How Meritocracy Made the Modern World

The Aristocracy of Talent

THE TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR 
*Shortlisted for the 2021 Financial Times and McKinsey &amp; Company Business Book of the Year Award* 
 
'This unique and fascinating history explains why the blame now being piled upon meritocracy for many social ills is misplaced-and that assigning responsibilities to the people best able to discharge them really is better than the time-honoured customs of corruption, patronage, nepotism and hereditary castes' Steven Pinker 
 
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.

superb ... Wooldridge, the political editor of The Economist, quite brilliantly evokes the values and manners of the pluto-meritocrats at the top of society ... They would do well to read Wooldridge's erudite, thoughtful and magnificently entertaining book. They will find many uncomfortable truths in it.

Adrian Wooldridge's extraordinary and irresistible history of meritocracy, The Aristocracy of Talent, describes the repeated efforts over the centuries to persuade peoples all over the world to accept the principle and compel society to organize itself on lines where merit alone, not bloodlines or bank balances, decides who rules and gets top dollar. ... Throughout, Wooldridge never loses faith in the principle of meritocracy as the key driver of modernity ... The Aristocracy of Talent is a serious treat from first to last. Not the least of its pleasures are the possibilities of disagreement that it provokes.

This is a blistering and provocative defence of meritocracy - the single word almost all democratic politicians swear by, but never debate. Wooldridge, the Economist's political editor, provides an erudite survey of many cultures over several centuries to remind us how meritocracy's core idea - that your place in society should be a reflect of talent and effort, not determined by birth - is both revolutionary and recent. He sees meritocracy as an organising ideal rather than something that has been satisfactorily achieved, and rails against the ability of the privileged to purchase educational advantage for their children. He deplores too, outbursts of arrogance from meritocracy's winners.

The Aristocracy of Talent is finely constructed: fluent insights include the importance of Plato's distrust of democracy, on the grounds that it tended to lead to tyranny, and his insistence on the need for a leadership of experts.

In The Aristocracy of Talent, the Economist writer Adrian Wooldridge defends the meritocratic ideal. The book offers a sweeping account of the history of meritocracy, from the elaborate exams required to join the Chinese civil service to the problems with our dysfunctional present version of meritocracy, which Wooldridge says might be better called "pluto-meritocracy". Essential reading for anyone who wants to understand one of the important problems facing rich nations.

This masterly book offers a robust defence of meritocracy.

hugely stimulating ... a spirited defence ... of meritocracy itself, made with cogent arguments ... a valuable, thought-provoking book

a timely book that is a reminder that meritocracy, for all its flaws, may well be, like the democracy it has sometimes served, better than the alternatives ... told with a wealth of erudition in brisk and readable prose

There are few terms whose origins are more misunderstood than "meritocracy". So Adrian Wooldridge has performed a public service with his latest book, The Aristocracy of Talent.

Adrian Wooldridge sees meritocracy as a revolutionary idea worth improving, not abandoning. He ranges across two and a half thousand years of history, surveying many societies and cultures, to remind us that until relatively recently the talented were almost always a matter of no interest to the rulers - not only unrewarded but undiscovered ... [a] rich stew of a book. Alongside the philosophers are innumerable politicians, theologians, scientists, academics, authors and campaigners. He has dug up a priceless array of quotes from all perspectives on how to define the best people, how to seek them out, how to educate them, how to test them, how to give them power, even how they should behave.

In this elegant historical and philosophical defence of the notion that people should advance according to talent rather than birth, Wooldridge argues that the idea that ruled the world by the late 20th century has become corrupted. This "golden ticket to prosperity" needs restoring in order to revive social mobility.

an omniscient and impassioned polemic ... Some of us have been waiting a long time for someone to do what Wooldridge has done: nail the lie that there is something shameful about success honestly earned

The Aristocracy of Talent is both an exhaustively researched history of an idea and a many-sided examination of the impacts of its imperfect execution.

A worthy successor to the 1958 classic The Rise of the Meritocracy, this sparkling study shows how much less meritocratic our society has become since then

Wooldridge has written one of the great books of the decade. Here, meticulously researched and in arresting prose, are definitive accounts of Plato's authoritarian philosophy and the way later generations interpreted it, of China's mandarinate, of the rise of IQ tests and much else.

with its remorseless erudition ... in his new book, Adrian Wooldridge tries to salvage meritocracy from the ossified over-class that Aldous Huxley foresaw.

Adrian Wooldridge relabels the system "pluto-meritocracy" to expose its sham ideology

readable and wide-ranging...Wooldridge maintains that meritocracy is revolutionary and egalitarian

Every page, there's an intriguing nugget of information.

kudos to Adrian Wooldridge... for producing a full-throated defence of the principle

Adrian Wooldridge is the global business columnist at Bloomberg Opinion. Previously, he worked for the Economist for thirty-two years, including stints as its Lexington, Schumpeter and Bagehot columnist. He earned a doctorate in history from Oxford University, where he was a Fellow of All Souls College. He is the author of ten previous books, including Capitalism in America co-written with Alan Greenspan and seven co-written with John Micklethwait: The Wake-Up Call, Th­e Witch Doctors, A Future Perfect, The Company, The Right Nation, God is Back and The Fourth Revolution.

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.

A History

Capitalism in America

Shortlisted for the FT &amp; McKinsey Business Book of the Year 2018 
 
'An inspiring, rip-roaring read - like the astonishing story it describes' Liam Halligan, Daily Telegraph 
 
Where does prosperity come from, and how does it spread through a society? What role does innovation play in creating prosperity and why do some eras see the fruits of innovation spread more democratically, and others, including our own, find the opposite? 
 
In Capitalism in America, Alan Greenspan, legendary Chair of the Federal Reserve, distils a lifetime of grappling with these questions into a profound assessment of the decisive drivers of the US economy over the course of its history. In partnership with Economist journalist and historian Adrian Wooldridge, he unfolds a tale of vast landscapes, titanic figures and triumphant breakthroughs as well as terrible moral failings. Every crucial American economic debate is here - from the role of slavery in the antebellum Southern economy to America's violent swings in its openness to global trade. 
 
At heart, the authors argue, America's genius has been its enthusiasm for the effects of creative destruction, the ceaseless churn of the old giving way to the new. Although messy and painful, it has lifted the overwhelming majority of Americans to standards of living unimaginable even a few generations past. At a time when productivity has again stalled, stirring populist furies, and the continuing of American pre-eminence seems uncertain, Capitalism in America explains why America has worked so successfully in the past and been such a gigantic engine of economic growth.

This book snaps, crackles and pops ... Readers will emerge from this heady blend of economic, business, and political history with a sense of exhilaration that so much of the American experience could be described so vividly and insightfully

Capitalism in America makes a strong case, with some wonderful insights into business history. Innovation, spread to the masses, is indeed the engine of capitalist economies.

A superbly written book ... the tone is businesslike but culturally savvy - with sociological themes from "America's urban nightmare" of the seventies and eighties to "the rising share of working women" handled with sensitivity and skill ... Capitalism in America is an inspiring, rip-roaring read - like the astonishing story it describes.

Born in 1926 in New York City, Alan Greenspan worked as a Juilliard-trained professional musician before studying Economics at New York University, where he earned his PhD. From 1974 to 1977, he served as Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Gerald Ford. In 1987, President Ronald Reagan appointed him Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, a position he held until his retirement in 2006. He is the author of the bestselling The Age of Turbulence and The Map and the Territory 2.0. 
 
 Adrian Wooldridge is the Economist's political editor and writes the Bagehot column. He has also worked as the Economist's American bureau chief and author of the Lexington column, and management editor and author of the Schumpeter column. He earned a doctorate in history from Oxford University, where he was a Fellow of All Souls College. He is the author of nine previous books, including six co-written with John Micklethwait: The Witch Doctors, A Future Perfect, The Company, The Right Nation, God is Back and The Fourth Revolution.

The Global Race to Reinvent the State

The Fourth Revolution

In The Fourth Revolution, John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge ask: what is the state actually for? Their remarkable book describes the three great revolutions in its history, and the fourth which is happening now 
 
In most of the states of the West, disillusion with government has become endemic. Gridlock in America; anger in much of Europe; cynicism in Britain; decreasing legitimacy everywhere. Most of us are resigned to the fact that nothing is ever going to change. But as John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge show us in this galvanizing book, this is a seriously limited view of things. In response to earlier crises in government, there have been three great revolutions, which have brought about in turn the nation-state, the liberal state and the welfare state. In each, Europe and America have set the example. We are now, they argue, in the midst of a fourth revolution in the history of the nation-state, but this time the Western way is in danger of being left behind. 
 
The Fourth Revolution brings the crisis into full view and points towards our future. The authors have enjoyed extraordinary access to influential figures and forces the world over, and the book is a global tour of the innovators. The front lines are in Chinese-oriented Asia, where experiments in state-directed capitalism and authoritarian modernization have ushered in an astonishing period of development. Other emerging nations are producing striking new ideas, from Brazil's conditional cash-transfer welfare system to India's application of mass-production techniques in hospitals. These governments have not by any means got everything right, but they have embraced the spirit of active reform and reinvention which in the past has provided so much of the West's comparative advantage. 
 
The race is not just one of efficiency, but one to see which political values will triumph in the twenty-first century: the liberal values of democracy and freedom or the authoritarian values of command and control. The centre of gravity is shifting quickly, and the stakes could not be higher.

The cost of government is no longer an ivory-tower whinge . . . [a] splendid diatribe

John Micklethwait is the Editor-in-Chief of The Economist; Adrian Wooldridge was its Washington bureau chief until 2009, and now serves as Management Editor and 'Schumpeter' columnist. They have written fi ve previous books together: The Company: A Short History of a Revolutionary Idea; A Future Perfect: The Challenge and Promise of Globalization; The Witchdoctors: Making Sense of the Management Gurus; The Right Nation: Why America is Different; and God is Back: How theGlobal Rise of Faith is Changing the World.

In most of the states of the West, disillusion with government has become endemic. Gridlock in America; anger in much of Europe; cynicism in Britain; decreasing legitimacy everywhere. Most of us are resigned to the fact that nothing is ever going to change. But as John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge show us in this galvanizing book, this is a seriously limited view of things. In response to earlier crises in government, there have been three great revolutions, which have brought about in turn the nation-state, the liberal state and the welfare state. In each, Europe and America have set the example. We are now, they argue, in the midst of a fourth revolution in the history of the nation-state, but this time the Western way is in danger of being left behind. 
 
The Fourth Revolution brings the crisis into full view and points towards our future. The authors have enjoyed extraordinary access to influential figures and forces the world over, and the book is a global tour of the innovators. The front lines are in Chinese-oriented Asia, where experiments in state-directed capitalism and authoritarian modernization have ushered in an astonishing period of development. Other emerging nations are producing striking new ideas, from Brazil's conditional cash-transfer welfare system to India's application of mass-production techniques in hospitals. These governments have not by any means got everything right, but they have embraced the spirit of active reform and reinvention which in the past has provided so much of the West's comparative advantage. 
 
The race is not just one of efficiency, but one to see which political values will triumph in the twenty-first century: the liberal values of democracy and freedom or the authoritarian values of command and control. The centre of gravity is shifting quickly, and the stakes could not be higher.

How the Global Rise of Faith is Changing the World

God is Back

John Micklethwait is the editor of the Economist and Adrian Wooldridge is its Washington bureau chief. They have written four previous books together: The Company: A Short History of a Revolutionary Idea, A Future Perfect: The Challenge and Promise of Globalization, The Witchdoctors: Making Sense of the Management Gurus and The Right Nation: Why America is Different.

As the world becomes more modern, it is not becoming more secular. Instead, on the street and in the corridors of power, religion is surging. As God is Back shows, for better or for worse, faith is on the increase - fuelled by an American-style model of personal, customer-driven, aggressively marketed religion. 
 
Shining a light on this huge, hidden world of faith, from Californian megachurches to exorcisms in Sao Paulo, from China's aspirant middle-class Christians to mosques in Nigeria, this book shows that if you want to understand the modern world, you cannot afford to ignore God - whether you believe in Him or not.

Why America is Different

The Right Nation

The book which explains why George Bush won the 2004 election and why conservatism is now dominant in American politics and the American way of life

John Micklethwait is the US editor of The Economist and Adrian Wooldridge writes its Lexington column. They are the authors of A Future Perfect, The Witch Doctors and The Company: A Short History of a Revolutionary Idea.

The Right Nation is the definitive portrait of the America that few outsiders understand: the America that votes for George Bush, that supports the death penalty and gun rights, that believes in minimal government and long prison sentences, that pulled out of the Kyoto Protocol. 
 
America, argue John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge, award winning journalists at The Economist, has always been a conservative country; but over the past 50 years it has built up a radical conservative movement unlike any other country. The authors tell the story of how these radicals took over the Republican Party, and they deconstruct the Bush White House, examining the many influences from neo-conservatism to sun belt entrepreneurialism. This quest takes the authors from young churchgoers in Colorado Springs to gay gun clubs in Massachusetts to black supporters of school vouchers in Milwaukee. And they drive to the heart of a question that is relevant to us all: why does America seem so different?

Adrian Wooldridge

Ambitious ... Wooldridge [is] the Bagehot of our day. His narrative is persuasive, his diagnosis of the malaise of the Western elites is fresh and he offers convincing reasons for believing that “the lost genius of liberalism” will make a comeback. ... [He] wants to rid liberals of their taste for extremism, to persuade them to take populism seriously and take the fight to the autocrats. He denies that liberalism is shallow or banal, as its critics from Carlyle to Houellebecq have scoffed. He has done an outstanding job of making a fresh, compelling case for liberalism

The Lost Genius of Liberalism

We live in an age of extremes: populist leaders are setting the agenda, autocracies are on the march, and the liberal establishment is a bewildered blob, devoid of new ideas or fresh solutions. Having once powered progress in the form of democracy, mass welfare and defeating totalitarianism, liberals have the power to save the world again – but only if they rediscover the lost genius of their creed. 
 
Guiding us skilfully and entertainingly through the intellectual, cultural and political histories of liberalism, this book lays out a centrist agenda for today’s problems. It reminds us of the dynamism and fixed principles that have shaped the successes of liberalism and warns us against splitting into sub-groups that fail to grapple with the common good. Wooldridge proposes that, as well as reviving social mobility, liberals today need to be much more critical of big business – particularly if it makes money by manipulating choices and spreading misinformation – and rethink the laissez-faire approach to immigration, social disorder, and substance abuse. 
 
A powerful call to action, Centrists of the World Unite! shows us how liberals of all parties and none can come together in defending the values of liberal civilization from enemies without and within.

Adrian Wooldridge

Praise for Centrists of the World Unite!

Ambitious ... Wooldridge [is] the Bagehot of our day. His narrative is persuasive, his diagnosis of the malaise of the Western elites is fresh and he offers convincing reasons for believing that “th ...

Books by Adrian Wooldridge

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