Meritocracy and equality

Abstract

Sociology acts on behalf of a form of equality whenever the requirements for participation in its rationality are seen to be equally binding on everyone in advanced industrial societies. Tocqueville made the case with respect to America long ago when he lamented that people made equal only imitate one another. Equality becomes historically and institutionally significant as such mainly as a complement to the liberal emphasis on individual rights which accompanies first the rule of law then the emergence of capitalism and the market society. Bureaucratization is important to any discussion of equality and fundamental democratization because it constitutes a key vehicle through which industrial societies have sought to harmonize these principles with the libertarian bias implicit in Western democratic ontology. Bureaucracy is the prototypical institution of civil society because its object is to treat everyone the same in line with ‘objectively valid norms’ which are unchallengeable.

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