Retrospective Versus Prospective Meritocracy

This article proposes a way of understanding meritocracy from retrospective versus prospective points of view. Retrospective meritocracy is static or backwards-looking: Merit is based on an individual’s characteristics or past achievements as representative of excellence or as desert for a position already obtained. Prospective meritocracy is forward-looking: Merit is functionally defined as the comparative contribution that an individual makes to a specified set of social objectives. I use formal models to show that these alternative conceptions have very different implications for meritocratic assignments of students to schools or workers to jobs and that they involve differing information needs for a policymaker. These different approaches to merit demonstrate how alternate versions of meritocracy may or may not be socially efficient. I discuss implications for the use of meritocracy as a desideratum for various public policy contexts.