Leigh Jenco Daniel Bell, The China model: political meritocracy and the limits of democracy



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Leigh Jenco



 

Daniel Bell, The China model: political 

meritocracy and the limits of democracy 

 

Article (Accepted version) 

(Refereed) 

 

 

 

Original citation: 

Jenco,  Leigh  K.  (2016)  Daniel  Bell,  The  China  model:  political  meritocracy  and  the  limits  of 

democracy

Perspectives on Politics

 . ISSN 1541-0986 

 

© 2016 American Political Science Association 



 

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Daniel Bell, The China Model: Political Meritocracy and the Limits of Democracy. 

Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015. 

 

 

Daniel Bell’s newest book continues the line of research he began more than twenty years 



ago, when he called for greater attention to the normative implications of Chinese approaches 

to politics. Unlike his earlier work, however, Bell does not here promote particular readings 

of the Chinese tradition in order to defend more communitarian approaches to public life.  

Although such readings remain clear undercurrents in The China Model, Bell focuses more 

on the contemporary practices of the Chinese party leadership to defend their model of 

meritocracy as a credible (albeit qualified) alternative to democracy, particularly for Chinese 

heritage societies but also possibly for the rest of the world. Bell’s larger goal is to undermine 

unquestioned faith in democracy as the only normatively defensible political model. In many 

ways Bell’s approach is refreshing because it is too little seen among Anglophone political 

theorists: he takes a non-Western, non-democratic political model seriously enough to draw 

out its normative and institutional implications within broader debates about good 

governance. For the most part he successfully avoids reductive essentialisms about East 

Asian culture by considering how the “China model” of centralized meritocracy, once 

suitably integrated with local democratic mechanisms, might produce a legitimate alternative 

to electoral democracy.  

 

Unfortunately, his argument is unlikely to convince anyone already committed to democracy, 



for at least two reasons. First, the evidence for the problems with “democracy” that Bell 

offers seem more precisely attributable to specific aspects of the contemporary American 

two-party political system than to democratic government itself. Bell defines democracy 

somewhat simplistically throughout his book as “one person, one vote,” (14 et passim) and 

draws examples almost exclusively from the United States (20). Despite this focus, his 

sweeping critique of democracy conflates differences both between federal, state, and 

township election systems in the United States, even as his meritocratic proposal insists on 

differentiating federal from local practices in the Chinese case (171). He also gives no 

account of alternative institutions, despite the fact that he draws on attempts to reform the 

British House of Lords (one example of how popular power is distributed and checked 

differently in different democratic systems) as evidence of the sacred power held by “one 

person one vote” (161).  Finally, he offers no sustained discussion of why the well-known 

problems of American-style electoral democracy—such as tyranny of the majority—are 

better solved with meritocracy specifically, rather than more or different kinds of democracy, 

including deliberative practices at the local and national levels or proportional representation 

to replace American two-party electoral democracy.  

 

Second, and more importantly, many of these criticisms of democracy—and by extension, 



Bell’s defense of meritocracy—turn on a problematic conception of knowledge as a body of 

always-expanding but nevertheless fairly objective information. Meritocracy is thus defined 

as a system that can somehow effectively determine, and ensconce with power, those few 

rational individuals who properly grasp that knowledge. If we accept this conception of 

knowledge, Bell’s claim that “voters should do their best to select wise leaders” would 

indeed be as uncontroversial as he assumes (19), as would the meritocratic conclusions 

stemming from the observation that “not everyone is equally able and willing to vote in a 

sensible manner” (156)—for which Bell cites John Stuart Mill’s Considerations on 



Representative Government.  Bell interprets resistance to such conclusions as political, not 


philosophical: that is, they make rational sense but they are politically infeasible because no 

one these days would willingly accept disenfranchisement (156, 159).   

 

This unironic use of Mill, paired with Bell’s continued insistence that popular participation is 



necessary only as a practical measure to secure “democratic legitimacy” to a regime 

otherwise ruled by meritocrats (151), elides not only the justification of colonialism implied 

in Mill’s remarks about “distinctions and gradations” in knowledge (156), but also the 

alternative views that emerged in critical response to just such a colonial, androcentric 

discourse of knowledge that registered difference as inferiority or deficiency. To his credit

Bell acknowledges (again citing Mill) “new sources of merit” and “differentiated standards of 

merit” (134-5) that may emerge in response to new circumstances, but these are not 

integrated with his recognition of the need to include persons of different genders and socio-

economic background into meritocratic processes. For Bell, this inclusion simply addresses 

the possibility that “politicians are more likely to fight for the interests of people from their 

own background when faced with competing considerations” (129). However, for most 

feminists and multiculturalists, these inclusions are necessary precisely because knowledge 

itself—particularly political knowledge—is not a body of objective information that can be 

assessed by and for experts, but rather a contested field of claims to truth that implicitly 

privilege certain groups over others. One reason to support (a version of) democracy, then, 

may be to resist the elevation of any one criteria of knowledge—as well as, of course, the 

group of people that body of knowledge implicitly privileges—to a status beyond meaningful 

political critique.  That is, contrary to Bell’s assumptions, democracy may not be a failed 

system for choosing “superior” political leaders (9), but rather a system that encourages 

interrogation of the very idea of superiority in politics. 

 

Without addressing this more subtle relationship between power and knowledge, Bell’s 



argument will not convince many contemporary scholars of politics. Nor would it necessarily 

be compelling to the historical Chinese thinkers that Bell occasionally cites in support of his 

claims: thinkers such as Zhu Xi and Su Shi did subscribe to a unitary view of moral and 

political knowledge, but they were emphatic that access to such knowledge remained 

irreducibly personal and differentiated. To them, one’s conversance with it could never be 

adequately assessed by any kind of objective selection or examination system.  Although 

Bell’s book does devote much-needed attention to an otherwise overlooked alternative to 

democracy, his broader thesis is overshadowed by these evidential shortcomings. 

 

 

Leigh Jenco 



London School of Economics and Political Science 

 

 



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