4장
Representing the Voiceless: Future Generations and Foreigners
The third flaw Bell identifies is the "tyranny of the voting community." Even when democracy functions properly, it remains deeply flawed because political equality ends at the boundaries of the political community. Government policies affect nonvoters like future generations and foreigners, yet nobody represents their interests.
Democratization tends to strengthen national identity, potentially increasing tensions with neighboring countries. Even established democracies have committed serious harms against nonvoters. Foreign domestic workers in Hong Kong and Singapore illustrate this dynamic - they enjoy better rights in nondemocratic Hong Kong than in Singapore, partly because Hong Kong's leaders aren't chosen through one person, one vote and can rely more on their sense of justice rather than catering to citizens' interests.
The most serious threat may be to future generations. Electoral democracies struggle with long-term challenges like unsustainable debt and climate change that require decades-long planning horizons. Voters demand instant gratification and reject politicians who impose short-term pain for long-term gain.
Bell suggests that meritocratic systems might better represent non-voters' interests. Singapore's "elected presidency" requires presidential candidates to meet stringent qualifications and gives the president power to veto policies harming future generations. China, despite its disastrous environmental record, shows promising signs in addressing climate change: boosting energy efficiency, investing in green technologies, building high-speed rail infrastructure, developing electric vehicles, launching carbon permit markets, and incorporating environmental performance in cadre evaluations.
The Chinese Communist Party's long-term political stability means it's more likely to honor climate commitments than democracies where changing administrations may abandon pledges. Since the party derives legitimacy from performance and disaster prevention, it has self-interest in preparing for both short and long-term environmental challenges.
5장
Social Harmony Versus Competitive Politics
The fourth flaw Bell identifies is the "tyranny of competitive individualists," a fundamental tension between democratic processes and social cohesion. Electoral democracy, while promising fair representation, often intensifies social conflict through increasingly aggressive negative campaigning and divisive political tactics. Research in social psychology and behavioral economics demonstrates that most people inherently value harmony, cooperation, and community well-being, but the machinery of competitive elections systematically undermines these natural inclinations by incentivizing the demonization of political opponents and the exploitation of social divisions.
The secret ballot, while protecting voters from coercion, has an unintended dark side. The privacy of voting booths enables people to act on their worst impulses without social accountability, potentially prioritizing narrow self-interest over collective good. This anonymity, combined with the winner-take-all nature of many electoral systems, can lead to voting patterns that fragment communities and exacerbate existing social tensions.
Democratic optimists have proposed various remedies to this problem. Some advocate for enhanced moral education through humanities programs that emphasize civic virtue and ethical reasoning. Others champion deliberative democracy models, where citizens engage in structured discussions to reach reasoned consensus. However, these well-intentioned theories have largely failed to counteract the rising tide of competitive individualism. The internet and social media have dramatically worsened this situation, creating echo chambers and enabling anonymous, inflammatory political speech that further poisons social relations and degrades public discourse.
Alternative democratic models offer potential solutions. Kwasi Wiredu's concept of consensus-based democracy, inspired by precolonial African governance systems, particularly the Akan people's traditional decision-making processes, eliminates party politics in favor of collaborative problem-solving. This approach emphasizes discussion until agreement is reached, rather than majority rule. However, implementation in modern contexts has proven challenging, as one person, one vote systems tend to naturally evolve toward partisan politics and factional competition.
China's political model presents another alternative approach, implementing a hybrid system that combines local democracy with centralized authority. At the village level, elections proceed without party politics, allowing for community-based decision-making. At the central level, elite deliberation among trained officials aims to promote long-term planning and social stability. While China's use of force to prevent competing parties raises serious ethical concerns and may merely suppress rather than resolve conflict, surveys and social indicators suggest that Chinese society maintains greater social harmony than large democracies like India and the United States, where partisan division has reached historic levels.
This tension between democratic competition and social cohesion remains one of the most challenging aspects of modern governance, requiring careful consideration of how electoral systems can be designed to promote both fair representation and community solidarity.
6장
Selecting Leaders in a Political Meritocracy
If meritocracy offers potential advantages over democracy, how should we select good leaders? Bell examines this question by tracing the concept from ancient China through Western political thought to contemporary Chinese governance. The idea of "elevating the worthy" emerged during China's Spring and Autumn period, with Confucians emphasizing moral worth while Legalists sought objective measures of capability. Imperial China's examination system, which selected officials through competitive testing for over thirteen hundred years, represents its greatest contribution to meritocratic governance. This system tested candidates not just on memorization but on their ability to apply classical knowledge to contemporary problems, requiring both intellectual depth and practical wisdom.
Unlike business with its clear profit motive, government's purpose is complex and contested. Political leaders must balance multiple goals, listen to conflicting perspectives, and respond to widespread public criticism. They require different qualities than business leaders - while Jack Welch could succeed through "criticizing, demeaning, ridiculing," political leaders need cooperation and strategic ambiguity. The skills that make someone successful in business - decisiveness, ruthless efficiency, and profit maximization - may actually hinder effective political leadership, where building consensus and maintaining social harmony are paramount.
In today's complex world, intellectual abilities matter more than physical prowess for political leadership. Leaders must understand intricate arguments across multiple disciplines and maintain a global outlook to respond to increasingly interconnected risks. Singapore exemplifies this approach, with Lee Kuan Yew prioritizing "near-geniuses" and institutionalizing rigorous recruitment starting from the school system. The Singapore model includes extensive psychological testing, leadership assessment centers, and early identification of talent through the education system. This comprehensive approach ensures that future leaders possess not just academic excellence but also the psychological resilience and strategic thinking capabilities necessary for governance.
While intellectual ability matters, social skills may be even more crucial. Knowledge of Chinese history on exams is valuable since Chinese leadership requires cultural literacy, but this doesn't guarantee social aptitude. One solution is requiring evidence of administrative competence after examination success, with promotion dependent on demonstrated performance at lower government levels. This staged approach allows evaluation of practical leadership abilities, including crisis management, team building, and public communication skills. Modern meritocratic systems often incorporate multiple assessment methods: written examinations, interviews, simulations, and performance reviews at various administrative levels. This comprehensive evaluation helps identify candidates who possess both the intellectual capacity and practical wisdom needed for effective political leadership.
The challenge lies in designing selection systems that can identify and nurture individuals with this rare combination of qualities - strong intellectual capabilities, cultural understanding, social skills, and practical administrative competence. Some countries have experimented with leadership academies, rotation programs through different government departments, and mentorship by experienced officials to develop these multifaceted abilities in potential leaders.
7장
The Challenges of Political Meritocracy
Despite its potential advantages, political meritocracy faces significant challenges. The most serious is corruption. Unlike democracies where corrupt rulers can be voted out, meritocracy faces an existential threat from corruption. China's anti-corruption campaign under Xi Jinping appears more systematic than previous efforts, targeting even high-ranking officials like Zhou Yongkang.
A critical factor driving corruption is the extremely low salaries of public officials. President Xi Jinping earns only $19,000 annually compared to President Obama's $400,000, while former leaders like Wen Jiabao and Bo Xilai had modest salaries despite their families accumulating enormous wealth. Singapore offers an alternative model, having dramatically increased public officials' salaries to compete with private sector compensation. By 2007, Singapore's ministers earned up to $3.1 million annually to prevent talent drain and reduce corruption incentives.
Beyond financial incentives, ethical cultivation remains essential. While the Chinese Communist Party officially promotes Marxist ideology for cadre motivation, this approach lacks effectiveness as Marxism offers little guidance on official ethics. Instead, Confucianism could provide more relevant moral education for public officials.
The second challenge is ossification, where meritocratically selected leaders increasingly come from narrow social backgrounds. In Singapore, former civil servant Ngiam Tong Dow observed "elite arrogance creeping in" where officials "behave like they have a mandate from the emperor." France's Ecole Nationale d'Administration (ENA) illustrates this problem - despite aiming to produce generalist administrators who are both technocrats and humanists, ENA graduates increasingly come from privileged backgrounds, with 50% of 2011 graduates having parents in national education and only 3 out of 81 having working-class origins.
The third challenge is legitimacy. After China's violent response to demands for change on June 4, 1989, many Western analysts predicted the Chinese Communist Party's inevitable collapse, assuming liberal democracy was the only legitimate regime type for modernizing societies. Yet China's single-party state has strengthened since the 1990s, with surveys consistently showing high regime support. Chinese citizens trust their political institutions more than citizens in democratic Asian societies do.
8장
Models of Democratic Meritocracy
How might democracy and meritocracy be reconciled? Bell examines three distinct models that attempt to bridge this fundamental tension in political organization. The first model combines democracy and meritocracy at the voter level through various weighted voting mechanisms. John Stuart Mill, in his influential work on representative government, proposed that university graduates, professionals, and individuals who passed voluntary examinations should receive additional votes in elections. Mill argued that the opinions of "higher moral or intellectual beings" carried greater weight and should be reflected proportionally in the democratic process. Similar proposals emerged from other political theorists, suggesting educational qualifications or civic knowledge tests as bases for differential voting power. However, such proposals consistently face insurmountable political and ethical obstacles - the formal institutionalization of citizen inequality in the political process is widely viewed as fundamentally incompatible with democratic principles of equal human dignity.
The second model attempts to reconcile democracy and meritocracy through specialized central political institutions. Sun Yat-sen, the founding father of modern China, advocated an innovative five-branch constitutional system that added an Examination branch and Supervisory branch to complement the traditional executive, legislative, and judicial branches. The Examination branch would implement comprehensive competency testing for all government officials, including elected representatives, before they could assume office. This system aimed to ensure minimal standards of capability while maintaining democratic selection. Similarly, Friedrich Hayek proposed a sophisticated bicameral legislature featuring a meritocratic upper chamber composed of accomplished individuals over forty-five serving single fifteen-year terms, designed to balance the more responsive democratically elected assembly. These individuals would be selected based on demonstrated expertise and achievement across various fields. However, these institutional proposals ultimately fall short by failing to recognize democracy's intrinsic value in modern societies - particularly its role in conferring legitimacy and ensuring accountability.
The third model, which Bell ultimately advocates, is a "vertical model" that implements democracy at lower levels of government while maintaining meritocratic selection at higher levels. This approach recognizes that democracy functions most effectively at the local level, where citizens have direct knowledge of their leaders' capabilities and character, and where policy issues tend to be more concrete and immediately relevant to daily life. At higher levels of government, where issues become more complex and technical, meritocratic selection ensures competent leadership while maintaining democratic input at the grassroots level. China's current political system partially reflects this approach through its combination of village-level elections and meritocratic advancement mechanisms for higher-level positions. This model attempts to harness the benefits of both systems - democratic accountability and participation at local levels, combined with competent, technically proficient leadership at higher levels of government. The vertical model also addresses practical concerns about voter knowledge and engagement across different scales of governance.
9장
The China Model: Democracy, Experimentation, and Meritocracy
Bell argues that China has developed a unique three-pronged approach to political governance: democracy at the bottom, experimentation in the middle, and meritocracy at the top. This hybrid system combines elements of traditional Chinese governance with modern administrative innovations.
The first plank is democracy at the bottom, which has historical roots in Neo-Confucian local institutions but evolved in modern form after the collapse of the commune system. Village self-governance emerged in the early 1980s, with the 1982 constitution formally establishing village committees as self-governing organizations with elected officials. By 1996, village elections had spread nationwide with high turnout rates and improving procedural quality. These elections typically involve multiple candidates, secret ballots, and direct voting for village chiefs and committee members. In successful cases, this grassroots democracy has improved local governance, reduced corruption, and increased accountability in areas like land use and public spending. However, implementation quality varies significantly across regions, with some villages maintaining more robust democratic practices than others.
The second plank is experimentation between local and central government levels. This approach has historical precedents in imperial China but was systematically developed by the Chinese Communist Party, influenced by both John Dewey's ideas of "learning by doing" and Confucian concepts of teaching by example. The "experimentation under hierarchy" approach allowed China to test sensitive market reforms in specific areas like Shenzhen before national implementation. This method extends beyond economic policy to social programs, environmental protection, and urban planning. Notable examples include the household responsibility system in agriculture, which began as local experiments in Anhui province, and the establishment of special economic zones that tested market reforms. Local governments serve as laboratories for policy innovation, with successful experiments being scaled up and failed ones contained.
The third plank is meritocracy at the top. China's civil service has evolved from a revolutionary cadre system to a sophisticated meritocratic selection process. The highly competitive national civil service examination (with success rates around 1 in 57) serves as the entry point, followed by decades of performance assessment and promotion through various levels of government. Officials face evaluation through public opinion surveys, peer reviews, and assessment of concrete achievements like GDP growth, environmental protection, and social stability. The system emphasizes extensive administrative experience - top leaders typically have 20-30 years of increasingly complex governance roles before reaching national leadership positions. This includes rotations through different regions and departments, ensuring broad expertise. The promotion process considers factors such as educational qualifications, crisis management abilities, and leadership of major projects. For instance, successful handling of natural disasters, implementation of poverty alleviation programs, or management of large-scale infrastructure projects can significantly influence an official's career trajectory.
This three-tiered system aims to combine local responsiveness, policy innovation, and competent leadership, though critics argue it faces challenges in maintaining accountability and preventing corruption at various levels.
10장
Beyond China: Global Implications
The China model, with its unique historical development, cannot be readily exported wholesale to other countries. It's a hybrid product combining village elections rooted in self-governance traditions but borrowed from the West, systematic experimentation developed by the Chinese Communist Party, and political meritocracy central to Chinese political culture.
Only Vietnam potentially meets the requirements to adopt the full model, but individual components could be selectively adopted elsewhere. Local democracy is already widely practiced globally. However, the experimentation component faces significant hurdles in democratic contexts where elected officials have short time horizons focused on re-election, different parties may control different government levels, or rigid federal systems prevent central authorities from generalizing successful local experiments nationwide.
Political meritocracy at the top, though fundamental to the China model, is the most difficult component to export. Citizens in electoral democracies are deeply committed to one person, one vote for selecting leaders, making it nearly impossible to campaign for "meritocratization" that would curtail equal voting rights. Nevertheless, meritocracy could influence democracies indirectly - voters might prefer candidates with meritocratic qualities, and elected leaders might emulate successful policies from meritocratic systems.
Bell's hope for the political world is that democracies and meritocracies can coexist and learn from each other. Both systems would acknowledge their flaws while competing to better serve their people. Democracies would improve while adopting meritocratic practices; meritocracies would enhance their systems while incorporating democratic elements. Both would recognize each other as morally legitimate despite different foundations, with the US dominant in the West and China in East Asia, cooperating on common concerns while embracing valuable political diversity.
