The Dilemma of Meritocratic Governance in American Cities | The Urban Lens Newsletter

The idea of meritocracy, in which individuals are selected, rewarded and succeed based on their abilities, skills, and achievements, is deeply embedded in the American ethos.

As far back as the Enlightenment era in the 17th and 18th centuries, influential thinkers like John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau emphasized reason, individual rights, and equality, proclaiming that individuals should be judged based on their abilities and merit rather than birthright or inherited privileges. 

These ideas were reinforced in American culture by the establishment of public education and land-grant universities in the late 19th century.  Both were intended to enable individuals to acquire the skills and knowledge needed to succeed based on their own merit and ability.  The expansion of access to higher education through policies such as the G.I. Bill after WWII confirmed and extended these ideas more broadly. 

The idea of merit was further reinforced and extended to government by civil service reforms such as the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act of 1883, and the early 20th century progressive era efforts to improve public administration, reduce urban corruption, and ensure that government positions were filled based on qualifications rather than patronage or political connections.  Merit has since become deeply embedded in the hiring, promotion and reward of public administrators, civil servants and all-except-elected policy makers throughout all levels of government. 

The longstanding emphasis on merit has had a significant and lasting impact on American governance.  It has shaped educational systems, government practices, economic mobility, and societal values. Merit has contributed to the development of a far more dynamic and educated society, influencing policies and reforms that aim to provide equal opportunities for individuals. 

But the idea of merit is now under attack.^[1]  The attack comes partially from right-wing populists who argue that the idea is at the core of the thinking of highly educated, elite policy makers and influencers who continue to make a mess out of running the country.  The attack also comes partially from a wide range of advocates for a more equitable and inclusive democratic society, who seek to remedy the nation’s many manifest social disparities related to race, gender, and socio-economic background.

With respect to the advocates for a more equitable and inclusive democratic society, amongst whom I count myself, I can see no room for doubt that discrimination is integral to any meritocratic system.  That is, any merit-based system discriminates on the basis of how much “merit” a person has – usually under the assumption of the pre-condition that everyone has equal opportunity to acquire it.  Merit based systems favor those who are perceived to have more of it.  Of course, this raises a host of questions about how perceptions of merit are shaped and influenced, and whose perceptions count.

If everyone were to have equal access to acquiring whatever quality is defined as merit, this would constitute the imaginary “level playing field.”  And if people were to be assessed only on criteria that predict performance within the context of the particular and well-defined set of circumstances within which these criteria pertain in terms of the performance of relevant tasks for any given position, meritocracy would be akin to an ideal system.  But can anyone ever really say that either of these conditions is ever truly met, particularly in highly politicized city management or urban policy decision-making processes? 

Every sizable city or urban area of which I am aware has neighborhood pockets of concentrated privilege and advantage, while other neighborhoods face challenges such as limited access to quality education, job opportunities, and essential services. These manifest disparities create situations in which more than a few people face few if any opportunities that even remotely resemble the so-called level playing field assumed by merit systems.  And for those who are excluded, the strict use of merit in local government hiring, promotion, and reward systems can become a sort of an ideational tyranny.

Nevertheless, regardless of meritocracy’s manifest shortcomings, in certain situations merit systems are arguably still preferable to any of the realistic and feasible alternatives.  Take, for example, the routine duties and responsibilities of mid-to-upper level urban public administrators and managers.  According to the International City/County Managers Association (ICMA), these include:^[2]

(1)  working with elected officials (mayors and city, town, and county councils) to develop sound approaches to community challenges by bringing together resources that produce results that matter;

(2)  helping the governing body develop a long-term vision for the community that provides a framework for policy development and goal-setting;

(3)  preparing a comprehensive annual budget and capital improvement program and managing local government staff, budgets, programs, and projects;

(4)  overseeing the delivery of local government services, which may include public works; police, fire, and public safety; planning and economic development; parks and recreation; libraries; youth services; resource recovery and recycling; sanitation; and utilities.

Accordingly, if such duties and responsibilities are to be fulfilled in a predictably competent, efficient, and effective manner that avoids undue waste of scarce public revenues, merit would seem to be an entirely appropriate and even strongly preferable basis from which to select, promote and reward the responsible individuals.

In response to the populists who, having recognized and identified the many failures of highly meritorious policymakers go on to disavow the value of meritocracy, there is not much doubt that the state of the art of collective decision-making for solving and/or ameliorating major social problems in towns and cities throughout the country is dismal.  The decisions and actions of more than a few highly meritorious elites have contributed to little more than making a mess out of public policy, administration, and governance. 

But selecting the next cohort of responsible individuals based on patronage, political connections, loyalties, payback for political contributions, group-representation, or any other criteria than merit is clearly not a solution to this problem. 

The primary reason the state of collective decision-making is so dreadful is increasingly systemic.  In a nutshell, so many of the socio-technical and organizational systems in today’s world have become so highly complex and large scale as to become practically unfathomable.  Numerous otherwise highly meritorious elites are simply not equipped by education or experience to make effective policy or governance decisions conditions in large-scale complex socio-technical systems that not only go way beyond their understanding, but change at breakneck speed. 

 If anything, the better solutions to the populists are more likely to be found in expansion of and heightened reliance upon the competencies used to define merit, not their disavowal.  Preparation for public office should accordingly include knowledge, skills and abilities that enable individuals in highly complex systems to anticipate unintended consequences, optimize resource allocation, double-loop learn, and otherwise decide and act in ways that effectively improve conditions. 

Thus, in response to the populists, rather than abandoning meritocracy, there is a far more effective way to avoid selecting and rewarding future elite policy makers who continue to mess things up.  That is, enhance the merit system specifically by including competence in methods for understanding, resolving and coping with complexity.

All of which gets back to the dilemma of meritocratic governance in American cities.

Both democracy and meritocracy share the fundamental goal of promoting effective and just governance.  But almost as if they were two sides of the same coin, they emphasize different and somewhat opposing principles and values, both sides of which contains some validity.  And therein lies the great difficulty. 

On one hand, the tenets of American democracy rightfully emphasize the supreme worth and moral responsibility of the individual person, in which all citizens have an equal say or vote in the collective or public decision-making process through which citizens’ lives are affected.  And it stands to reason that this tenet will be best realized if public policy makers constitute a more representative sample of the citizens they represent, especially including those groups who have historically been excluded. 

On the other hand, only a deep understanding of highly-complex large-scale socio-technical systems can possibly provide the best possible foundation for evidence-based, strategic, and sustainable public policymaking.  This recommends merit-based systems that select policy makers using demonstrated abilities, skills, and achievements, not factors such as social status, group-representation, wealth, or personal connections. 

While the problem of finding the best, workable balance between these two opposing tenets is of great difficulty, the principal danger is in dogmatic, exclusive and uncompromising adherence to one or the other in its extreme.  Meritocracy, if taken to its extreme, it would lead to a lack of consideration for factors like privilege or systemic barriers that can affect other's ability to succeed.  Meritocracy could thus end up reinforcing existing inequalities. 

On the flip side, over-emphasis on ensuring that public policy makers are representative in terms of the characteristics of the groups they represent would likely result in governance decisions based solely on popular opinion, without enough regard for the knowledge, competence and expertise required to make sound and well-informed decisions in highly complex and large-scale systems.  

While I do not have a glib solution to this dilemma, it is clear that the historical American emphasis on meritocracy has contributed to positive developments in education, workforce, and governance.  And challenges remain, including issues of systemic biases, unequal access to opportunities, and the need for ongoing efforts to promote a more inclusive and equitable meritocracy in the 21st century.

Bill Bowen

^[1] Some of the arguments at the core of this attack can be found for example in Daniel Markovits’s The Meritocracy Trap (Penguin Press 2019) or Michael Sandel’s The Tyranny of Merit (Macmillan 2020).

^[2] https://icma.org/what-professional-city-town-and-county-managers-do

Source: Substack