Italy’s journey with meritocracy

A “festival of economics” sounds like a contradiction in terms. What next? A bacchanalia of boredom? A celebration of sophistry? Thomas Carlyle dubbed economics “the dismal science” for good reason.
Yet Turin’s International Festival of Economics lived up to its billing. Giuseppe Laterza, the festival impresario, got the inspiration of the festival from two sources: the Hay-on-Wye book festival in rural Herefordshire, which Bill Clinton dubbed “the Woodstock of the mind,” and a festival of philosophy in Modena.
This year’s theme, merit, diversity and social justice, could not have been more timely. There is a fierce global debate going on about the subject, with both the right and the left united in denouncing meritocracy as a sham. Italy has also been in perpetual turmoil about the relative claims of family loyalty and open competition, la dolce vita and self-discipline, new men and ancient traditions.
Italy is in many ways the world’s great pioneer of meritocracy. Venice became a global power in the early middle ages by embracing open competition: governed by a doge, who was selected by a council of wise men, rather than by a royal dynasty, it showered opportunities on new men and new economic forms, principally commenda, prototypes of today’s joint-stock companies. Venetian sailors, estimated to number 36,000 in the early 15th century, popped up in China. Renaissance Florence saw “the discovery of the individual,” in Jacob Burckhardt’s evocative phrase, meaning the discovery of the individual as a self-defining creature rather than as a member of a clan. The Risorgimento was a liberal revolution against feudal princelings.
Italy has produced some of the world’s great meritocratic thinkers. Niccolò Machiavelli may have dedicated “The Prince” to Lorenzo de Medici with his signature cynicism but he argued that “open republics” are more successful than principalities because they choose their leaders on the basis of their fitness for the job and can get rid of them when their job descriptions change. Vilfredo Pareto believed that history is shaped by the vital few and that the key to social progress is “the circulation of elites.”
“Nepotism” is, after all, derived from an Italian word, nepotismo. In 1297, Venice excluded new talent from its governing council in what Venetians came to call La Serrata or the closure, which culminated with the publication of an official list of top families, the Book of Gold (Libro d’Oro) in 1315. Decline followed.

—Bloomberg