The Politics of Meritocracy from Republicanism to Cosmopolitanism to Populism

Aras Koksal, University of Minnesota - Twin Cities

In meritocratic societies, inequality and social mobility are structured on the basis of academic achievement instead of social position at birth. Meritocracy upholds the individual as the main unit of social organization, de-emphasizing collective identities and group interests. In contrast, populism re-imagines the individual in relation to a narrative that centers on a symbolic boundary between the meritocratic elite and the majority that is left behind. Bridging two distant areas of inquiry in sociology of education and populism studies, this paper contributes to the literature on the social and cultural construction of meritocracy. I present a historical discussion of the institutional changes to higher education in modern Turkey and offer a threefold typology of meritocracy regimes. First, I find that republican meritocracy defined the period of national state-building (1850s-1950s) and was mainly geared to cultivate the state’s infrastructural power by training technocrats. Merit was defined in relation to the national interest, and individual emancipation was tied to collective emancipation. The following period of globalization and neoliberalization (1970s-2000s) led to the rise of cosmopolitan meritocracy. With its emphasis on individualism, free markets, and global exchange, cosmopolitanism re-defined merit as human capital, defined in light of the supply and demand dynamics of the labor market. Finally, from the mid-2000s onwards, the consolidation of an authoritarian-populist regime fomented a symbolic war against both republican and cosmopolitan meritocracies. The AKP government has combined an anti-elitist discourse with a massive expansion in higher education, building a new university in each province and doubling the rate of post-secondary attainment. I argue that the regime’s populist meritocracy is part of a larger struggle to accrue cultural power and produce a cultural counter-elite. The organizational and discursive shifts in Turkish higher education point to an important but so far under-theorized relationship between populism, education, and meritocracy.

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 Presented in Session 144. Economic and Ideological Underpinnings of Higher Education