Editing Meritocracy (section)

===19th century===
In 1813, [[Founding Fathers of the United States|U.S. Founding Father]] and President [[Thomas Jefferson]] declared that there exists a "[[natural aristocracy]] of men"  whose right to rule comes from their talent and virtue (merit), rather than their wealth or inherited status. He believed a successful republic must establish educational institutions that identify these natural aristocrats and train them to rule.<ref>{{cite magazine |title=Jefferson, Adams, and the SAT's New Adversity Factor |url=https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/jefferson-adams-and-the-sats-new-adversity-factor |magazine=The New Yorker |date=23 May 2019 |access-date=13 April 2023 |archive-date=15 April 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230415015217/https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/jefferson-adams-and-the-sats-new-adversity-factor |url-status=live }}</ref>

The federal bureaucracy in the United States used the [[spoils system]] from 1828 until the assassination of United States President [[James A. Garfield]] by a disappointed office seeker in 1881 proved its dangers. Two years later in 1883, the system of appointments to the United States Federal Bureaucracy was revamped by the [[Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act]], partially based on the British meritocratic civil service that had been established years earlier. The act stipulated that government jobs should be awarded on the basis of merit, through competitive exams, rather than ties to politicians or political affiliation. It also made it illegal to fire or demote government employees for political reasons.<ref name=penl>{{cite web |url=http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtID=2&psid=3115 |title=Civil Service Reform |work=Digital History |publisher=[[University of Houston]] |access-date=2016-02-19 |archive-date=12 March 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160312083614/http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtID=2&psid=3115 |url-status=live }}</ref>

To enforce the merit system and the judicial system, the law also created the [[United States Civil Service Commission]].<ref name="penl" /> In the modern American meritocracy, the president may hand out only a certain number of jobs, which must be approved by the [[United States Senate]].

Australia began establishing public universities in the 1850s with the goal of promoting meritocracy by providing advanced training and credentials. The educational system was set up to service urban males of middle-class background, but of diverse social and religious origins. It was increasingly extended to all graduates of the public school system, those of rural and regional background, and then to women and finally to ethnic minorities.<ref>Julia Horne, and Geoffrey Sherington, "Extending the educational franchise: the social contract of Australia's public universities, 1850-1890",  ''Paedagogica Historica'' (2010) 46#1 pp 207-227</ref> Both the middle classes and the working classes have promoted the ideal of meritocracy within a strong commitment to "mate-ship" and political equality.<ref>{{cite book|author=Miriam Henry|title=Understanding Schooling: An Introductory Sociology of Australian Education|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=-_FSMpdmK3oC&pg=PA81|year=1988|publisher=Psychology Press|page=81|isbn=9780203135990}}</ref>

The British philosopher and polymath [[John Stuart Mill]] advocated meritocracy in his book ''[[Considerations on Representative Government]]''. [[Plural voting|His model]] was to give more votes to the more [[educated]] voter. His views are explained in [[David Estlund|Estlund]] (2003:57–58):

<blockquote><poem>Mill's proposal of plural voting has two motives. One is to prevent one group or class of people from being able to control the political process even without having to give reasons in order to gain sufficient support. He calls this the problem of class legislation. Since the most numerous class is also at a lower level of education and social rank, this could be partly remedied by giving those at the higher ranks plural votes. A second, and equally prominent motive for plural voting is to avoid giving equal influence to each person without regard to their merit, intelligence, etc. He thinks that it is fundamentally important that political institutions embody, in their spirit, the recognition that some opinions are worth more than others. He does not say that this is a route to producing better political decisions, but it is hard to understand his argument, based on this second motive, in any other way.

So, if Aristotle is right that the deliberation is best if participants are numerous (and assuming for simplicity that the voters are the deliberators) then this is a reason for giving all or many citizens a vote, but this does not yet show that the wiser subset should not have, say, two or three; in that way something would be given both to the value of the diverse perspectives, and to the value of the greater wisdom of the few. This combination of the Platonic and Aristotelian points is part of what I think is so formidable about Mill's proposal of plural voting. It is also an advantage of his view that he proposes to privilege not the wise, but the educated. Even if we agreed that the wise should rule, there is a serious problem about how to identify them. This becomes especially important if a successful political justification must be generally acceptable to the ruled. In that case, privileging the wise would require not only their being so wise as to be better rulers, but also, and more demandingly, that their wisdom be something that can be agreed to by all reasonable citizens. I turn to this conception of justification below.

Mill's position has great plausibility: good education promotes the ability of citizens to rule more wisely. So, how can we deny that the educated subset would rule more wisely than others? But then why shouldn't they have more votes?</poem></blockquote>

Estlund goes on to criticize Mill's education-based meritocracy on various grounds.