Towards Confucian democratic meritocracy

Introduction

In the past two decades, the question of political meritocracy has been one of the most debated topics in contemporary political theory. Noting that China, which is ruled by non-democratically selected political leaders, has enjoyed remarkable economic performance in recent years while Western liberal democracies are currently suffering the rise of populism, political polarization and social unrest, scholars such as Daniel Bell and Tongdong Bai have proposed a meritocratic political system in which the members of the legislature are selected by examination by deriving its justification from the Confucian ideal of rule by virtue (Bai 2013; Bell 2006, 2015). ¹ Equally concerned with the flaws of liberal democracy and strongly convinced of the need for meritocratic rule in East Asia, Joseph Chan (2014) has also developed a philosophically robust idea of political meritocracy by articulating the Confucian conception of political authority, which does not allow equal political rights. Chan seeks a more compelling philosophical justification for political meritocracy – and one that allows for a critique of the Chinese government’s recent attempts to ‘hijack’ Confucianism to rationalize its authoritarian regime. To this end, Chan still explores a non-democratic institution; specifically, the second chamber composed of the so-called virtuous elite, who can constrain the popular sovereignty of the people.

Understood in this way, Bell, Bai and Chan share two core ideas of Confucian meritocracy. First, according to Confucian virtue politics, only a virtuous person who can contribute to the well-being of the people holds the legitimate right to rule – not every individual has this right, and neither do the people nor nation as a whole. Second, and in accordance with the first, the selection mechanisms for choosing political leaders should be designed to select the most virtuous person (Bai 2013; Bell 2006, 2015; Chan 2014). Thus, Confucian meritocracy is defined by two meritocratic principles: the first concerns the form of sovereignty and the second concerns a selection mechanism. ²

What is important in the relation between these two principles is that it is not the meritocratic selection principle but the meritocratic sovereignty principle that provides a normative justification for the unequal distribution of political power. Thus, it is also the first principle that renders Confucian meritocracy a distinctive version of political meritocracy, one which does not support the core ideas of democracy. This fact becomes clear when we consider the relation between the two principles in the Western political tradition. Although modern Western political philosophers have also endorsed the ‘principle of distinction’ (Manin 1997: 94), which emphasizes the superior faculties of the representative, and have devised various forms of elections as selection mechanisms, the meritocratic selection principle has been successfully combined with the idea of popular sovereignty through meritocratic selection mechanisms (i.e. elections). This means that the primary concern of Confucian meritocracy should be to clearly present Confucian moral virtues, which are required of a political leader to gain the exclusive right to rule. Then, it might be able to suggest why examination (Bell and Bai) or recommendation (Chan) is the best selection option – the one best able to identify a person who has the moral virtues necessary for gaining the exclusive right to rule.

Unfortunately, the justifications offered by Confucian meritocrats mentioned above are not quite satisfactory. While sharing a deep distrust of electoral democracy, which endows self-interested, myopic, irrational and competitive individuals with excessive political power, Bell and Bai argue that political authority is allowed only to a virtuous political leader who can make sound judgements. The problem with their justification of the unequal distribution of political power is that they do not pay close attention to the intrinsic value of the ruler’s moral virtues for the ethically good life of the political community, which is the most critical factor for judging whether a political leader has political legitimacy according to the ideal of Confucian virtue politics. Instead, they are overly preoccupied with the instrumental value of a political leader’s competence, its role in bringing about good political outcomes, particularly the material well-being of the people – and accept democratic institutions only as instruments for efficient governance. As a result, not only do they fail to see how democratic principles and institutions enable ‘mutual moral transformation’ between a Confucian political leader and his or her people, but they also overlook the way in which this transformation can contribute to the cultivation of a virtuous political leader, which is the ideal of Confucian meritocracy.

In marked contrast to Bell and Bai, who cite a leader’s ability to ensure strong economic performance as a requirement for gaining the legitimate right to rule, Chan argues that political authority in Confucianism is justified not merely by a political leader’s competence but also by his or her sincere commitment to the well-being of the people (Chan 2014: chap. 1). Then, he derives the justification of democratic institutions, particularly elections, from their ‘strong ability’ to select virtuous rulers and express the mutual commitment of the ruler and the people (Chan 2014: 85–86). Despite his elaborate analysis of the two constitutive elements of legitimate political authority in Confucianism and justification of democratic institutions, one critical problem arises for Chan’s view. By proposing a second chamber, in which non-democratically selected senior public servants monitor the elected chamber and serve as moral exemplars, the expressive value of democracy and the ideal of the meritocratic rule in his theory clash with each other. As a result, it becomes unclear how ordinary citizens and political leaders, particularly the members of the second chamber, can form and express mutual commitment in the actual political process.

Understood in this way, it turns out that the main concern of the theorists mentioned is not how to make and foster political circumstances in which political leaders and citizens can mutually cultivate Confucian moral and political agency through a more democratic interaction, but rather how to select political leaders who already have moral character and political competence outside of the democratic system. Bell, Bai and Chan all overlook the possibility that Confucian meritocracy can be better realized in a democratic society in which virtuous political leadership is cultivated by mutual moral transformation between a political leader and ordinary citizens, mediated by democratic principles and institutions.

Two questions immediately arise. First, given that pluralism is increasingly characterizing East Asian societies as citizens in the region cherish the value of personal autonomy and individual freedom protected by the constitution, how can Confucian meritocracy, which necessarily relies on a political leader’s moral authority and pursues the perfectionist ideal, avoid permitting or sliding into oppression of non-Confucians in contemporary East Asian democratic society? Second, conversely, given that Confucian values and mores are already considerably eroded in contemporary East Asian society, how can Confucian meritocracy be supported by democratic citizens who have incompatible moral, religious and philosophical doctrines? I argue that we can avoid these worries by examining how Confucian meritocratic principles are actually working in consolidated democratic societies. Drawing on this examination, I describe a Confucian civil society, in which a political norm is formed by citizens’ moral demand for virtuous political leadership expressed through democratic political processes, and in turn, citizens are morally influenced by a Confucian political leader nurtured within the democratic process. Then, I establish the theoretical foundation of ‘Confucian democratic meritocracy’.

This article consists of four main parts. In the first section below, I will revisit Chan’s insight regarding the two constitutive elements of legitimate political authority in Confucianism. I clarify that at the heart of Confucian virtue politics lies the moral conception of political responsibility and authority and demonstrate why even Chan’s Confucian meritocracy is still unsatisfactory. Next, I describe the idea of Confucian civil society by analysing a recent political event that occurred in South Korea (hereafter Korea), a country whose public culture is still saturated with Confucian values and mores. Lastly, I sketch out the role of a Confucian political leader in contemporary democratic society and explain how he or she can appeal to democratic citizens in contemporary East Asian societies from a normative standpoint.

The moral conception of political responsibility in Confucianism

It has been widely accepted among Confucian political theorists that the heart of Confucian virtue politics lies in realizing ‘the well-being of the people’ by relying on a virtuous leader’s moral virtues. This Confucian ideal clearly appears in The Analects 14.42:

Zilu asked about the gentleman. The Master said, ‘He cultivates himself in order to achieve respectfulness’. ‘Is that all?’ ‘He cultivates himself in order to bring peace to others’. ‘Is that all?’ ‘He cultivates himself in order to bring peace to all people. Cultivating oneself and thereby bringing peace to all people is something even a Yao or a Shun would find difficult’. (Analects 14.42) ³

Let us address the first problem. Kongzi and Mengzi emphasize the importance of feeding and protecting ‘common people’ as the root of governance throughout The Analects and Mencius because ‘the gentleman is concerned about the Way and not about poverty’ (Analects 15.32), whereas common people cannot cultivate their moral minds without a decent level of material well-being (Analects 15.2). Echoing this idea, Mengzi famously declares that ‘when they have a constant livelihood, they will have constant minds, but when they lack a constant livelihood, they will lack constant minds. When they lack constant minds, there is no dissoluteness, depravity, deviance, or excess to which they will not succumb’ (Mencius 3A3). However, it is important to note that they also repeatedly argue that the material well-being of common people (i.e. security, sufficient food, warm clothing and comfortable dwellings) must be accompanied by the ‘ethically good life’, which ought to be realized by the trust of the people (Analects 12.7), a proper ethical order among family and society members (Analects 12.11; Mencius 1A5), the fair distribution of wealth (Analects 16.4) and moral education (Mencius 3A4). Put differently, material well-being is not intrinsically valuable, but valuable only for its contribution to moral well-being. Therefore, even though the government has an obligation to enhance the level of material well-being of common people, this does not lead to the conclusion that the moral well-being of society, which is primarily satisfied by a political leader’s moral virtues and their extension to the political realm, can be sacrificed for the material well-being of society. Understood in this way, the ruler’s political authority will be justified when he or she fulfils two interrelated political responsibilities: one is a responsibility to improve the level of material well-being of common people, as this is a precondition for the moral well-being of the people. The other is a responsibility to promote the moral well-being of the people, which is the ultimate aim of Confucian virtue politics.

Let us now turn to how the ruler’s moral virtues can contribute to fulfilling the two responsibilities. As scholars such as Justin Tiwald and David Elstein effectively show, despite the political importance of min (民) as the root of good government, the Confucian classical texts do not endorse the people’s right to impose sanctions on the ruler or to make a collective decision even in the extreme case in which their basic living conditions are not satisfied mainly due to the ruler’s inability and immorality (Elstein 2010; Tiwald 2008). Political authority is permitted only to morally cultivated men who can understand Heaven’s grand plan and hence are chosen by Heaven to play a crucial role in the realization of this plan (Analects 9.5, 18.6; Mencius 2B13). Based on this belief, both Kongzi and Mengzi believed that the ruler’s moral virtues, at the core of which lies ren (sympathetic care, 仁), incubated and cultivated within familial loves and duties, would bring expected political outcomes through three ethico-political effects. First, throughout The Analects and Mencius, Kongzi and Mengzi exhort the ruler to cultivate moral virtues because only when the ruler desires goodness will common people be good, and conversely, if the ruler is not morally upright, it is hard to expect that common people will be (Analects 8.2, 13.13; Mencius 4A20; 4B5). When the ruler is morally virtuous, his virtue spreads like the wind, and common people are influenced by his moral power like the grass (Analects 12.19). Second, the function of the ruler’s moral virtue is not limited to enhancing the moral well-being of common people. It is directly connected to governability in that it draws willing submission from common people. Both Kongzi and Mengzi hold the same view on this effect of the ruler’s moral virtue (Analects 13.6; Mencius 2A3).

The last function of the ruler’s moral virtue is related to the way of improving material well-being. As mentioned above, early Confucians were well aware of how decent material conditions are critical to cultivating common people’s moral minds; hence, they paid much attention to improving the level of material well-being through socio-economic policies. ⁵ What is intriguing is that, given that moral virtues are not directly connected to a knowledge-based ability to make and implement efficient socio-economic policies, it is unclear how a ruler’s moral virtue can produce the expected political outcomes. With regard to this question, Mengzi provides a plausible answer. In the discussion on the qualification of a true king with King Xuan of Qi, explicating that at the heart of the mind of a true king is the extension of one’s own moral emotions from the near to the distant, Mengzi says:

By treating the elders in one’s own family as elders should be treated and extending this to the elders of other families, and by treating the young of one’s own family as the young ought to be treated and extending this to the young of other people’s families, the empire can be turned around on the palm of one’s hand.…If one extends his kindness it will be enough to protect all within the four seas, whereas if one fails to extend it, he will have no way to protect his wife and children. The reason the ancients so greatly surpassed most people was nothing other than this: they were good at extending what they did. (Mencius 1A7, italics added)

From these facts, we can infer that the ideal of Confucian virtue politics, predicated on the firm belief that a political leader’s moral virtues will bring about the well-being of the people, creates authentically Confucian conceptions of a political good and political responsibility. In Confucian moral philosophy, moral virtues are cultivated and practiced through the interpersonal processes of forming and rectifying ethical relationships among members of families and communities. Given that even the ruler’s responsibility for enhancing the material well-being of the people also must be fulfilled by the extension of his or her moral virtues, the ruler should behave as if he or she were a benevolent father or mother, trying to create an ethical relationship with common people even when making and implementing laws and policies. In turn, as Chan rightly points out, this extended ethical relationship between the ruler and common people itself constitutes an intrinsic good in the political realm (Chan 2014: 39). In other words, the ruler ought to sincerely pay attention to the people’s sorrow, anger, resentment and other emotions and transform the uncontrolled emotions of the people into morally cultivated ones, even in the law- and policy-making process. I shall call this moral conception of political responsibility in Confucianism ‘affective accountability’. By fulfilling this moral conception of political responsibility, the ruler can gain the trust of the people, which is the most important constitutive element of good government even if he or she fails to bring about material well-being (Analect 12.7). This is made clear in Mencius 7A12:

If one employs the people in a way intended to ease their lives, though they may suffer, they will not be resentful. If one causes people’s death in the course of trying to preserve their lives, though they may die, they will not be resentful of those who brought about their death. (Mencius 7A12)

The critique of Chan’s second chamber model

Let us now turn to Chan’s Confucian meritocracy, which clearly articulates two constitutive elements of political authority in Confucianism and suggests democratic institutions as appropriate selection mechanisms. While arguing for the Confucian conception of political authority, which only gives political authority to a virtuous person, Chan clearly articulates the value of an ethical relationship, which is formed by ‘people’s willing and glad submission that is engendered by the virtue and commitment of the ruler’, independently of the ruler’s success in bringing about the well-being of the people (Chan 2014: 40). According to him, ‘what makes the relationship truly authoritative is not just the ruler’s ability to protect and promote the people’s well-being, but the willing acceptance of his rule by the people’. In other words, ‘authority is not merely externally justified but is internally constituted by mutual commitment on both sides – the ruler’s commitment to care for the people and, most important, the people’s willing acceptance’ (Chan 2014: 36). What makes his theory more attractive is that he articulates the ‘expressive value’ of democracy, which has not been widely discussed in either Confucian democratic theory or Western political philosophy. According to him, democratic institutions, particularly elections, which enable citizens to select virtuous leaders and sanction political leaders who turn out to be immoral or incompetent, are understood as an instrument for helping them express their mutual commitment. The strong point of his democratic theory is that not only do democratic institutions help ordinary citizens protect their basic interests (Chan 2014: 85–86) but also enhance the quality of a political relationship by allowing ordinary citizens access to reliable, transparent and accurate information about a political leader’s virtues and competence. Above all, by giving voters an opportunity to ‘express’ themselves in favour of a political leader, political community can avoid severe conflicts and maintain normal political rhythms. Strong democratic institutions support the shared belief that citizens can change political situations through democratic processes even in the case where political leaders betray voters’ trust.

On the other hand, although he clearly defends the expressive value of democracy, embodied in elections, he does not accept a full democracy because ‘in non-ideal situations, democratic elections cannot furnish enough high-quality politicians’, so that ‘public interest compels us to find alternative means to supplement the electoral method of selecting legislators and officials’ (Chan 2014: 101). Arguing that examinations ‘cannot effectively test for virtues such as civility, public-spiritedness, trustworthiness, and integrity’, he proposes a second chamber, in which members are selected by ‘colleagues, senior secretarial staff, and experienced journalists’ who can evaluate candidates’ virtue and competence (Chan 2014: 107–108). According him, the second chamber has two values:

The first one, naturally, is to contribute to governance through discussing and passing bills and government budget and spending, balancing the views of the democratically elected chamber (hereafter called ‘first chamber’), and monitoring the government. The second value is educational. If the second chamber is filled with politicians who are thought to be of high quality (i.e., virtuous and competent), they can serve as role models for other politicians and the entire citizenry, as the manner in which they debate on public affairs, the viewpoints they bring into public discussion, and the judgments and decisions they make can have an educational influence on other people. (Chan 2014: 101)

The problem is that although Chan does not clearly answer the question of the power of the second chamber in the relation to the democratic house, ⁶ if ordinary citizens’ glad acceptance of a democratically elected political leader’s authority is rejected by non-democratically selected politicians, then two primary values in his theory – the value of the meritocratic rule and the expressive value of democracy – are in tension with each other. In other words, he should answer the question of which value is more important: the so-called superior decision, if the second chamber is actually capable of making it, or the expressive value of the democratic election. He might give priority to the former when he says, ‘[I]n justifying political authority, priority is given to the instrumental effects of the institutional arrangement of powers and offices’ (Chan 2014: 40). Implicit in this argument is that he relies heavily on the value of meritocratic rule rather than on the value of moral transformation embodied through democratic political interactions between a political leader and ordinary citizens. It becomes clear when we consider his rejection of civic education through political participation and its contribution to Confucian moral agency. Chan is deeply interested in the development of moral agency, but he argues that moral education is more effective and desirable than civic education – which engenders polarization and damages citizens’ virtue – in cultivating the virtues that a well-functioning democracy needs (2014: chap. 4). As a result, both political leaders and ordinary citizens lose the opportunity to form, shape and express the mutual commitment between them through ongoing political interactions. Just as importantly, they also lose the opportunity to cultivate Confucian political leadership as well as Confucian citizenship through mutual transformation within a democratic system. This article examines another possibility. Holding on to democratic principles and institutions, this article attempts to place a Confucian political leader at the centre of democratic civil society – a society in which the political relationship between a political leader and ordinary citizens is dialectically transformed in accordance with moral demands for a good political leader deeply embedded in Confucian public culture.

Theoretical Conundrums of Confucian democratic meritocracy

When turning our attention from criticizing Confucian non-democratic meritocracy to reconstructing Confucian meritocracy in a way compatible with democratic principles, one critical problem immediately arises. Given that pluralism is increasingly characterizing East Asian societies, as citizens in the region cherish the value of personal autonomy and individual freedom protected by the constitution, there might be various non-Confucians who have incompatible moral, religious and philosophical doctrines; they are likely to refuse a Confucian political leader who subscribes to the Confucian comprehensive doctrine and attempts to make laws and policies on the basis of it. This reality casts doubts on Confucian democratic meritocracy in two respects. First, a Confucian political leader’s attempt to exert his or her moral power makes for an authoritarian social atmosphere and, more importantly, his or her attempt to make public laws and policies based on a comprehensive Confucian doctrine is likely to oppress non-Confucian citizens. In other words, a political leader’s influence is ‘so strong’ that a slippery slope towards authoritarian-style political leadership and governance cannot be stopped. Second, conversely, one might argue that socio-economic conditions and perceptions of Confucian values as crucial for shoring up accepted Confucian conceptions of the individual, the family and society have changed significantly in the past two decades mainly due to the young generation’s refusal of undemocratic authority, a great emphasis on individuality, a low-growth economy and the increase in the number of one-person households. As a result, ‘Confucian mores and values’ are already considerably depleted and a Confucian political leader’s influence would be ‘so weak’ that he or she would not be chosen by democratic citizens in East Asian societies.

These two problems should be examined both theoretically and empirically. Let us begin with the theoretical level. Although neither view is primarily concerned with political leadership itself, Chan’s ‘moderate perfectionism’ and Sungmoon Kim’s ‘democratic perfectionism’ have mainly addressed the question of whether Confucian values can be compatible with value pluralism in contemporary East Asian society. While advocating for ‘Confucian political perfectionism’, ⁷ Chan argues that the conception of the good in contemporary East Asian society should not be derived from any comprehensive doctrine because in modern pluralistic societies in which ‘citizens live according to various ways of life and beliefs, including different religions’, promoting Confucianism as a comprehensive doctrine can damage civility among citizens (Chan 2014: 201). Then, he says that the role of Confucian political philosophy for modern times is to ‘offer a list of items that constitute the good life and good social order, such as valuable social relationships, practical wisdom and learning, sincerity, harmony, social and political trust and care, moral and personal autonomy, and economic sufficiency and self-responsibility, and explore the implications of these items for social and political arrangements’ (Chan 2014: 203). In other words, a political leader or government should try to establish an ethical relationship with ordinary citizens by appealing to a universally acceptable conception of the good.

Kim offers two objections to Chan’s moderate perfectionism: first, Kim argues that by decoupling the conception of the good life from a comprehensive doctrine of the good,

He (Chan) fails to construct a philosophically intelligible notion of political Confucianism. While discussing some items that can contribute to a good life, his theory of Confucian perfectionism renders the very idea of the good life too ambiguous. One of the consequences of this ambiguity is the massive blurring of the meaningful difference between Confucian and liberal perfectionism. (Sungmoon Kim 2016: 47)

Second, as discussed in the previous section, the proposal for the second chamber renders Chan’s perfectionism immoderate: the second chamber is likely to constrain ordinary citizens who have incompatible moral, religious and philosophical doctrines from making decisions important for promoting their basic interests. Therefore, by accepting democratic principles such as popular sovereignty, political equality and the right to political participation, Confucian perfectionism should give ordinary citizens the final say in shaping, forming and accommodating Confucian values in ways compatible with democratic values. ⁸ By doing so, argues Kim, ordinary citizens in East Asian societies gain an opportunity to form ‘Confucian democratic citizenship’ through dialectical interactions between ‘democratic principles and institutions’, which are all of Western provenance, and ‘Confucian rituals, habits, civilities, mores, and moral sentiments, which together form the existing semiotics of social communication’ (Sungmoon Kim 2018b: 75).

The debate between two versions of Confucian perfectionism raises several important points; paying close attention to these will help us to create a more developed theory of Confucian democratic meritocracy. First, let us examine how Kim’s first criticism of Chan’s moderate perfectionism applies to our context. In order for an ethical relationship between a political leader and ordinary citizens to be genuinely Confucian, it should be formed by a political leader’s moral virtues, predicated on intelligible Confucian moral values and ordinary citizens’ acceptance of them. In other words, although Kim does not pay attention to an ethical relationship between a political leader and ordinary citizens, we can infer that a Confucian ethical relationship should be established by a political leader who claims to possess moral virtues, which are accommodated in ways compatible with democratic values but still intelligibly Confucian and ordinary citizens’ acceptance of them.

Second, given that Confucian virtue politics, which heavily relies on a political leader’s virtue and does not permit equal political rights, has long been criticized for justifying authoritarian regimes in East Asian society, the concern raised by Chan and other theorists who advocate the principle of liberal neutrality seems reasonable. ⁹ The problem, however, is that their concern is grounded in the limited empirical foundation formed by experience with authoritarian and limited democratic societies. They do not see how citizens in a democratic society whose public culture is still saturated with Confucian values and mores actually interact with their Confucian public culture. In other words, as I will demonstrate shortly, they overlook the likelihood that in a democratic society in which the right to political participation is protected; free, fair and competitive elections are regularly held and ‘the norms, procedures, and expectations of democracy become so internalized that actors routinely, instinctively conform to the written (and unwritten) rules of the game, even when they conflict and compete intensely’ (Diamond 1999: 65), there is little possibility that a political leader or government can accelerate a ‘slippery slope’ towards Confucian authoritarian government by using undemocratic methods and coercive means.

Third, and consequently, Kim’s democratic perfectionism, which derives the items of the good from substantive Confucian values, can avoid the charge of an immoderate, overbearing or even anachronistic political theory because Confucian values and mores in civil and political society can be updated, revised and even rejected by empowered citizens. Rather, the problem with his perfectionism is that ‘Confucian mores and values’ have been significantly (though not entirely) depleted. Kim’s democratic perfectionism is grounded in the assumption that East Asian countries, particularly Korea, still share the Confucian public culture, be it thick or thin, so the primary concern of democratic perfectionism should be how Confucian values and mores – including filial piety; respect for elders, including ancestors; harmony within the family and ritual propriety – can be continuously recognized as an integral part of the good life and reproduced in a healthy way. Kim mainly focuses on the modes of democratic citizenship and citizens’ capacity for public reason, which facilitates dialectical negotiations between the substantive Confucian moral values and democratic values and institutions; here I depart from Kim’s view in favour of a Confucian democratic meritocracy, which relies heavily on a Confucian political leader’s moral power and affective accountability from the normative standpoint of Confucian virtue politics. ¹⁰

On the other hand, one might argue that my three claims about the two problems raised in the first part of this section (the problem of too-strong Confucianism and the problem of too-weak Confucianism) necessitate at least one prerequisite condition. That is, there must be a ‘consolidated democratic society’ where Confucian public culture, be it thick or thin, is shared and appreciated by members of society – hence, a Confucian political leader can be elected through democratic systems. If there is no such society, my attempt to theorize Confucian democratic meritocracy will be grounded in too many assumptions and conducted on a theoretically shaky ground. By analysing a political event that recently occurred in Korean civil society from the Confucian perspective and describing the idea of Confucian civil society, I will provide an empirical ground for Confucian democratic meritocracy.

Confucian civil society in consolidated democracy

Over the past three decades, Korea’s political system has successfully achieved basic conditions for the settlement and deepening of procedural democracy: protection of basic freedoms as constitutional rights, fair and periodic elections, the peaceful transfer of power between political parties and a vibrant civil society. And, it is generally accepted that Korean civil society made a great contribution to the consolidating process of democracy as well as the democratizing process. ¹¹ What is important in the present context is whether Korean civil society can be captured from the Confucian perspective and, if yes, in what sense it can be called Confucian civil society. Not surprisingly, many scholars have sought to find the influence of Confucian values and ethics on the formation of modern Korean civil society and to describe the ethical aspects of it. ¹² According to them, Korean civil society’s relationship with the state in the democratizing period can be captured by the conventional view of civil society, which emphasizes its independent role and status against the state. On the other hand, political actors’ moral motivations, their moral ideals and their perceptions of the private and public spheres are not captured by the conventional view, which sees actors in civil society as rational and autonomous individuals who pursue their own interests or form informal opinions through the rational exchange of reasons.

What is intriguing is that despite the consolidation of democratic structures and the emergence of pluralistic interests in Korean civil society, it is often noted that the moral ground for the political judgement of Korean citizens is difficult to explain with reference to ‘interest politics’ or ‘deliberative politics’, two of the most salient normative standards for political judgement in Western political philosophy. Instead, Korean citizens’ judgements regarding political legitimacy still appear to rely far more on an affective but critical evaluation of both the political outcomes brought about by political leaders and, sometimes more significantly, their ‘proper conduct’ in the political arena whose core constitutive elements can be reasonably attributed to Confucian values and mores.

Surprisingly, we can easily find this Confucian aspect of Korean civil society in the Korean Constitutional Court’s (KCC) decision on the impeachment of President Park Geun-hye. On 11 March 2017, issuing a unanimous 8-0 ruling upholding the Korean Assembly’s December 2016 vote to impeach, the KCC says:

The question of whether to remove the President from office when he or she has violated the law should be determined by whether this violation is of such gravity in terms of protecting the Constitution, that it is required to preserve the Constitution and restore the impaired constitutional order through a decision in favor of removal; or whether the President, through a violation of law, has betrayed the trust of the people to such an extent that said public trust vested in the President should be forfeited before the presidential term ends. ¹³ (emphasis added)

Second, this explanation does not properly describe why even ardent supporters of President Park withdrew their support. Korean politics has long been dominated by two main conflicting camps. One is the progressive camp, representing the values of substantive democracy, socio-economic equality and peaceful engagement with North Korea. The other is the conservative camp, representing the values of economic growth, national security, anti-Communism and a hard line stance on North Korea. President Park, the daughter of Park Junghee – the military dictator and icon of Korean conservatism who ruled Korea from 1963 until his assassination in 1979 by Kim Jae-gyu, the director of the Korean Central Intelligence Agency – had benefitted from the conservatives’ nostalgia for her father during her entire political career. Many supporters voted for her believing that she represented and would restore conservative values. Just over half (51.6%) of those who voted for President Park in 2012 agreed with her impeachment 5 years later. For perhaps different reasons, just under half (48%) of the supporters of Moon Jae-in, the 2012 Democratic Party presidential candidate, agreed with her impeachment. It is widely accepted that the Choi Soon-sil scandal was what propelled ordinary Korean citizens to take part in the Candlelight movement, which eventually led to the impeachment of the sitting president. ¹⁵ Yet it is still unclear whether ordinary citizens saw Park’s corruption as a moral problem or took a more pragmatic view on which the essence of the president’s wrongdoing was unjust intervention in the free market. This latter interpretation is supported by the fact that one of reasons for the impeachment was the president’s violation of the freedom and property rights of enterprises. ¹⁶ In other words, the expression ‘the trust of the people’ may be only a conventional expression of disappointment at a political leader’s wrongdoing and may not bear on whether he or she has failed to fulfil political responsibility in the Confucian sense. Therefore, in order for this case to be explained by the Confucian perspective, we need to more carefully focus on why millions of Korean citizens took to the streets and participated in massive protests against the Park Gyen-hye government and in what sense their moral motivation can be captured from the Confucian perspective. To this end, this article focuses on Park’s lack of basic moral abilities as well as her lack of political competence – clearly revealed in the Sewol Ferry incident. ¹⁷

As noted above, it is undeniable that the Choi Soon-sil scandal was what propelled ordinary Korean citizens to participate in the Candlelight movement. And, the KCC acknowledged Choi’s illegal meddling in state affairs through her private connection with the president as the only legally valid ground for Park’s impeachment. What is casually dismissed, however, is that the Korean public’s negative evaluation of her and the conviction that she was utterly unsuitable for the nation’s highest leadership position dramatically increased when she failed to show up for as long as seven hours during the ‘Sewol Ferry incident’. Watching this tragedy on live broadcast and dumbfounded by the sudden disappearance of the nation’s highest political leader, Koreans concurred that the president’s failed leadership had exacerbated this national crisis. Nan Kim supports this view:

Park’s handling of the disaster was the beginning of her own political demise because it hardened the determination of a wider public to hold Park and her administration accountable for their incompetence, which was exemplified by the Sewol crisis while also reflected in several other highly contentious controversies. (Nan Kim 2017: 7)

Seen from this perspective, we can capture how Confucian meritocratic principles are actually working in a consolidated democratic society and thus derive the idea of Confucian (democratic) civil society. First, it was ‘ordinary citizens’ who called for the affective accountability of President Park and attempted to oust her from office due to her lack of moral abilities. One might argue that there is no significant difference between a Western-style civil society and Confucian civil society in that George W. Bush was harshly criticized when he failed to deal with Hurricane Katrina in a timely and efficient way and Donald Trump has been criticized for his lack of moral virtues and sympathy towards common people. However, a crucial difference between Confucian civil society and Western civil society, observed in the Korean case, is that the trust of the people, which is formed by a political leader’s moral virtues and ordinary citizens’ acceptance, was critical to judging the democratic legitimacy of the government. In this sense, Korean civil society is also differentiated from non-democratic meritocratic society in which the instrumental value of a political leader’s competence is emphasized over the intrinsic value of a political leader’s moral virtues. The fact that ‘affective accountability’ was required of President Park as the constitutive element of democratic legitimacy gives a new aspect to the idea of Confucian civil society in consolidated democracy. When democratic institutions are successfully set up and consensus on the belief that the democratic system is unlikely to revert to an authoritarian system is firmly established, the focal point of political participation in Confucian civil society moves from a hierarchical ethical relationship between the ruler and the ruled towards mutual moral transformation between a political leader who should fulfil affective accountability and empowered citizens who have the legitimate right to remonstrate with a political leader about his or her lack of moral ability.

What is important is that the process of mutual moral transformation does not deviate from democratic rules and procedures as is seen in the Korean case that ordinary citizens’ various voices, which were motivated by the moral aspiration to select a morally virtuous political leader, called for the impeachment together and the nationwide protest proceeded peacefully and in accordance with democratic civility and procedures. Rather, the process necessitates more horizontal, verifiable and substantive interactions between a political leader and his or her constituents. In fact, a democratic relationship between a political leader and ordinary citizens is not a necessary condition for fulfilling Confucian affective accountability. As seen in Chan’s proposal, affective accountability can be also fulfilled by a patriarchal but benevolent political leader in the second chamber. Or even a political leader in an authoritarian regime, or the sympathetic king in a constitutional monarchy, can fulfil the requirement of affective accountability by showing a sincere attitude towards the well-being of the people. In addition, one might argue that what Korean citizens really expected of President Park was that she would represent the moral identity of a whole nation rather than interactively communicate with ordinary citizens. Nevertheless, it should be noted that even before she became president, President Park had been criticized not only for her lack of moral ability to show sincere attitude towards ordinary citizens, especially those who suffer from socio-economic hardships, but also for her lack of ability to communicate with them in more horizontal ways. Moreover, according to two New Year’s public opinion surveys conducted by major Korean media outlets in December 2016, in response to the question of which virtue is most required of a political leader and the next president, 36% of respondents in one survey and 30.4% in the other cited ‘communication ability’, which requires a political leader to engage in more horizontal and actual interactions with citizens, and 30.6% of respondents and 29.2% in the two surveys cited ‘moral ability’ as the second most required of a political leader. ¹⁹ Taken together, we can infer that ordinary citizens in Korean society require more democratic interactions between a political leader and constituents in a formal sense, but at the heart of such interactions is sincere attitude towards the well-being of the people rather than rational discussion nor interest-orientation negotiation.

Confucian political leadership in consolidated democracy

Based on the discussions so far, we can capture the idea of Confucian civil society in consolidated democracy, at the heart of which lies moral interactions between a political leader and ordinary citizens formed by dialectical negotiations between Confucian public culture and socio-political structures predicated on democratic principles. ²⁰ This idea makes it possible to establish three principles of Confucian democratic meritocracy as follows:

The democratic principle of sovereignty: a political leader’s legitimate right to rule is given by citizens in democratic society.

In the previous section, I demonstrated how the first and second principles are upheld in a consolidated democratic society. The remaining question then is how a Confucian political leader can appeal to ordinary citizens and can be chosen by them in consolidated democratic society where many candidates, representing various goods, are competing with one another. This section answers this question by exploring the role of a Confucian political leader in democratic society from the normative standpoint of Confucian virtue politics.

No doubt, in the Confucian tradition, the key to a political leader’s moral virtues has been thought to be sympathetic care (ren 仁), which is incubated and cultivated within familial loves and duties (Analects 1.2). Throughout The Analects, ren is primarily described as a substantive moral emotion – ‘benevolence’ or ‘sympathetic care’ –, on the one hand, and a way of treating others on the other hand. The latter interpretation connotes reciprocal feeling (shu 恕), that is, the golden rule: ‘do not impose on others what you do not want and extend what you think morally good’ (Analects 12.2, 15.24; Mencius 4A9). Although neo-Confucian Dai Zhen explicitly employs perspective-taking to judge whether the people’s desires satisfy the condition of ‘life-fulfilment’ (Tiwald 2010), and this golden rule, shu, has often been associated with a capacity for empathy ²¹ at the core of which lies the cognitive ability of mind-reading, the heart of shu as described in the Confucian classical texts is to make judgement in light of not others’ feelings, but one’s own morally cultivated feelings. This is because without a morally cultivated core emotion such as ren, empathy understood as mind-reading is likely to result in two different kinds of moral hazards. One is that the ruler becomes a psychopathic mind reader who uses this ability only for his or her own interest, and the other is that the ruler becomes a populist political leader, permitting all kinds of desires since he has no core moral emotions with which to guide the people’s unrefined desires.

In Confucian civil society, a political leader’s affective accountability based on ren and shu exerts two ethico-political effects. First, a Confucian political leader’s moral virtues exert a moral influence upon the entire society without violating any citizen’s basic interests. In Confucian civil society, a political leader’s proper conduct, which is based on his or her sympathetic care, creates the effect of mutual moral transformation by shaping and refining the emotions and feelings of all participants, including political leaders themselves, towards more refined states. When a political leader’s moral influence is properly appreciated, it creates a civilizing force by providing citizens who want to be efficacious in politics and even try to become political leaders themselves with moral guidance. Given that a Confucian political leader is one of many candidates in democratic society and the final say in giving him or her political authority comes from all citizens, this effect does not violate the basic interests of citizens, even who do not necessarily subscribe to Confucian values.

Second, a political leader’s sympathetic narratives based on his or her Confucian moral emotions can exert more active moral influence upon ordinary citizens. On the one hand, a Confucian political leader leads ordinary citizens to fruitful public discussion on the compatibility between Confucian moral values and democratic principles and persuades them to accept public laws and policies on the basis of intelligible Confucian values. On the other hand, a Confucian political leader establishes an affective political relationship with ordinary citizens by showing sincere concern for their basic interests and broadens the horizon of mutual understanding by exhorting them to think of all as belonging to an extended family. One might argue that even though a Confucian political leader’s moral virtues are accommodated in ways that correspond with democratic values, a Confucian political leader is likely to face lukewarm responses from citizens who do not subscribe to any Confucian values. This is because when a political leader’s sympathetic care has been cultivated in light of Confucian moral experiences, he or she is likely to fail to grasp or appreciate affective attachments based on different moral values and beliefs. More importantly, a political leader’s sincere attitude is likely to lead to the implementation of laws and policies that do not represent non-Confucian citizens’ basic interests.

As such, the effect of establishing an affective political relationship via the reliance upon sympathetic narratives can decrease when engaging with citizens who do not endorse Confucian moral values. However, it is important to note that even though such citizens may not support a Confucian political leader, a political leader’s proper conduct based on sympathetic care per se can be evaluated in terms of its basic respect for human beings. In particular, when solving socio-political problems, a political leader’s proper conduct mediates conflict by showing a respect to all members of society. This relieves unnecessary emotional conflicts which would drive participants away from addressing key topics. In this sense, a political leader’s proper conduct can help non-Confucian citizens to acknowledge a Confucian political leader as a partner in political cooperation.

Now we can describe a multistage process that a Confucian political leader and ordinary citizens embark upon. First, citizens come into civil society when their basic interests are violated or when there are issues that ‘the public ought to discuss’. As Kim nicely points out, to mediate and resolve such political disputes and conflicts, ‘a set of democratic institutions and underlying practices’ is needed ‘for authoritative coordination of social, economic, and political interactions among members of a political community’ (Sungmoon Kim 2018b: 37). At the same time, citizens come into civil society and critically engage in a set of diverse activities when a political leader or the government fails to show basic moral sentiments towards citizens. Such activities comprise not only periodic elections but also ongoing political processes such as face-to-face meetings with political leaders, calling elected representatives, making political donations, circulating petitions, participating in public forums and so on. Ordinary citizens’ informal opinions not only express what they think may be morally wrong but also suggest new ways of looking at the problems at hand. And in turn, this process helps ordinary citizens to morally grow and gain qualifications for being political leaders.

On the other hand, political leaders come into civil society to not only solve public issues but also to fulfil affective accountability. Based on their own cultivated moral emotions, political leaders make sympathetic narratives and attempt to care about citizens’ affective attachments and emotional responses. The motivation for fulfilling affective accountability is not fully decoupled from the realistic goal of re-election. From a normative standpoint, by generating sympathetic narratives that exhort ordinary citizens to shift back and forth between their own partial perspectives, political leaders form bridges among citizens’ affective moral perspectives as dispersed in civil society. Political leaders play a crucial role in leading ordinary citizens’ uncultivated and unmediated emotional responses potentially to the point where all citizens can commonly share and empathize, though they may not fully agree with their opponents’ opinions and their subsequent policies. As mutual and affective interactions between a Confucian political leader and ordinary citizens are deepened, Confucian civil society becomes the locus of Confucian political leadership as well as citizenship.

Conclusion

Although Confucian political theory has achieved remarkable progress in the past two decades by reconstructing the moral ideal of Confucian virtue politics to be compatible with democratic values and institutions, Confucian political leadership has not been given sufficient attention from Confucian theorists who advocate liberal democratic values. This is because political leadership has been traditionally regarded as antithetical to liberal democracy in Western political philosophy, and, more importantly, the need to defend the values of democratic citizenship and equality rather than political leadership in East Asian society has arisen as Confucian meritocrats justify elite rule or authoritarian regimes. Nevertheless, it should be noted that Confucian virtue politics necessarily depends on a political leader’s moral virtues, and it aims to achieve mutual moral transformation between a political leader and common people. In addition, given that a political leader is still a most powerful and influential actor in real politics and that there remains in East Asian society a Confucian public culture requiring a morally virtuous political leader, both the normative standards required of a Confucian political leader and his or her role in contemporary East Asian society should be taken seriously.

More importantly, Confucian meritocrats have derived the justifications of Confucian non-democratic meritocracy from the ideal of Confucian virtue politics. This means that to establish an effective counterargument against Confucian non-democratic meritocracy, we need to show that the ideal of Confucian virtue politics can be even better realized in democratic system. To this end, in this article, I suggested the idea of Confucian democratic meritocracy, at the core of which lies mutual moral transformation, formed by dialectical interactions between empowered citizens’ moral demand for a virtuous political leader and a political leader’s duty of affective accountability. Ultimately, I expect that my theoretical attempt not only takes the name of Confucian virtue politics back from Confucian non-democratic meritocracy but also defends democratic values and institutions against it.