In recent years, democracy has faced growing challenges. Many political theorists have criticized the average voter’s lack of necessary competence for making informed decisions, which they argue has resulted in several disappointing democratic outcomes, such as the decision to leave the EU and the election of Donald Trump. Moreover, democratic politics have increasingly trended towards ‘personalization’ with political leaders gaining more influence in electoral outcomes and becoming more independent from their political parties. This situation raises three pressing questions for democracy: (1) What makes democracy appealing as a political system? (2) What should be the role of political leaders in a democracy? (3) What should be the role of political parties in a democracy?
Elena Ziliotti’s book, Meritocracy Democracy: A Cross-Cultural Theory, provides a timely response to these pressing questions about democracy. Ziliotti presents an innovative theory of meritocratic democracy, arguing that it is superior to other political alternatives like Confucian meritocracy, as defended by theorists such as Daniel Bell (Reference Bell2015) and Tongdong Bai (Reference Bai2020), and epistocracy, advocated by philosophers like Jason Brennan (Reference Brennan2016). She asserts that ‘the best way for a government to provide for the well-being of its citizens is to allow them to participate in the decision-making process’ (p. 9). However, Ziliotti also emphasizes the importance of elite leaders in a democracy and discusses the essential role political parties can play in selecting virtuous leaders. According to Ziliotti, meritocratic democracy comprises three main components, each addressing one of the pressing questions posed earlier:
(a) Democratic rule is epistemically superior to meritocratic forms of government
(b) Contemporary democracies need public-spirited leaders
(c) A meritocratic selection of the candidates running for the party leadership can bring about more public-spirited leadership (p. 8)
For (a), Ziliotti challenges the notion that average voters are ignorant and that political decisions should be left to knowledgeable elites. Instead, she argues that democracy is an optimal decision-making process compared to non-democratic models like Confucian meritocracy, because it can identify and address issues affecting the well-being of the majority. Democracy allows adult citizens from diverse social backgrounds to have equal access to reliable information and influence the decision-making process. This allows citizens to pool their knowledge and work together to address issues that affect the public interest. As Ziliotti notes, ‘[w]hile democracy shifts the burden of a decision-making system to allow different agents to interact at different stages of decision-making, political meritocracy places too much responsibility on the political leaders’ shoulders’ (pp. 61–62). In other words, the decision-making process in democracy benefits from great cognitive diversity in addressing complex social and political issues that impact people’s well-being. For Ziliotti, this epistemic benefit provides a compelling reason to favor democracy over other non-democratic alternatives.
However, to achieve this epistemic benefit, democracy also requires virtuous leaders to inspire and organize the populace. This leads to proposition (b) in Ziliotti’s theory. Ziliotti contends that political leaders should fulfill three important epistemic functions in a democracy. First, political leaders serve a crucial motivational role: they can cultivate citizens’ interest in politics and encourage them to participate in various political activities. This is especially significant in large societies where voters often show apathy towards politics and political engagement. The second role of political leaders is the imaginative role. Leaders should use their creativity to formulate opinions and political visions during public discussions. Third, political leaders should act as intermediaries for the influence of expert testimony on policy formulation. They should be at the helm of various political institutions, enabling them to determine which experts and advisors to consult and how to incorporate their testimony into policy development.
Ziliotti further argues that political leaders should possess several virtues to effectively perform their epistemic functions. The most crucial virtue is public-spiritedness. Leaders must wield their power for the benefit of society’s members, not for personal gain. Additionally, Ziliotti highlights other important virtues that political leaders should embody. For instance, leaders should be humble, meaning they should be willing to listen to others during disagreements and step down from office once their mandate ends. Moreover, leaders should refuse to be factional. While they may belong to a political party, they should advocate for projects that benefit the entire society, rather than prioritizing the interests of a specific group (p. 121). In other words, leaders can be partisan, but they should not be factional. Finally, political leaders must be honest. They should communicate difficult truths that are pertinent to the community’s well-being and make promises they believe they can fulfil. A dishonest political leader can harm a political community in reaching the right political decisions.
Interestingly, Ziliotti believes that the virtues necessary for political leaders align with the traditional virtues long promoted in Confucianism. As Sungmoon Kim points out, Confucianism is unique in its advocacy of ‘virtue politics’ (2019). It posits that good governance is achievable only if those in leadership positions are virtuous (2019). Ziliotti suggests that the Confucian concept of virtuous leaders can guide us in identifying suitable leaders for modern democratic contexts. For instance, the Confucian virtue of qian (modesty, 謙) encourages individuals to uplift others by being humble, instead of bragging about their own accomplishments. This is akin to the virtue of humility expected in democratic leadership. Likewise, the Confucian virtue of xin (trustworthiness, 信) corresponds to the virtue of honesty, urging political leaders to act in a trustworthy manner and speak truthfully to the populace. In summary, the Confucian ideal of virtue politics offers a standard for political leaders to strive for and a criterion for people to evaluate their leaders.
Finally, even if we understand the qualities of good leaders, how can we go about selecting them? This brings us to proposition (c), where Ziliotti emphasizes the crucial role of political parties. In a democratic society, political parties are the primary entities responsible for recruiting and pre-selecting future political leaders. By applying ethical screenings during the intra-party recruitment process, the quality of political leaders in a democracy can be improved. This is what ‘meritocratic democracy’ means: while the political system should be democratic, it functions best when political parties effectively choose virtuous elites to become political leaders.
The next question is: How should leaders be chosen? Ziliotti proposes the use of intra-party partisan juries. To avoid gender and racial biases and ensure a variety of voices are heard, Ziliotti recommends that a political party should form a jury composed of ‘a randomly selected sample with oversampling for minorities’ (p. 137). The jurors would be responsible for evaluating the moral qualities of the candidates before they participate in intra-party democratic selection processes. The jury’s tasks would include:
• Interviewing the candidates to understand their motivations for pursuing leadership roles within the party and their future political intentions.
• Interviewing character witnesses, such as individuals who have worked or lived closely with the candidates.
• Collecting evidence from experts, including behavioral and cognitive psychologists, personality psychologists, and political behavior specialists. These experts would evaluate the candidates and provide their assessments to the jurors (p. 136).
The purpose of these juries is ‘ethical screening’ (p. 138), which aims to select candidates who are public-spirited and intend to use their political power for the benefit of society rather than personal gain. The juries will also choose individuals who exhibit virtues such as political humility, a refusal to be factional, and honesty. In summary, this meritocratic intra-party mechanism enhances the moral quality of political leaders and strengthens the democratic system to facilitate better decision-making.
Ziliotti presents an innovative model that integrates a democratic system with a meritocratic approach to selecting virtuous leaders. Her work makes a significant contribution to both Confucian political theory and Western democratic theory. For the former, Ziliotti provides a compelling response to Confucian meritocracy, arguing why Confucians should support democracy. For the latter, Ziliotti engages in the debate between epistemic democrats and epistocrats, illustrating how virtuous leaders can enhance the epistemic quality of democracy.
Due to space limitations, I shall only make two comments. First, is it possible to select virtuous leaders if the general populace is not also virtuous? It seems that for Ziliotti’s model to function effectively, the people must possess various virtues, such as a refusal to be factional. Imagine if most party supporters were highly factional. Even if a party selected its leaders through an intra-party jury, the jury’s considerations would likely be driven by sectarian interests. Consequently, the ethical screening within the party could become superficial, serving merely as a tool for party supporters to choose someone likely to win the election and protect sectarian interests, rather than someone who is genuinely virtuous. Therefore, for Ziliotti’s meritocratic democracy to work well, it cannot rely solely on a few virtuous elites as leaders; it also requires the majority of the populace to be virtuous. This might align her model with other democratic models, such as deliberative democracy, which also places significant demands on citizens’ civic virtues.
Second, while Ziliotti convincingly argues why Confucian leaders would benefit democracy, she does not sufficiently address how these leaders could be cultivated. In fact, beyond emphasizing the importance of virtuous leaders, Confucianism also offers rich cultural resources on cultivating virtues like humility and honesty. These theories of self-cultivation, known as gong-fu, have been extensively discussed by Neo-Confucians such as Zhu Xi (1130–1200) and Wang Yangming (1472-1529). For example, Zhu Xi proposed that the practice of ‘deep reading’ can help individuals develop the virtue of modesty (Wong, Reference Wong2025), which is closely related to the virtue of humility emphasized by Ziliotti. When reading, individuals should keep an open mind without preconceived notions about the text’s content. Also, readers should be prepared to learn from the authors rather than aiming to refute them or use their words to justify their own beliefs. This approach to reading serves as a spiritual exercise that nurtures modesty towards others. By consistently acknowledging the partiality of their views and the importance of open-mindedness towards others (i.e., authors) while reading, individuals will gradually overcome their pride and gain greater respect for differing opinions during discussions. In summary, this possible integration of Ziliotti’s theory with the Confucian tradition of self-cultivation suggests a promising direction for the further development of Confucian democratic theory.
