Our first research question regards meanings: what do we intend by meritocracy? One of its success factors lies in its semantic ambiguity and vagueness. Within political philosophy and the theoretical literature of social sciences, two clusters of interpretations which we can call “spurious meritocracy” and “pure meritocracy” can be traced. The first incorporates a proportional idea of justice (benefits commensurate with capacity and performance), an old concept which has been reformulated from an economic viewpoint by current neo-liberal political thought.  

The second coincides with the concept of “social equality of opportunity”, which has shaped most sociological research on educational stratification and incorporates an idea of justice founded on a responsibility criterion (benefits commensurate with capacity and performance only if attributable to the subject’s responsibility).  My objective is to identify these two clusters of interpretation, ascertain how they are applied in the educational field and observe, albeit summarily, their implications for educational research (also of a comparative type) and policy. At the same time, I would like to discuss the limitations, mainly of the first but also of the second cluster, both in terms of ethical legitimization and of practical feasibility.

A second research question regards the current main conceptions of justice which go beyond the axiological perspective of meritocracy and the meanings they assume when applied to education.

A third question is whether the diverse concepts which emerge from  both philosophical debate and empirical investigation into feelings of justice are absolute, and therefore incompatible, or rather partial, and therefore susceptible to varied contextualized combinations.

My theoretical framework is multidisciplinary, as I will attempt to link the sphere of normative ethics with that of descriptive ethics and the contribution of philosophical studies with those of economics and sociology. As to the first, I will focus above all on the theoretical contribution of Rawls and Sen, with some mention of the challenges stemming from the theory of difference. For the second, I will refer to sociological criticism of meritocracy, from M. Young to J. Goldthorpe and to recent works by F. Dubet and M. Duru-Bellat, as well as to the analyses of pluralism of justice ideals in education (for example those inspired by the discourse of Boltanski and Thevenot).

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