Description
Offering a stimulating tour of the history of meritocracy, Wooldridge shows how the principle of putting talent before hereditary privilege has shaped the modern world, how corruption and nepotism have disrupted its recent progress and what can be done to revive its advance.
Longlisted for the Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award 2021
Meritocracy: the idea that people should be advanced according to their talents rather than their status at birth. For much of history this was a revolutionary thought, but by the end of the twentieth century it had become the world's ruling ideology. How did this happen, and why is meritocracy now under attack from both right and left?
Adrian Wooldridge traces the history of meritocracy forged by the politicians and officials who introduced the revolutionary principle of open competition, the psychologists who devised methods for measuring natural mental abilities and the educationalists who built ladders of educational opportunity. He looks outside western cultures and shows what transformative effects it has had everywhere it has been adopted, especially once women were brought into the meritocractic system.
Wooldridge also shows how meritocracy has now become corrupted and argues that the recent stalling of social mobility is the result of failure to complete the meritocratic revolution. Rather than abandoning meritocracy, he says, we should call for its renewal.
Number of pages: 496
Dimensions: 240 x 162 x 34 mm
