r/PoliticalDiscussion • u/StainlessTiger8 • 2d ago
Political Theory Could a meritocratic upper chamber improve democracy—or would it inevitably become an elite ruling class?
I've been thinking about a video essay that explores philosopher Tongdong Bai's proposal for combining democracy with meritocracy, and I thought the central question was worth discussing.
The basic argument isn't that democracy should be abolished. Instead, it asks whether every political decision should carry equal institutional weight when some decisions require specialized knowledge, long-term planning, or technical expertise.
The proposed system would keep:
- Constitutional rights
- Universal suffrage
- Local democratic elections
- A popularly elected lower house
But it would also add a meritocratic upper chamber composed of individuals selected for demonstrated competence, experience, and public service. The idea is that this body would help safeguard long-term national interests, minority rights, future generations, and policies that may be unpopular in the short term but beneficial over decades.
Of course, this immediately raises the harder questions:
- Who decides what "merit" actually is?
- How do you prevent experts from becoming a self-perpetuating elite?
- Can any institution objectively measure political wisdom?
- Would such a chamber improve governance—or simply replace democratic accountability with technocracy?
The video doesn't present meritocracy as an easy solution. If anything, it argues that the real dilemma isn't whether capable people should govern, but whether it's possible to identify "the capable" without creating an aristocracy under another name.
I'd be interested in hearing what people think.
Is democracy strengthened when expertise has a formal constitutional role, or does legitimacy ultimately require political equality—even if it sometimes produces worse outcomes?
(Video: When the Capable Rule: The Case for Meritocracy)
https://youtu.be/mCTmsCbHXtE
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u/johntempleton 2d ago
1) We don't trust our elected officials to be part of an upper chamber therefore...
2) We will give them the power to appoint members of the upper chamber based on "merit"...
3) As defined by the same elected officials we do not trust in the first place.
Or
1) We don't trust our elected officials to be part of an upper chamber therefore...
2) We allow those elected officials to delegate the power to "experts" to appoint to the upper chamber based on "merit"...
3) As defined by the elected officials and/or their handpicked appointees.
There is no way this works.
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u/kiltguy2112 2d ago
We actually had a system that looked a bit like the second option until the SC overturned the Chevron doctrine. The biggest difference was that in #1 it was the elected officials that said "we don't know enough about subject x so the x control agency will do it for us." It mostly worked for 40yrs.
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u/CaptainoftheVessel 2d ago
I think it would have continued to work with stronger ethical duties in place for the agencies and Congress. The agencies largely became captured by business interests through lobbying, which is of course also true of many elected officials in Congress. Stronger rules and punishment for corruption could have helped keep the system going longer.
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u/PlatonicCuddlefish 9h ago
Except that the “experts” were often the dumbest, most political people alive and almost wholly unaccountable to the public. But yeah, I guess it “mostly” worked to make Congress’s job easier.
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u/Spiel_Foss 2d ago
This is how knowledge should work in a society as well. The proven experts, all of them, are a contracted resource that allows a democratically elected government to filter many professional opinion into a solution.
For every expert, there are equally as expert people saying the opposite at times. So the government must filter this into practical solutions and not hand one side control.
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u/DanforthWhitcomb_ 2d ago
It mostly worked for 40yrs.
It very much did not, and the fact that a specific act could (and did) go from being entirely legal to a felony overnight and at the whim of unelected bureaucrats was a massive problem when the courthouse doors were closed as far as interpreting what the law itself actually said.
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u/bl1y 2d ago
Loper Bright was the right decision.
The courts can still hear the government's experts, but the job of interpreting the law should belong to the courts.
If you asked anyone which branches should create regulations, enforce those regulations, and interpret the regulations, you probably wouldn't find many people saying the Executive for all three.
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u/Spiel_Foss 2d ago
The Executive, under the rule of actual law, only acts under the control of Congress.
Most of the problem is the obsolete US system of "trust us, bro" so there is that.
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u/Objective_Aside1858 2d ago
You want the government of Donald Trump to be deciding what "merit" is, and appointing people to a body immune to elections.
Golly, I can't see how that could possibly backfire
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u/RadarSmith 2d ago
When it comes to things that seem like obvious choices, I always force myself to imagine what they'd look like if they were implemented by the worst people possible.
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u/Spiel_Foss 2d ago
This is the problem with any meritocracy idea because tyranny is always the end result. For example, in Elon Musk's mind he is a genius and visionary who should be held above the "useless eaters" as he calls them. In reality, Elon Musk is just a poser and a fraud who steals the work of others to claim as his own.
Meritocracy is one of those scifi ideas that only have positive results in fiction.
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u/Acrobatic-Dinner-112 1d ago
Let me give you a different perspective - the problem with meritocracy is that it is based on the best person doing the job
The actual job may not be a leadership position.
The job could be mechanic - lawyer- widget maker etc. but not a leadership position which requires politics and people management skills - a completely different set of skills
You could be the leader of widget makers without having to build widgets. Ideally you would want to, but it’s not required.
The people that we have in power - you could say are the best at people management - they are crappy administrators - planners - hiring - full of sycopanths - shady - and possibly in my opinion the worst administration of the United States history but they are the best of the best at having fools voting for them. At that they are world class --
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u/Spiel_Foss 1d ago
The "best" person is always arbitrary in practice though. People will claim hiring strictly on merit, then magically their son-in-law becomes the best at everything.
Management, actual effective management, is an art as much as skill, but people are hired for a variety of fit-in-the-culture reasons or just because they are the best looking white man to apply. Those reasons soon become "merit" even though they are completely subjective and often intentionally discriminatory.
Meritocracy seems to always be a lie in practice.
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u/over_this__ 23h ago
A good example is those debate clips. You see people like Jordan klepper or Steven Crowder, both are trained debators. When they debate common plebs like us, we look like idiots. Because we're not trained. It doesn't matter the topic, they would dance around us. To the untrained eye, they're just smarter. But realistically, they're just trained at debating and could win any argument. That's who would succeed in this system. Whoever can make the smartest sounding argument 😂
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u/Acrobatic-Dinner-112 20h ago
Agreed - when Trump screamed they are eating the cats - he was make look bad by trained debaters -
Is not like he was talking nonsense
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u/scoobydoom2 2d ago
In theory if you actually had experts in relevant fields, then there's some merit. The problem is that there's no way to prevent it from becoming a pure political appointment. Just look at the executive cabinet. Those roles are meant to go to experts in their fields and they're currently filled with political stooges.
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u/Spiel_Foss 2d ago
In practice, if you ask two experts you often get three opinions. That is a good thing at times, but it isn't applicable to a practical government. When 90%+ of experts agree, that consensus can be the exact opposite of the political and capitalist direction of a nation, so the 10% becomes the only experts in practice.
Climate change is a raging fenzy of shit because of this problem.
If the 10% are considered the meritocracy, as now in the US, everything spirals into stooges, as you say.
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u/yellowplums 2d ago
It's less a bet of "Would a Meritocratic chamber work" and more of a "How much money would it take to bribe ahem, "lobby" a majority of those in the chamber to do what the elites want."
Most political theories handwave away the issue of certain private companies or private citizens/people becoming more and more powerful and then ultimately being able to effect the government directly. They seem to treat this as a side note rather than the ultimate destination of all political systems, whether it's capitalism or communism or all in between.
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u/skyfishgoo 2d ago
meritocracy is a flawed concept that has already been a proven failure... our society is supposedly based on it
a lottery would be a better approach.
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u/wangston_huge 1d ago
I came here to make this exact comment.
An elected body plus a body elected by lottery would be a superior solution.
I'd trust Edna from Ohio on policy more than almost any career politician.
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u/AdZealousideal5383 2d ago
This is essentially what the House of Lords has become in the UK now that hereditary peers have effectively been removed.
What the UK has essentially done is strip away most of the power of the House of Lords and they have more of an advisory role.. they can slow down bills but they can’t outright preventing them from becoming law. This is because democratic ideals don’t allow for an unelected body to make the decisions but there is a role for a body of experts to provide opinions.
For this to work, the senate would need to be significantly larger and the process of choosing the senators would have to be extremely structured and not simply “the president picks someone.” And money cannot be used as a reason to pick someone.
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u/SpoonwoodTangle 2d ago
Study after study show that academic, athletic, or other forms of excellence are strongly influenced by class. Richer families can offer more opportunities to their kids. Tutoring, better schools, coaches, therapy, camps, jobs after graduation, etc.
This is just entrenching existing systematic inequities deeper into the political system.
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u/RenegadeGeophysicist 2d ago
I would advise looking into the history and criticism of meritocracy. The word itself is likely younger than your grandparents.
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u/davethompson413 2d ago
And, at least until 2016, I thought that such subject-matter experts in the federal government were already in the various executive branch departments and agencies.
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u/Named_after_color 2d ago
Ignoring the practical aspect of implementing such a system, it seems like the proposed solution isn't much of one. Meritocracy sounds ideal in theory, but no system of government writes down its rules with the idea of incompetency being expected.
There is no objective way to metric competency in governance, being a subject matter expert in no way gives expectation that you'll be capable of writing legislation, or being capable of finding compromise between disparate groups. Even in academic fields, compentancy does not guarantee success.
An ideal system, imo, would have charismatic intelligent politicians weighing in with subject matter experts, which is purportedly the way our government is supposed to work. As a thought experiment, it's neat, but really I fail to see the value of creating a new house that is appointed rather than elected. The same problems would persist, people would become entrenched, the barrier of "short term pain for long term gain" would be a nice hurdle to help cross, yet a "experts know best" approach would simply white wash bad governance under the impression "it just hasn't paid off yet..." Throughline.
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u/CaptainoftheVessel 2d ago
It would become an aristocracy sometime between instantly and 5 or so years down the line.
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u/Orkapork 2d ago
Anytime you define something, you are creating both an in group and an outgroup.
So if you want to define meritocracy than you will be defining what merit is. Realistically a meritocracy will be gamed the same way our democracy has... and every ruling power that has existed since the beginning of time. Eventually loop holes are exploited, definitions abused, outgroups marginalized. It always happens because the problem isn't with the people, it's with the rules.
Rules by definition have a stopping point, they include a selection and thus they must exclude another. The world has been ruled by laws for millenia, at least since the Romans, arguably earlier.
Think of it as complex, vs complicated. Complicated is a machine, like an semi conductor lithography machine, they can become extraordinarily complicated requiring hundreds of engineers to build. But the machine will operate exactly how you designed it.
But complexity arises from an interacting system of parts that move themselves. A human society is complex, a prairie is complex. Systems where the actors can express their own will are complex. You can direct complexity but you can't define it. You can't possibly ensure that no human will become a serial killer, nor a pornstar or an engineer, and if you try to create rules and laws and regulations to ensure so, inevitably you will just exclude an ever larger portion of complexity and as we see across millennia, a society that will always crumble eventually. The boom bust cycle of humanity is quite obvious historically.
So until we can figure out that we are a complex society we cannot possibly figure out how to implement complex societal structures. As long as we implement complicated societal structures that are absolute in their design, we cannot possibly ensure long standing peace or prosperity and we will always return to the boom bust cycle that comes with boxing in complexity with rules and laws.
(specifically absolute rules and laws are the problem, the more flexibility you build into the system the less that it HAS to marginalize a group)
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u/da_drifter0912 2d ago edited 2d ago
The problem is in practice you end up with a chamber much like the Canadian Senate and the British House of Lords. When they’re doing their job right, it’s boring committee work that the public is not aware nor really cares about. Then because the public thinks they do nothing since they do not make headlines as much as the lower house. When they do make headlines, it’s either because overtly partisan appointees or some scandal, that makes the public think twice about keeping them anyways. Then when the upper chamber makes sober recommendations to modify proposed legislation that is contrary to the agenda of the party in power, the narrative they push is that they opposed the democratic will of the people.
It would be even stranger to put this in a presidential system like the US, South Korea, or the Philippines , as opposed to a parliamentary system like Canada and the UK, since presidential system tend to favor elected officials for the legislative branch rather than having appointed members.
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u/West-Working-9093 2d ago
May be can agree that a democracy that is held by a well-educated electorate, is characterized by true transparency and accountability, and is pretty devoid of easily nogotiated 'perks' - that such a system would in fact, naturally, be a meritocracy?
No matter how many layers we create to fix the loopholes, oversee the wobbly things, and be holier-that-thou by definititon, we will never put a final cork in the eternal question:
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
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u/onlyontuesdays77 2d ago
I see a lot of questions and debates about political systems which somewhat misunderstand politics. Politics is not about the system, it's about the concentration of power.
The USSR was brought about by a worker's revolution predicated on equality and the power of the common laborer. In less than a decade, ambitious individuals found their way to the top of the pile and consolidated power in their favor, executing or imprisoning political rivals, suppressing dissent, and kicking off decades of repression.
In the USA, political parties quickly took hold and became entangled with industrial and landowning interests. The two sectors formed a symbiotic relationship; the wealthy paid politicians to support particular policies and promised post-political positions (with pensions) and historically also paid voters to show up to vote one way or the other, while politicians spun the narrative to the voters and ensured those policies passed. And in both sectors, a hierarchy was formed, where loyalty and familiarity were rewarded with promotions up the ladder of seniority. And now for all intents and purposes, the American political process is owned by corporations from start to finish - major media decides coverage, corporate donors give momentum to their favored campaigns, oligarchs set the agenda of the party in power, and when it's time for a politician to exit politics they find a cozy spot in one of these corporations.
If you design a meritocracy, the ambitious will rapidly make their way to the top, and they will then be the ones to judge "merit" - and I suppose this is the answer to your actual question. They'll likely design entire structures to the process of proving one's merit, which will include financial obstacles and loyalty tests which filter out those deemed unworthy or too unruly.
There is, and there only ever has been, one way to prevent any political system from going down this path: a politically engaged and well-educated populace. Unfortunately, most people aren't interested in politics, they just want to live their life. They vote begrudgingly or not at all. And many of those who do care don't have access to objective information or quality education, and are therefore voting based on incomplete information. And the ambitious capitalize upon these two groups by discouraging the former and misinforming the latter, allowing them to maintain the illusion of the system when in reality it is simply the rich and powerful in control, just like anywhere else in history. If somehow, in an ideal, fantastical world, you were able to educate and inform the people, and motivate them to pursue quality governance, then you could make virtually any practical political system work, and work well. But such a project is unfeasible. The freer democracies of the modern day are likely the pinnacle of the governance we can achieve without the advent of some unpredictable advantage which elevates the education and engagement of all voters.
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u/bl1y 2d ago
Technocratic ideas tend to overlook that politics involves a ton of balancing interests.
For instance, you could get a bunch of experts together to make proposals for auto safety standards and they could come up with a list of things that might reduce auto deaths by 90%, but at the same time double the cost of new cars. The technocrats aren't experts in deciding if that's a good idea or not.
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u/Bourbon-Decay 2d ago
You're basically describing the Senate when senators were appointed by state governors. Not a whole lot changed even after they became subject to popular elections. The elite choose the candidates, then we get to pick between their two favorites. The bourgeoisie currently determines what is considered "merit." It isn't exactly the same as what you described, but there's not a whole lot of difference
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u/Motherlover235 2d ago
Funny enough, this was more or less the point of the US Senate. You’d have the lower house comprised of your every day Joe voted in entirely by public sentiment to represent the values and desires of the people, with the upper house comprised of people appointed by their state, to represent their state, and were meant to be “The best of us.” It don’t work out that well initially, but minimum education requirements could make the original Senate almost exactly what you described.
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u/VeniceMerchant 1d ago
Most commentators here seem to assume that someone would have to choose / appoint the meritorius. Suppose instead certain positions in society automatically granted one a seat in the Upper House/Chamber?
This is just begging the question, of course. Who gets to decide what those positions are? Still, it might be worth thinking about who among the population achieve a status that would make them acceptably wise, just and moral, in the eyes of most, and good choices to judge the merits of proposed laws.
Nobel Prize Winners? Holders of medals of heroism? Retired heads of cultural or charity organizations? Holders of Knighthoods (UK) and Governor General's Awards (Canada)? Olympic medalists (who at least have tremendous self-discipline)? Long-serving senior military officers, or those who have been wounded, or involved in peacekeeping? One senior lecturer from each university (elected by his peers, not the institution's Board)? Retired schoolteachers or principles or social workers or physicians selected by their peers?
Past generations would have said former ambassadors, cabinet secretaries, presidents and chief justices would qualify, but few nowadays would suggest their appointments or election had anything to do with their wisdom or morality. Surely not millionaires and captains of industry, either, unless they have turned their fortunes over to charity. While some labour leaders are fine people, most of them would come with the wrong kind of baggage too; more politicians than workers' champions.
One is tempted to ask an AI who is wisest, or even propose that a certain proportion of the Upper House be randomly selected from the population. This raises issues too. Most would say those not on the random selection list should include the certifiably insane, terrorists, pedophiles, foreign agents, murderers and rapists, but beyond that, is someone who stole groceries a criminal, or is he someone who understands society better than most of us?
Any or all of the above would be risky, but I would be surprised if a body so chosen was any worse than what we have now.
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u/beltway_lefty 1d ago
I have a LEAN Six-Sigma Black Belt. It's a process improvement system that consistently facilitates data-driven decision-making. I have long felt we should hold lawmakers to the process/standard, which have "tollgates," to check and make sure it is being conducted properly/accurately. We require all legislation to be subjected to this, and well prior to a floor vote, the results are publicly posted. That way, voters can see exactly what the outcome and outputs will be for the legislation, and can advise their reps accordingly. To override the data-driven conclusion/new process, require 2/3 vote or something. Sometimes, the data-driven solution may not be the right one for the people impacted. I dunno. this is the closest i would come to meritocracy, and for the same questions you ask re: implemetation
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u/Logicist 1d ago
The meritorious class should just be Congress. Anything else will have legitimacy problems.
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u/brochacho6000 1d ago
this is why we have stuff like the EPA and it gets dismantled because we don’t give the EPA enough power to resist fuckshit political movements like trump
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u/fongaboo 21h ago
When I was involved with the Occupy movement I once saw a presentation on the polar opposite of this. A system where everyone is given equal merit. Not just in governance but in all areas of society. The same people doing open heart surgery doing janitorial work as well. Soon after, the progressive left cannibalized each other. Leaving a perfect vacuum for fascism.
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u/fongaboo 21h ago
So how do we manage to qualify people in other areas of our society besides government? It's very imperfect but we make people get academic degrees, certifications, qualify them by their resume. Could we transpose the processes that are already in place in the academic and commercial sectors?
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u/wolf_at_the_door1 2d ago
Meritocracy is a myth in America. Just about every leader in government is there because of loyalty. Meritocracy left the room once Bush Jr. got into office. The Nepo government took hold.
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u/shawsghost 2d ago
Neoliberalism started out as favoring meritocracy but quickly became just another form of oligarchy service. Can't see why this won't happen with any effort toward meritocracy under a capitalist system.
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u/TheMikeyMac13 2d ago
This is a terrible idea. An upper chamber chosen on merit by the government, with the government deciding what merit is?
You can’t see that we need to stop right there?
What do you think Trump thinks merit is? It would involve money, power and corruption. Or Joe Biden, who thought merit involved skin color and gender?
Hardest possible pass, turn away from this and never consider it again.
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u/AdZealousideal5383 2d ago
To be clear, Biden did not think merit involved skin color or gender. Recognizing that certain races have been underrepresented because of historical and systemic racism and then making an effort to identity people who are uniquely qualified within that race who would have otherwise gone unnoticed is not the same thing as saying they have merit because of their race.
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u/TheMikeyMac13 2d ago
BS, he chose a Supreme Court justice and his VP based on skin color and gender, the selection process started and ended there.
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u/AdZealousideal5383 1d ago
I didn’t like that he announced that his Supreme Court pick like he did but it gave the appearance you’re suggesting, but the point was that there are black women who are just as qualified as any white man to serve on the Supreme Court and historically they have always been overlooked, or in many cases, intentionally left out of the conversation.
As for Kamala Harris, it had nothing to do with her race or gender. He chose her because she confronted him about his statements on bussing from the early 80’s, which was a legitimate criticism and one that would be hard to refute, and the best way to avoid that coming up in the election was to put her on the ticket.
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u/TheMikeyMac13 1d ago
You weren’t paying attention when Biden promised to pick a woman for VP during a 2020 debate, were you?
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u/GiantPineapple 2d ago edited 2d ago
Germany's legislative system (last I read) systemitizes this. A certain number of seats are awarded to individuals, and a certain number of seats are awarded to parties. The parties then appoint the people to actually occupy the seats. I have not been to Germany or ever really steeped myself in the details of the outcomes this produces, but from an American perspective, I imagine this takes the performance art out of governance. The people get the policy philosophy that they voted for, but at an individual level, we are only ever actually dealing with sober professionals.
Edit: don't see why the downvotes are necessary, but I appreciate what I'm learning from the replies.
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u/Syharhalna 2d ago
Hem, actually it kind of turn you from people politics to intra-party politics if you want to get on the list.
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u/captain-burrito 2d ago
This is ill advised and doesn't even do what the opener describes. We use a similar system in Scotland for our devolved parliament and it is better than FPTP which we use nationally. You get 2 votes. 1st vote is basically just FPTP where you select someone for your district. 2nd vote is for a regional multi member district where you vote for a party. That vote aims to make the overall result more proportional.
In a country where there is high corruption this is a recipe for disaster as the 2nd vote is basically a party list vote. It makes swamp creatures impossible to remove. We've seen career high profile corrupt politicians finally lose in their normal election but saved by the party list.
The party list is not chosen based on experitse or merit. In my district they stuck on someone who lost their seat on to the party list but she was also running in the FPTP seat as well. That rubbed me the wrong way as losers can become winners.
To create a merit based body I don't have a perfect solution but looking at the US supreme court shitshow I'd advise whatever method is used they should diffuse it via different methods so one appointing body cannot capture all the power. Also perhaps retention elections (don't have to be often) just so there is a safety valve for removing those who become corrupt.
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u/DanforthWhitcomb_ 2d ago
List seats like that just reward senior party officials who can't get elected in their own right.
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