Merit and meritocracy
Paradoxes and broken promises

It is not convenient to forget the problems of merit and the origins of meritocracy. Despite its satirical beginnings and constant criticism of its harmful and illusory nature, the meritocratic principle has spread widely as a way to reconcile equality and inequality. Today, when the deepest and most varied inequities are plainly revealed, it is necessary to question one of the most widespread ideas about how to manage and justify them.

This book proposes to analyze different promises and paradoxes of merit and meritocracy, articulating a psychosocial and critical perspective that brings psychology into dialogue with the social sciences, education, and work. The work is organized into three parts, which address the relationships between meritocracy and social inequalities, and different intersections of merit with education and work.

As François Dubet points out in his contribution to this book, “meritocratic equality of opportunity” presents many challenges in its implementation and also paradoxes: “the realization of a model of justice, perfectly fair a priori, it can be sustained on uncertain foundations, and, even worse, it can engender unjust effects to the extent that it legitimizes and deepens social inequalities that we might consider scandalous.” Through its various chapters, this work invites us to systematically examine and problematize merit as a ubiquitous and paradoxical principle of justice.