candidates in multimember teams so that they – although still unfamiliar to the constituents they are meant to represent – can nevertheless ride on the coattails of more experienced ministers who anchor these multimember teams.30 Ezra Vogel calls Singapore a “macho-meritocracy,” referring more specifically to the “aura of special awe for the top leaders . . . [which] provides a basis for discrediting less meritocratic opposition almost regardless of the content of its arguments.”31 Naturally, as longtime political winners, the PAP has been able to control the definition of merit and thus strongly influence the electorate’s understanding of who deserves to win. Even the PAP government’s admirers will find it hard not to admit that many PAP politicians, so convinced of their superiority, exude a certain arrogance and insensitivity. Novelist Catherine Lim noticed a widening rift between the government and ordinary Singaporeans, which she described as a “great affective divide.”32 Lim observed that “the main criticisms levelled against the PAP point to a style deficient in human sensitivity and feeling – ‘dictatorial,’ ‘arrogant,’ ‘impatient,’ ‘unforgiving,’ ‘vindictive.’” Journalist Seah Chiang Nee similarly observed that only “a few newer MPs are social workers or people with good community links, but compassion, charity and humility generally rank low in priority in a candidate’s qualities.”33 Through a system of prestigious and competitive government scholarships, the PAP establishment has attempted to attract the brightest and most talented students into public service. Shortlisted annually from a pool of preuniversity students scoring the highest examination marks and chalking up notable extracurricular achievements, candidates are interviewed by the Public Service Commission and subjected to various tests before the final cut is made. The most prestigious scholars are sent to pursue degrees in well-known overseas universities. All sign on to an obligation (known as a “bond”) to work in the public sector for a period of up to eight years after they graduate. Upon their return, scholars are subjected to more interviews and tests before the best of them are eventually assigned to the elite Administrative Service. Since 1994, Singapore’s ministers and top civil servants, when compared with their counterparts in the rest of the world, have received some of the highest salaries.34 This is perhaps the most spectacular example of adherence to the “new public management” orthodoxy that

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has pervaded Singapore’s public service. Chua Beng Huat describes this “logic of big business” that has pervaded the “logic of government” in Singapore as the inevitable consequence of such a view of public sector salaries.35 This high salaries policy has not been uncontroversial, but the justifications offered have generally focused on the idea that money will draw the “best” people into politics and the public sector and that high salaries will reduce the need and motivation for supplementing low incomes with money obtained through corrupt means. The “best” people for government are thus assumed, rather problematically, to be the academically accomplished, whose values and skillsets are similar to those enshrined in the private sector. These are, clearly, rather tenuous assumptions, but the PAP government has, until recently, been uncompromising in holding on to them. What has been left unsaid, possibly because assumed to be common sense, is the narcissistic belief that they absolutely deserve this money, and in fact more, as just reward for their talent and commitment to the public interest. III. NEOLIBERAL GLOBALIZATION: MERITOCRACY HARDENS AND BEGINS TO CRACK

After survivalism and developmentalism, Singapore has – since the late 1990s – transitioned into its neoliberal globalization phase. Despite more recent counter-hegemonic accounts of a crisis of capitalism, neoliberal globalization continues to enjoy global hegemonic stature in ideological terms, convincing governments and their citizens that there is still really no alternative to free markets, privatization, liberalization, and deregulation.36 But concealed by this resilient orthodoxy of market freedoms are the necessarily authoritarian and undemocratic actions of governments aimed at controlling social and political opposition mobilized against the exploitations and excesses of international capital.37 In Singapore, the developmental “strong state” legacy continues to induce political stability that is thought to be a centrally attractive prospect for international capital. Over the decades, the state has taken full control of industrial relations, largely through the cooptation of trade unions and the tripartite management of annual wage determination, all to create a pro-business environment where labor has been made docile and relatively affordable. Not only has the PAP government been eager to make Singapore conducive to the profitability of foreign capital, but, as Shamsul Haque argues, it has also “most

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enthusiastically” adopted market-based governance reforms to suit a global context “dominated by market-driven neoliberal ideology.”38 Ideologically entrenched, Singapore’s formula for success has taken the following form: economic growth comes from foreign investment in Singapore, which depends on political stability, which in turn depends on maintaining a one-party state with the meritocratic PAP secure at its centre. The fact that Singapore is among the top five wealthiest countries in the world when its per capita GDP is adjusted for purchasing power parity39 and the fact that it is consistently placed at or near the top of international rankings on economic performance, competitiveness, and business environment40 further entrench the legitimacy-enhancing ideological belief that the PAP government has been solely responsible, against the odds, for taking Singapore from a Third World to First World country in a matter of a few decades.41 However, Singapore’s experience of neoliberal globalization, fraught with contradictions, has not been immune to systemic challenges. First, Singapore’s open economy and dependence on the external economy – its trade, for instance, is more than three times the size of its GDP – makes it highly responsive to changes in the international economy. This, of course, reduces the PAP government’s capacity fully to control the economic prospects that Singaporeans face. Ideologically, this puts a limit on the government’s self-legitimizing strategy of taking credit for economic success when it can be demonstrated and blaming the uncontrollable external forces for Singapore’s failures when they cannot be masked. And yet, as Soek-Fang Sim concludes from interviews conducted during the Asian economic crisis of 1997–8, The PAP was so ideologically successful that its citizens, despite believing that the crisis was “regional” and thus beyond the PAP’s control, also believed that the PAP was the only option to lead Singapore out of the economic storm. This is a remarkable feat because it is tantamount to an ideological short-circuit: if the crisis is regional and beyond the control of the state, how can it be conquered by the PAP or by any government? Not surprisingly, the converse question of “if the government is so good, why did the crisis happen” was a thought that none of my interviewees articulated.42

With the assistance of a compliant mainstream media, the government could present the crisis as a concrete case of how its wise policies had produced a fundamentally sound economy that could survive a difficult time and even emerge stronger from it. It could be argued that

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the legitimacy of the regime may rise when the economy goes down, because the people may want even more to be governed by capable economic managers. However, as Singapore’s deeper involvement in neoliberal globalization induces more frequent, protracted, and perplexing occurrences of economic crisis, such legitimizing claims have become less credible as ordinary Singaporeans begin to doubt the meritocratic processes that have supposedly been successful at bringing the best Singaporeans together to lead and look after the people and advance their interests. Second, Singapore’s deepening embedment in neoliberal globalization has brought about widening economic inequalities and the emergence of relative poverty, both exacerbated by rising costs in what has become an expensive city in which to live, work, and conduct business.43 Singapore’s relatively thin state welfare system, compared with those of other also highly globalized nations in Scandinavia, has not been able to reduce inequalities in any significant way or to placate a strata of Singaporeans who regard themselves as relatively deprived. The notion of a relatively classless Singapore – consisting mostly of a home-owning middle class44 – has, if it was ever true, become much less recognizable in the global city that now has the highest concentration of millionaire households in the world,45 whereas more than 15 percent of its 5.2 million population consist of low-wage migrant workers contributing mainly to the construction and live-in domestic service sectors. Unskilled and semiskilled Singaporeans, in competition with migrant workers who are – according to conventional wisdom – willing to work harder for less pay, have systematically faced downward pressure on their wages and have been hardest hit by economic crises.46 More generally, the middle class has experienced stagnation in its wages and the lowest 20 percent nonretiree households a decline in their income,47 while cost of living has gone up significantly. The Gini coefficient, which measures income inequality, had been relatively stable from 1990 to 1998,48 but (based on original income from work per household member) widened after 1999 from 0.444 in 2000 to 0.480 in 2010.49 Thirdly, neoliberal globalization has seen remarkable change in Singapore’s total population and its composition. Total population figures rose from 4,027,900 in 2000 to 4,987,600 in 2009.50 Over this period, the percentage of citizens dropped from 74 percent to 64 percent, the percentage of permanent residents increased from 7 percent to 11 percent, and the percentage of nonresident foreigners increased from

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19 percent to 25 percent. In 1999, 28 percent of Singapore’s total labor force consisted of nonresident workers (totaling 621,800); in 2009, it was 34 percent (totaling 1,044,300).51 About 856,000 workers were estimated in 2009 to be unskilled or semiskilled migrant workers.52 In 2010, foreign workers of all backgrounds took up more than half of the 112,500 jobs created that year (totaling 58,300).53 In highly cosmopolitan Singapore, a city with a long history of immigration and with citizens not generally known to be xenophobic, the drastically accelerated liberalization of immigration policies since 2006 has instigated social friction and some uncharacteristically intolerant views about foreigners expressed in the public sphere. In these circumstances, as the problems that attend Singapore’s commitment to neoliberal globalization pervade the quotidian aspects of citizens’ experience, popular belief in meritocracy has weakened, leaving a strong sense that in its place is now elitism of the kind that focuses on winning and maximizing rewards for the winners and downplaying factors and reasons that limit opportunities for the disadvantaged. On one side of this coin is the tenacious resistance to providing more substantive state welfare beyond the current very basic framework, which the PAP government continues to treat as anathema. Former prime minister Goh Chok Tong’s view that Singaporeans should “encourage enterprise and reward success, not envy and tax them” continues to inform the neoliberal global city’s policies to sustain a pro-business environment, while quietly supporting voluntary welfare organizations within civil society in the task of helping the most disadvantaged.54 Opposition politician Chee Soon Juan describes the PAP government’s approach – having a large presence in the economy while leaving welfare matters to private citizens’ voluntary efforts – as an “upside-down” philosophy of government.55 On the other side of the coin, the government appears to have become even more convinced of its own superiority, celebrating the technocratic talents of its scholar-elite, boasting of its monopoly on leadership talent secured through the party’s selection criteria,56 and persisting to pay itself the highest salaries in the world. What gets counted as merit in Singapore is ultimately a reflection of the high regard that the elite have for themselves. Taking care to define merit in their own image, the self-congratulatory and narcissistic winners preserve their position as winners by ideologically promoting their selfserving definition to maximize popular consensus and support. The future prospects for winning and staying in power depend on this.

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Writing more generally, Robert Klitgaard observes how the winners often coopt an “ostensibly anti-elitist” meritocracy and are transformed into an elitist, “self-conscious, exploitative ruling minority” obsessed with reproducing their power and prestige.57 While in power, extreme self-confidence may turn into insecurity, which can bring out vindictiveness and yet more feelings of contempt for the losers who are always secretly viewed as a potential competitor and threat. Those who are kept out of the game by winners who refuse to level the playing field in order to secure their position in power may become resentful, disenchanted, disengaged, and alienated from the system. Or else, motivated by envy or a deep sense of injustice, they may mobilize to wage ideological battle to challenge the hegemonic status of meritocracy, now more fragile because hardened by an elitist focus on rewards and heightened popular consciousness of intolerable socioeconomic inequalities, obstacles to fair competition, and vastly different life prospects enjoyed by different segments of the global city’s population. IV. COUNTER-HEGEMONIC LEADERSHIP AND ALTERNATIVE IDEOLOGICAL FORMATIONS

Especially since the mid-1980s, when developmental Singapore began more deliberately to assume the features of a neoliberal global city, its government has been managing a gradual process of liberalization, most pronounced in the economic and cultural spheres and, in part, provoked by emerging bottom-up pressures for change.58 However, the specifically political aspects of liberalization, those that relate to loosening up one-party dominance for instance, have been modest. The institutional changes put in place since the 1980s, officially justified in terms that appear supportive of democracy, simultaneously lend themselves to being sophisticated instruments of political control and regime maintenance.59 These changes have included introducing government parliamentary committees (GPCs) made up of PAP backbenchers tasked to keep a critical eye on government ministries; introducing a small number of nonconstituency members of parliament (MPs) to be appointed from among unsuccessful opposition candidates who have won the most number of votes in a general election; guaranteeing minority ethnic representation through multimember constituencies called group representation constituencies (GRCs); raising the quality of parliamentary debate and introducing functional representation in

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parliament through the appointment of nominated MPs; introducing a separately elected president whose job is to safeguard the national reserves; and instituting direct channels of communication between government and citizens. Despite the PAP’s clear advantage, parliamentary elections held in May 2011 witnessed the party’s worst performance since Singapore gained independence. It garnered only 60.14 percent of the total votes, but, because of the simple plurality electoral system, managed to win 81 of the 87 seats. Even so, the PAP lost for the first time an entire five-member GRC, which saw two ministers (one a heavyweight and the other Singapore’s first and only female full minister) lose their seats. This relatively poor performance prompted the PAP leadership to do some serious “soul searching.” Minister and party chairman Khaw Boon Wan attributed this result to three issues that his party had not handled well: (1) policies on housing, immigration, transport, and cost of living; (2) a popular perception of the government as disconnected from the people; and (3) ineffective coordination and strategy where the election campaign was concerned.60 Although these issues resonated with the image of an elitist party in government out of touch with the people, other underlying trends were also identified by Khaw to explain the poor performance. Those trends relating to a changing electorate included a larger proportion of younger voters in the mood for political change and the impact on highly Internet-connected Singaporeans of antiestablishment voices in cyberspace. Two other trends, Khaw identified, related to opposition parties, specifically a “stronger mood for opposition voices” and “strengthening of the opposition.” From 1968 until 1981, no opposition candidates were voted into parliament. From 1981 until the 2011 elections, four opposition candidates at most were successful in any one election. In part, this poor performance was because the opposition parties had not been as well organized and faced difficulty ironing out internal as well as interparty rivalries.61 But this had just as much to do with its negative public image. With the (often blatant) assistance of a biased mass media, the PAP government had been able to portray opposition politicians as poorly qualified and inexperienced candidates who lacked credibility and integrity. Others had been portrayed as buffoonish, mischievous, libelous, or even treacherous.62 In reality, though, the opposition parties have been increasingly successful at attracting higher-caliber candidates with qualifications (including a few with PhDs) that can match or even exceed many PAP candidates. In the 2011 elections, for instance,

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the Workers’ Party (WP) was able to field Chen Show Mao, a lawyer with degrees from Harvard, Oxford, and Stanford, who served as advisor to an impressive international high-level list of governments and companies. The Singapore Democratic Party (SDP) had Tan Jee Say, a former government scholar and Oxford graduate who had at one time worked as the prime minister’s principal private secretary. Chen won a seat in parliament, but Tan did not and went on instead to run – although unsuccessfully – in the presidential elections in August that year. Not only have the opposition parties been able in recent years to attract impressively credentialed candidates, they have also become highly organized both in the management of their campaigns and public communications. Among the well-researched and carefully argued reports produced by the SDP, for instance, was “Ethical salaries for a public service centered government,” a paper released some weeks before the government-appointed high-powered committee to review ministerial salaries made its findings public. Responding to what it considered to be mounting public unhappiness over ministers’ salaries, the SDP offered five recommendations aimed at attracting leaders focused on serving all Singaporeans and not only their own interests and the interests of the upper economic echelon: (1) Establish an independent salary commission to review ministerial salaries on an annual basis. (2) Discontinue variable bonuses such as those tied to Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth and individual performances of ministers. (3) Peg ministerial pay to the wages of the lowest 20 percent of Singaporean workers. (4) Provide allowances for ministers in their performance of state duties. (5) Establish an independent anti-corruption board that has the power to investigate ministers for corruption.63

The National Solidarity Party (NSP), shortly after the SDP report was launched, organized a public forum at which the topic of ministerial salary review was discussed and debated. Tan Jee Say, one of the speakers, took the same view as SDP about pegging these salaries not to the highest but to the lowest salaries in Singapore, arguing that “CEOs have a specific goal of profits . . . while ministers should be more concerned with the broader welfare of the people. . . . Are you serving the people or the tycoons?”64 The report and forum demonstrated the opposition parties’ increasing capacity – despite limited resources and lack of access to

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information – to perform creditably in technical policy-formulation terms. It also showed off their political sensitivity and acumen, which the PAP seems to have lost in its narrowly elitist approach to talent management, leadership succession, and technocratic policy decisions. In the 2011 elections, several opposition candidates were able to engage the electorate with political flair, demonstrating mastery over the aesthetic dimensions of public communications in an age of new media. The NSP’s twenty-four-year-old Nicole Seah, for instance, broke down in tears during a campaign rally when talking about how the poor were mistreated in Singapore. In the hands of a less aesthetically skillful candidate, such theatrical displays would have been condemned as hysterical and hypocritical. Instead, they strengthened her already attractive public image, held in the public’s mind as the polar opposite of her twenty-seven-year-old PAP opponent, Tin Pei Ling, whose every word and deed were inescapably framed as puerile, gauche, superficial, and unoriginal, even on occasions when there was no real basis for judging them that way. Apart from holding a doctoral degree in social policy, the SDP’s Vincent Wijeysingha was also a highly skilled orator, able to successfully punctuate his accusations and weave emotive figures of speech into the tones and textures of his public speaking. The WP’s Pritam Singh led a packed stadium in a heart-stopping recitation of the national pledge during his campaign rally. This new generation of opposition politicians, articulate and academically accomplished, possessed an acute appreciation of aesthetic power and the ability to exercise it effectively, which contrasted favorably with the unattractively clinical, rational, “just-the-facts” style of most candidates from the PAP. As early as 1991, before the arrival of new media technologies, a survey of 434 voters in the general election that year found that, even though the electorate relied heavily on newspapers and television for information about the election, media credibility was seen to be relatively low, in terms of perceived fairness and completeness.65 Today, a more sceptical and media-savvy generation of Singaporeans increasingly turn to online sources for alternative news and commentary such as The Online Citizen and Temasek Review and then recirculate this information through social media platforms like Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter.66 The Parliamentary Election Act, until it was amended in 2009, had effectively outlawed the use of new media for election campaigns. Party-political films, ambiguously defined, had also been disallowed under the Films Act. Today, new media bearing

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alternative reports, commentaries, and creative video clips critical of the establishment are not only legal but have become the primary site for exposing the PAP government’s perceived weaknesses and foregrounding the opposition parties’ perceived strengths. Here also is where discussion can be found on the cracks in the Singapore success story, including problems in the practice of meritocracy and the elitist government’s loss of moral authority. Cyberspace has become an important extension of Singapore’s civil society, where many talented Singaporeans – including several from the arts community – have assumed intellectual leadership roles. Many of them had been effectively excluded from the establishment because they did not fit the narrow profile of the dominant one-party state, whose elitist pretensions have placed a limit on the pool of national leadership talent, restricting a healthy circulation of elites67 and creating a disaffected and “exiled” class of able Singaporeans with a less mainstream perspective. The 2011 general elections showed how affinities between charismatic opposition politicians and intellectual leaders could develop into informal political alliances within cyberspace, as their respective activities mutually reinforced each other. These political formations in cyberspace were facilitated and amplified by a new aesthetic of popular indignation, courage, coming out, and activism, in some ways encouraged by popular movements for change such as the so-called Arab Spring. Even in 2006, political bloggers interviewed by Dorothy Tan revealed that they did not feel the need to censor their own writing.68 In response to the popularity of alternative media, the pro-establishment mainstream media – perhaps in an effort not to lose readership and thus profits – seems to have loosened up and broadened their coverage to include more nonmainstream views. A letter published in the forum pages, for instance, argued for “actions to create a just society” that was incompatible with the PAP’s approach to meritocracy.69 In August 2012, the prime minister announced a year-long public engagement exercise called Our Singapore Conversation. The language on its website has been decidedly emotive and obviously directed toward countering the spreading cynicism of disgruntled Singaporeans in the public sphere: As a nation and as a people, we are not just defined by our beautiful skyline, our green city or our thriving economy. . . . We are defined by our shared Hope for the future, our Heart for one another, and our love for our common Home. We are also defined by our choices

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and how we reach them. . . . Singapore is at a critical point where our future direction will depend on our choices today. We face many new and complex challenges, both internal and external. . . . We invite Singaporeans from all walks of life to participate in an inclusive national conversation that will extend across different platforms and forums, in groups large and small, both offline and online. We hope you will listen to one another’s views on the issues and challenges we face today. Through this process, we hope to emerge with a better Singapore for everyone.70

Alongside the more traditional dialogue sessions and discussions, a large part of the conversations are happening online, mostly through Facebook and Twitter. Although this can be a good opportunity for the PAP establishment to regain its moral authority, the exercise started on the wrong footing by obviously excluding opposition politicians and civil society activists in its committee. This called into question the government’s sincerity about being inclusive. By asserting that it wants to give voice to the “silent majority” and to get Singaporeans to appreciate the notion of policy “trade-offs,” the unfortunate impression given is that the exercise seeks to galvanize supporters of the status quo, rather than include more troublesome and critical viewpoints. At the time of this writing, the success of this exercise remains to be seen. V. CHALLENGING MERITOCRACY: WHAT IS AT STAKE?

Political meritocracy has been a key ideological component of Singapore’s hegemonic state, institutionalized in the PAP’s role in national leadership selection, prestigious “bonded” scholarships for public sector leadership, and high salaries for political and civil service elites. Ideological justification has been drawn from a range of sources including the notion of vulnerability, resource scarcity, and allocative efficiency forged during the survivalist years in the late 1960s; and, during the developmental state phase in the 1970s–80s, the need for economic competitiveness to secure high growth achieved by suppressing societal pressures that could otherwise prevent a high-capacity technocratic state from directing the economy in a rational and strategic manner. Apart from addressing the capitalist dimensions of Singapore’s development experience, meritocracy also resonated with the moderate socialist roots of the PAP, thus looking to the perfectibility of Singapore society as a whole by making sure that there was relative equality of opportunity to be enjoyed by each.

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Over the decades, however, Singapore has moved decidedly away from socialist values and toward capitalist ones – in particular, those enshrined in the neoliberal globalization orthodoxy that, especially since the mid-1980s in Singapore, has provoked an increase in market freedoms and cultural liberalization and commercialization but also more sophisticated practices of state authoritarianism aimed at protecting the interests of global capital. Meritocracy, although it continues even today to perform an ideologically useful function of connecting potentially contradictory values of egalitarianism, allocative efficiency, competitiveness, and reward, has nevertheless begun to lose its plasticity, hardening into institutions of elitism that have become brittle and susceptible to cracking under the pressures of neoliberal globalization. These pressures include more frequent and deeper economic crises, economic inequalities and social divisions amid rising cost of living, and social frictions resulting from accelerated liberalization of immigration policies. In these circumstances, popular faith in an upwardly mobile system is diminished as people recalibrate more realistically their life chances and prospects for personal success. Taking an adamant stand against comprehensive state welfare to keep Singaporean workers “competitive” while making arguments in parliament to raise the salaries of the establishment elite, the PAP government has not shied away from making its ideological and value preferences explicit. In these circumstances, the PAP government’s basis of legitimacy, including the ideology and institutions of meritocracy that undergird its claim to popular support and obedience, have been called into question. Naturally, political opposition – organizationally strengthened in recent years – has begun to form around these fault lines, mobilizing support against the PAP government that increasingly appears elitist, uncaring, unresponsive, self-interested, and capable of making serious mistakes. Amplified within the new media environment, which has seen the rise of alternative ideological leadership, not least from members of civil society and the arts community, opposition politics have gained significant ground. This is particularly true in the aftermath of the PAP’s relatively poor performance in the 2011 general elections. PAP-style meritocracy seemed to work well for achieving rapid growth and development through long-term planning, expert policy making, and swift implementation by a strong state able to limit political pressures from society and the economy. The government has often been admired, sometimes grudgingly by more established

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democracies, for its ability to pursue policies and programs in a technically rational and relatively straightforward manner, without having to pander to popular demands and material interests of the electorate, which can often be selfish, oriented towards the short term, conflicting, and even paralyzing. As the Singapore state slowly transforms itself in an effort to regain its moral authority amid a more vocal citizenry that has become cynical of not only the failure to be meritocratic but also of the way meritocracy has come to be understood and practiced, it may be less willing and able to act without first taking into account the particular interests, perspectives, viewpoints, and even feelings of the people. To regain its moral and political authority, the PAP may have to expand its narrowly technical and academic notion of merit, in part to recognize the importance for political success of communicative talent and emotional intelligence and in part to be visibly inclusive of a more variegated citizenry that its narrowly elite concerns may have alienated over the years. It will have to develop capabilities in engaging the public through face-to-face as well as online platforms in ways that do not betray an underlying condescension or a less-than-genuine desire to take people’s interests and views seriously. Singaporeans will almost certainly still want to be ruled by the “best,” but the definition of “best” and the means of selecting the “best” will have to be adjusted to take into account the contemporary realities of Singapore society. These may be quite different from the decades of survival and rapid development. Although this will not necessarily mean that Singapore’s public administration will end up gridlocked like many mature democracies, it will probably mean that results may not be achieved so quickly, and fairer and more morally informed outcomes may sometimes be overruled by populist imperatives. notes

1. Kenneth Paul Tan, “The Ideology of Pragmatism: Neo-Liberal Globalisation and Political Authoritarianism in Singapore,” Journal of Contemporary Asia, vol. 42 (2012), pp. 67–92. 2. Jon Quah, “Curbing Corruption in a One-Party Dominant System: Learning from Singapore’s Experience,” in Ting Gong and Stephen K. Ma, eds., Preventing Corruption in Asia: Institutional Design and Policy Capacity (London: Routledge, 2009). 3. Kenneth Paul Tan, “Meritocracy and Elitism in a Global City: Ideological Shifts in Singapore,” International Political Science Review, vol. 29 (2008), pp. 7–27.

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4. See, for example, Kishore Mahbubani, Can Asians Think? Understanding the Divide between East and West (Singapore: Marshall Cavendish, 2009). 5. See, for example, Thomas Friedman, “Serious in Singapore,” The New York Times, January 29, 2011. 6. Amartya Sen, “Merit and Justice,” in Kenneth Arrow, Samuel Bowles, and Steven Durlauf, eds. Meritocracy and Economic Inequality (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000). 7. Bernard Manin, The Principles of Representative Government (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). 8. In “Meritocracy in Asia Pacific: Status, Issues, and Challenges,” Review of Public Personnel Administration, vol. 33 (2013), pp. 1–24, Ora-orn Poocharoen and Alex Brillantes observe that, unlike the United States, which has a long history of democracy, most Asian countries adopted merit systems long before the democratization of their political systems. 9. Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith, eds. and trans. (New York: International Publishers, 1971). 10. For example, Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (Free Press, 1992); Samuel P. Huntington, Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991). 11. See Diane K. Mauzy and R.S. Milne, Singapore Politics Under the People’s Action Party (London and New York: Routledge, 2002), p. 115. 12. For example, Henri Ghesquiere, Singapore’s Success: Engineering Economic Growth (Singapore: Thomson, 2007); N. C. Saxena, Virtuous Cycles: The Singapore Public Service and National Development (United Nations Development Program, 2011), available at http://www.undp.org.my/uploads/mfa%20%20the%20singapore%20experience.pdf;Raj (accessed May 19, 2013), Vasil, Governing Singapore: A History of National Development and Democracy (Australia: Allen & Unwin, 2000). 13. For example, James Minchin, No Man Is an Island: A Portrait of Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1990); T. S. Selvan, Singapore: The Ultimate Island (Lee Kuan Yew’s Untold Story) (Melbourne: Freeway Books, 1990); Michael D. Barr, Lee Kuan Yew: The Beliefs behind the Man (Richmond, UK: Curzon, 2000); Ross Worthington, Governance in Singapore (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2002); Michael D. Barr and Zlatko Skrbis, Constructing Singapore: Elitism, Ethnicity and the Nation-Building Project (Copenhagen: NIAS Press, 2008). 14. Tan 2008, op. cit. 15. Tan 2012, op. cit. 16. Gramsci, op. cit., p. 269. 17. Jennifer D. Slack, “The Theory and Method of Articulation in Cultural Studies,” in David Morley and Kuan-Hsing Chen, eds. Stuart Hall: Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies (London: Routledge, 1996), pp. 114, 117–18. 18. Isaiah Berlin, Four Essays on Liberty (London: Oxford University Press, 1969). 19. Chan Heng Chee, The Politics of Survival 1965–67 (Singapore: Oxford University Press, 1971).

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20. H. E. Wilson, Social Engineering in Singapore (Singapore: Singapore University Press, 1978). 21. C. V. Devan Nair, ed., Socialism That Works – The Singapore Way (Singapore: Federal Publications, 1976). 22. Garry Rodan, The Political Economy of Singapore’s Industrialization: National State and International Capital (Kuala Lumpur: Forum, 1989). 23. Chan Heng Chee, “Politics in an Administrative State: Where Has the Politics Gone?’ in Seah Chee Meow, ed., Trends in Singapore: Proceedings and Background Paper (Singapore: Singapore University Press, 1975). 24. Richard Stubbs, “What Ever Happened to the East Asian Developmental State? The Unfolding Debate,” The Pacific Review, vol. 22 (2009), pp. 1–22. 25. Matt Cavanagh, Against Equality of Opportunity (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2002). 26. Kishore Mahbubani, Beyond the Age of Innocence: Rebuilding Trust Between America and the World (New York: Public Affairs, 2005), p. 5. 27. Government of Singapore, Singapore: The Next Lap (Singapore: Times Edition, 1991). 28. Lee Kuan Yew, “Singapore’s Fate Depends on 300 Men,” in Han Fook Kwang, Warren Fernandez, and Sumiko Tan, eds., Lee Kuan Yew: The Man and His Ideas (Singapore: Times Editions, 1998), p. 315. 29. Michael Elliott, Zoher Abdoolcarim, and Simon Elegant, “Lee Kuan Yew Reflects,” Time, December 5, 2005, available at http://www.time.com/time/ printout/0,8816,501051212–1137705,00.html (accessed December 5, 2011). 30. Derek da Cunha, The Price of Victory: The 1997 Singapore General Election and Beyond (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 1997). 31. Ezra Vogel, “A Little Dragon Tamed,” in Kernial Singh Sandhu and Paul Wheatley, eds., Management of Success: The Moulding of Modern Singapore (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 1989). 32. Catherine Lim, “The PAP and the people – a great affective divide,” The Straits Times (Singapore), September 3, 1994. 33. Chiang Nee Seah, “Political Elitism Takes an Emotive Turn,” The Sunday Star (Malaysia), October 29, 2006. 34. The resulting ministerial and upper-level civil service salaries are meant to reflect the market value of Singapore’s public sector elite as well as the government’s faith in the market to allocate human talent resource efficiently. See Benjamin Wong’s chapter in this volume for a description of how these salaries are calculated. 35. Chua Beng Huat, “Singapore in 2007: High Wage Ministers and the Management of Gays and Elderly,” Asian Survey, vol. 48 (2008), pp. 55–61. 36. See, for example, Kenneth Rogoff, “Is Modern Capitalism Sustainable?” Project Syndicate, December 2, 2011, http://www.project-syndicate.org/ commentary/rogoff87/English (accessed December 5, 2011). 37. Jan Scholte, “The sources of neoliberal globalization,” UNRISD Overarching Concerns Programme Paper No. 8, October 2005; Mark Purcell, Recapturing Democracy: Neoliberalization and the Struggle for Alternative Urban Futures (New York: Routledge, 2008).

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38. Shamsul Haque, “Governance and Bureaucracy in Singapore: Contemporary Reforms and Implications,” International Political Science Review, vol. 25 (2004), pp. 227–40. 39. See, for example, International Monetary Fund, World Economic Outlook Database, September 2011, available at http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/ weo/2011/02/index.htm (accessed November 29, 2011). 40. Economic Development Board, “Singapore Rankings,” available at http:// www.edb.gov.sg/edb/sg/en uk/index/why singapore/singapore rankings.html (accessed November 29, 2011). 41. Lee Kuan Yew, From Third World to First: The Singapore Story: 1965–2000 (Singapore: Times Editions, 2000). 42. Sim Soek-Fang, “Hegemonic Authoritarianism and Singapore: Economics, Ideology and the Asian Economic Crisis,” Journal of Contemporary Asia, vol. 36 (2006), pp. 143–59. 43. Anita Gabriel, “Singapore Is 6th Most Expensive City in Asia,” The Straits Times (Singapore), December 6, 2011. 44. Garry Rodan, “Class Transformations and Political Tensions in Singapore’s Development,” in Richard Robison and David Goodman, eds., The New Rich in Asia: Mobile Phones, McDonalds and Middle-Class Revolution (London: Routledge, 1996). 45. Venessa Wong, “As World Millionaires Multiply, Singapore Holds Its Lead,” Bloomberg Businessweek, June 2, 2011, available at http://www.businessweek. com//investor/content/jun2011/pi2011062 946842.htm (accessed December 1, 2011). 46. Department of Statistics Singapore, “Is Income Disparity Increasing in Singapore?” Occasional Paper on Social Statistics, May 2000, available at http://www.singstat.gov.sg/papers/op/op-s6.pdf (accessed April 1, 2007). 47. Department of Statistics Singapore, “Key Household Income Trends 2006,” Occasional Paper on Income Statistics, February 2007, available at http://www. singstat.gov.sg/papers/op/op-s12.pdf (accessed April 1, 2007). 48. Department of Statistics Singapore, “Income Distribution and Inequality Measures in Singapore,” paper presented at the Conference on Chinese Population and Socioeconomic Studies: Utilizing the 2000/2001 Round Census Data, Hong Kong, June 19–21, 2002, available at http://www.singstat.gov.sg/papers/ seminar/income2000.pdf (accessed April 1, 2007). 49. Department of Statistics Singapore, “Key Household Income Trends, 2010,” available at http://www.singstat.gov.sg/pubn/papers/people/pp-s17.pdf (accessed November 28, 2011). 50. Department of Statistics Singapore, “Statistics: Time Series on Population (Mid-Year Estimates),” available at http://www.singstat.gov.sg/stats/themes/ people/hist/popn.html, 2010 (accessed March 7, 2011). 51. Ministry of Manpower Singapore, Singapore Yearbook of Manpower Statistics, 2010, Singapore. 52. Solidarity for Migrant Workers, “A Joint Submission by Members of Solidarity for Migrant Workers for the 11th Session of the Universal Periodic Review,” May 2011, available at http://www.home.org.sg/downloads/UPR_Report_011110 .pdf (accessed March 7, 2011).

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53. Kor Kian Beng, “Foreign Worker Influx Slower Than Expected,” The Straits Times (Singapore), February 1, 2011. 54. Goh Chok Tong, Agenda for Action: Goals and Challenges (Singapore: Singapore National Printers, 1988), p. 5. 55. Chee Soon Juan, Dare to Change: An Alternative Vision for Singapore (Singapore: Singapore Democratic Party, 1994), pp. 70–88. 56. See, for example, Walter Fernandez, “Line-Up ‘The Best Since 1955 Election,’” The Straits Times (Singapore), May 27, 1996. 57. Robert Klitgaard, Elitism and Meritocracy in Developing Countries: Selection Policies for Higher Education (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986), p. 1. 58. Kenneth Paul Tan, ed., Renaissance Singapore? Economy, Culture, and Politics (Singapore: NUS Press, 2007). 59. Kenneth Paul Tan, “The People’s Action Party and Political Liberalization in Singapore,” in Liang Fook Lye and Wilhelm Hofmeister, eds., Political Parties, Party Systems and Democratization in East Asia (Singapore: World Scientific, 2011). 60. Khaw Boon Wan, “We Hear You; We’ll Change, and Improve Your Lives,” speech at PAP Convention, November 27, 2011, available at http://www.PAP.org.sg/articleview.php?id=871&cid=23 (accessed December 6, 2011). 61. Hussin Mutalib, Parties and Politics: A Study of Opposition Parties and the PAP in Singapore, 2nd ed. (Singapore: Marshall Cavendish Academic, 2004). 62. “Rally at Hougang Field,” YawningBread blog, May 2006, available at http:// www.yawningbread.org/photo essay/pew-05/pew-0500.htm (accessed January 1, 2010). 63. Singapore Democratic Party, “Ethical Salaries for a Public Service Centered Government,” Policy Unit Paper, November 2011, Singapore, p. 3. 64. Quoted in Jewel Philemon, “ ‘If You Pay Peanuts, You Will Get Monkeys for Ministers.’ Really?,” The Online Citizen, December 6, 2011, available at http:// theonlinecitizen.com/2011/12/if-you-pay-peanuts-monkeys-ministers-really (accessed December 6, 2011). 65. Eddie C. Y. Kuo, Duncan Holaday, and Eugenia Peck, Mirror on the Wall: Media in a Singapore Election (Singapore: Asian Mass Communication Research and Information Centre, 1993). 66. Cherian George, Contentious Journalism and the Internet: Towards Democratic Discourse in Malaysia and Singapore (Singapore: Singapore University Press, 2006). 67. Ettore Albertoni, Mosca and the Theory of Elitism (Blackwell: Oxford, 1987). 68. Dorothy Tan, “The Political Blog: The Struggle for Hegemony in Singapore’s Emerging Blogosphere,” Honors Thesis, National University of Singapore, 2006. 69. Sanjay Perera, “Actions to Create a Just Society Will Win People Over,” Today (Singapore), December 1, 2011. 70. Available at https://www.oursgconversation.sg (retrieved September 29, 2012). In the interest of full disclosure, the author was appointed to its twenty-sixmember committee.

12 China’s Meritocratic Examinations and the Ideal of Virtuous Talents Hong Xiao and Chenyang Li

Emphasis on both moral character and talent in selecting government officials has been an intrinsic part of China’s meritocratic tradition.1 From early on, mainstream Chinese political philosophy, particularly of the Confucian heritage, has promoted such an ideal. This quest, however, has also encountered perennial challenges in practice. In this chapter, we examine in historic context the ideal and practice of integrating moral character with talent in selecting government officials. We show that, despite difficulties, searching for virtuous talent in China today has evolved into the most comprehensive and sophisticated process of its kind in history. The first section of this chapter retrieves the history of China’s civil examinations and its problems. The second section investigates recent evolutions of China’s public servant recruitment as a stepping stone into officialdom. The third section focuses on China’s recent reform in the selection of government officials. Finally, we examine to what extent the reformed system causes corruption in China. I. A BRIEF HISTORY OF CHINA’S CIVIL SERVICE EXAMINATIONS

The long and complex history of China’s civil service examinations has been studied extensively.2 We do not intend to present a comprehensive or balanced history here. Building on work by others, we highlight some points and aspects to set the stage for our argument. The ideal of selecting people of both moral character and talent to serve in government has its roots in ancient China. Moral character, or de, symbolizes virtuous personality. Talent, neng  or cai , refers primarily, but not exclusively, to a person’s ability in discharging 340

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official duties. Persons equipped with both traits are called xian , the worthy.3 It has long been believed that government should recruit virtuous and talented people to serve the country.4 This ideal was gradually established during the Spring-and-Autumn period5 and subsequently implemented as government policy. Ancient thinkers, however, have attributed such practice to the earliest periods of Chinese history. The Confucian classic Book of History records a story of the early king Yao looking for a senior minister. He passed over his son Zhu and a talented minister Gonggong. According to the text, Zhu was smart but immodest; Gonggong successfully controlled devastating floods but was irreverent toward Heaven (tian). Then local lords insisted on appointing Gun. Yao reluctantly agreed, although he regarded Gun as disobedient. It turned out that Gun did not do a good job.6 This story suggests the importance of moral character for selecting government officials; without moral character, talent alone does not produce good results. When King Yao was to select a successor, he asked local lords for recommendations. They suggested Shun. Living in a dysfunctional family, Shun’s father lacked virtue, and his stepmother was inconsiderate. He also had an arrogant and obnoxious brother. Yet Shun managed to maintain harmony in the family and to remain a filial son and a caring brother. Therefore, Yao chose Shun as the candidate to succeed to the throne. Shun was first appointed as the general minister. He did well: the people emulated his virtues, government officials followed his directions, and guests from all quarters received by him rendered their respect. When he was stationed at the foot of the mountains, he did not go astray even amid tempests of wind, thunder, and rain. After three years, Shun proved himself as an able leader and was given the throne. This story indicates the Confucian ideal that government should be in the hands of people of virtue and talent.7 Two points in this story are worth noting. First, the Confucian view does not separate “private” virtues from public morals. So-called private virtues are taken as good indications of a person’s character and, hence, his (or her) ability to be a good public figure. Second, the ability to harmonize one’s family is a key virtue in Confucianism and has been accorded primary importance in evaluating a person’s character. The assumption is that if a person does not do well within his own family, it is difficult, if not impossible, for him to work well with others beyond family. Both viewpoints hold to this day (see Section 2 of this chapter). The historian Qian Mu’s study shows that selecting government officials became a systematic practice during the Western Han dynasty

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(202 b.c.e.–9 c.e.). Government selected officials mainly in three ways. The first was to look for virtuous talents (xian liang ). For this category, the emphasis seemed to be on talent, provided that those selected were also virtuous. Candidates included both government officials at lower levels and those without a government post. Upon recommendation by government agencies at various levels, candidates were interviewed or tested on government policies. When successful, they were then appointed to government posts. The second category was for people who were filial at home and for government employees, usually at low ranks, who were honest and clean on their job (xiao lian ). The emphasis in this category was on moral character. This practice was meant to reward people with good morals. During the Wudi period (141–87 b.c.e.), whether local governments could find such people in their districts was taken as an indication of the effectiveness of government performance, on the presumption that such people exist in well-governed society. During the Eastern Han (25–220 c.e.), examinations for talent were added to screening candidates of this category to ensure competence on the job. The last category of selecting government officials took place when there was a need for special talents, such as flood control experts and envoys to foreign countries. This category appeared to focus more on talent than moral quality. Selections of all these categories were conducted through recommendations by incumbent government officials.8 According to the Wangzhi chapter of the classical Book of Rites, in ancient China the selection of scholar-officials began at the level of local districts (xiang). Top scholars at that level were awarded the title of “Excellent Scholar” (xiu shi). When they became selected at an upper level, they were given the title of “Select Scholar” (xuan shi) and the responsibility of teaching others. Those exceling as “Select Scholars” were further educated to become “Outstanding Scholars” (jun shi). The highest achievers were “Accomplished Scholars” (zao shi). Both “Outstanding Scholars” and “Accomplished Scholars” were granted the privilege of exemption from draft to labor for the state.9 The text also indicates that for all good talents to serve in government, they should be discussed (lun) and examined (bian) before they were assigned to appropriate posts. This record indicates a general philosophy of not only how virtuous talents should be selected but also how they should be rewarded. During the Sui (581–618) and Tang (618–907) periods, selection by recommendation was replaced with selection by examinations (keju).

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The Tang system of selection comprised two steps. The first was examination for candidacy. The second step involved government appointments made from the candidate pool.10 Benjamin Elman’s study shows that under the Tang emperors Gao-zu (r. 618–26) and Tai-zong (r. 627–50), candidates first took qualifying examinations (ju). To enter officialdom, they had to undergo a selection process (xuan) that evaluated candidates’ moral character and determined the level of appointment. Selection criteria included candidates’ deportment, eloquence, calligraphy, and legal knowledge. The entire qualification and appointment process was called xuanju,11 a term that has evolved to mean election. Civil service examinations continued through subsequent dynasties. The examination system had far-reaching consequences in history. For one thing, it provided a channel for the aspirations of men of ability (women were excluded) from almost every social stratum. Although success in the examinations was easier for people with well-off family backgrounds, poor scholars also succeeded in their ambitions, although to a lesser degree. Pertinent information in this regard is largely unobtainable. Available records, however, indicate the possibility of impressive social upward mobility through civil service examinations. In 1148 during the Song dynasty, for example, 330 people successfully passed national civil service examinations (jin shi). Of the 279 graduates with family information on record, 157 had no forebears in civil service versus 122 with forebears who had served in government. The year 1156 witnessed 601 examination graduates. Of the 572 individuals with family background information on record, 331 did not have forebears in civil service as opposed to 241 with forebears in civil service.12 Those without forebears in civil service may have come from economically well-off families. But given that social status in ancient China was gauged heavily on government positions, entering civil service through successful passage of examinations was undoubtedly a major upgrade in social status for individuals and their families. Another major effect of the examination system is to enhance social stability. The possibility of moving up the social ladder through examinations, although a mere dream for the vast majority, nevertheless provided people with ambitions some hope in life so they would not seek deviatory means in pursuing aspirations. This feature was particularly salient during transitions between dynasties. When a new dynasty called to recruit the “virtuous and talented” to serve in government, it also required people’s submission to the new ruler. An unintended consequence of the civil

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examinations, as Benjamin Elman’s study shows, was the creation of legions of classically literate men (and women), who used their linguistic talents for a variety of nonofficial purposes, from literati physicians to local pettifoggers, from fiction writers to examination essay teachers. There we find a healthy degree of social mobility (or “circulation” as Elman calls it) for members of the lower classes to rise in the social hierarchy.13 According to Qian Mu, examination subjects during the Tang period were mainly in two areas: poetry and rhymed prose, and the classics.14 The presumption seems to be that people who were good at these subjects would be competent in government posts. It is questionable, however, whether such persons also possessed moral character and practical skills for the job. Some ancient thinkers seemed to consider this kind of examinations adequate for selecting virtuous talents. The prominent scholar-official Han Yu (768–824), for example, held that learning to write is itself a moral exercise, a matter of nourishing one’s qi (vital energy). He wrote: Qi is water and words are floating objects. When the water is great, all floating things, large or small, float equally. Qi’s relationship to words is similar to this. When one’s qi is flourishing, the length of his words and the pitch of his voice are all fitting. . . . (The cultivated person) places his heart in the moral way and behaves appropriately. When he is in office, he applies the Dao to people. When he has quit office, he teaches the Dao to students and passes his writings to later generations as a model.15

For Han, writing is not an isolated technique or skill. It is a dimension integral to a person’s whole being, which manifests the state of one’s cultivated qi.16 Just as objects float only when there is adequate water,17 a person writes well only when adequate effort has been exerted in successfully cultivating his qi. The ability to write well is therefore a good indication of holistic self-cultivation. Accordingly, examining a person’s writing ability would at the same time reveal his moral quality and talent. Han may have overstated the linkage between writing and personal cultivation, however. Although good writing skills may indicate discipline and an important ability for performance in governmental office, they are not reliable measurements for either moral character or administrative competence on the job. Examinations in themselves did not provide necessary preparations for these qualities, nor

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did they adequately measure them. To recruit people of both moral refinement and practical talent, additional measures were needed to complement literary examinations. Qian Mu noted that, in early periods, candidates were mostly from established families. Their family backgrounds provided them with adequate knowledge and familiarity with rules of politics (e.g., office practice) and ritual propriety (li jiao). By the time of an appointment, they were already fairly well equipped with these necessary qualities and skills for the job. Examination graduates without adequate family education in politics and ritual propriety, however, were ill prepared for effective performance on the job.18 Subjects of examinations remained largely unchanged during the Song period (960–1279). Although examinations provided a platform for upward social mobility and thus aspirations for people at various layers of society, their flaws were obvious. Cheng Yi (1033–1107) lamented that the formal, detailed, legally prescribed literary requirements in preparation for the examinations were of no use in evaluating the moral worth of the students.19 Zhu Xi (1130–1200) also criticized that state academies failed to evaluate students’ moral quality or actual ability on the job; they only encouraged students’ desires for personal gains rather than moral rightness.20 In an essay on the civil examination, Zhu proposed reforming the system to take into consideration candidates’ ability in job performance: [Zhu] wanted his candidates to think, and to know how to think for themselves; in studying the Classics, they should study not only the classical texts but also the commentaries of different schools of interpreters, and in answering a question should be prepared to cite different opinions, concluding with their own judgment.21

In Zhu’s view, these critical-thinking qualities are important for problem solving in practice, and they are part of a person’s integrated selfcultivation. Zhu believed that if his proposal were to be adopted, “men’s minds would be composed and there would be no spirit of hustling and striving; there would be actual virtuous conduct and none of the corruption of empty words; there would be solid learning and no unusable talent.”22 Without such a reform, civil service examinations were unable to generate virtuous talents to serve the country and would be detrimental to it. Zhu said, “[I]f the government wishes to recapture the lost land in the Central Plan, it must stop the civil examination system for thirty years!”23

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Zhu’s worry was not unusual in the history of China’s civil service examinations. David Nivison’s study shows that the idea of doing away with the examinations, and of filling the ranks of government officials by recommendation of the “virtuous” from below, was resurrected from time to time in Chinese history. Nivison writes, The surprising fact is that throughout all this we find the examinationeducation complex, the function and effect of which was to ensure the dominance of the Confucian classical tradition, criticized precisely by appeal to Confucian moral, aesthetic, and political values.24

Critics of examinations seemed to have focused primarily on their ineffectiveness in selecting people who were both virtuous and talented, particularly the former. The Song scholar-official Wang Anshi (1021– 1086) complained that, under the examination system, when children should concentrate on learning the moral truth in the world, they were made to study poetry and rhymed prose behind closed doors; and when they were in government office, they had absolutely no experience with affairs in the real world. “This examination system destroys talents and makes today’s world pale in comparison with ancient times.”25 Later, the Ming scholar Wang Tingxiang (1474–1544) also lamented, “today’s examination system does not look into people’s moral character and conduct, and merely selects individuals on their writing. No wonder it only selects people of poor quality for offices.”26 It was not that only Confucian scholars of the time were concerned about the moral inadequacy in the examination systems. Benjamin Elman’s study of the examinations in the Ming (1368–1644) and the Qing (1644–1911) shows that the moral cultivation of the literati was a perennial concern of the imperial court because it sought to ensure that the officials it chose in the examination market would serve the people in the name of the ruling family.27 In reality, however, the examination system as practiced in history fell far short of the ideal of selecting people who were both virtuous and talented. Because of this failure, throughout the history of civil examinations, recommendation on the basis of both ability and moral character has been a recurring theme. As indicated earlier, the practice of government recruitments on recommendation has a long history. According to a study by E. A. Kracke, Jr., From the earliest clearly historical times, recommendation was not merely sanctioned as an open practice; the recommendation of worthy

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and able men became at least a moral obligation, possibly reinforced by penalties for its neglect. By the early second century b.c., if not earlier, recommendation had assumed institutional form.28

From King Yao looking for his own successor to the Han court’s selection of the filial and the uncorrupt for government posts, recommendation on the basis of moral character has been an important way of selecting virtuous talent. During the Song period, the method of recommendation for civil service was used in complementing competitive examinations. The government identified qualified sponsors, primarily on their personal quality, especially moral character. Sponsors then recommended candidates for promotion to more important positions in civil service on the basis of several criteria. Among these were vigor, discipline, caution, and noncorruption. Candidates must have demonstrated firmness and confidence. They must be free from presumption, impropriety, or the misuse of authority. Caution was considered the third important quality as it is for anyone with considerable responsibilities. Finally and most important, candidates must also be free from corruption and penal offense.29 Although these were not testable on examinations, recommendation provided a useful way for selecting suitable people. Once a recommended candidate was appointed to a government post, his sponsor served as a mentor and was held responsible for his prot´eg´e’s job performance. Records are unavailable regarding how many or what proportion of people were promoted to senior positions in government via recommendation during the Song dynasty; recommendation as a supplement to examinations, however, appeared to have played a significant role in promoting people to senior positions in civil service during that period.30 Recommendation was a useful means to supplement and strengthen the examination method, but it placed a great amount of power in the hands of sponsors. This would work well only if sponsors were reliably virtuous people whose only interest is the good of society. From today’s perspective, this method has at least two problems. First, it opens doors to nepotism. If it were practiced today, sponsors would likely fight for opportunities to place their own prot´eg´es. Second, in the modern context of individuality, it is difficult to determine the recommender’ responsibility when his prot´eg´e fails. For example, how much responsibility should the recommender bear if his prot´eg´e, after an outstanding start on a new job, becomes corrupt five years after taking

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office? What about ten years later or even longer? Although recommendation may still play a role in selecting government appointees, it cannot play as important a role as it used to in history. The search for reliable ways to select people who are both virtuous and talented continues. II. CURRENT CIVIL SERVICE EXAMINATIONS

The imperial examination system was abolished in 1905, but examinations remain big affairs in China today. There are two major examinations. One is the university entrance examination, called gao kao, or the “examination for entrance into higher education.” According to China Education Online, from 1977 to 2010, 152 million contestants participated in the gao kao, and 66.61 million were admitted to universities.31 In 2011 alone, 9.33 million people took the gao kao, and 6.75 million were granted university admissions. The gao kao is also called da kao, meaning both the “examination for university entrance” and the “big examination.” For Chinese families with children, this examination is indeed the greatest affair in their lives. Acquiring a university seat is not only important for receiving an education, it is also a crucial move in upward social mobility, for which a good university degree is a requirement, with few exceptions, for obtaining good jobs, especially highly competitive civil service jobs, and for future promotions.32 Success in the gao kao is the first step in climbing today’s meritocratic social ladder. The other major examination is for civil service (gongwuyuan kaoshi). Civil service examinations take place both at the national and local levels. Examinations at the national level are called guo kao, the “examination for national civil service” or simply the “national examination.” The guo kao is an examination for appointments in the central government and its direct branches. Others are for civil service posts at the provincial level (sheng kao) and below. These examinations draw participants from all walks of life to compete for particularly desirable posts at various levels of government. These jobs are highly sought-after not only because they come with job security, excellent benefits, social prestige, and potential personal advantages often associated with government offices, but also because they are the primary passage for promotion to more important offices in government. In China, there is no difference between the tracks of professional civil servants (shiwu guan)

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and political appointees (zhengwu guan). With few exceptions, all senior positions have to be filled by candidates from the pool of civil servants.33 Today, more people than ever attempt to climb the social ladder through examinations. Approximately 1.5 million people registered for the 2013 national civil service examinations, competing for 20,800 posts,34 up from 2012 when more than 1.3 million people registered, competing for 18,000 positions.35 Two of the most sought-after posts drew 9,411 and 9,175 examination participants, respectively.36 These situations have given rise to the expression, “a colossal army passes through a single-log bridge.” In addition to the high desirability of these positions, the overly competitive situation is in part due to a large pool of qualified candidates looking for employment. In 1977, when China’s universities first reopened after the Cultural Revolution, 4.8 percent of 5,700,000 university examination participants, or 270,000, were admitted to universities. In 2011, 72 percent of 9,330,000 participants, or 6,750,000, were offered admissions. Increasingly, large numbers of university graduates place tremendous pressure on the job market; civil service examinations offer at least a nominal hope, even though the majority of applicants know that they have little chance of success in the competition. Today’s civil service examinations differ from the ancient keju in several ways. Contents of the examinations now include general and specialized subjects. Under general subjects are general civil knowledge, administrative abilities and aptitudes, and problem-solving essays. Specialized subjects are discipline- (or position-) specific. Those passing written examinations successfully are then interviewed before final selections are made. During the Tang dynasty, success in the keju gave candidates only the qualification for official posts; examination graduates only made it to the pool from which actual appointments were to be made by the ministry of personnel. During the Song dynasty, all successful candidates from examinations above the provincial level were automatically appointed to government offices. Success in today’s civil service examinations likewise means immediate appointment in government offices, because the success rate is set at the exact number of available openings. Unlike the Song practice, however, these appointments are usually office staff positions rather than senior positions. In most cases, staff appointments admit candidates into a select pool

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for further competition down the road in pursuit of more important government positions. Although the government commands a “buyer’s market” in selecting civil servants and professional training of public servants may have significantly improved over the years, the moral quality of civil servants appears to have deteriorated. Since its reforms and opening-up in late 1970s, China has been increasingly infested with corruption, particularly among government officials. With power and influence attached to government offices, occupants are prone to abusing public trust and to becoming primary targets for bribes. Every year, a large number of government officials are arrested at every level for corruption. From October 1997 to September 2002, ninety-eight officials at the minister-governor rank (sheng-bu ji), 2,422 officials at the rank immediately below (si-ju¨ ji), and, further down, 28,996 officials at the level of county mayor or ministerial office director (xian-chu ji) were penalized for corruption.37 In 2002 alone, 3,269 corruption cases involved government officials at or above the level of county mayor or ministerial office director.38 In 2010, 139,621 corruption cases were investigated; 146,517 government officials were disciplined by the Communist Party internally, and 5,373 of these were handed over to the court.39 It is believed, however, that these are merely the tip of the iceberg. Fighting corruption has become a matter of life and death for the ruling Party.40 Moral deterioration in society, particularly among government officials, has caused serious concerns with the moral quality of public servants in general. It is against this backdrop that the government recently proposed measures for ethical screening in the guo kao and for ethics education of civil servants. In October 2011, the State Administration of Civil Service announced that future recruitments will take candidates’ moral quality into consideration. According to one report, future civil service examinations will be based first on candidates’ moral character, followed by their talent and interview performance: “Candidates who lack political integrity, a sense of social responsibility, and a willingness to serve the public will not be allowed to become civil servants.”41 So far, no formal policies have been put in place for screening candidates’ moral character in civil servant examinations, and it is unclear how this is actually to be implemented. It would surely be difficult, if not impossible, to test personal moral quality with examinations. Following the announcement, the Xinhua Net conducted an online survey,

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finding that only 14 percent the 7,200 respondents approved the proposed measure, whereas 86 percent feared that it may be abused for opening “backdoors” in recruiting civil servants.42 In the meantime, the State Administration of Civil Service also published “Outlines for Professional Ethics Training of Civil Servants,” making ethical education part of the ongoing maintenance of civil service personnel. The outlines aim to enhance civil servants’ “professional ethics.” These include ten basic areas of moral knowledge and four themes: 1. The meaning and function of ethics and professional ethics. 2. The meaning and function of professional ethics for civil servants. 3. Civil servants’ responsibility, duty, and discipline. 4. Civil servants’ worldview, view of power, and view of career. 5. Ancient Chinese view on cultivating virtuous government officials. 6. The main contents of socialist core values. 7. The government’s requirements of anticorruption and integritybuilding among civil servants. 8. Main contents, features, and measures of professional ethics for civil servants in other countries. 9. The significance of professional ethics enhancement among civil servants. 10. Principles and methods of professional ethics enhancement among civil servants. The four themes are 1. Loyalty to the Country 2. The Fundamental Goal of Serving the People 3. Dutifulness 4. Fairness and Noncorruption43 Embedded in these are both moral and political connotations. The item of “socialist core values,” for example, obviously has a political overtone. The definition of “loyalty to the country” includes “firmly upholding the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party” and “maintaining uniformity with the Party in thought, politics, and action.”44 This reflects the persistent pattern of the PRC government’s longtime conflation of the party and the country. Disloyalty to the party is portrayed as disloyalty to the country. It should also be noted that the emphasis on

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“uniformity with the Party in thought, politics, and action” goes directly against the traditional Confucian value of “harmony with differences (he er bu tong).” Confucian classical teachings explicitly emphasize the importance of different voices in the government. The Shaogong 20 chapter of the Zuozhuan, for instance, spells out that, when the minister always keeps in uniformity with the ruler, there is only sameness rather than harmony; harmony requires a healthy interaction of different opinions.45 The majority of the guidelines, however, are of an ethical nature. For example, “enhancing responsibility consciousness,” “honesty,” “integrity,” and “seeking no personal gain in office.” Moreover, there are even items about “promoting traditional virtues” and “abiding by social ethics and family ethics.”46 The guidelines set the goal of placing every civil servant through such training during 2011–2015. Whether this kind of training is effective remains to be seen. We can hope, however, the training can serve at least as a reminder to civil servants of their duty and ethical obligations on the job. It is far from clear whether these guidelines, or similar material, will be used for future civil service examinations, and if they are, whether they can be a meaningful measure of professional ethics of civil servants. III. RECENT REFORM TOWARD “SCIENTIFIC AND DEMOCRATIC” SELECTIONS

China’s current civil service system in effect separates recruitment from promotion. Although currently there is no specific requirement on candidates’ moral character for civil service examinations besides absence of criminal record, promotion of public servants is more demanding in this regard. After decades of evolution and reform, promotion within civil service today takes into consideration candidates’ qualifications in multiple dimensions, including civic knowledge, professional ability, moral character, and political reliability. In 2004, the government implemented a policy of “Promotion through Competition (jingzheng shanggang),” institutionalizing competitive promotion of civil servants, up to deputy directors at the departmental level in ministries or provincial governments (fu-ju ji).47 The policy stipulates that promotions must be carried out on the principles of openness, fairness, and justice, on the basis of a combination of examinations and inspection by upper administration. Article 27 of the policy states that there must not be any “pre-chosen internal

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candidate,” that procedures cannot be altered in the middle of the process, that unpublicized information and contents of the examinations are strictly kept confidential, among other stipulations. The promotion process takes several steps. First, when there is a vacancy, interested individuals must submit applications and pass qualification screenings. The policy does not specify criteria for qualification screenings; it refers to another government document published in 2002, “Regulations regarding Promotion to Party and Government Leadership Positions.”48 That document contains specific guidelines for promotion of civil servants. For example, applicants for positions at the level of county mayor or ministerial office director (xian-chu ji) must have had working experience at a level immediately below it (Article 6). It also stipulates that candidacies may be generated through “democratic nominations,” a process that includes self-nomination and nomination by others. In the second stage of the promotion process, candidates must take written examinations and must pass interviews successfully. These examinations are localized and usually positionspecific. Examinations are important as the scores determine whether a candidate can move forward in the process and his or her ranking vis-`a-vis other candidates. Unlike civil service examinations in ancient times, however, these examinations are not the sole determining factor in securing appointments. They are only one of the several steps in the process of selection. The 2002 policy stipulates that subjects of the examinations and interviews must include job-related knowledge and skills (Articles 14 and 15). The interviewing committee must consist of at least seven members, including upper-level administrators, human resources staff, and professional experts; it should also include members from outside the agency. Individuals with conflicts of interest are to be recused. To maintain transparency, interviewing processes are open to public observation within the same agency (Article 16). Third, there will be a “democratic assessment” and inspection by human resources officers. During the “democratic assessment,” public input is solicited (Article 19). Background checks are then conducted. Finally, appointment decisions are to be made by the party leadership in the institution or its supervising agency (Article 24). The 2004 policy marks a major move toward a comprehensive scheme in selecting civil servants for senior positions. Although the practice inherits traditional methods of examinations and selections by superiors, new mechanisms are incorporated. Article 1 of the policy states that promotion processes must be “scientific, democratic, and

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institutionalized.” To be “scientific” means to be realistic and relevant to job qualifications. This is manifested mainly in two ways. First, examination subjects are on knowledge and skills closely related to the job. In this regard, it signifies a meaningful departure from ancient examinations. Ancient Chinese civil service examinations focused mainly on Confucian classics. Although the significance of these classics is not to be underestimated, they can at best provide moral and political guidance but do not help with specific skills for job performance. The second main area of the “scientific” move is in requiring professional experts and individuals familiar with the position to serve on interviewing committees. This makes interviews more pertinent and more reliable. One of Max Weber’s characteristics of modern bureaucracy is that modern office management requires expert training.49 The “scientific” turn in the policy in part answers to that requirement. It enhances the mechanism for search after talents. Whereas the “scientific” characteristic focuses mainly on the “talent” side of the search, the “democratic” dimension covers moral character as well as talent. The selection process is an “open” one; it includes “democratic nominations” as well as “public input and feedback.” This practice reduces nepotism and makes it more likely to select candidates with a broad base of support. To induce employees’ wide participation in the process, Article 18 requires an 80 percent participation rate in “public input and feedback.” Article 21 states that candidates who receive low ratings in the process will not be promoted. Article 19 states that public assessment of candidates focuses mainly on five areas: moral character, ability, dedication, accomplishment, and noncorruptness. These qualities can be readily sorted into two categories: moral character, dedication, and noncorruptness concern moral virtues; ability and accomplishment are indications of talent. Moral character, or de, is listed notably as the first among the five focuses in consideration. This is consistent with a long-held party line50 as well as the ancient tradition of placing virtue prominently in the selection process. We should note, however, that in these documents, de is used in a broad sense to encompass both moral virtues in the traditional sense and political loyalty to the Party. Article 6 of the 2002 “Regulations” stipulates that occupants of leadership positions “must be equipped with the necessary level of Marxism-Leninism, Mao Thought, and Deng Xiaoping Theory.” These requirements apply even to those who are not members of the party; Article 4 states that the

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document also applies to promoting non–Party members in leadership positions. Although this political requirement strikes us as an unreasonable imposition because it is binding to non–party members, it is almost irrelevant to the vast majority of candidates. Nowadays, there is hardly a clear official interpretation of these ideologies. In most cases, the requirement is no more than a matter of lip service. It becomes relevant, however, when individuals openly express political dissidence. Most candidates, of course, are unwilling to do so. For good moral character beyond political loyalty, Article 6 of the 2002 “Regulations” includes the following qualities: “Seeking truth from fact,” “uprightness without corruption,” “diligence in serving the people,” “being role models,” “thriftiness and simplicity,” “close connectedness to the people,” “receptiveness to criticism (from the Party and the people),” “self-respect, self-reflection, self-caution, and self-encouragement,” “opposition to bureaucratism,” “opposition to all abuses of power and to using office for self-interest,” and “solidarity with colleagues.” It is noteworthy that most of these are new expressions of traditional values in China. For example, the formulation of truthfulness in terms of “seeking truth from fact” can be traced to the Han dynasty;51 “uprightness without corruption” has been a perennial value in Chinese social philosophy, especially in Confucianism. There is little specifics as to how exactly these criteria are measured in the selection process. Presumably, during the period of “democratic assessment,” everyone with an opportunity for input can gauge candidates by his or her own interpretation and assign candidates with appropriate scores on respective virtues accordingly. Furthermore, pertinent considerations are factored in the deliberation process when the Party leadership makes the final decision for appointment. The 2002 and 2004 documents do not include special provisions for ethnic minorities. China has 56 officially registered ethnic groups, with numerous minority autonomous regions, districts, and counties. Adequate representation of ethnic minorities in government leadership positions is undoubtedly an important issue of fairness and social stability. Such a mechanism regarding selecting government officials is guaranteed legally in the form of the “Law for the Autonomous Governance of the Ethnic Minorities Areas of the People’s Republic of China.”52 Article 17 of the law stipulates that presidents or mayors of the autonomous regions, districts, and counties must be members of the respective ethnic minorities, and other governing officials

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in these governments must include respective minority members as well as members of other minorities. Article 18 further stipulates that respective minorities and other minorities must be reasonably represented in the governments of these ethnic minority areas. These laws set the parameters within which the 2002, 2004, and other related policies operate. They provide a remedy for potential social inequalities that meritocratic practice may engender. The current system of selecting civil servants for leadership positions is the most comprehensive and sophisticated in China’s history. The goal by and large remains the same: to select people who are both virtuous and talented for government positions, even though definitions of these two qualities have evolved. Mechanisms in the process have also changed. Compared with practices in ancient times, the current system is indeed (more) “scientific” and “democratic,” and it has definitely been institutionalized. The “scientific” turn helps make selection processes more skill-pertinent by designing and conducting examinations and interviews to actually measure job-related knowledge and skills. The “democratic” aspect gives the public some say in the selection process, not only regarding candidates’ professional ability but also moral character, providing a way to remedy a persistent failure of traditional examination systems. Finally, the ultimate decision power lies with the party leadership in the institution. This, if it functions well, provides a possible corrective to populism or manipulation by public opinions. All these, of course, are managed in the context of the absolute leadership of the party. The decision power by the party has been maintained as the ultimate principle in the entire process of reform. In ancient times, although candidates were evaluated, judged, and selected in various ways, the ruling family of the empire was not to be challenged. To a large extent, China’s selection system remains the same in this regard. In ancient times, loyalty to the ruling family was considered a primary virtue; today it is loyalty to the party. The absolute leadership of the party determines that the system inherently rewards party loyalty more than anything else. Although personal moral character and records of accomplishments are taken into consideration, loyalty to the party trumps all other criteria. Today’s increasingly diverse society has presented various challenges to the monopoly of the oneparty system. If we recognize that the interest of the country and that of the party do not necessarily coincide, and if we regard governmental pursuit of any interest other than that of the country as corruption, then this element of the selection process may well be the greatest

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corruption of the current system. Correction of this defect will require replacing the authority of the party with that of the nation in the form of government not monopolized by any political party. IV. CONNECTIONS WITH INDIVIDUAL CORRUPTION?

We have shown that China’s current system of selecting government officials has evolved into a comprehensive and sophisticated one, although its general goal for selecting and retaining virtuous and talented officials, broadly speaking, remains intact. So what does it take if someone wishes to climb the meritocratic ladder and become a government official with leadership responsibility? Normally, first he (or she)53 needs to pass the university entrance examination and secure a place at a good university. After graduation, he needs to pass a civil service examination and acquire a government post. He then needs to pass another specialized examination(s) to compete for a particular leadership position, along with other required screenings. After these accomplishments, with luck, he becomes a government official with leadership responsibility. Down the road, he may be further promoted to higher positions by repeating the last process again and again.54 Thus, becoming a government official in China is one of the most difficult career paths in the world. For some, perhaps many, it is also the most valuable career path, because it brings job security, social prestige, and sometimes wealth. Toward the end of the last section, we raised the issue of corruption associated with the party’s monopoly of power. We may call this “collective corruption,” as opposed to corruption of individual persons. Individual corruption, however, is a widespread problem in China. Here we turn to the issue of individual corruption. Because the current Chinese selection system coexists conspicuously with severe corruption in society, one cannot help asking the obvious question: does the current selection system contribute to these problems of corruption? It would indeed appear paradoxical to have a comprehensive and sophisticated selection process coexisting with serious corruption in the government. Our view is, however, that although China’s civil servant selection and promotion system is by no means perfect and is subject to abuse (particularly abuse of the final decision power of the party), the mechanism itself is not a cause of corruption, in the sense that it does not encourage corrupt officials. For the most part, it provides a countering force against it; without it, corruption would be even worse.

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There are several reasons for thinking this way. First, we must note the social context of the system. China’s opening up in the past few decades has brought economic prosperity, but it also witnessed severe moral deterioration in society. Deng Xiaoping’s pragmatic philosophy as it has been promoted contains two main doctrines. The first is that “getting rich is glorious.”55 The second is his “cat doctrine,” that is, “a cat, white or black, is good as long as it catches mice.” Although these doctrines have promoted economic development, they have also led to a social mentality of achieving one’s goal at any cost, particularly if the cost is intangible, such as a moral price. The result is a morally debased society.56 The civil service selection reform has been developed in such a social background and is meant to counter corruption. Even though corruption sometimes penetrates the civil service selection processes, the method itself is not a mechanism for corruption. Admittedly, within such an unfortunate social climate, any procedural method is likely to be ineffective in fighting corruption. The final decision process of the appointment by the party leadership at a higher level, for example, can be, and definitely has been, used for nepotism or taking bribes, even though it is not supposed to be. This, however, is not an inherent character of the system, just as corruption in many democratic countries cannot be considered an inherent character of democracy or judges taking bribes an inherent aspect of legal systems. When upright people take charge, presumably, they will make uncorrupt decisions, whether in a democracy or in the current Chinese system. Second, if corruption is the norm, as is commonly believed to be the case in China, even the finest selection method cannot produce clean candidates; it at best yields candidates who are less corrupt than others (this is not to deny that there are uncorrupt officials in China). An ancient Chinese saying goes that “sometimes generals have to be selected from among dwarfs.” Generals (in ancient times) are supposed to be tall and strong. But when they have to be selected from an army entirely comprising short men, generals are just relatively tall dwarfs. Similarly, when candidates for higher government positions have to be selected from a pool of largely corrupt individuals, even wellselected appointees can at best be less corrupt, rather than uncorrupt, individuals. Third, selection methods, no matter how effective, can only choose qualified candidates and yield suitable appointments at the time of selection; they cannot prevent appointees from becoming corrupt in office. Additional measures are needed to fight corruption after

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candidates take office. Within the context of the Chinese political system, the main problem for corruption of the officialdom is not the selection system but the lack of effective watchdogs to keep government officials under close scrutiny. China’s current watchdog system is an internal one; the party has its own inspection department at all levels. Although it has caught a large amount of corruption, including some dishonest officials at the national level, these are believed to be merely a fraction of the actual corruption that is widespread throughout the government. The solution to corruption lies in an effective mechanism of close supervision through checks-and-balances of power; the current political system in China does not have an adequate mechanism. It is our opinion that, under normal circumstances, when social morality is not as widely deteriorated as it is today, the kind of selection process developed so far may serve as an effective way to generate good candidates for government positions. It is reasonable to think that much of China’s current selection system can be continued, more formally than materially, as a key component of meritocracy after major changes take place in the country and as the nation’s exploration of improved mechanisms for virtuous and talented leaders moves forward.57 notes

1. Research for this article was supported by Nanyang Technological University Research grant nos. M4080394/M4080408. 2. For example, see Benjamin Elman, A Cultural History of Civil Examinations in Late Imperial China (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2000), and the chapters by Benjamin Elman (Ch. 7) and Yuri Pines (Ch. 6) in this volume. 3. The  (Chinese Dictionary, http://zidian.teachercn.com/xian/Word 17127.html) defines  as ,   (virtuous and talented; accessed on July 14, 2012). This is also the way the word is used in the Shang Xian chapter of the Mozi. In the Book of History, the Book of Zhou Rituals, and the Book of Rites, classic commentators Zheng Xuan and Kong Yingda have interpreted xian (primarily) as the virtuous or the morally good (e.g., Thirteen Classics with Commentaries (hereafter TTC, 1985) (Beijing: China Shudian  ), 171, 175, 874, 1463). 4. TTC, 134. 5. See Yuri Pines’s chapter in this volume. 6. TTC, 122. 7. These stories are in the Yaodian and Shundian chapters of the Book of History. The authors thank Joseph Chan for the reference in the Shundian.

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8. Qian Mu ,New Studies of Chinese History (Taipei: Dongda Publishing Company, 2004), pp. 242–4. 9. TTC, 1342. 10. Qian, op. cit., pp. 246–7. 11. Elman, op. cit., p. 7. 12. E. A. Kracke, Jr., “Family vs. Merit in the Examination System,” in Johanna M. Menzel, ed., ( 1963), The Chinese Civil Service: Career Open to Talent? (Boston: D. C. Heath and Company), pp. 1–8. 13. See Elman’s chapter in this volume. 14. Qian, op. cit., p. 248. 15. ,  ; ,  .   ,   ,     . . . () , ,  ;   (Qu Shouyuan and Chang Sichun     eds., Annotated Complete Works of Han Yu (Chengdu: Sichuan University Press, 1996). The authors gratefully acknowledge William Nienhauser for suggestions in revising our English translation. 16. For a Confucian view of a person’s being as the cultivation of qi, see Chenyang Li, “Confucian Moral Cultivation, Longevity, and Public Policy,” Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy, vol. IX, no. 1 (2010), pp. 25–36. 17. Han obviously had in mind objects lighter than water. 18. Qian, op. cit., p. 249. 19. David Nivison, “The Criteria for Excellence,” in Johanna M. Menzel, ed., (1963), p. 98. 20.  , ,   , ,   ,  ,  Zhu Jieren et al.  ed.,  Complete Works of Zhu Xi (Shanghai: Shanghai Guji Press, 2002), p. 3783). 21. Nivison, op. cit., p. 99. 22. Ibid. 23. Qian, op. cit., p. 252. 24. Nivison, op. cit., p. 94. 25. “    ,        , #          ,          ,    ” (  ·    ) Twenty-five Histories(Shanghai: Shanghai Guji Press, 1986), p. 467. 26. “ ,  ,   ,  $

 ”  (  · ·, see Wang Tingxiang,  Collected Works of Wang Tingixang (Beijing: Zhonghua Books, 1989), p. 860). 27. Elman, op. cit., p. 371. 28. E. A. Kracke, Jr., “Sponsorship and the Selection of Talent,” in Menzel (1963), pp. 84–5. 29. Ibid., p. 86. This is undoubtedly far from a complete list. From a Confucian perspective, such personal qualities as fondness of learning, trustworthiness, and family virtues are also indispensable. 30. Ibid.

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31. Available at http://gaokao.eol.cn/baogao_11480/20110428/t20110428_608004 .shtml (accessed November 7, 2011). 32. A government regulation concerning promotions of civil servants, published on 23 July 2002, states that candidates “usually should have university degrees (http://www.people.com.cn/GB/shizheng/16/20020723/782504.html). Accessed on November 7, 2011. 33. These exceptions include direct selection from outstanding college students, selective recruitment from veterans, and selection of leadership officeholders from state-owned companies. 34. China Daily, November 26, 2012, 4 Nation. 35. Jinghua Times, October 26, 2011, A03. 36. Xinjing News, October 25, 2012. 37. China’s current cadre system assigns each government office a rank (ji) so that a minster in the central government is on the same rank as a provincial governor and so forth. 38. ,  (Ni Xing and Wang Lijing), “  %  (Assessing Current Corruption in China and Its Consequences)),”  Xinhua Wenzhai, 2004;3. 39. See http://www.mos.gov.cn/mos/cms/html/3/65/201102/2025.html (accessed November 7, 2011). 40. A widespread saying is, “fighting corruption will lead to the demise of the Party; but not fighting corruption will mean the demise of the nation” ! &; !&. 41. See http://bj.lgwy.net/StudentDoc-content 4506.html (accessed November 7, 2011). 42. “Can Civil Service Examinations Place Moral Character First?” (     “  ”?)   Ningbo Evening News, October 16, 2011, A15; available at http://daily.cnnb.com.cn/nbwb/html/2011– 10/16/content_373680.htm (accessed November 7, 2011). 43.'  , the State Administration of Civil Service (http://www.scs.gov.cn/Desktop.aspx?path=Desktop.aspx?PATH=gjgwyj/ gjgwyjsy/xxllym&gid=b897e8a0-cebd-4777–8f68–66fb3ef4facf&tid=Cms_ Info). Accessed November 7, 2011. 44. Ibid. 45. TTC, 2093. 46. Same as 43. 47.    (       (http://law.51labour.com/lawshow82265.html). Another pertinent document, China’s Civil Service Act (        ), enacted on January 1, 2006, stipulates that civil servants at the office staff level should be recruited through open, competitive examinations (Article 21) and that promotions up to deputy directors at the departmental level in a ministry or a provincial government are through two channels: (1) selection through competition among candidates at lower positions within the same administrative system (jingzheng shanggang) and (2) selection from candidates in all sectors of society (gongkai xuanba, Article 45). A vast majority of promotions in the government have been through competition among candidates at lower positions within the same

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agency. China’s Human Resources Paper reported that, within China’s Ministry of Human Resources, 95 percent of promotions were made through open competition among internal candidates  ( August 20, 2007). The government does not formally publicize this kind of data. Because the Ministry of Human Resources is likely to lead the trend in this regard, we have reasons to think these data have broad representation. 48.  (see http://www.people.com.cn/GB/ shizheng/16/20020723/782504.html). Accessed on May 11, 2013. 49. H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills, From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (New York: Oxford University Press, 1946), p. 198. 50. Section 5.1 of the 2009 “Resolutions of the Party’s Fourth Plenary Meeting of the 17th Congress” explicitly states a policy of “both virtue and talent but virtue first” (

 ). 51. , Twenty-five Histories (Vol. 1), p. 226. 52.   "  , available at http://www.gov.cn/test/ 2005–07/29/content_18338.htm, accessed January 15, 2012. 53. Although there is still sex inequality, especially for government positions at higher levels, there has been significant progress in sex equality in assess to university education in China. 54. Currently, promotions to the directorship at the departmental level in a ministry and above go through a different channel. 55. The saying has been widely attributed to Deng Xiaoping, although its origin remains unclear. 56. For a detailed discussion of this issue, see Chenyang Li, “Contemporary Challenges for Confucianism,” Journal of East-West Thought, vol. 1, no. 2 (2012), pp. 53–68. 57. The authors would like to thank Daniel A. Bell, Kenneth Tan, and William Nienhauser for their valuable comments and suggestions on earlier versions of this essay.

13 Reflections on Political Meritocracy Its Manipulation and Transformation Philippe C. Schmitter

Political merit sounds like a simple principle on which to base the legitimacy and, hence, the stability of a polity. Those who rule such an arrangement should deserve (“merit”) the position they have attained. I doubt if there has ever been a ruler who did not make such a claim: “I deserve to govern you because I am better (at something) than you are” – even if that something is just because he or she has more resources and a greater capacity for exercising coercion than you do. What makes a difference is not just the criterion for making this self-assertion, but also whether it is shared by both the ruler and the ruled. Only when the notion of merit is mutually acceptable is it likely to induce voluntary compliance and serve to legitimate the position of the ruler or rulers. In a democratic regime, the justification rests on the expressed opinions and actions of citizens (who may be wrong in their judgment about merit and elect quite incompetent and corrupt leaders). In an autocratic one, the rulers are likely to claim to be more worthy in absolute terms regardless of the “shortsighted” or “illinformed” opinions of their subjects (who may even agree with this judgment, at least for a while). The criterion for making the assertion about merit, therefore, has varied a great deal over time, but often the ruler’s claim to superiority has eventually not proven to be acceptable to the ruled. In most of Western Europe until, roughly, the nineteenth century, merit was based on genetics, that is, being born into the proper (royal) family at the right moment in time (primogeniture) and usually of the right gender (male). Except for odd places such as Switzerland or Iceland, that was regarded as sufficient – even by the least genetically meritorious of the ruler. The concept of merit has an ancient history in political thought. Plato 363

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assigned every inhabitant of his ideal Polis to an appropriate rank in a putative natural hierarchy of “metallic orders” in which the Golden Ones were entitled to rule, the Silver Ones should act as their assistants, and all of the other (Iron and Bronze) ones should occupy themselves with nonpolitical tasks. How this standard was to be recognized and applied was less clear, as were the criteria for moving up or down from one order to another. Needless to say, there have always been wellentrenched oligarchies of knowledge, wealth, or descent eager to claim virtuous membership in the top positions and zealous in their efforts to prevent others from entering or expelling them from this status. In the Chinese-Confucian tradition, political merit was supposedly determined by formal academic competition, although the highest ranks of rulers seem to have been filled by quite different criteria, usually victory in war and then family descent.1 With the emergence of liberal democracy in Western Europe and North America the late eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries, a distinctive standard for legitimizing domination gradually and fitfully asserted itself: political merit was to be determined by periodic competition between candidates nominated by political parties in which the one or ones obtaining the most votes from a body of citizens was declared the most meritorious and thereby entitled to act as representatives for the whole who in turn were entitled to form a government for some temporary period (pro tempore). I. SOME DOUBTS ABOUT POLITICAL MERITOCRACY IN GENERAL

All of these claims to political merit were (and still are) dubious.2 Birth into a royal family has not proven a reliable guarantee of genetic superiority – rather the contrary due to intermarriage. Assignment to some metallic rank-ordering of excellence has also not proven either reliable or consensual – despite the subsequent invention of IQ and other “objective” tests of personality and intellectual competence. Formal examinations for entry have floundered on the issue of what the subject matter for good governing should be – especially when the knowledge being tested remained the same over time while the conditions for ruling changed constantly. Even the relatively simpler criterion of winning elections has depended for its efficacy on a number of previous conditions of fairness in competition and equality of opportunity for candidates. Otherwise, these contests are systematically biased either in favor of incumbents (`a la Roberto Michels) or for the benefit of a socioeconomic oligarchy (`a la C. Wright Mills).

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Above and beyond all of these flaws in design principles, the practical application of criteria of merit has been subject historically to falsification and manipulation by entrenched and decidedly unmeritorious rulers. The more autocratic the regime whose rulers are proclaiming their intrinsic merit, the more likely the criteria will be manipulated – and the more difficult it will be for nonrulers to criticize or remove their allegedly meritorious rulers peacefully. From a strictly scholarly perspective, it is therefore tempting to dismiss the entire notion that politics can and should be “meritocratic” as one of those “convenient fictions” (Plato called it a “Noble Lie”) that seem to be such an indispensable symbolic component in all forms of political life. In theory, all of the principles for assessing political merit are intrinsically ambiguous and, therefore, unlikely to generate an enduring consensus between rulers and ruled. In practice, whatever the basis of the claim may be, its application will almost always prove to be either manifestly insufficient for dealing with new challenges or simply a momentary effort to justify the existing distribution of power. II. POLITICAL MERIT IN REAL-EXISTING DEMOCRACIES (REDS)

The number of REDs has increased dramatically in the past three decades.3 Back in the early 1960s, Robert Dahl could only find twenty or so of them.4 Today, there may be as many as eighty or so. And there are currently a dozen or so in which the struggle for such a regime dominates political life. Ironically, in this same time frame, just as something approximating liberal, representative, constitutional, and capitalist democracy has extended to new countries and even continents, citizen satisfaction within preexisting REDs has declined. And, after a short initial period of “founding enthusiasm,” it has also plummeted in the new REDs. Could this have something to do with a generic decline in citizen perceptions of the merit of their rulers? In the long list of “morbidity symptoms” compiled by observers of contemporary REDs (e.g., decline in electoral turnout, falling party membership and identification, greater volatility in voter preferences and, hence, electoral outcomes, greater difficulty in obtaining and sustaining majority support for governments, declining centrality of parliament, and increased devolution of authority to undemocratic “guardian institutions,”) one of the most salient has been decrease in trust in politicians, parties, and political institutions in general.5 Is this an indication that the heretofore dominant criterion

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for certifying their merit – namely, electoral success – is no longer working? And, if so, what (if anything) might be replacing it? III. THE CENTRALITY OF REPRESENTATION IN REDS

The thread that connects all of these symptoms is representation and, even more specifically, the extent to which citizen representation through political parties competing in elections is capable of identifying meritorious rulers and ensuring their legitimacy. Could it be that what institutions are no longer working as they used to and, therefore, generating most of the disaffection among citizens are the partisan channels for aggregating, deliberating, and deciding among competing interests and passions? If so, the crisis would not be of the merit of democracy itself, but just of one criterion for excellence and one set of institutions that have come to be closely identified with it. And the solution, therefore, is to be found not in getting rid of this type of regime but in recognizing and applying other meritocratic grounds for the selection of its rulers. And that would inevitably imply transforming or redimensioning the role played by political parties and elections.6 Lurking in the background of this hypothesis is the notion that other channels of selection – especially those involving the associations and movements of civil society – might be capable of offering an alternative basis of participation, accountability, and legitimacy. Partially as a result of this reconceptualization, it has become apparent to many students of democracy that representation is not a mere pragmatic artifact of political technology introduced to compensate for the enlarged scale of political units (from city-states to nation-states and even to region-states) and the expanded scope of citizenship (from a privileged socioeconomic minority to an indiscriminate majority and even to foreign residents and nationals living abroad), but the very basis on which all REDs function (and dysfunction).7 And, once representation is accorded this more intrusive and autonomous role, it can be found in many more sites within the polity. Elected partisan representatives may still enjoy a more visible status, but they are surrounded and supplemented by (and, sometimes, subordinated to) self-appointed and bureaucratically selected ones emerging from alternative channels provided by interest associations and social movements.8 All of which has undermined the following three items of orthodox liberal ideology on which most REDs rest: (1) individual citizens are the exclusive “principals” and their representatives should

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act as mere “agents” responsive to them; (2) the “natural” constituencies within which these citizens should articulate their interests or passions are formally delineated territories; (3) competition between alternative providers – whether between parties in public elections or between factions within representative organizations – is the exclusive mechanism for determining who these legitimate representatives should be. Taken to the extreme, this principled liberal democratic conception of political merit would exclude all other claims. Citizens are empowered to decide by themselves what criteria should be applied in choosing their rulers, and, collectively, the outcome of their voting should set the normative standard for the polity as a whole. Rival meritocratic claims, whether based on favorable descent, specialized knowledge, moral rectitude, or superior material resources, should be trumped by the simple (if periodic) expression of voters’ preferences – regardless of the other qualifications that any particular candidate or party may have.9 Granted that in their early development stages, liberal democracies did impose restrictions based on gender, property, fiscal contribution, education, literacy, and other factors, allegedly to discriminate in favor of meritorious citizens and more eligible candidates, but these have largely been eroded by the process of democratic competition. At least in formal terms, the only one remaining is age – and even this one is being gradually revised downward from 18 to 16 years old. IV. TWO KEY COMPROMISES WITH REGARD TO POLITICAL MERIT

In practice, however, REDs have been compelled to compromise and to recognize other meritocratic claims. First and foremost, because all of these regimes have historically been associated with (and been protected by) a peculiar type of political unit – namely, the sovereign national state, which is composed of a distinctive set of permanent agencies that require specialized forms of knowledge for their security and prosperity. In short, all REDs depend on an infrastructure of nondemocratic and bureaucratically structured organizations – Robert Dahl has called them “guardian institutions” – and, if only for that reason, they have to recognize and reward other bases of political merit. To put it in Plato’s terms, its “Golden” elected politicians require a lot of “Silver” auxiliaries if they are to rule effectively.

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The criteria used to assess the merits of these politically appointed or permanently hired “Silvers” certainly contribute to how the ruled evaluate their rulers, above and beyond their ability to win elections. A second generic source of alternative claims to merit has come from within the process of electoral competition. Under conditions of mass enfranchisement and technological change, the politicians competing for votes need to become more and more professional. Initially, acting as an elected representative in REDs was a part-time and barely remunerated job. Liberal democratic theory presumed that politicians were amateurs – persons who might have been somewhat more affected by “civic” motives than others, but who were otherwise no different from ordinary citizens. Candidates would (reluctantly) agree to serve in public office for a prescribed period of time and then return to their normal private lives and occupations. Although it is difficult to place a date on it, at some time during the twentieth century, more and more RED politicians began to live, not for politics, but from politics. Moreover, they not only entered the role with the expectation of making it their life’s work; they also surrounded themselves with other professionals: campaign consultants, fundraisers, public relations specialists, media experts, and – to use the latest term – “spin doctors.” Whether as cause or effect, the change in personnel and campaign organization has been accompanied by an astronomical increase in the cost of getting elected and of remaining in the public eye if one is so unfortunate as to become unelected. This role transformation has had a profound effect on the sort of qualities (“merits”) that are necessary for political success – both in gaining office and exercising power. Unfortunately, many of the professional skills that contemporary politicians need (telegenic image, programmatic ambiguity, ideological flexibility, personalistic self-promotion, information manipulation, package-dealing, fundraising, adjusting to opinion surveys and focus groups, negative advertising, and media penetration – not to mention receiving kickbacks from contractors and distributing payoffs clandestinely to supporters) are hardly compatible with the qualities most citizens desire in their representatives. No doubt, this clash between normatively expected and actually practiced merits has contributed to the sharp decline in the prestige of and trust in politicians in almost all REDs. As a result of these two transformations, none of the three items of orthodox liberal democratic ideology noted here is any longer empirically the case (if they ever were). Those who are normally being

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represented are not individuals as such with the status of citizens but individuals (or families, firms, social groups, etc.) within preestablished or prescribed constituencies. The politics of REDs are filled with representative agents who are continuously inventing and inculcating new conceptions of interest and passion in their alleged citizen principals. These mutable constituencies for representation, whether based on functional interests (class, sector, and profession, in my jargon) or on passionate issues (collective identity, lifestyle, religious conviction, environmental concern, and so forth), have proliferated and tend to cut across existing territorial boundaries – both national and international. Finally, most of the representatives that have merged from these alternative channels do not (and cannot) claim legitimacy on the basis of a publicly organized process of competition. They have been appointed through some obscure process internal to their organization or, in the most extreme cases, they have simply proclaimed themselves to be representative of some category of interest or passion – and then called on followers to support them.10 Paradoxically (from the perspective of liberal democratic theory), public opinion surveys seem to indicate that these representatives chosen by various “selectorates” are more trusted (and, perhaps, more closely identified with and relied on) than the politicians chosen by “electorates.” If so and if this persists, one may well question whether the “deeply innovative” and “increasingly (inclusive)” historical role of political parties will persist into the future.11 Could it be the case that the future quality and legitimacy of REDs will depend more on other – associational and movement – forms of representation? V. SOME QUERIES ABOUT NONELECTED REPRESENTATION

What is not at all clear from this apparent shift in public opinion is the following: 1. Whether this is an irreversible trend away from the liberal principle of attributing political merit according to electoral success or just an aberration due to a temporary sclerosis of national party systems in the face of changes in domestic cleavage structures and/or transnational pressures. 2. Why nonelected representatives should be considered more politically meritorious and, hence, more trustworthy than elected

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ones – especially given that they have yet to assume direct responsibility for governing. 3. What attaches these self-appointed or bureaucratically selected representatives to their respective constituencies and, hence, ensures the validity of their articulations of interest or passion. 4. What is the role being played by the technocrats and specialists (the “staff”) who typically surround and advise the nonelected leaders of these civil society organizations and who presumably influence the substance of their collective demands. 5. To what extent has the growing presence of these “counterdemocratic” actors already influenced the way in which decisions are made in REDs under the guise of substituting “governance” for “government” in which consensus among so-called stakeholders replaces majority voting among representatives of citizens.12 VI. TOWARD AN INSTITUTIONAL REDESIGN OF REDS?

Implicit in these queries is the potentiality for redesigning the basic institutions of real-existing democracy.13 It is not just the criteria for assessing merit and, hence, legitimate access to public decision making that are at stake as a result of these transformations, but even more important, they have raised the specter of a change in the type or model of democracy that is being practiced. For, once the analyst recognizes explicitly that representation provides the generic institutional basis for identifying and certifying political merit in all REDs and that these institutions have evolved historically as a function of changes in issue content and cleavage patterns, then he or she should be in a better position to discern the emergence of different types or models of democracy than by relying on the traditional formal criteria of differentiation (e.g., parliamentarism vs. presidentialism, unitary vs. federal, two party vs. multiparty, first-past-the post vs. proportional, e cos`ı via). What counts is the “systemic configuration” of representative institutions, not just the role of one set of them. Changes in their interrelationship – based in turn on changes in the way citizens assess political merit – should be indicative of the emergence of new types or models of RED. Individual components do not disappear and may not even change much. The constitution remains the same; “free and fair” elections continue to be conducted under the same rules; the number of parties does not vary; the identity of the party in power varies between the same elites; presidents and parliaments come and go regularly; but somewhere in

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the respective roles played by parties, associations, and movements and in the salience of multiple and cross-cutting constituencies, changes do occur that direct the exercise of public and private power in different directions – and to the benefit of different persons and groups. There are at least three generic “models” of democracy circulating among theorists and practitioners, at least in contemporary Europe. Each of them places primary responsibility on different types of actors and processes of decision making. All of them are compatible with our generic definition of democracy as “a regime or system of governance in which rulers are held accountable for their actions in the public realm by citizens, acting indirectly through the competition and cooperation of their representatives”14 – whether the latter are elected, selected, or self-appointed. Especially, this definition does not “commit” to any specific institutional format or decision rules. Leaving open the key issues of how citizens choose their representatives, what the most effective mechanisms of accountability are, and how collective binding decisions should be taken does not preclude the validity or viability of any of the following generic types. Summarizing crudely, one can distinguish three ideal-typical “models” of democracy that persist in all European states and combine in varying degrees to form distinctive subtypes of RED. They are not incompatible with each other, but each places emphasis on different institutions and consequentially on the merit of contributions by different sets of actors.

1. Numerical. Democracy consists of a process in which citizens with equal rights and obligations participate directly (in elections, primaries, referendums, initiatives, polls, and so forth) or indirectly (through representatives in parliaments, legislative committees, investigatory commissions, advisory councils, local governments, and so forth) in the making of binding collective decisions by competition, such that the alternative that receives the most votes (plurality) or more than half the votes (majority) is chosen. 2. Negotiative. Democracy consists of a process in which citizens with preferences that are of unequal intensity and, at times, of incompatible resolution enter – again, directly or indirectly – into negotiations with each other to arrive at a binding collective decision by consensus, that is, one that is mutually advantageous and, therefore, acceptable to all.

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3. Deliberative. Democracy consists of a process through which citizens agree to exchange information about each other’s interests and passions under conditions of honest disclosure, mutual respect and equal power to modify these preexisting preferences, discover shared solutions, and arrive at a binding decision by consensus. Returning to our reflections on the nature and role of political merit, each of these three models values the contribution of citizens and their representatives in different ways and to different degrees. The focus of “numerical democracy” comes closest to embodying the traditional liberal principle of electoral success; “negotiative democracy” places a greater emphasis on specialized knowledge and expertise exchanged among nonelected interest representatives and, therefore, embodies some meritocratic features15 ; “deliberative democracy” would diffuse merit more broadly among the citizenry, anchor it more in personal experience than in professional training, and find more legitimate expression in the enormous variety of social movements in civil society. VII. CONCLUDING WITH A QUESTION

If this conceptualization is valid – if the nature of contemporary RED has already shifted away from the traditional numerical model and is currently being contested between the negotiative and deliberative ones – then what does this imply for political meritocracy? One hypothesis would be that if both citizens and rulers recognize (at least, implicitly) this transformation in the nature of their practice of democracy, they should be changing the criteria they use to assess political merit. But this by no means ensures a consensus among them on what this implies. What would be particularly alarming for the legitimacy of REDs is a situation in which the qualities that representatives or politicians need to wield to become or remain virtuous, that is, to get into power and remain there, are not just different from what their supporters/voters regard as meritorious but even diametrically opposed to them. notes

1. Please refer to the chapters by Elman (Ch. 7) and Pines (Ch. 6) in this volume. 2. No Western political theorist paid more attention to political merit than ` For him, it played a central role Niccolo` Machiavelli who called it Virtu.

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4. 5.

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in both founding and sustaining a Stato. To anyone reading his Prince, it should be clear that this had nothing to do with formal education, religious piety, moral rectitude, test scores, or even basic intelligence and everything to do with learning from personal experience in the “rough and tough” practice of politics. A “real-existing democracy” (RED) has three only characteristics: (1) it is a regime that calls itself “democratic,” (2) it is accepted by other self-proclaimed REDs as one of them, and (3) most political scientists would agree that it meets or exceeds their minimal procedural standards for democracy. It is roughly equivalent to what Robert Dahl once tried to label as a “polyarchy.” Needless to say, the relationship between this regime and what classical theories designate as a democracy or what normative theories advocate for a democracy is fortuitous because REDs are historical compromises that mix different principles of liberalism, representation, centralization, technocracy, monarchism, and populism with those of democracy. Robert Dahl, Polyarchy, Participation and Opposition (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1971). Philippe Schmitter and Alexandre Trechsel, eds., The Future of Democracy in Europe: Trends, Analyses and Reforms (Strasbourg: Council of Europe Publishing, 2004). It should be noted that it is not just politicians whose merits are being called into question. Scientists, experts and technicians in many professions and with a variety of credentials are also more mistrusted than in the past. “The political parties created democracy and modern democracy is unthinkable save in terms of the parties,” E. E. Schattschneider, Party Government (New York: Rhinehart & Co., 1942), p. 1. Leaving aside the fact that the first part of this statement is manifestly not true, the second remains “foundational” for much of contemporary political science. If this group of theorists had taken the occasion to draft a single phrase capturing the essence of their revisionist conception of RED, it might have been: “Representative democracy is government by professional politicians, not by amateur citizens.” Compare with chapters by Pettit (Ch. 5) and Macedo (Ch. 8) in this volume. I am reminded of my first visit to Taiwan when my host, a local political scientist, proudly observed that its government at the time was the best educated in the world. Every cabinet member but one had a doctorate from an American university, and the one outsider got his from a British university. If memory serves me correctly, that overeducated Kuomintang government lost the subsequent elections. Just consider the extreme (and improbable but nonetheless effective) case of the Irish rock musician Bono “representing” Africa! For a general treatment of celebrity politics, see “Introduction,” John Corner and Dick Pels, eds., Media and the Restyling of Politics (London: Sage, 2003), pp. 1–18. Maurizio Cotta and Heinrich Best, Parliamentary Representatives in Europe, 1848–2000. Legislative Recruitment and Careers in Eleven European Countries (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).

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12. Pierre Rosanvallon, Counter-Democracy, Politics in an Age of Distrust (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008). 13. Another way of thinking about this shift, and one that may be more compatible with revising the underlying democratic theory involved, is to consider that, although equality in “numbers” – one citizen, one vote, one weight – was the defining characteristic of previous forms of both direct and representative democracy, the new emerging form is more sensitive to “intensities” of preference as expressed by citizens in their different (and often multiple) constituencies. Only a flexible set of associations and movements could be expected to respond to this challenge. 14. Philippe C. Schmitter and Terry Karl, “What Democracy is and is not,” Journal of Democracy, Vol. II, No. 3 (Summer 1991), p. 76. 15. However, it should be noted that access to the negotiating process is based on the reputation for political influence and the potential for disruption, not on any formalized process of identifying and certifying merit. Once in the process, however, the meritocratic quality of one’s information and expertise should make a difference in the outcome.

14 Political Meritocracy and Direct Democracy A Hybrid Experiment in California Nicolas Berggruen and Nathan Gardels

LOS ANGELES – At the turn of the 20th century when Western power was at its height, Sun Yat-Sen sought to blend the Confucian tradition of meritocratic governance and Western-style democracy in his vision for modern China. With the “rise of the rest” in the 21st century – led by China – perhaps the political imagination is open once again, this time not only to Western ideas flowing East but to Eastern ideas flowing West as well. The political imagination has been pried open anew not only because of the sustained success of non-Western modernity in places such as Singapore and China but because democracy itself has become so dysfunctional across the West, from its ancient birthplace in Greece to its most advanced outpost in California. That liberal democracy is the best form of governance ever achieved in the long arc of history is no longer self-evident. Today, democracy must prove itself. Even Francis Fukuyama, who declared “the end of history” with the triumph of market democracies after the Cold War, now seems to doubt his own verdict. In a conversation last spring with us and California Governor Jerry Brown, Fukuyama worried that American democracy, above all, had deteriorated into a “vetocracy” in which the general will and long-term sustainability are subverted by specialinterest lobbies and the short-term mentality of ideologically rigid or narrowly self-interested constituencies. These organized groups have amassed the clout to veto whatever threatens their hold on government. The votes of ordinary citizens are thus steeply discounted, if not virtually meaningless. As a result, democratic governance in the United States has become divided against itself and paralyzed by gridlock, unable to face the 375

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challenges of the future. In this sense, a vote for democracy is a vote for the past because it is a vote for the vested interests of the present. It is a system almost guaranteed to generate debts and deficits while blocking any change in the status quo. To escape paralysis, politics in the West, however haltingly, is beginning to search out nonpartisan “depoliticized” solutions based on meritocratic expertise. Unable to reach a consensus on long-term deficit reduction through the normal workings of the U.S. Congress, a “supercommittee” of the fairest and the wisest among the contending parties was established to find a compromise – at this writing still elusive. A clearer example in Europe was the appointment of Mario Monti as prime minister by Italy’s president to lead a “technocratic government.” Monti, a former European commissioner and Italian Senator for Life, itself a meritocratic post, was tasked with executing the necessary reforms to overcome the eurocrisis. The elected parties were simply deemed incapable of reaching a governing consensus through politics as usual. After the crash of 2008–9, many came to recognize that financial markets are not self-correcting but in fact tend toward disequilibrium instead of equilibrium. Now, many in the West are coming to suspect that democracy itself, despite the formal exercise of regular elections, is not capable of self-correction without political reforms that introduce the kind of long-term perspective and nonpartisan, knowledge-based capacity for consensus associated with political meritocracy. There is a growing recognition that when the deliberative bodies in democracies wither, inclusive politics dies, and the seeming sanity of short-term fixes can result in the wholesale madness of unintended consequences such as exuberant bubbles, mountains of debt, and fiscal crisis. Democracies today must cope not only with internal crises but a changing external environment as well. Across the board, they face a double challenge. On one hand, the greater complexity of the interpenetrating trade, financial, and information flows of globalization requires greater institutional capacity for competent, delegated authority to manage the systemic links of interdependence. On the other hand, greater diversity and political awakenings everywhere that demand the dignity of meaningful participation – abetted and amplified by social media – require more devolution of power toward the grassroots. Failure to find an institutional response to this double challenge will result in a crisis of legitimacy for any governing system – either through

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failure to perform by providing inclusive growth and employment or because a “democratic deficit” that shuts out diverse public voices will undermine effective consent. Of course, the kind of rule by meritocratic elites long associated with China cannot be the answer to the West’s woes, just as multiparty democracy, with all the problems we have described, is not likely to resonate as an effective response to China’s challenges. The two political cultures are as highly distinct as their economies are today intertwined. But, undoubtedly, some combination of popular sovereignty – including through increased participation by citizens in their own communities – balanced by depoliticized deliberative bodies of delegated authority selected on merit at higher levels of complexity is well within the traditions of the West. Indeed, the American Founding Fathers proposed just such a balance as they sought in their vision of self-government to prevent rule by both monarch and mob. They believed – like the Enlightenment philosophers such as Voltaire who admired Confucius – that governing institutions should empower the natural aristocracy of talent instead of blood inheritance or class. And they sought to filter direct rule by the ill-informed public at large. The Federalist Papers make it clear that they favored a mixed constitutional system that combined knowledgeable democracy with accountable meritocracy as the most intelligent form of governance. Thus, in their original design, a government rooted in popular sovereignty would delegate authority to an unelected Supreme Court, an indirectly elected Senate, a selected electoral college “to enlarge the views” of the public in electing a president and, later, a central bank governed by appointed meritocrats insulated from politics. All were meant to check and balance the immediate passions and constituent interests of a directly elected House of Representatives. To correct the present dysfunction in the Western democracies today, we need not only to revisit the political philosophy of the Founding Fathers and place it within the framework of the 21st century; we also need to engage in the actual institutional design of what a mixed liberal democratic constitutionalism might look like. In California, we have tried to blaze such a path. First, we established a self-appointed, bipartisan group of some of the state’s most eminent and experienced citizens to convene for a year to deliberate over solutions to fix what ails the Golden State. Second, the group itself made recommendations for structural changes in California’s

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governing institutions – including an independent deliberative body, appointed by democratically elected officials but insulated from politics, that would propose considered policies to the public for a vote in California’s unique direct democracy initiative process. I. REBOOTING CALIFORNIA’S DYSFUNCTIONAL DEMOCRACY

California has long been the bellwether for the United States as a whole. Indeed, as the world’s ninth largest economy that is home to Hollywood and Google, this outpost of creativity and innovation has continent-size influence with a cultural resonance that looms large in the global imagination. Unfortunately, of late, California’s role as a bellwether has taken on a decidedly negative cast. Where once Californians dreamed of building a society that matched the magnificence of the state’s landscape, in recent years its citizens have settled instead for mountains of debt, disappearing jobs, D+ schools, greater public spending for prisons than higher education and an outdated, crumbling infrastructure that emerging economies like China put to shame. Every college freshman, entrepreneur, homeowner, new immigrant, or retiree in California has shared the sinking feeling that the future the state was once so famously ahead of is passing them by. Facing daunting deficits after years of political gridlock, California has come in the minds of many to epitomize the crisis of democratic governance spreading across the West from Athens to Washington. Where will California and America as a whole be two decades from now if we don’t find a way for democratic societies to break out of the gridlock that is leading us from an era of promise to a trajectory of demise? But, true to form as the land where second acts are possible, California seems be finally to reaching a tipping point and is preparing to come back. Once again it is ahead of the curve of the rest of the country. Despite the successful recall election of a governor in 2003 and the concerted efforts of political leaders in the years since, Californians have come to realize that the real challenge is not so much replacing elected officials as fixing a system that is itself broken. As a result of this experience, the opportunity for the serious reform of California’s governance process has opened up.

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In the past five years, Californians have voted for open primaries, redistricting by citizen commission and for a simple majority vote on budgets – all with the aim of ending partisan paralysis in the legislature. And, by a huge margin, they voted for a clean energy future less dependent on foreign oil by protecting California’s landmark climate change law from being overturned. In 2010, the Nicolas Berggruen Institute (NBI) added a new set of voices to this growing movement by establishing the Think Long Committee for California, a high-powered group of eminent citizens with broad experience in public affairs, labor, and business financed with an initial $20 million to fight the requisite political campaigns for structural change. The name of the group itself implied its main objective: to introduce a depoliticized, nonpartisan, and long-term agenda as a corrective to the partisan rancor and short-term, specialinterest political culture that has come to dominate California political life. The Committee ranges from two former secretaries of state, George Shultz and Condi Rice, to Clinton economic advisor Laura Tyson; from Eric Schmidt of Google to former Yahoo! and Warner Bros chief Terry Semel, to former assembly speakers Bob Hertzberg and Willie Brown and former state treasurer Matt Fong, former UC Regents chair Gerry Parsky, former California Supreme Court Justice Ron George, philanthropist Eli Broad, labor leader Maria Elena Durazo, and advocate for the poor Antonia Hernandez, who was formerly chief legal counsel for the Mexican-American Legal Defense Fund. At our first meeting at Google headquarters in October 2010, thenGovernor Arnold Schwarzenegger shared the table with Gray Davis, the governor he ousted in the 2003 recall. The committee has since worked closely as well with Governor Jerry Brown, who returned to the statehouse after two terms as governor in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The group is advised by the two former state directors of finance, one a Republican and one a Democrat as well as the former chief economic forecaster for the state. After deliberating for a year in monthly sessions, usually held at the Googleplex in Mountain View, California, the group released its Blueprint to Renew California in November, 2011.1 Even as the dispiriting gridlock continued to grip Sacramento and as the so-called supercommittee of the U.S. Congress convened to figure a way out of the nation’s fiscal crisis failed to reach consensus, this group

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of dedicated Californians succeeded in breaking out of the untenable status quo. Putting politics aside, they were able to bridge philosophical divides and agree to a bipartisan plan to reboot California’s dysfunctional democracy. Unlike many other piecemeal reform efforts over recent years, the Think Long Committee’s plan seeks to modernize California’s system of governance by installing a new civic software that seeks to address the “double challenge” cited earlier by devolving power, involving citizens more actively, and decision-division. Decision-division means the delegation of whatever competencies can’t be performed at the local level to a higher or more integrated level We therefore propose decentralizing power to the local level and, at the same time, creating greater capacity for depoliticized deliberation at the state level that incorporates a long-term perspective in governance. Our integrated set of recommendations range from commonsense practices, such as a “rainy-day” reserve fund to multiyear budgeting, two-year legislative sessions with one year dedicated to oversight, K– 12 school reform; aligning the skills and educational outcomes of California’s master plan educational institutions with the needs of our cutting-edge industry, and speeding up regulatory approval to foster job creation. But the core of our proposal has three parts: 1. Local empowerment (Devolve and Involve): Returning decision-making responsibilities and resources where appropriate from Sacramento to localities and regions where the real economy functions and government is closer to the people – and thus more responsive, flexible, and accountable. By helping to cover the costs of devolving public safety from the state to the counties, which Governor Brown has proposed, our plan will also help reduce the high costs associated with prisons – on which California absurdly spends more than on higher education. The Think Long plan would dedicate new revenues annually to counties for public safety and as block grants to cities for infrastructure and other locally determined uses. Counties would be empowered to seek “waivers” from state rules and mandates (exempting environmental and safety standards) to more flexibly pursue locally devised “strategic action plans,” thus more actively engaging the grassroots.

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2. A Depoliticized Deliberative Council (Decision Division): Creating an independent watchdog for the long-term public interest as a counterbalance to the short-term mentality and specialinterest political culture that dominate Sacramento. This impartial and nonpartisan Citizens’ Council for Government Accountability, composed of eminent citizens with expertise and experience in California affairs, would be tasked with both foresight and oversight responsibilities, deliberating on the “big picture” issues of the state and making recommendations to ensure that the public’s long-term priorities are met. As a nonpolitical quality control body, the Citizens Council will ensure that California taxpayers get their “return on investment” through excellence in education, world-class infrastructure, a sustained quality of life, opportunities for good jobs and the strengthening of a vibrant middle class by boosting the state’s competitiveness in today’s global economy. Critically, the council would be empowered to place its proposals directly on the public ballot as initiatives for public approval. We discuss this council in greater detail subsequently. 3. A Modern Broad-Based Tax System (Financing the Future): Updating California’s tax system to mirror the real composition of our modern service and information economy and provide a stable, broad-based tax system that is sustainable over the long term. The ideologically rigid will have a hard time putting the Think Long proposal in any box because it is a pragmatic response to the state’s predicament. The essence of the bipartisan compromise involves expanding the sales tax to the service sector – not now taxed despite the fact that is comprises half of California’s $2 trillion economy – while at the same time reducing personal income taxes across the board in keeping with the state’s historically progressive tax structure. This combination would generate $10 billion in new revenues annually, apportioned to pay down the state’s wall of debt, fund K–12 schools and higher education, especially the University of California, and finance devolution to localities. Over the coming years, the Think Long Committee will seek to implement these integrated set of reforms by placing constitutional and statutory amendments on initiative ballots for a public vote in

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2014 and 2016 and by working directly with the governor and legislature where possible. II. NEW INNOVATIONS IN DEMOCRATIC GOVERNANCE

Like the convening of the Think Long Committee itself, the group’s proposals with respect to governance seek to integrate more knowledgebased consensus-building capacity into the “one person, one vote” system through a combination of (1) deliberative polling (educating the voters), (2) reform of the initiative process, and (3) the establishment of the Citizens’ Council (directly offering voters policy recommendations for their approval after thorough deliberation by a select body with experience and expertise). In short, we have tried to advance toward a knowledgeable democracy with elements of accountable meritocracy. 1. Deliberative Polling In the summer of 2011, the Think Long Committee joined with another reform group, California Forward, to sponsor a weekend-long deliberative poll of 412 voters chosen on a random scientific basis to contemplate and debate changes in the way the state is governed. The results of that poll, which indicatively represented the electorate at large, informed the drafting of the Government Performance and Accountability Act (GPAA),2 a constitutional amendment that went before voters on the November 2012 ballot. Provisions of that initiative included a “pay-go” requirement for legislation (the legislature must show where the revenues or offsetting cuts will come from for new spending or tax credits), performance-based budgeting on two-year cycles with oversight review, and enabling more flexibility for county governments to make their own decisions about how to deploy state funds. 2. Initiative Reform The mechanisms of direct democracy in California – the initiative (making laws), referendum (amending or nullifying laws), and recall (of public officials) provisions of the Constitution – were once heralded

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as the hallmarks of progressive government.3 Under Governor Hiram Johnson, the state adopted the Swiss system of popular initiatives in 1914 as part of a series of reforms to give the public a way to challenge the railroad barons and large landowners that controlled state government. Although the initiative process was used sparingly until the 1970s, it became thereafter the chief battleground of state politics, nearly a “fourth branch” of government. Because of the high costs of gathering qualifying signatures and waging media campaigns in such a large state (usually in the tens of millions of dollars), this venue of the people has too often been subverted by special interests for their own ends or captured by ideological zealots who exploit short-term populist sentiments to advance their agenda. As Andreas Kluth wrote in the Economist in its April 23, 2011, issue: The initiative culture as it exists in California today may resemble James Madison’s worst nightmare. Passions are inflamed rather than cooled. Confrontation replaces compromise as minority factions (special interests) battle one another with rival initiatives.

In 2009, Ronald George, at the time California’s chief justice, worried publicly about the effect on liberty: “Has the voter initiative now become the tool of the very types of special interests it was intended to control, and an impediment to the effective functioning of a true democratic process?”4 The Think Long Committee’s reforms on initiatives thus involve providing more information and analysis to voters about the various propositions, including electronically, than the one hundred or so words allowed on the ballot summary written by the attorney general. They further involve mandating transparency on who is funding the proponents and opponents of a given measure. The proposed reforms would also revert California’s system to the original Swiss process in which the proponents of initiatives are required to negotiate with the representative legislature so they can act on issues without going to a public ballot. Failing agreement, both the legislature’s and the proponent’s initiative would appear on the ballot side by side. By presenting alternatives, the process becomes more deliberative and less prone to special-interest manipulation; it would become more collaborative and less adversarial, restoring the balance between representative and direct democracy.

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3. The Citizens Council The most innovative and far-reaching proposal of the Think Long governance reforms – the Citizens’ Council for Government Accountability – would improve on California’s unique mix of representative and direct democracy through the establishment of a depoliticized deliberative body that checks and balances both.

California

(CCGA) Governor Citizens Council for Government Accountability (13)

(Deliberated Initiatives)

Legislature (Assembly & Senate)

Laws/ Budget

Electorate

As noted earlier in brief, the council would be both a deliberative body tasked with foresight and oversight. It would ferret out waste and poor performance in state government while promoting the long-term priorities of the public: jobs, excellence in education, a clean environment, world-class infrastructure, and the fiscal health of state finances. In an era of rapid technological advance and the competitive pressures of globalization, there is little chance of achieving these goals without a determined strategic agenda such as the council would pursue to move the state forward.

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Although the council of thirteen members would be appointed for six-year terms by the governor (nine members) and legislative leaders (four members) under procedures that would ensure its independence, any policies it might propose must be approved by the voters. Empowered to evaluate initiative proposals as well as place initiatives directly on the ballot on behalf of the public interest, the council would short-circuit the influence of special interest money that has come to dominate the politics of propositions. Working with the California State Auditor, it would also possess subpoena power to audit spending and review programs to make sure that taxpayers get what they are paying for. To help ensure its constitutional integrity, the council idea was formulated with the prudent advice of Ron George. Reporting on the council proposal, the Economist (April 23, 2011) predicted that “the next few years in California might see perhaps the liveliest debate about freedom and governance since Federalists and Anti-Federalists argued in 1787–88 about whether or not to ratify America’s new constitution. Lovers of democracy and liberty everywhere still study that old debate. Now they will also pay attention to California’s, for it will provide lessons for everyone.”5 It is useful here to rehearse the arguments in our public campaign for the Citizen’s Council because they reveal the points of contention that arise when proposing the introduction of meritocratic elements of governance in a democratic culture that distrusts the delegation of authority. Lack of Capacity in the Legislature. Because of their limited terms, legislators generally lack both the time and incentives for either devising a long-term agenda or performance review of the policies they put in place, sunsetting of laws, or follow-through. Because they are in office for only a short period, there is little accountability other than to the special interests that sponsor them, the lobbyists who influence them. At one time, such a big-picture, long-term role was played by the California Senate as an “upper house” like the U.S. Senate, based on geographic instead of population representation. Since 1968, however, the Senate and the Assembly in California have duplicated each other’s role with overlapping districts based on population. This has meant a necessarily narrow focus by legislators on the particular short-term concerns of local constituents rather than on the state as a whole.

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The point of the council is to create an institutional counterbalance to the short-term, special-interest political culture of Sacramento as well as to their narrow constituent focus. Like the rest of the United States, California needs a long-term strategic agenda if it is going to prosper in the decades ahead. The legislature is simply not disposed or equipped to fulfill this task. Accountability and Legitimacy. First, the council would be appointed by the state’s democratically elected officials. Second, what it might propose can go into effect only if approved by the public at the ballot box. Third, council members can be removed for corruption or malfeasance by the Senate. Some pundits have quipped that the Council would be being granted “king’s power.” Others have called it “A House of Lords.” This is nonsense. What king, or hereditary nobility, ever had to go to the public at large in a general election to approve or reject their policies? The council meets the criteria of both legitimacy and accountability: Its members would be selected by democratically elected representatives of the people, and its proposals would be approved or rejected through the direct democracy of the initiative system. The reason the council would be appointed instead of elected is to insulate it from the same short-term, special-interest influences that result from electoral campaigns. While the Council’s legitimacy must necessarily derive from appointment by elected officials, council members would be appointed in a way – with strict limitations on political contributions they can make to the appointing officials and with terms that cross electoral cycles – that would ensure their independence and long-range perspective while avoiding the patronage, cronyism, and partisanship that has immobilized state governance. Not Too Much Power to the Governor. The concern has been voiced that because the governor would have the majority of appointments to the council, the body would do his bidding. First of all, this is a structural proposal for governance that is meant to be in place for decades, and not just for one governor or another. The staggered six-year appointments across political cycles would result in a mix of different gubernatorial appointments over time, as is the case with the California Supreme Court, the Regents of the University of California, the Public Utilities Commission, and the Coastal Commission.

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The logic of giving the governor the most appointments is that, although the legislature represents specific constituencies, the governor represents the “general will” because he is elected statewide and is thus best positioned to select council members accordingly. However, one way to remedy this concern is to follow the precedent of the appointment process for the Commission on Judicial Performance in Article 6 Section 8c of the California Constitution. This would allow for five of the governor’s selections to be appointed for an initial twoyear term and then be eligible for appointment to the full six-year term after that tenure. The other four members would be appointed to the full six-year terms. In this way, a staggered schedule would be set in place giving future governors as well as the current governor a key role. Not Another Layer of Bureaucracy. The council would not be an agency of bureaucrats but a body of citizens – paid on a per diem basis and bound by strict conflict-of-interest rules – charged with the responsibility of being a deliberative watchdog for the public interest. This body would be a quality-control body that will make sure the taxpaying public gets a long-term “return on its investment.” Safeguarding the Initiative. The council truly empowers citizens by being a nonpartisan advocate for the long- term public interest. It is misleading to argue that the initiative process as it exists today provides a venue of recourse for the ordinary citizen. Although historically the initiative process has played a key role in giving the public a direct voice in governance, the mounting costs of signature gathering and media have led to the process being captured by special interests and ideological causes pursuing short-term aims. It is these organized interests that have usurped the citizens’ power. The council would recover that power for the citizens. All citizens would be welcomed to submit proposals for initiatives to the council. Unless we remove money from the politics of ballot propositions, this proposal provides the public with the best option for California’s future because it will be an advocate for the public at the ballot box and a trusted guide for an electorate busy with family and work to sort through the thicket of spin and special interests that initiative campaigns have mostly become. The council may in fact be the public’s best safeguard of the initiative process.

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III. THE NEXT STEPS Because devolution and “realignment” of responsibilities and revenues to localities proceeds over the coming years in California and the state government assumes a leaner and more strategic role, it would make sense in time to make two further structural changes. First, the current state Senate, which, as we explained, has become a purely representative, nondeliberative body like the state Assembly, would be replaced with the Citizen’s Council for Government Accountability as a genuine deliberative “upper house.” Second, the representative districts of the Senate and Assembly would be merged into one lower house with a stepped form of elections to promote more grassroots citizens engagement. Conceivably, the present Senate (40 members) and Assembly (80 members) would be combined into one nonpartisan legislative chamber with 120 representatives and a strong committee structure. This would allow the size of the districts to be smaller (300,000 or so instead of 1 million citizens), thus making legislators more responsive and accountable by bringing them closer to their constituents. Districts would be held to a population of 300,000, with more seats added as the population grows. Each district of 300,000 could be divided into six neighborhood councils of 50,000 each. Each of the six neighborhoods would elect one delegate to the district council. That council would in turn elect the representative for that district to the state legislature. This new civic software would be more efficient, less redundant, and less contentious, also greatly reducing the overhead costs of two houses. It would dampen the influence of money in politics (necessitated by fundraising for media in large jurisdictions) by limiting the population size of districts and curbing the power of lobbyists who play one house off against the other. Above all, it would close the distance between the represented and the representative and involve local citizens more meaningfully in setting the rules that govern their lives. Replacing the Senate with a genuine upper house with deliberative responsibilities would further balance the short-term and local nature of constituency representation of the lower house, as historically intended. Change along these lines would shift California toward a modern system of governance that has the capacity for decisive action, reflects the complexity and diversity of its population and economy, and is more

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suited to the challenges and opportunities of the 21st century than the one inherited from the time of ranches and railroad barons. Above all, the checks, balances and incentives of this new civic software would imbue governance with a public-interest political culture that replaces the rancor of polarization with the nonpartisan spirit of pragmatism and long-range perspective associated with the great builders of the state in the 1950s and 1960s – Republican Governor Earl Warren and Democratic Governor Pat Brown – who laid the foundations in the post–World War II era for the prosperity and quality of life that California enjoyed for decades. If Californians embrace such an approach, they could have a fiscally sound government that can weather the ups and downs of the business cycle and foster the high-wage jobs linked to California’s cutting edge industries from biotech to information technology to clean energy. Upward mobility could be ensured through excellent schools with affordable higher education, accessible to all Californians, that provide the innovative and highly skilled workers who are key to building competitive new industries. Environmentally friendly, livable cities that use energy and water smartly could be a model for the world. Despite its current travails, California is rightly known for its can-do creativity. If that can be turned toward the task of good governance, all Californians will be empowered to get back to the future with the government they want and deserve. IV. LESSONS OF THE CALIFORNIA EXPERIENCE

If the reforms proposed by the Think Long Committee can take hold, California is well positioned in other respects to face the coming era. Its fundamentals are strong – a diverse population of hardworking immigrants from everywhere, an entrepreneurial energy linked to venture capital resources unmatched elsewhere in the world, world-class universities, abundant agriculture, a temperate climate, and magnificent natural landscape. The most vibrant new industries on the planet – represented by companies from Genentech to Intel, Google and Facebook to SunPower – have emerged in recent years from this fertile California environment. Yet despite what appears to be a growing openness to reform on the part of the public, the obstacles to change we have encountered remain daunting.

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The first lesson is that good policy can be bad politics – and bad policy is good politics. This is at the root of the incapacity of the one person, one vote system to self-correct absent the counterbalance of a deliberative body that takes into account the long-term consequences of the quick fixes popular democracy favors. Facing deep cuts in education and social programs, the temptation of politics as usual is to look for a solution that polls well instead of fixes the state for the long-term. This is precisely what happened in 2012 when Governor Brown, the California Federation of Teachers, and other groups, fueled by the 99 percent movement, sought to close the state’s funding gap by taxing the easiest target – the rich. They did so because it is far more politically viable to tax “others” than the broad middle class that makes up most of the voting public, even though, as our Think Long Committee recommended, a modern broad-based sales tax on services in which everyone pays slightly more would stabilize revenues for years to come. Although there is much to be said, and with which we agree, about the need to stem growing inequality, California is already perched on a narrowly volatile tax base where the top 5 percent of earners account through income and capital gains taxes for 67 percent of revenues. As we have explained, the boom and bust of the budget cycle that results from this narrow reliance means programs funded in a good year (for example, when Google or Facebook go public and capital gains skyrocket) simply have to be drastically cut when there is an economic downturn and top end revenues drop dramatically. The situation is made worse by the absence of a “rainy-day” savings fund, which the same groups oppose precisely because it would curb spending in good years. The end result a dysfunctional system that generates perpetual deficits, drives up borrowing costs, and deprives the state of a growing source of future revenue needed to invest in precisely those public goods – higher education and infrastructure – that are the structural answer to growing inequality. Other lessons of our effort to bring “intelligent governance” to California could easily be lifted from the texts of political scientists such as Francis Fukuyama or economic theorists like Mancur Olson. In its short history, California has, in the broadest sense, followed the same trajectory of the rise and political decay of systems of governance as seen in the ups and downs of China’s millennia-long experience or that of the Ottoman Empire that Francis Fukuyama documents in his magisterial The Origins of Political Order. In each case, once-robust

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institutions of good governance eventually corroded because they failed to adjust to new conditions or succumbed to the relentless resurgence of what Fukuyama calls “patrimonialization” – or the dominance of special interests over the general interests of the public. As Fukuyama writes, “Institutions are created in the first place to meet the competitive challenges of a particular environment . . . when the original conditions leading to the creation or adoption of an institution change, the institution fails to adjust quickly to meet the new circumstances. The disjunction in rates of changes between institutions and the external environment then accounts for political decay and deinstitutionalization.”6 This has certainly been true of California. The state rose to become the world’s ninth largest economy during the post–World War II years when it became the thriving outpost of the American empire with a vast military-industrial complex – largely located in California – and cheap energy that fueled its sprawling growth. In those days, a growing middle class that still saved more than it consumed was willing and able to finance infrastructure investments in the future, from a quality education system that included the expansion of the University of California to the state’s famed network of freeways to the system of canals that brought water from the snowy Sierra Nevada peaks and wet north to the parched south. With the advent of a mass consumer culture in the 1960s and the commensurate emphasis on the single-family home instead of the public weal as the locus of the California Dream, the real estate bubble that finally burst in the subprime mortgage crisis of 2008–9 began to build. Along with that burst bubble came the end, for the foreseeable future, of a decades-long boom in construction jobs. Proposition 13 in 1979 marked the revolt of the homeowner/taxpayer, which significantly deprived the state of its most stable source of financing for local services and education by severely limiting property taxes. Even as the population doubled and immigration from Mexico swelled, the state could never make up the difference, going deeply into debt just to maintain operations, much less invest in the future. With the end of the Cold War, the military-industrial complex withered. Easy credit dried up with the financial crash as the housing market collapsed. With the rapid growth of China and India, global energy demand is conjoining with Middle East turmoil to end the era of cheap fuel.

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Yet despite increasing acceptance of the need for reform, Californians have remained in denial, as if they were historically entitled to a future as promising as the past has been. Fukuyama also posits “repatrimonialization” – the resurgence of special interests who capture the state – as a cause of political decay. In this, his argument is similar to that of Mancur Olson in his classic 1982 book The Rise and Decline of Nations: Economic Growth, Stagflation, and Social Rigidities.7 Using rational choice theory, Olson argued that organized special interests, whether labor unions or business associations, assert their interests more effectively in a democracy than individual citizens because the return on their activism is higher as a collective body than it is for the diaspora of unorganized individual citizens – the general public. Thus, public employee unions can garner hefty pension deals or business lobbyists can garner hefty tax breaks, or avoid taxation. These interest groups thus become the primary “stakeholders” in the public budget, accreting like barnacles onto state government. Any California reform effort, as was true for the Think Long Committee, runs up directly against these “stakeholders” who have taken the state government hostage. Especially with term limits on legislators, their lobbyists are more a permanent presence in Sacramento than the people’s representatives, and, because they sponsor the election campaigns, elected officials are largely beholden to them. This situation is compounded by the initiative process in California. Once the venue of public recourse, initiatives, as former California Supreme Court Justice Ron George has noted, as often as not have become a battleground of well-funded special interests fighting each other. When deciding which issues to take to the public ballot, the main consideration of the Think Long Committee is who will oppose it and how much they might spend to defeat reform that threatened their interests. If you want to raise revenues, the antitax lobby will spend $40 million against you. The huge entertainment conglomerates based in California will likely spend whatever it takes to stop a 5 percent services sales tax on tickets for movies or theme parks, revealing their societal priority of amusement over education. If you want to reform K–12 schools, the California Teachers Association will spend $50 million to keep teacher tenure and avoid evaluation. If you want to close the tax loopholes on commercial property, the large land and commercial real estate corporations will spend $100 million

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to stop you. If you want to impose an oil severance tax, the large oil companies will spend what it takes to prevent that from happening. But it is not only the special interests that abuse the initiative process. So does the public, which, through this tool of direct democracy, has contributed significantly to California’s political decay. Mainly, this is because the public irresponsibly mandates spending that it then refuses to pay for with sufficient taxation. Locked-in spending and locked-out revenues are at the core of the state’s fiscal crisis. The most egregious example of this was the “Three Strikes” initiative, which required imprisonment after a third felony conviction, and mandatory doubling of the sentence on the second “strike.” Although this understandably appealing attempt to improve public safety was overwhelmingly approved at the polls, no commensurate spending plan to build more prisons was included. As a result, a decade after the passage of this law by initiative, the U.S. Supreme Court, in May 2011, ordered the release of 36,000 prisoners from California jails because overcrowding violated their human rights.8 At the same time, politicians fearful of being labeled “soft on crime” cave in to the compensation demands of the prison employees union, escalating personnel costs into an unreasonable fiscal burden on the state budget. As already noted, the famous Proposition 13, voted into law by the public in 1978, is another case in point. By limiting the property tax collections by localities to 2 percent of the assessed value of their homes, California homeowners were able to escape increasingly burdensome taxation. Yet this deprived government of the requisite resources for education and public safety services, never yet to have been replaced. The point of representative democracy was to create deliberative bodies that would take into account the longer-term ramifications of their decisions. The inherent shortsighted nature of direct democracy, which has tied California’s finances in knots, was exactly what America’s Founding Fathers such as James Madison and Alexander Hamilton, in their wisdom, sought to avoid. The California experience suggests not only that good governance must guard against the age-old onset of political decay as a result of rigidity in the face of changed conditions and repatrimonialization. It also warns against a common assumption that more direct democracy ought to be part and parcel of the knowledge society. Good governance requires check and balances not only on government but on the public as well.

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Nicolas Berggruen and Nathan Gardels notes

1. N. Berggruen, A Blueprint to Renew California: Report and Recommendations Presented by the Think Long Committee for California (Los Angeles: Nicolas Berggruen Institution, 2011). 2. California Forward, GPAA, 2012. Available at http://www.cafwd-action.org/ pagespropsed-ballot-measure (accessed May 2012). 3. C. W. Simmons, California’s Statewide Initiative Process (Sacramento: California Research Bureau, California State Library, 1997). 4. A. Kluth, “Democracy in California: The People’s Will,” The Economist, April 23, 2011. 5. Ibid. 6. F. Fukuyama, The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution (New York: Macmillan, 2011), p. 452. 7. M. Olson, The Rise and Decline of Nations: Economic Growth, Stagflation, and Social Rigidities (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1984). 8. D. G. Savage and P. McGreevy, “US Supreme Court Orders Massive Inmate Release to Relieve California’s Crowded Prisons,” Los Angeles Times, May 24, 2011.

Index

abdication, heredity, power transfer, 31–37 Ackerman, Bruce, 60–61 Adams, John, 249–251 adjudicative authorities, 147 AFDC. See Aid to Families with Dependent Children Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), 102 The Analects (Confucius), 265, 266. See also Lunyu Athenian democracy, 61 Bai Tongdong, 7–10, 95, 108 Bell, Daniel, A., 43–44, 74, 95, 108 Berggruen, Nicolas, 23–24 Blueprint to Renew California, 379 Bo Xilai, 97–98 The Book of History, 263, 341 The Book of Rites, 13, 33, 37–38, 342 Brown, Jerry, 375, 379 California, political meritocracy and direct democracy accountability, legitimacy and, 386 Blueprint to Renew California, 379 bureaucracy and, 387 California Forward, 382 citizen empowerment, 387 Citizens Council for Government Accountability, 384 civic software, 380, 388–389 deliberative polling, 382 democratic governance crisis, 378–379 democratic governance innovations, 382 de-politicized deliberative council, 381

future steps, 388–389 Government Performance and Accountability Act (GPAA), 382 Governor’s power, 386–387 initiative reform, 382–383 legislature capacity and, 385–386 lessons from, 388–393 local empowerment, 380 tax system, 381 Think Long Committee for California, 379–382, 388–389 Carpenter, Daniel, 251–252 Cavanagh, Matt, 320 Chan, Joseph, 7–8, 92, 95, 108 Chang Heng Chee, 320 Chee Soon Juan, 327 Chen Show Mao, 330 Cheng Yi, 345 China political meritocracy, rise of, 1, 6 poverty alleviation, historic achievement, 4 power transfer, traditional, 31–32 China Education Online, 348 Chinese Communist Party absolute leadership of, loyalty to, 356 corruption, fighting, 350 dynamism, advancement options, 14 examinations, 227 loyalty, uniformity, 351–352 Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, China, 71–72 Chua Beng Huat, 294, 324 Chua Mui Hoong, 304 Citizens Assembly, British Columbia, 144, 145–146

395

396

Index

Citizens Council for Government Accountability, California, 384 Confucian hybrid regime civic education and, 65–66, 68, 69–71, 73–74 elitist design of, 76–78 examination system, 69–71, 73–74 government role, 65–66 legitimacy of government and, 73, 80–81 liberal democracy compatibility, 79–82 one person one vote and, 66–67, 77, 81 paternalism and, 74–75 quota system, upper houses, 71–72 Rawls theory and, 81–82 representative democracy vs., 72–73 rule of law, human rights in, 65 ruler, ruled distinction objection, 74–75 superiority, challenges and answers, 73–79 superiority of, 65–73 upper house functions, 72 voting right and, 67 Confucian ideal democracy and, 32, 41 meritorious rule and, 32, 37, 50 political participation and, 106 public ownership, egalitarian distribution and, 104–105 respect (jing) vs. equality, 105–106 rule of law and, 105 Confucian meritocracy, contemporary China. See also meritocracy, Confucian perspective democracy vs. meritocracy, preferences, 18 family-based life and, 101–106 human well-being and, 89–90, 93 human well-being, Confucian Constitution, 100–107 individual rights and, 92 institutional implications, 107–109 leaders, leadership and, 89–90, 108–109 leadership question, conceptually fundamental, 90–91 leadership question, practical importance, 91–93 liberal neutrality vs., 92–93, 94 minben model, 93, 94–95, 96–97, 263 reconstructionist, 95–100 rule of virtue by government, 88 virtue, 88 Confucius, 77, 167–168 on assessing a person, 45

on family-based life, 103–104 on government by the people, 266 on leadership, 265–266 on political participation, governing by virtue, 76 Considerations on Representative Government (Mill), 117 Constant, Benjamin, 146 contestatory authorities, 147 corruption, 350 de (virtue), 340, 354 de Tocqueville, Alexis, 250 Deliberation Day, 60 deliberative democracy (Rawls), 60 democracy. See also meritocratic democracy, American Constitution Athenian, 61 Confucian ideal and, 32, 41 constitutional conception, 237–240 deliberative, 60 demanding assumptions, 40 disproportionate capitalist influence, 5–6 four problems with, 55–57 improving, 41–42 legitimacy crisis, 376–377 limited, 63 meritocracy, current, 251–254 meritocracy vs., 233–237 non-meritocratic solutions, fundamental limit, 57–64 numerical, negotiative, deliberative, 371–372 problems, negative picture of, 40 sanctions model of, 37–38 selection model, 39–40 state, country size and, 61–62, 64, 67–68 Democracy in America (de Tocqueville), 250 democracy, liberal critique of allegiance and, 131–132 case for democracy, 123–128 classical liberalism and, 119–120 democracy, meritocracy, meritarchy, 116–118 deontological liberalism and, 121–122 fair say principle, 125–128 individual and collective rights, justice principle, 125–128 liberal order, liberal philosophy, 119–123 liberal worries, 128–134 modernity and, 128–130 morality, spirituality and, 132–134

Index personal development argument, case for democracy, 123–124 realist liberalism and, 120 sinister interests argument, case for democracy, 124–125 stability of democracy, 128–131 democratic elections, ideal and non-ideal situations, meritorious rule, 37–41 democratic society, Rawls five facts of, 64 Deng Xiaoping, 4, 358 The Economist, 299 Elman, Benjamin, 15, 344, 346 End of History (Fukuyama), 1, 25, 128 English government, 38–39 examination system. See also keju ability vs. virtue, testing for, 22 abrogation of, 207 admiration for, 211 classical learning fields, 223 Communist Party and, 227, 351 current civil service examinations, 348–352 de-legitimation, de-canonization, 224 economic, cultural reproduction overlaps and, 217–219 Education Board, 226–227 education system and, 204, 209 eligibility for, 203–204 Examination Bureau, 227 fairness, legitimacy, 73–74 fiercely competitive, 69 history of, 208–212, 340–348 imperial support, cultural symbols, 211–212 individual corruption and, 357–359 literacy, social dimensions and, 221–223 literari culture and, 208, 217–218 meritocracy and, 212–219 Ming dynasty, 210–211 political reproduction and, 215–217 power, politics and, 219–223 promotion process, current, 352–353 provincial examinations of south, 206–207 Qing dynasty, 205, 207 quotas and, 216–217, 220 reform, revolution, 224–228 reform, scientific and democratic selections, 352–357 schools of learning and, 212 social mobility and, 15, 205–206, 215 social reproduction and, 214–215

397

Song dynasty, 209–210 unintended consequences of, 205–206, 215 executive authorities, 147–148 Fan Ruiping, 7, 10, 137, 313 The Fatal Conceit: Errors of Socialism (Hayek), 295 Federalist Papers, 39, 116, 244, 245–248 Fishkin, James, 60–61 Food and Drug Administration (FDA), 16, 251–252 Friedman, Barry, 240 Fukuyama, Francis, 1, 128, 375, 390–391 Functional Groups, Hong Kong, 72 Gardels, Nathan, 23–24 Gasset, Jose, 61 George, Ronald, 383 Ginsburg, Ruth Bader, 240 Goh Chok Tong, 289, 291–292, 293–294, 296–297, 327 Government Performance and Accountability Act (GPAA), California, 382 The Great Learning (Confucius), 266 Greenspan, Alan, 94 Hague, Shamsul, 324–325 Hamilton, Alexander, 245–248 Han Feizi, 182–184 Han Yu, 344 Hardin, Russell, 63–64 Harvey, David, 298 Hayek, Frederick, 295 heredity, abdication, 32–37 House of Virtue and Talent (Xianshiyuan), 44, 69, 95 indicative vs. responsive, duty representation, 80 individualism, self-interest, 57–58, 92, 101–102 Jefferson, Thomas, 249–251 Jiang Qing, 107–109 Johnson, Hiram, 383 Kampfner, David, 298 Kaplan, Robert, 63 keju, 71. See also examination system Khaw Bon Wan, 329 Kim Dae Jung, 2

398

Index

Kissinger, Henry, 56–57 Klitgaard, Robert, 328 Kluth, Andreas, 383 Kong Yingda, 33 Kracke, E. A., Jr., 346 The Law of Peoples (Rawls), 60 Lee Hsien Loong, 3–4, 292, 294, 305 Lee Kuan Yew, 1–3, 295, 296, 303–304, 315–316, 322 Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man (Schiller), 132 li (ritual, ritual propriety), 3, 345 Li Chenyang, 4, 21–22, 52–53, 85, 108, 115, 360, 362 Li, Eric X., 27 liberal democracy Asian Values challenge, 1–3, 17 fundamentally republican aspect, 61 principles, state legitimacy, equality, 79–80 triumph of, 1 liberal elitism, 5, 123–124 Lim, Catherine, 323 local community, 67–68 Lu Zhi, 45–46 Lunyu, 168. See also The Analects Macedo, Stephen, 15–16, 52, 77–78, 81, 111–112 Madison, James, 39, 235–236, 246–248 Mahbubani, Kishore, 321 Manin, Bernard, 235 Mansbridge, Jane, 39–40 Mencius, 32, 33, 34–35, 102, 104, 263–265 meritarchy, 11–12 meritocracy. See also political meritocracy, late imperial China (1400–1900) Chinese-style, alternative to democracy, 5 examination system and, 212–219 meritocratic representation and, 146–150 meritocracy and democracy, mixed disagreement fact, 49–50 meritocrats, strong vs. weak, 25 power, size, term, 48–49 rationale, approach, selection method, 47–48 reliability and, 42–43 selection by close acquaintance, 43–44 selection by colleagues, constitutional proposal, 46–49

selection by competitive examinations and, 43–44 meritocracy, Confucian perspective Asian Values Thesis, 1–3, 17, 260–262 citizen welfare, 273–274 Confucian Asia values debate, 260–262 Confucian meritocracy, overall support, 275–276 cultural democratization, 279–282 datong shehui, 259, 262 democracy, popular support, 276–279 good government, 262–264 meritocracy notion, 262 politically passive citizenry, 266–267, 271–273 popular attachment to meritocracy, 267 virtuous, capable leadership, 267–271 virtuous leadership, 264–266 Zhongyong, Doctrine of the Mean, 261 meritocracy, manipulation and transformation, real-existing democracies (REDs) doubts about political meritocracy in general, 364–365 electoral competition, 368 institutional redesign, 370–372 non-electoral representation, 369–370 political merit, 365–366 representation centrality, 366–367 sovereign national state, 367–368 meritocracy, pre-imperial China characterological texts, 175–181 elevating the worthy, historical background, 161, 167–171 end of aristocratic age, 162–165 merit vs. worthiness, Qin regime and beyond, 184–188 present lessons, fairness, 188–189 present lessons, flexibility, 191–192 present lessons, morality and efficiency, 189–191 rise of shi, 165–167 worthiness, reconsidered, 179–184 worthiness, shi pride discourse, 172–179 meritocratic democracy, American Constitution accountability and, 232, 242–244 accountability, responsiveness to responsibility, 240–242 Antifederalists and, 237, 243, 245–246 current problems, 248

Index democracy and meritocracy, current, 251–254 democracy, constitutional conception, 237–240 democracy vs. meritocracy, 18, 233–237 Federalists vs. Antifederalists, 15–16 Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and, 16, 251–252 globalization and, 253 indicative representation and, 245 judicial review and, 238–239 popular sovereignty, competence, 249–251 responsive, responsible representation, 242–248 Supreme Court and, 238–240 meritocratic representation attractions within electoral democracy, 150–153 authorization in role, 138–139, 140–142 indicative representation, at individual level, 144–146 indicative representation, traditional and existing practice, 142–144 meritocracy and, 146–150 problems without electoral democracy, 153–156 meritorious rule Confucian ideal and, 32, 37, 50 defined, 31 democratic elections, ideal and non-ideal situations, 37–41 Mill, John Stuart, 47, 74, 117–118, 123, 131 Miller, Matt, 298–299 minben model, 93, 94–95, 96–97 Montesquieu, 62–63 Monti, Mario, 234, 376 Mozi, 170–171 neng (ability, talent), 174, 340 Neptune Orient Lines (NOL), 291 Ngaim Tong Dow, 299, 308 Nivison, David, 346 office and virtue, ex-ante vs. ex-post method, 32–33, 34, 37 Olson, Mancur, 63, 390, 392, 394 On Liberty (Mill), 117–118, 131 The Origins of Political Order (Fukuyama), 390 Outlines for Professional Ethics Training of Civil Servants, 351, 390–391

399

PAP. See Singapore, People’s Action Party (PAP) Pettit, Philip, 12 Pines, Yuri, 13–14, 51, 204, 208, 359, 372 Plato, 363–364 Political Liberalism (Rawls), 64 political meritocracy, defined, 7, 31. See also meritocracy political meritocracy, late imperial China (1400–1900) classical learning fields, 223 Communist Party and, 227 Education Board, 226–227 education system and, 204, 209 eligibility for, 203–204 Examination Bureau, 227 imperial support, cultural symbols, 211–212 literacy, social dimensions and, 221–223 literari culture and, 208, 217–218 meritocracy and, 212–219 Ming dynasty, 203–205, 210–211 power, politics and, 219–223 provincial examinations of south, 206–207 Qing dynasty, 205, 207 quotas and, 216–217, 220 schools of learning and, 212 social mobility and, 205–206, 215 Song dynasty, 209–210 travel and, 203, 205 power transfer, 31–32, 37 princely education, 35–36 public choice theory, postwar, 63–64 Qian Mu, 75, 341, 344, 345 radical individualism, self-interest, 57–58 Rawls, John, 58–60, 64, 74, 81–82, 101 ren (humane, human excellence), 88, 103 Reputation and Power (Carpenter), 251–252 The Rise and Decline of Nations: Economic Growth, Stagflation, and Social Rigidities (Olson), 392 rule of virtue by government, 88 Schiller, Friedrich, 132 Schmitter, Philippe, 22–23 scholarships, 290–291 Schwarzenegger, Arnold, 379 Seah Chiang Nee, 323 Seah, Nicole, 331

400

Index

Sen, Amartya, 314 Shang Yang, 182, 189 Shanmugam, K., 302–303 Shen Dao, 179–180 Shin, Doh Chull, 17 Shu Xincheng, 225 Sima Guang, 189–190 Singapore, meritocracy and political liberalization authoritarianism, 4 challenging meritocracy, stakes, 333–335 counter-hegemonic leadership, alternative ideological formations, 20, 327–333 ideological hegemony, survivalism to developmentalism, 317–322 neoglobalization and, 324–328 new media technologies and, 331–332 political meritocracy institutionalization, 322–324 repressive practices, 319 state welfare, 321–322 Singapore, People’s Action Party (PAP) Darwinian economic warriors, 299–302 General Election of 2011, 305–306, 308 honor, sacrifice denigration, 302–305 as meritocracy model, 288 meritocratic elites, democratic reaction, 305–307 ministers, civil servants salaries, 289 neoliberal meritocratic elites, problems with, 299–305 new authoritarianism, meritocratic elitism, 296–299 Presidential Elections, 306–307 salary system, market-based, 289, 293–296, 303–305, 308 scholars, political elite selection, 289–293 scholarship process, 289–290 Soek-Fang Sim, 325 Singh, Pritam, 331 Skorupski, John, 11–12, 110 Smith, Adam, 125 The Straights Times, 304 strictly local matters, 67–68 Stubbs, Richard, 320 Sun Xidan, 33 Sun Yat-sen, 227

Supreme Court, 13, 80–81, 238–240 Tan Cheng Bock, 306–307 Tan, Dorothy, 332 Tan Jee Say, 330 Tan, Kenneth Paul, 20–21 Tan, Tony, 306–307 Teo, Eddie, 300 A Theory of Justice (Rawls), 74, 81 Think Long Committee for California, 379–382, 388–389 Tian (Heaven), 103, 341 Tin Pei Ling, 331 Trump, Donald, 301 virtue (de), 88 Vogel, Ezra, 323 Wang Anshi, 346 Wang Tao, 38–39 Wang Tingxiang, 346 Wang Yangming, 212 Wanli, 35–36 Washington Post, 298 Wee Shu Min, 300–301 Wee Siew Kim, 301 Wijeysingha, Vincent, 331 The Will of the People: How Public Opinion Has Influenced the Supreme Court and Shaped the Meaning of the Constitution (Friedman), 240 Wong, Benjamin, 18, 20 Xi Jinping, 4 xian (the worthy), 44, 161, 170, 174, 341–343 xiao (filial dutifulness, filial piety), 71, 88, 342 Xiao Hong, 4, 22–23 Xinhua Net, 350 Xunzi, 32, 33, 36, 37, 173–174 Yeo, George, 305–306 Zengzi, 169 Zhang Weiwei, 27 Zhu Xi, 345–346 Zizhang, 169 Zuozhuan, 162, 352