Meritocracy: the selection, promotion or predominance of those who are objectively the most worthy and capable (Dictionary of Modern Greek – Centre for the Greek Language 2006 – 2008)

MERITOCRACY AS A PRINCIPLE AND A RIGHT
How useful is the concept of meritocracy today if we want to implement fair policies in the sensitive area of recruitment and staffing in the public sector? This is the question that the new book by Apostolos Papatolias “Meritocracy as a principle & as a right. Theoretical origins, constitutional foundation and institutional practice” which is published by Papazisis Publications.

A. Papatolias (pictured) is a doctor of constitutional law and a distinguished member of the ASEP, an institution that has become associated in the minds of citizens with the meritocratic ideal. He argues that meritocracy, either as an individual right or as an organisational principle, remains an extremely flexible concept with a highly uncertain and fluctuating content. Which qualities ‘deserve’ to be rewarded and by what criteria one’s ‘worth’ is recognised are constantly open questions that inevitably point to different conceptions of what constitutes ‘fair treatment’ or a ‘just society’.

At a time when the meritocratic ideal is substantially shaken and the undemocratic and oppressive role of the elites is harshly criticized, the author does not hesitate to propose “policies of equalizing results either through progressive taxation as a tool of permanent support for the losers of our hierarchical society or through the ‘redistribution of positions’ for the benefit of the socially vulnerable categories”. In this “solidarity post – meritocracy”, Weber meets Rawls, while Obama seems to be winning the bet from Sarkozy in the world of ideas.

Rewarding talent and encouraging excellence thus coexist harmoniously and equally with the institutions of “guaranteed competences for all” in order to ensure meaningful opportunities for success for the less advantaged members of our society.

* The book by Apostolos Papatolias “Meritocracy as a principle & as a right. Theoretical origins, constitutional foundation and institutional practice” will be presented on Wednesday 27 February at 18:00 at the IANOS Bookstore (24 Stadiou Street). Professor of Constitutional Law, Faculty of Law, University of Athens; Iphigenia Kamtsidou, President of the National Council of Constitutional Law, Deputy Chairperson of the National Council of Constitutional Law. Καθηγήτρια του ΑΠΘ· Αντώνης Μακρυδημήτρης, Καθηγητής του Πανεπιστημίου Αθηνών. The presentation will be moderated by Konstantinos Menoudakos, Honorary President of the CoE, President of the Data Protection Authority.

MERITOCRACY AND DEMOCRACY
Speech by Ev. Venizelos, on 5.7.2018, at the event of the think tank “The Catalyst”, which was attended by Berit Reiss-Andersen, Chair of the Nobel Peace Prize Committee.
“Thank you very much for the invitation and I wish this new think tank to fulfill its goal and overturn basic assumptions of chemistry, namely that once the reaction is achieved, the catalyst is not lost.

Because the fate of the catalyst is to disappear when the reaction is facilitated and achieved. The role of the catalyst is too thankless because it runs this risk of self-sacrifice. So I hope that you can overcome this by contributing to a science served by Arthur Nobel, who bequeathed us the most important prizes in the world, namely the international rewarding and crowning of a meritocratic process based on hard research, hard work and of course ability, talent, charisma to a very large extent, but certainly excellence which is composed of all these.

I welcome Mrs Reiss – Andersen who came from Norway.
The issue of meritocracy and democracy can be approached in two – basically – ways. One way is the current journalistic way, which concerns the debate that takes place on a daily basis in Greece and in many countries, not only in Greece, but in many other countries of the world and the European Union, about various pathologies in the functioning of the state, the political system, the administrative system, but also other major systems, such as the educational system of each country.

The other approach starts from the dangers that democracy, Western democracy, is in danger in our time. And because we are in Europe, European democracy, which is identified not only with periodic elections, pluralism, human rights, but is also identified with certain very important economic achievements, with a level of development that has historically been considered to be the product of an open, democratic and liberal society. A society that not only expresses itself politically through participation and representation, but also a society that enjoys a high level of protection of human rights, of guarantees of the rule of law. So economic growth, competitiveness, great achievements, research and scientific achievements, what we call innovation, are to a very great extent historically linked to the parallel development of institutions. So with the European democratic rule of law, with European liberal democracy.
Except that this is no longer the case. Because unfortunately the world map shows many phenomena of large countries and large economies that are progressing, that have a constantly rising level of development without being democratic. They are authoritarian [Yassa Mounk and Roberto Stefan Foa, The end of the Democratic Century. Autocracy’s Global Ascendance, Foreign Affairs, May/June. 2018].

So the basic link between democracy, liberalism and development, economic progress, is being questioned. And this questioning brings to the surface an age-old debate on the relationship between democracy and meritocracy, a debate whose starting point is of course ancient Greek philosophical thought, because we know all too well the Platonic utopia or the Platonic dystopia of Gallipoli, that is, the search for a model of government that is not democratic because it is based on the philosopher-king, based on elements of meritocracy, not to say even on elements of eugenics.

So this very old debate has now become highly topical, because China, apart from its economic and population size and its catalytic presence in other continents, in Africa primarily, but also in Europe and in our country and in Southeastern Europe, is also exporting a whole theory: the theory that meritocracy is a more effective political system than Western-style democracy. And this meritocracy is ensured, in an absolute and effective way, by the Communist Party of China, which no longer has Marxism-Leninism as its ideology, but has meritocracy as its new ideology, through which – this is the claim – the complete modernization of the country and the ever-rising competitiveness of the Chinese economy will be achieved: Political Meritocracy and the Limits of Democracy, 2015 and, more concisely, by the same author, China’s Political Meritocracy versus Western Democracy, The Economist, Jun 12th 2018. But Jean – Marc Coicaud, Debating Daniel A. Bell : On Political Meritocracy and Democracy in China and Beyond , Philosophy and Public Issues ( New Series), Vol.7, No.1 (2017):3-14].
This is a very important chapter in the international topical debate on the relationship between meritocracy and democracy, not the miserable domestic debate on the pathologies of democracy, but the global debate on grand concepts. For the theorem says that the Communist Party of China selects its members through a strict meritocratic process in all areas of Chinese life and builds up a body of members, and much more so of cadres, which is meritocratically structured and through which the governance of an economy is exercised, which wants to gain its rightful place in the global GDP and its rightful place in the global international political system.

Because it’s not enough to be a permanent member of the Security Council, you have to have military power, you have to be able to influence developments, not only through economic means but also through the use of traditional means of exercising foreign policy. Military means are always implied or creeping and are always critical. That is the debate.

In between these two extremes, the Platonic dystopia of the philosopher-king’s Gallipoli and the Chinese concept of the meritocracy of an authoritarian one-party regime, such as the Chinese one, are many, many European theories that you are familiar with. There is, for example, Vilfredo Pareto’s concept of elites, the role and circulation of elites, which is very well known to those who have studied social sciences, that this is what politics is, that politics is based on the circulation and rotation of elites.

And of course Max Weber’s even more famous conception of politics as a profession. The practice of politics is not just based on election, and therefore on the relationship of representation, but also contains elements which are apostolic, there is a vocation, so to speak, which concerns the politician and his role and his moral conviction or reduction to values. Here is placed the well-known opposition between the ethics of conviction and the ethics of responsibility.

This is the debate in very broad terms, a debate which has never been closed, because the theoretical assumption of democracy is not so self-evident. Anti-democratic theories have been developed at all times in world history, including the history of Western political culture. I need not mention well-known examples, such as the theoretical conflicts and experience of the interwar and World War II.

The debate on meritocracy requires us to see how what we call Western democracy can be reconstituted. There can be no democracy that is not liberal. This is unthinkable after the modern era. Authoritarian or illiberal democracy, which disconnects democracy from political liberalism, is simply not democracy.

And on the other hand, it’s not possible to have large institutional systems, like the European Union, which are liberal, which are constitutional, which respect human rights, but which have a huge democratic vacuum, like the one that exists at the level of the European Union itself, which is also a political vacuum, because there is a one-way political and economic thinking, an orthodoxy, which is now legally imposed by the Treaties, since 1992, since Maastricht at least, since 1992. So, with this in mind, we can go to the other level, the easier one.
First of all, let us clarify that democracy is not meritocratic.

And on the other hand, it’s not possible to have large institutional systems, like the European Union, which are liberal, which are constitutional, which respect human rights, but which have a huge democratic vacuum, like the one that exists at the level of the European Union itself, which is also a political vacuum, because there is a one-way political and economic thinking, an orthodoxy, which is now legally imposed by the Treaties, since 1992, since Maastricht at least, since 1992. So, with this in mind, we can go to the other level, the easier one.
First of all, let us clarify that democracy is not meritocratic.

Does that in itself constitute a skill? And where does that skill take you, which can make you a party leader, it can make you a prime minister, but that skill can also make you a finance minister, or does that become more difficult because of the technical demands of the position? This ability by which you become a party leader and prime minister can also make you a foreign minister? Because it could make you an absolute master of power, but it also makes you a manager of authority?

Especially when your power is controlled at the international level, at the European or international level, and now requires technical knowledge, even particular skills that are different from a merely technocratic approach of an economist or a professional diplomat? Or should democracy give way and say I am delegating a large part of my democratically legitimised power to technocrats whom I invite, without any democratic legitimacy, because I choose them on merit and assign them to perform tasks as important as those of the Minister of Finance or the Minister of Foreign Affairs or the Minister of Research or the Minister of Education?

I wonder if we can take this to a lower level, to the level of the regions, to the level of the municipalities, or to a higher level, to the level of the European Union or the major international organisations, to the positions of the Secretary General of the UN, the Secretary General of the CoE, which is held by a Norwegian friend of ours, or the Secretary General of NATO, which is also held by a Norwegian friend of ours, which we have talked about with Mrs Rice?

What is happening, how are these seats allocated, what are the criteria? Are the criteria political, are they state criteria, are there certain states that are preferred? Let’s say Norway, Luxembourg and some which have difficulties because they have open foreign policy problems, like Greece? What is happening in the European Union in this respect?

And to put it another way. If a prime minister is lacking in foreign languages, does he have to make up for it with an extra effort in order to be useful for his country and for himself? And so does the electoral aspect of the democratic system of government ultimately lead to a technical upgrade as well?

There has recently been a very large study on Sweden, which shows that the level of representation of the electorate at the national and regional level shows that it is a political staff that has very high elements of meritocracy and technical competence [Ernesto Dal Bo, Frederico Finan, Olle Folke, Torsten Persson, Johanna Rickne, Political Selection and the Path to Inclusive Meritocracy, VOX, CEPR Policy Portal, 26 April 2017].

And these investigations are now being extended to other countries. Because you have to bring out skills even if you don’t have them, or if you do have them they take you one step beyond the point you would reach by election alone. But democracy as a system of government now, not as a principle or as a value system, has not only the elected part: we elect the parliament, the parliament brings up a government, the government works.

What is called a democratic system of government, a democratic state, to put it more simply, has many other aspects which are not based on the election of elected leaders or on the choices of the majority, but operate on the basis of guarantees which are liberal, which are based on human rights. A basic human right is the free development of the personality of each individual and the participation, in proportion to one’s worth, in social, economic and political activity. So in its non-electoral part, democracy as a way of organising the state is certainly meritocratic, because the education system, the health system and the public administration operate, or rather should operate, in a meritocratic way.

The Panhellenic or general examinations for admission to higher educational institutions are a basic meritocratic institution by Greek standards. The same applies to the AΣEP from 1994 onwards and its constitutional enshrinement in 2001 or to the competitions for entry into the judiciary.
But there is also a problem of meritocracy in the private sector.

Don’t we have family businesses and undesirability in economies with a large number of small and micro-enterprises? Do we not see large firms that grow up as family businesses and do not apply corporate governance rules collapse because meritocratic rules for corporate governance in the private sector are not in place?

Too often. Or are there not other large civil society spaces, such as churches and religious organisations, even under conditions of complete separation of church and state, in countries that are secular, which operate according to criteria that are not meritocratic, but ideological, confessional or even moral? In the predominantly democratic representative country, the one that gave birth, together with the French Revolution, to the phenomenon of modern Western democracy, that is, the United States, which is a pluralist country, a secular country, a Catholic president has been elected since the Federation was formed, all the others belong to Protestant denominations, and he, as you know, was assassinated long before his term of office expired.

Because only John F. Kennedy was a Catholic president in the history of the United States. Not to mention that in laïque France, one reason why, as we know from the research that has been done, Lionel Jospin was defeated when Jacques Chirac was found to be the rival of Jean-Marie Le Pen the first time that there was a forced choice of president to prevent the far right from winning, was that he is a Protestant, he is a Huguenot, in a society that has its own preferences, which are much more profoundly Catholic than can be seen with the naked eye.

There is, of course, in the political system the element of family rule, which is a basic element of undignity, the element of nepotism, what we very easily call “forms of bribery”. But does it not exist in the university, does it not exist in smaller workplaces, where the father or brother makes sure that the son or younger brother is hired? And these great political dynasties, we see them reproduced, or we see them arouse great admiration, because such a “princely” element can exert a fascination far greater in a democracy than can be imagined with the naked eye. [Ronald Mendoza, Dynasties in Democracies: The Political Side of Inequality, VOX, CEPR Policy Portal, 11 March 2012].

If some people for reasons of descent inequality have been educated in better schools, in better universities, if they speak better foreign languages, if they have better connections and so by tradition they have a much more advanced starting point, unequal, they exploit that politically [Mark Bovens and Anchrit Wille, Diploma Democracy: The Rise of Political Meritocracy, 2017]. This gives them a ‘meritocratic’ or ‘technical’ advantage and gives them a greater chance of contributing to the reproduction of a political dynasty pattern.

Political dynasties are also the subject of much applied research in Europe, because phenomena of political dynasties with a high degree of family reproduction in political life are not only found in Greece. We have perhaps less in Greece than in other countries. I think the American example is also very typical.

So, one can formulate simple positions and say, of course, a democratic modern European constitution must be meritocratic, it must give equal opportunities to all, it must not have any intermediate racism or xenophobia, it must integrate all minorities, it must be pluralistic. But are we solving the problem of the difficult relationship between meritocracy and democracy so simply? No. We are not solving it at national, European or international level.

The problems are much deeper and concern the social perception of democracy and the ideological problems of democracy itself. Unfortunately, democracy is going through a period of devaluation and ideological crisis, not because the principle of majority rule is being called into question, but rather because the principle of majority rule and the emergence of powerful leaders with majority legitimacy calls into question the liberal and franchise aspect of democracy, the institutions and guarantees of the rule of law, equality and pluralism.

The democratically, i.e. majority-legitimized emphasis on issues of national identity, pushes out of the democratic process opinions, groups, persons who do not correspond to these identity criteria. In parallel, the questioning of the institutions of the rule of law, as is the case with the separation of powers and the independence of the judiciary in Poland or Hungary or in Greece with violent interventions in the internal independence of the courts, undermines democracy in its most sensitive meritocratic dimension, which is the administration of justice by scientists, professional judges who are selected meritocratically, evaluated by senior judges or their counterparts, surrounded by guarantees of personal and functional independence.