Political meritocracy versus ethical democracy: The Confucian political ideal revisited

Abstract

Counter to ‘political meritocracy’, the goal of this article is to present a different approach to incorporating the Confucian political ideal into an ethical modification of liberal democracy, namely ‘ethical democracy’, encouraged by Mou Zongsan. In Mou’s words, ethical democracy arises from a synthesis of ‘the way of politics’ related to liberal democracy and ‘the way of governance’ underlining ‘humane government’. Rather than restricting his focus to a process of selecting the virtuous leaders, Mou’s project, as I hope to show, has the deeper purpose of resting the basis of liberal democracy on a set of political virtues rooted in ‘humane government’. Having given a detailed analysis of Confucian political virtues in terms of the purpose of government and the limits on the abuse of power, I intend to conclude this article by indicating Mou’s pioneering contributions to the recent development of Confucian democratic theory in opposition to Confucian meritocratic discourse.