FLAWS OF MERITOCRACY
Meritocracy is flawed as an organising principle to select the elite for society. Yet, it has been widely embraced by the liberal world for there is no viable alternative that has been tried and tested, lest society opts for the elite selection based on lineage or family and social connections. Communist countries have their unique selection process based on commitment to the ideology, loyalty to the party and job performance within the network of people’s organisations.
This article is a reaction to one of the best speeches made in Parliament during the recent debate on the President’s address. It was delivered by Education Minister Chan Chun Sing who was spot on in his theoretical description and practical analysis of the pitfalls of meritocracy. He went on to propose significant shifts in the way that meritocracy should be done in Singapore. It was a bold speech and what Forward Singapore should rightly deal with, that is, the big picture changes that are needed to enable the country to remain united and avoid divisions due to deep social stratification by class and the emergence of the underclass.
But this is not the first time the problematics related to meritocracy were publicly surfaced. About 30 years ago, Home Affairs Minister Shanmugam, (then a back- bencher MP), made an excellent critique in Parliament on the downsides of meritocracy. His speech was so impactful that The Straits Times carried an editorial on what he had articulated.
Additionally, in 1990, a group of Malay professionals expressed their serious misgivings about meritocracy during a historic Convention that assembled 500 of their peers. During this large meeting, the National Convention of Malay/Muslim Professionals 1990, they took the position that the meritocratic environment worked against the Malay minority community and expressed grave concern that this exacerbated the situation that Singaporean Malays were lagging far behind other communities in many areas especially education and the economy. They then suggested alternative versions of meritocracy, namely the ideas of “balanced meritocracy” and “meritocracy with compassion”, which would be fairer to disadvantaged and underprivileged groups in society. Unfortunately, these alternative ideas were rejected because they were deemed to be affirmative action which would hurt the Malay sense of self-pride.
MERITOCRACY IS UTOPIAN
It was most welcome when Minister Chan laid out potential pitfalls of meritocracy and suggested some ways to ameliorate them. The pitfalls arise from the inherent defects and imperfections of meritocracy.
To start off, the term meritocracy was born as a satire and not as a well thought through theory. It was a satirical term coined by British sociologist Michael Young who introduced it in his 1958 fiction which he authored. Titled The Rise of the Meritocracy 1870 2033 it was sharply directed at the elite class of his time and Young was critical of the elitism as well as the deep social divide meritocracy brought with it. No one wanted to publish Young’s writing till much later. His introduction of the term meritocracy presaged the contemporary debate on the “underclass”.
Meritocracy is a utopian idea because the conditions that must exist for it to work in the real world can never be fulfilled.
The first condition is that every member of society must have equal opportunity to have a fair chance to succeed in meritocracy and be selected as the elite to provide leadership in politics, the economy and other sectors of public life. This is idealistic and not possible. No two families can give equal opportunity to their children. Even within the same family, each child has equal opportunity. There are also children whose families provide them with little or no opportunity at all. Having the social condition of equality of opportunity and fair chance for success can never be achieved in real life. It is therefore impossible for meritocracy to work fairly because of this natural human condition of unequal opportunity.
The second condition is that everyone must be at the same starting line and at the same time. This is again an ideal in the real world. Given the situation of unequal opportunity, individuals do not start at the same time and from the same starting line. There will be some who are already running on the track, while the majority have just arrived at the starting blocks or have not even entered the “stadium” or worse are not persuaded that they need to find the way to the “stadium”. How then can we say that meritocracy is a fair system? It is therefore not surprising that meritocracy has given rise to stark social inequalities because it is designed as a “winner takes all” system and sadly, it is indifferent to the fate of all the others who are eliminated as the non-winners. Bluntly put, this latter group constitutes the victims of the inherent flaws of meritocracy.
The third condition that must be fulfilled is that the meritocratic system of elite selection must be able to measure only innate qualities of an individual and these include one’s intelligence, talent, and diligence. It must not measure merit that one accrues from external or social circumstances, that has nothing to do with one’s natural abilities. This, again, can never be achieved in real life because an individual’s merit is certainly influenced by external social factors, like family connections, peer influence and social networking. There is no magical device within the meritocratic system to isolate these external contributions and only measure the individual’s innate qualities. As such, meritocracy favours those whose merit is positively influenced by external factors. It is therefore not a fair system, and this unfairness fundamentally renders meritocracy as morally unacceptable.
REMODELLING MERITOCRACY
Notwithstanding its flaws, Singapore has reaped benefits from meritocracy as it has been able to produce a top-notch elite class to make it a highly successful country. A serious pitfall is that meritocracy has made Singapore into a highly stratified society and the emerging class divisions may give rise to ugly consequences. It is therefore urgent and critical to find ways to work around the pitfalls of meritocracy. Three ways can be considered to mitigate the three flaws as mentioned above.
First is to build a comprehensive national infrastructure to achieve an overall upward equalisation of opportunities. Those who are underprivileged and disadvantaged ought to be provided with the whole slew of state-sponsored opportunities. Existing schemes like the Baby Bonus, KidSTART, Edusave and SkillsFuture, can be expanded to offer citizens in the lower social strata with numerous opportunities and special ones that only the elite and upper stratum of society have access to.
Second, there ought to be flexibility in the embrace of meritocracy to give a better chance for all individuals with different talents and abilities to succeed. There should be multiple tracks, a wider choice of starting lines and the freedom for people to decide on when they wish to be at the starting blocks. This means that there can be a variety of ways to measure the merit of individuals with respect to their talents, interests, and abilities. Gone should be the days when meritocracy offers only one track (conventionally the academic track) and one start line (conventionally in the national school system) and the same time for starting (conventionally at primary one). A remodelled meritocracy will have the flexibility to evaluate a diverse range in types of merit as society recognises more kinds of talent and ability, even unconventional ones.
Third and equally important, this new way of doing meritocracy should be very inclusive to give recognition to those from disadvantaged backgrounds that include people with disabilities, members of minority communities and marginalised groups. Nevertheless, these individuals must have the required abilities but not necessarily be among those who cross the finishing line first. The merit of such special groups lies in the value propositions that they can “bring to the table”. For example, able members of minority communities can contribute to more enriched as well as inclusive decision and policy making.
In the final analysis, Minister Chan Chun Sing’s speech can be a stepping stone to develop a uniquely Singaporean Meritocracy Model (SMM) one which not only produces top-notch scholars but importantly, citizens with the best technical, vocational, and creative skills within a meritocracy that is highly inclusive to embrace minorities. Forward Singapore is about having merit-based Singaporeans and not about entrapping them within a narrow practice of meritocracy. ⬛
Mohammad Alami Musa was Chairman of AMP from 1995-2003.
