Why Democracy Needs Meritocracy

The safeguards of democracy, like having checks and balances, are generally failing us. For instance, the different branches of government can be stacked in favor of one party, such as in the U.S., where there really are no checks on the president. One angle to attack this problem is to ask how can democratic institutions be redesigned to address this issue? My approach examines the question, in part, from the perspectives of Confucius and Plato. I introduce a new Confucian hybrid system for the legislative branch that fuses meritocracy or rule by the merited with democracy. A meritocracy has merit requirements for leaders as can be found with Plato, while an epistocracy has political knowledge criteria for voters to give differential voting powers. For my particular hybrid meritocracy-democracy, all relevant officials must be democratically elected via one person, one vote, but in order to run for office, candidates must pass certain merit requirements, like a criminal background check, having prior work experience relevant to politics, and education requirements. Just as any other professional job has merit requirements to get the position, such as being a professor, doctor, engineer, and lawyer, the most important professional jobs in the country should have them too. If we correctly need merit criteria to practice law, we should have criteria to more fundamentally make laws. By relying on philosophical reasoning and empirical studies, I claim that democracy needs to append meritocracy in order to make it more likely that our legislative and executive leaders are virtuous. I don’t claim my hybrid meritocracy-democracy is perfect. However, I do argue comparatively that it is more likely to bring better outcomes than democracy alone despite being imperfect. My arguments use empirical evidence from the social sciences such as data showing that in Western democracies, officials like the chair of the central bank and judges do better when appointed through meritocracy rather than being democratically elected. Also, I draw on evidence from Singapore’s meritocracy-democracy system to provide additional evidence for my view. Moreover, I show weaknesses with voters in a democracy. For example, there’s studies demonstrating that most are tribalistic and will vote for their tribal leaders come what may. Surprisingly, data indicates that those who know more about politics are more tribalistic than those who know less. This causes severe problems for an epistocracy that tries to increase voting power for knowledgeable voters. I also point out a Catch-22 that a major problem with democracy is that having uninformed voters is likely to lead to poor decision-making at the ballot box. However, having informed voters is also problematic because they’ll be highly tribalistic and follow their tribal leader regardless of their character. Yet, on my hybrid, the only candidates they can vote for are ones who have passed the merit requirements. They’re candidates who we’re more justified in believing are virtuous as compared to candidates who only come from a democratic process, with all else held equal. I conclude by addressing counterobjections. Panel 5