President's Speaker Series at Yale-NUS: Daniel Bell and Philip Pettit Debating "How Much Democracy? How Much Meritocracy?" | Peatixtag:peatix.com,2011:12019-10-31T06:00:16+08:00PeatixYale-NUS CollegePresident's Speaker Series at Yale-NUS: Daniel Bell and Philip Pettit Debating "How Much Democracy? How Much Meritocracy?"tag:peatix.com,2015:event-1270292015-11-20T18:30:00SGT2015-11-20T18:30:00SGT
Daniel Bell, Chair
Professor of the Schwarzman Scholars program at Tsinghua University in Beijing
and Director of the Berggruen Philosophy and Culture Center, will debate Philip
Pettit, L.S. Rockefeller University Professor of Politics and Human Values
at Princeton and Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the ANU, on the topic
"How Much Democracy? How Much Meritocracy?"
Statement from Professor Bell:
“Westerners tend to divide the political world into
"good" democracies and "bad" authoritarian regimes. But the
Chinese political model does not fit neatly in either category. Over the past
three decades, China has developed a genuinely new approach to governance,
rooted in its long history and at odds with the "Western" idea that
electoral democracy is the only legitimate form of government. This
political model can best be described as "political meritocracy"
although there remains a large gap between the theory and the practice and a
large democratic deficit. How do the ideals of
political meritocracy set the standard for evaluating political
progress (and regress) in China? How can China avoid the disadvantages of
political meritocracy? How can political meritocracy best be
combined with democracy? And what can the West learn from the Chinese
approach to governance? Drawing on this new book The China
Model: Political Meritocracy and the Limits of Democracy (Princeton,
2015), Daniel A. Bell (Tsinghua University, Beijing) will
discuss one of the most important political developments of the twenty-first
century.”
Statement from Professor Pettit:
“The ideal of democracy is to give the people an
equally shared form of directive influence over government. But how
commanding is that ideal? What are the best institutions for realizing it? And
how far should they allow for electoral and meritocratic modes of appointment
to government? The answers defended are that the ideal is needed to make
the legitimacy of a regime robust; that the best institutions for realizing it
require a variety of channels for mediating the influence of people over
government and for making government susceptible to that influence; and that
while electoral and meritocratic measures may take many forms, and vary in
their appeal, it is important to have some version of each mode of
appointment.”