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9 - How East Asians View Meritocracy

A Confucian Perspective

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2014

By
Doh Chull Shin
Edited by
Daniel A. Bell  and
Chenyang Li
Daniel A. Bell
Affiliation:
Tsinghua University, Beijing
Chenyang Li
Affiliation:
Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
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Summary

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. 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 Confucian meritocracy and those of democratic government, and so support the counterclaim of the thesis's opponents?

Type
Chapter
Information
The East Asian Challenge for Democracy
Political Meritocracy in Comparative Perspective
 , pp. 259 - 287
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2013

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