When I say neoliberal meritocratic technocracy has hollowed out democracy, I mean that democratic values like public reasoning, representation, and accountability have been displaced by managerial logic, credentialism, and market-driven thinking. bsky.app/profile/yusu...
Thank you for that clarification. I agree
Means testing remains one of the worst ideas in the history of western governance
@unroll.skywriter.blue unroll
The thread as a shareable webpage: https://skywriter.blue/pages/did:plc:2whlowi5jjjqrdrrj4lxh2lx/post/3lumjeen3fs2h.
📌
In 4th part about meritocracy, I think autocorrect got you. Usually I read right past, but could you say it again? I’m missing something.
Which bit specifically?
“This creates a moral logic that equates inequality with desert, eroding solidarity and masking systemic barriers.” My apologies. I had not seen desert used as the noun of deserving. I’m very sorry to bother you. Thank you.
I picked it up from Sandel.
I'm having an issue with every word If you argue trump is "neolib" then you can't apply the same meaning to dems Meritocracy may suggest a lot of things, but that's protestant predestination And experts solving stuff is just good? The problem is when the problem a fascist has is different from yours
I’m not saying Trump is a neoliberal in the way Clinton or Blair were. But Trump governs through the aftershocks of neoliberalism, a hollowed-out public sphere and institutions reduced to performance. He exploits the ruins of a system he didn’t build but absolutely thrives in.
Fair enough, but nor Clinton nor Blair nor Obama seemed to imply this "business owner" perspective in any way? They weren't cultists, AFAIK they listened to both their base and the fairly competent circle they had around, and most of all they didn't hollow public participation (if any the opposite).
I’m not saying Blair, Clinton, or Obama intended to hollow out public participation, in many ways they believed they were modernising government. But by embracing market logic and technocratic management, they reshaped democracy around performance, not participation.
All capitalist "leaders" seek to hollow out public participation. Embracing market "logic" is fundamentally bad (for us mere peasants) and bourgeois politicians know it. They serve the rich, not the people.
The state became a service provider, citizens became consumers, and politics became about branding, delivery, and metrics. It wasn’t cultish, it was professionalised. But it still weakened the structures that once rooted democratic power in public life.
I read words in your sentences.. but for the life of me I just cannot figure out what you are talking about in practice? Hell, "branding and delivery" seems exactly the opposite of what biden was trying to provide. Constantly pushing for appeasement rather than the angry populist bent people wanted.
When I say politics became about “branding and delivery,” I’m not talking about PR spin. I mean that governments started thinking like managers, not democratic leaders: “What do the polls say? What can we announce that looks like progress?”
Think Blair’s Delivery Unit or Starmer’s obsession with “message discipline.” In the US, Biden rolls out policies with metrics, funding breakdowns, targeted benefits, all of which matter, but they’re delivered like a product, not shaped through public debate.
I disagree on JRB, I'll grant that I have lil insight into Blair, but if Starmer is the example sure I can see the idiocy. But regressing to the mean doesn't seem "neolib"? I mean maybe overvaluing the average voter as "rational" (and with good reasons for their beliefs) is but.. it feels a stretch?
It’s not about intent, it’s about structure. When politics is reduced to managing outcomes and calming markets or headlines, democratic participation gets bypassed. That’s what I mean by hollowing out the deeper structures of public power
This seems instead very anglo-focused, where the economies are so solid that "markets" paradoxically have very little power. It was when the interest rates on the italian debt skyrocketed (with investors forecasting disasters) that both fucking berlusconi and salvini had to tone down their policies.
And yes, meritocracy is entangled with Protestant notions of predestination, that’s precisely the problem. It moralises inequality. As for experts: the issue isn’t expertise, it’s when technocracy replaces democracy, when problems are "solved" without public participation.
📌
I see what you are saying here (as opposed to the N-word above).. but it seems a bit odd to adopt the corrupt meaning which conservatives implicitly use to peddle heinousness, rather than what they should mean normally per the dictionary. Then fairly enough this is a 300 characters limited platform.
On one hand the thing isnbad as described on the other I do maintain in strongest terms that current UK is not driven by managerial logic or market/capitalism and things would be better if it was. Even credentialism takes backseat to a troglodytic, anti-evidential patetnalist *impulse*
Neoliberalism reframes citizens as consumers, and the state as a service provider. It promotes the idea that society should be run like a business; efficient, competitive, and responsive to market signals, not democratic deliberation.
Don't disagree, but the presence of organised, independent social movements doesn't mean 'democracy strengthening' eg 1930s fascist movements before they were invited into govt, evangelical churches in Latin America. The issue is *progressive* working class and 60's social movements got smashed.
Indeed, I’m not arguing that any organised movement strengthens democracy. As Wendy Brown and others have shown, neoliberalism didn’t just erode collective structures in the abstract, it specifically dismantled progressive counterpower: labour, civil rights, and solidarity-based publics.
The vacuum left behind hasn’t remained empty, it’s been filled by reactionary, exclusionary forces precisely because the democratic infrastructure that once channelled collective action toward justice was smashed.
So yes, what was hollowed out wasn’t organisation per se, it was the civic and institutional capacity to expand democracy. Rebuilding that means recovering not just form, but direction: structures that cultivate public reasoning, solidarity, and shared democratic purpose.
I agree but I have no idea how except the hard slog of irl organizing around material, everyday issues But you can't really do that without social media and all that entails Where I live a few MLM and knitting(!) influencers built a 100k strong movement like that. But it is antivax and rw populist
They say 'politics follows culture' and have set up local meetups, food growing groups and a radio station They're also using their network to introduce rw ideology via a mixture of lifestyle and political content But they have $$$ and can draw on copious output of US/UK culture war influencers
It would be great if the left could do that. Our indigenous people do have the kind of independent grassroots, social movement you describe, but they have had to, to persist. But the left seems to be mainly on line with the occasional one off, reactive protest which doesn't really go anywhere.
On the party political level, how can there be any hope when the supposed opponents of fascism adopt its language and so much of its world view? When they plainly believe in nothing? What hope is there for civic society once Labour's calamitous failures give us a Reform government?
Capitalism did all that in the early 20th century too
Meritocracy adds the moral dimension: if you succeed, it’s because you earned it; if you fail, it’s your fault. This creates a moral logic that equates inequality with desert, eroding solidarity and masking systemic barriers.
In fact Meritocracy in this system doesn't really exist except as a narrative. The real way to advance is through contacts, not ability alone. Often people gain positions because they say the right things in interview. Often they aren't actually qualified. The merit is illusory.
I'd really recommend Sandel's work on this, this podcast covers his work on meritocracy www.philosophizethis.org/podcast/epis...
That's not a definition of meritocracy that I recognise: for me, it's always meant that you shd be able to advance as far as you can based on yr ability, not yr social background/gender/ethnicity & c.
Michael Sandel's Tyrannt of Merit describes how that is actually corrosive for society, as predicted by Michael Young when he coined the term. I'd highly recommend the Tyrannt of Merit, this podcast covers it well too www.philosophizethis.org/podcast/epis...
I think what's corrosive is when it fails to deliver. I worked hard, got great qualifications, then struggled to get work commensurate with my abilities.
Indeed, and it also creates a permission structure to make moral judgements about those deemed unsuccessful by the standards of the meritocracy, both by the successful and the unsuccessful, and that breeds the sort of resentment being exploited by the likes of Trump and Farage.
My problem has been seeing dim-witted well-connected ppl or immoral chancers get on… The ethos I was raised in (late 1960s-1970s) told me that I shd be able to do anything if I succeeded academically. I loathe the lauding of 'prodigals' who 'made it': always thought that an immoral fable.
I'd really recommend Sandel's work as he reflects a lot of what you've experienced in his own thinking or meritocracy.
Tbh, I don't rlly have time/inclination to read outside my historical/art historical researches, these days.
I support meritocracy: I believe there's nothing wrong with élitism based on ability & achievement, but there shd be a proper safety net below. That's why I think UBI is a good idea. When I was child (late 60s-70s) there was a proper safety net: cdn't imagine how quickly that wd be dismantled.
Technocracy further narrows politics to the domain of ‘experts’. Decisions are framed as technical problems for specialists to solve, not issues requiring collective judgement. That strips the public of agency.
The result is a system that performs democracy, elections still happen, institutions remain, but the citizen’s role is reduced to passive consent or reaction. Democratic participation becomes hollow, procedural, or symbolic.
Democracy was always a bourgeoisie delusion that favored property owners over everyone else
Democracy cargo cults.
In that vacuum, people lose faith. They turn to spectacle, strongmen, or conspiracies to make sense of a system that no longer hears them. The shell of democracy remains, but the substance is gone, replaced by disillusionment and disinformation.
Now do elite kompromat, do elite kompromat, do elite kompromatttttttt
This is the hollowing out: democracy without voice, governance without participation, legitimacy without trust.
📌
Good questions; I’m not claiming the pre-neoliberal era was a democratic ideal, but neoliberal meritocratic technocracy didn’t just weaken institutions, it hollowed out the conditions for democratic participation, including the role of counterpublics. bsky.app/profile/ande...
The democratic project has always relied on more than formal elections. Counterpublics, organised groups outside dominant power, play a vital role in expanding rights, challenging elites, and reshaping what democracy even means.
No this is what happens when you allow unregulated social media run by actual Nazis, oligarchs and the Chinese state. All of whom seek to destabilise democracies by promoting racial hatred and hiding truth.
That's part of it, but if we ignore the political and social systems that takes place within then we're going to constantly fail to deal with the deeper problems.
In the postwar period, despite many exclusions, unions, grassroots movements, radical media, and activist communities forced democratic expansion. They didn’t just protest, they produced knowledge, exerted pressure, and built legitimacy from below.
Neoliberalism weakened these spaces: – Unions lost power – Local organising was defunded – Radical media became unsustainable – Protest was reframed as disruption – Collective identity was replaced with consumer identity
The neoliberal approach regards rules either as hindrance or as self-ruling, as if they don't need to be enforced by an outside force. It's like thinking about architecture without stairs, toilets and the way people move inside or to it. Of course these topics are not what a building is about but >
if you willingly don't think about them funny things happen. I like the institutional approach by Douglass C. North. It adds institutions aka norms and rules (that restrain actions) and transaction costs to classic liberal economy. This approach helps to explain why some countries are rich/poor.
