The rise of the pluto-meritocracy

Meritocracy, a word coined by my father, gets a bad press these days. Two recent books — The Meritocracy Trap (2019) by Daniel Markovits and The Tyranny of Merit (2020) by Michael Sandel — hold it responsible for many of America’s ills, and in some settings saying you believe the most qualified person should get the job is classified as a ‘micro-aggression’ because it ignores the role that race plays in determining a person’s life chances. It’s one of those progressive doctrines that’s fallen out of favour.

So kudos to Adrian Wooldridge, the political editor of the Economist, for producing a full-throated defence of the principle. In The Aristocracy of Talent, he argues that meritocracy has been responsible for transforming the developed nations of the West into the most successful societies the world has ever known and is currently having a similarly galvanising effect on China and south-east Asia. Unless the principle is revitalised in Europe and North America, he says, the West is doomed to decline.