Meritocracy

JPART — 2026-07-13 Original Bureaucratic turnover under new governments: the moderating effect of bureaucratic and political layering Bjørn Mo Forum Abstract Abstract Politically motivated personnel turnover affects government bureaucracy’s legitimacy and performance. To understand the conditions of meritocracy, the article explores how variability in hierarchy moderates the effect of government transitions on bureaucratic turnover. Event history analysis of the careers of 948 Norwegian senior bureaucrats (1884–2024) reveals that the organizational layers separating bureaucrats from ministers moderate the effect of government change differently depending on the layer’s political or bureaucratic nature. Bureaucrats directly exposed to political appointees experience heightened turnover during government transitions, while the turnover of bureaucrats separated from appointees by an intervening layer of career employees is unaffected by government transitions. Further analysis of different time periods and senior bureaucratic roles shows that layering alone does not fully explain political influence on bureaucratic careers. Positions must be hierarchically exposed (lacking intervening bureaucratic layers), functionally politicized (involved in tasks that are strategically important to political leadership), and subject to administrative politicization (by being under the purview of political appointees) to be vulnerable to politically motivated turnover. The article advances scholarship on the politicization of senior bureaucrats in merit bureaucracies by examining 140 years of politically induced turnover through a theory of how layering moderates political dynamics.

JOP — 2026-04-17 Original Meritocracy and Autocratic Power-Sharing: A Historical Perspective Clair Yang, Yasheng Huang, Zhaomin Li Abstract This paper proposes meritocracy as a power-sharing institution in authoritarian regimes, particularly in weakly institutionalized environments. Contrary to what Enlightenment scholars believed, our evidence shows that meritocratic institutions were not uncommon in historical states and were often associated with absolute rulers. Using a formal model, we demonstrate that meritocracy benefits rulers by enabling them to co-opt high-ability agents, and it can remain credible even without third-party enforcement mechanisms. Unlike other power-sharing institutions, such as parliaments, which function more effectively under weaker rulers, meritocracy is more likely to emerge endogenously under strong rulers and remains self-reinforcing over time. We test these theoretical predictions using historical case studies and empirical analysis of a panel of 289 historical polities. The results confirm a positive association between meritocracy and autocracy. We believe that meritocracy can fill the gap in the literature to explain power-sharing in many historical absolute regimes.