Towards a democratic-sortitional meritocracy : reflections on the democracy-meritocracy debate

This thesis investigates the arguments of the political meritocrats, such as Daniel A. Bell, Tongdong Bai, Joseph Chan, Ruiping Fan and Qing Jiang. The political meritocrats argue that core positions of political authority should be allocated by merit rather than popular elections, because contemporary democratic politics is deficient in many ways. To that end, they argue, the democratically elected officials of the core executive and/or legislature should be constrained if not replaced by some meritocratically selected officials. Their proposed merit-based mechanisms for selecting public officials include, for example, examinations, interviews, peer recommendations and assessments of bureaucratic performance. This thesis has three aims. First, contra the political meritocrats, I argue that an individual might not merit political power, even when she has some personal attributes helpful for improving political decision-making quality. Second, in line with the political meritocrats, I argue that a political system need not distribute political power equally to be morally justified, at least when we focus on some familiar conceptions of equality, stability and acceptability underpinning democratic arrangements. Third, pace the political meritocrats, I defend the democratic-sortitional model of meritocracy. The model envisions a core legislature composed of two chambers, the first elected, and the second meritocratically selected. Unlike the existing models of meritocracy, however, those occupying the meritocratic chamber of the democratic-sortitional model are chosen by sortition. The democratic chamber is responsible for designing the eligibility criteria for the meritocratic chamber, according to citizens' deliberative conclusions on what skills, expertise, interests and so on merit political representation. Interested citizens fulfilling those criteria will be randomly selected for the meritocratic chamber. This thesis will not just enhance our understanding of various conceptual and normative issues related to the idea of political meritocracy, but it will also shed light on how meritocratic political systems should be evaluated and designed.