What makes something a “cross-cultural political theory”? Elena Ziliotti’s terrific new book claims such a status and goes a long way toward earning it. For starters, she draws on two distinct literatures, one that is framed by Western debates in democratic theory and one that is framed by questions about the significance of Confucianism to contemporary politics. In addition, she pays attention to the distinct sorts of lessons that scholars in each community might draw from her work. She therefore cannot be accused of contributing to the imbalance that abounds in comparative philosophy: she is just as interested in the ways Western theory and practice can be improved thanks to an encounter with Confucianism as she is in ways that Confucian theorists can learn from Western arguments. As Ziliotti readily acknowledges, her work focuses on Anglophone scholarship and so leaves room for other, cross-linguistic forms of political theory, but she succeeds in her avowed aim of developing a balanced account that privileges neither context and is relevant to both (p. 18).

After the introduction, the book is divided into three parts, each of which makes a distinct argument that can be evaluated separately from the others, though there is also a logic that connects them. Part I argues on epistemic grounds that political meritocracies like those envisioned by Confucian meritocrats are inferior to democracies. Part II takes inspiration from Confucian ideas of virtue politics to emphasize the importance of excellent political leaders in democracies, again with an emphasis on their potential epistemic contributions. Part III then defends an institutional innovation—intra-party ethical screening of future leaders—as capable of improving the quality of the candidates from whom citizens select their leaders. Putting all three parts together, Ziliotti argues for a “meritocratic democracy” that can improve the state of democracy in the West and be more attractive to citizens in East Asia than their existing political systems or the purer meritocracies envisioned by contemporary Confucian meritocrats.

A central contention of the book is that it makes sense to assess political theories and regime types epistemically. Ziliotti argues persuasively that she can mount a fair and telling comparison between political systems by focusing on the epistemic “systems” (p. 48) they enable and the effects of these systems on people’s non-moral well-being. (She sets aside things like the influence of political participation on citizens’ moral well-being as too contentious; p. 45.) The “systematic” approach to political epistemology is important because it allows her to pay attention to the direct and indirect epistemic roles that leaders play in a democracy, rather than more bluntly comparing the epistemic capacities of the many (in a democracy) with those of the few (in a meritocracy). Ziliotti recognizes that meritocrats may be able to reply to her worries about meritocracy’s lack of “epistemic diversity” by incorporating non-democratic forms of participation or at least perspective-gathering (pp. 52–3), but she responds that meritocrats will be subject to “epistemic avoidance”: avoidance of cognitive dissonance will lead those in power to avoid viewpoints that clash with their own (p. 54). Taking this as a representative instance of Ziliotti’s argumentation, I believe that she has substantially advanced on existing debates while still not settling these issues. For one thing, it is important to take seriously the precise democratic admixtures proposed by meritocrats, which can potentially contribute to a more successful epistemic “system” than Ziliotti here credits.Footnote ¹

Next comes Ziliotti’s case for the epistemic importance of leaders in a democracy, which is compelling. I note that while her focus in this part of the book is on professional politicians (p. 84), in other work she argues that democratic leadership is not just a relationship between politicians and citizens, but is perhaps more relevantly found through “ritually mediated social relations” wherein civic “co-leadership” emerges.Footnote ² But especially with the move toward ever-more leader-centered democracies in many societies today (p. 91), the book’s emphasis on politicians is surely important. Ziliotti’s core idea has two parts: (1) politicians play both indirect and direct epistemic roles, and (2) we can use an agency-centered approach to get some traction on the quality of an individual leader’s likely epistemic contribution. Among her many insights, I limit myself to two things, both examples of the way that Ziliotti brings Confucianism and modern theory into conversation. She explains that an indirect role leaders play is to motivate people to participate in public affairs, despite costs (time, energy, tedium), which in turn can increase the epistemic diversity of society, leading to better outcomes. This is a modern version of the Confucian exemplary person influencing the behavior of others through emotional contagion (pp. 95–96).

Of course, leaders’ influence is not always constructive. Ziliotti analyzes this problem in terms of leaders’ moral dispositions, which both motivate them and can serve as internal checks—complementing external, institutional checks—on bad behavior. Here again she draws on Confucianism, though arguing that the Confucians’ specific virtue of ren (humaneness) is difficult to justify to diverse, modern populations (p. 116). Instead, she deconstructs ren into two aspects, a general public spiritedness and a specific vision of public flourishing, and suggests that “public spiritedness” on its own can succeed as a general norm for leaders. Both the strengths and weaknesses of this effort to rework a distinctively Confucian value so that it can remain relevant in today’s pluralistic societies bears comparison with P. C. Chang’s effort to include ren in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (ultimately, “conscience” was agreed upon).Footnote ³

The final part of Meritocratic Democracy argues that ethical screenings of future leaders, carried out within political parties by juries made up of party members, can help us arrive at candidates for public office who are more consistently meritorious—having the various character traits Ziliotti has spelled out—than is currently the case. She addresses a range of potential objections, arguing for the possibility of such assessments partly by appealing to the fact that the PAP in Singapore already does something that bears similarities to her proposal (p. 180). Neither this analogy nor her other responses answer the questions one might raise about ethical screening once and for all. But in my judgment Ziliotti has made her case that leaders play important epistemic roles in democracies, that the expected quality of this influence can be assessed in an agency-centered way by looking at key character traits, and that intra-party ethical screening might be a realistic possibility and would not undermine a society’s fundamental commitment to democracy. These arguments draw significantly on Confucian ideas, including by framing successful outcomes around popular well-being, but are simultaneously attentive to pluralistic citizenries. Ziliotti has demonstrated to the heirs of both East Asian and Western political traditions that democracies can and should be more meritocratic without becoming less democratic.