Review of Tarun KHANNA & Michael SZONYI (eds), Making Meritocracy. Lessons from China and India, from Antiquity to the Present

The intellectual and political debate on merit as a criterion for the distribution of the most relevant social resources and on meritocracy, i.e. the type of society governed by it, is now being conducted in several Western and Asian countries. The arguments presented against the use of this distribution criterion are frequently of a philosophical nature, with a considerable number of cases also being ideological. This is a significant debate, as it concerns the fundamental principles of distributive justice, the status order, and the processes of social stratification. This debate frequently neglects to consider the historical and contemporary experiences of China and India, the two countries with the largest populations, exceeding 2,8 billion.