Confucian meritocracy,political legitimacy and constitutional democracy

Introduction

The increasing diversity in East Asian societies has led to a new wave of political theories that attempt to situate Confucianism in a liberal and democratic background so that both the historical and cultural influence of Confucianism and the accommodating capacity of liberal democracy can be maintained. ¹ Despite their differences, these theories share a similar aversion towards Confucian political meritocracy, by which I mean a political system that publicly endorses Confucianism and selects political leaders based on their merits in accordance with Confucianism. Interestingly and somewhat counterintuitively, some theories of Confucian political meritocracy do include democratic elements. For instance, both Daniel Bell and Jiang Qing include a democratic house in their respective systems of legislature that are supposed to contribute to the legitimacy of a meritocratic Confucian state. ² However, it would be missing the big picture if Bell’s and Jiang’s approaches are understood as attempts to democratize Confucian political meritocracy. Quite the opposite. Both Bell and Jiang have very negative views on liberal and especially democratic ideals and institutions. ³ Their disappointment and even disdain towards democracy pave the road for their proposals for Confucian political meritocracy in replacement of liberal democracy.

This seeming contradiction between the willingness to adopt democratic elements and the harsh criticisms against democracy prompts Sungmoon Kim to ask, ‘why should we bother with democracy if its disvalue is so obvious and practically unbearable?’ (Kim 2016, 9). In my view, two other questions need to be answered before Kim’s question can be fully addressed, which requires an exploration of the relationship between legitimacy, meritocracy and democracy. First, in the backdrop of pluralism in East Asian societies, how should the concept of legitimacy be understood? Second, can a nondemocratic meritocracy be nonetheless legitimate? These are the guiding questions of this essay. In the next section, I will go through what may be called ‘multiple legitimacies’ and what Leigh Jenco refers to as the hybrid view of legitimacy. I will argue that both fail to provide substantial guidance in reconceiving legitimacy in pluralistic societies. Instead, I will propose a more helpful view of legitimacy by drawing from John Rawls’s liberal principle of legitimacy. I will demonstrate that Rawls’s classic formulation can be deprived of its liberal connotation by taking constitutional essentials as the source of legitimation for political authority, to which citizens can relate in a plurality of manners from within their comprehensive doctrine, or for partially or even fully prudential reasons. I will refer to this as the principle of pluralistic legitimacy (PPL). In the following section, I will address the second question by applying the PPL to nondemocratic meritocracy. I will argue that nondemocratic meritocracy, of which Confucian political meritocracy is an example, need not be illegitimate under all circumstances. However, the lack of practicality and conflict with contemporary pluralism make it a less likely candidate for East Asian societies. Finally, it will become clear that a pluralistic understanding of legitimacy does not rule out meritocracy, but it does make a strong case for an antiperfectionist state, even if it might be nondemocratic. Thus, Kim’s concern in the original question quoted in the beginning might be misplaced. The problem with Bell’s and Jiang’s theories of Confucian political meritocracy is not so much that the inclusion of democratic elements leads to theoretical inconsistency, or that Confucian political meritocracy is necessarily illegitimate, but that the comprehensively perfectionist nature of their proposals make them unfit for contemporary East Asian societies.

From multiple legitimacies to hybridity: Political legitimacy in East Asia

There is no denying that East Asia has always been an exceptionally diverse region with a plurality of cultural traditions and religions. ⁴ However, because of the dominant and enduring influence of Confucianism, the region is sometimes (and wrongly) considered homogeneously Confucian. What is even more misleading is the belief that a Confucian cultural background necessarily leads to a Confucian state. As a matter of fact, few scholars believe that a comprehensively Confucian state is practical in East Asia. Instead, the most vibrant discussions in Confucian political theory in the past decade has been about the relationship between Confucianism and democracy, as well as the most reasonable arrangement to accommodate both Confucian ideals and democratic institutions. From the democratic side, a Confucian state has a legitimacy problem on two levels. First, a Confucian state needs to legitimatize its superiority over competing cultural traditions and religions to become publicly endorsed by the state and to influence legislation and policy making. Second, granting the superiority of Confucianism still leaves the legitimacy problem unsolved. Meritorious rule is central to Confucian political thought, but the essence of ‘merit’ or ‘worth’ is less clear in contemporary societies. ⁵ Selecting rulers based on such a vague and easily manipulated criterion risks misrepresenting and even suppressing the will of the people. From the Confucian side, democracy represents at best one of the many criteria of legitimacy and at worst a highly problematic political system for East Asian societies. ⁶ Connecting both sides is the mutual criticism that the other side lacks sufficient or complete legitimacy. However, it is not clear if the two sides hold a similar concept of legitimacy, which is somewhat understandable given the complexity of the concept itself. Most would agree that the concept of legitimacy has both a descriptive and a normative perspective. ⁷ Contemporary theories of Confucian political meritocracy, Jiang’s Confucian constitutionalism for instance, adopts a mixture of both perspectives in constructing the idea of legitimacy. The descriptive or empirical perspective is necessary given the long history and influence of Confucianism in East Asia and China in particular. The normative perspective, on the other hand, is present for two reasons. First, even a Confucian state needs to justify its use of coercive power, which calls for a normative understanding of political legitimacy. Second, the inclusion of democratic elements also strengthens the normative perspective of political legitimacy, that is, political authority at least partially relies on the endorsement of the popular will. As mentioned in the introduction, the inclusion of democratic elements in an otherwise Confucian and meritocratic theory of politics raises some serious questions. It is not unreasonable to assume more comprehensive Confucian political theories that do away with any reference to democratic ideals and institutions altogether. In this case, a purely descriptive understanding of legitimacy might be adopted. For example, a comprehensively Confucian meritocracy can be viewed as fully legitimate simply because the majority of citizens genuinely subscribe to Confucianism. In other words, citizens have faith in the leadership deemed worthy according to Confucian doctrines. Alternatively, citizens might also endorse such a political arrangement simply because the state has been an excellent provider and caretaker of their economic well-being.

The complexity and diversity within the concept of legitimacy leads to exploration of new ways to conceive legitimate political arrangement, especially in East Asia where a plurality of cultural traditions and religions coexist. In this section, I will first outline two such attempts in the discussion of Confucian political theory and then argue that both Jiang Qing’s multiple legitimacies and Leigh Jenco’s hybrid legitimacy fail to capture what is at stake with political legitimacy in East Asia. While Jiang’s approach fails because its focus is too narrow to be practical, Jenco’s approach fails because its scope is too broad to be meaningful.

Jiang Qing is arguably one of the most controversial contemporary Confucian political theorists. The controversy surrounding him and his theory is manifold, but the most obvious theoretical controversy has to do with his proposal of a tricameral parliamentary political system for China on the basis of his Confucian constitutionalism. To preface his proposal, Jiang says that the way ahead for China’s political development is ‘the Way of the Humane Authority and not democracy’, and that this is ‘the only way in which Chinese culture can respond to the challenge of Western culture’ (Jiang 2013, 27; emphasis mine). ⁸ Jiang draws two crucial distinctions in this statement. There is the distinction between ‘the Way’ and democracy, and there is the distinction between Chinese and Western cultures. Because of the ‘inherent pattern of Chinese history’, Jiang claims, democracy cannot be the answer to the future of China (p. 27). Instead, drawing from the Gongyang Commentary to the Spring and Autumn Annals, Jiang proposes a threefold view of political legitimacy that points to what he refers to as ‘the Way of the Humane Authority’ that involves the heaven, the earth and the human:

The legitimacy of ‘heaven’ refers to transcendent, sacred legitimacy. In Chinese culture ‘heaven’ has both the character of a ruling will, personal yet hidden, and a transcendent, sacred sense of natural morality. The legitimacy of ‘earth’ refers to the legitimacy that comes from history and culture because cultures are formed through history in particular places. The legitimacy of the ‘human’ refers to the legitimacy of the will of the people because conformity to the will of the people directly determines whether or not people will obey political authorities. (p. 28)

Jiang’s theory of multiple legitimacies is as innovative as it is problematic. ¹⁰ The main innovation is the attempt to combine Confucian meritocracy with democratic values. According to Daniel A. Bell, it is ‘tempting to conceive of the possibility of reconciling the Confucian emphasis on rule by wise and virtuous elites with the democratic values of popular participation, accountability, and transparency’ (Bell 2006, 152). The reason for this temptation has to do with the Confucian doctrine of ruling by merits, which can be demonstrated from both the perspective of the ruler and that of the ruled. From the ruler’s perspective, cultivating virtues will have a ripple-like effect that leads to moral transformation of the entire community. The ruler is in a unique position to set the example of virtue. Confucius offers a comparison between the virtuous ruler and the North Star when he says, ‘One who rules through the power of Virtue is analogous to the Pole Star: it simply remains in its place and receives the homage of the myriad lesser stars’ (Confucius 2003, 8). From the perspective of the people who follow the example of the ruler, the legitimacy of the state and the ruler also relies on his virtue and merits. Consider, for instance, the following exchange between Zigong and Confucius on the issue of government:

The Master said, ‘Simply make sure there is sufficient food, sufficient armaments, and that you have the confidence of the common people’.

Zigong said, ‘If sacrificing one of these three things became unavoidable, which would you sacrifice first?’

The Master replied, ‘I would sacrifice the armaments’.

Zigong said, ‘If sacrificing one of the two remaining things became unavoidable, which would you sacrifice next?’

The Master replied, ‘I would sacrifice the food. Death has always been with us, but a state cannot stand once it has lost the confidence of the people’ (Confucius 2003, 128).

Recently, however, Bell revises his earlier stance. Criticizing Jiang’s proposal as unrealistic, especially in the likely scenario that the popular support for political leaders chosen on the basis of one person, one vote clashes with the meritocratic endorsement of leaders chosen by Confucian standards, Bell says:

If we want something better than one person, one vote – such as a political institution that secures the interests of future generations, with the power to complement, and sometimes override, the decisions of politicians elected by one person, one vote – it cannot be done in the form of proposals for bicameral or tricameral legislatures, no matter what the context. (2015, 167)

Unlike Jiang, Leigh Jenco recently proposes the concept of hybridity as ‘a new lens to interpret legitimacy in East Asia’ (Jenco 2016, 247). According to Jenco,

Hybridity is not simply a mixture or juxtaposition of different elements. Rather, the concept portrays social realities as always constituted (as opposed to, say, merely episodically enhanced) by multiple elements – regime types, allegiances, values, cultures, interests, motives – whose relative content and relationship change dynamically over time, both producing and being produced by the conditions in which they are found. (pp. 238–239)

From the Liberal Principle of Legitimacy to the Principle of Pluralistic Legitimacy

Although the concept of hybridity is too abstract to provide substantive guidance regarding the issue of political legitimacy, it does highlight the fact that East Asian societies have become increasingly pluralistic. How to understand political legitimacy when a plurality of comprehensive doctrines are competing for sociopolitical attention becomes an urgent matter. It will be recalled that Jiang’s multiple legitimacies represent a backward-looking approach to address pluralism and legitimacy at the same time. On the liberal and democratic side, John Rawls’s political liberalism is also inspired by the need to accommodate pluralism in well-ordered liberal societies, which prompts Rawls to ask the fundamental question of political liberalism: ‘how is it possible for there to exist over time a just and stable society of free and equal citizens, who remain profoundly divided by reasonable religious, philosophical, and moral doctrines?’ (Rawls 2005, 4) What is of special interest to us is Rawls’s attempt to define the legitimacy of political authority in a liberal democracy. According to Rawls,

our exercise of political power is fully proper only when it is exercised in accordance with a constitution the essentials of which all citizens as free and equal may reasonably be expected to endorse in the light of principles and ideals acceptable to their common human reason. (p. 137)

Rawls’s liberal principle of legitimacy touches upon two important aspects of political legitimacy that give it the potential to go beyond its liberal boundary. First of all, the source of legitimation lies with the constitutional essentials. Rawls has in mind the constitutional essentials as concerning ‘questions about what political rights and liberties, say, may reasonably be included in a written constitution, when assuming the constitution may be interpreted by a supreme court, or some similar body’ (Rawls 2005, 442, Footnote 7). Frank Michelman further develops this point with what he calls ‘legitimation-worthy constitution’, by which he means

one whose terms are such as to allow you or me to say, with clear conscience, that any law whose process of enactment, and whose content, pass muster under that constitution’s requirements can ipso facto be deemed a law that all within range have good enough reason to accept, even if they disagree with it. (Michelman 2010, 1017)

The second aspect of the liberal principle of legitimacy that also gives it the potential to go beyond its liberal context is Rawls’s emphasis that the justification of constitutional essentials, which further justifies the legitimacy of political authority, is contingent upon reasonable citizens’ endorsement based on their practice of common human reason. ¹⁴ It is unrealistic to expect that all citizens in a liberal democracy are reasonable in the Rawlsian sense. ¹⁵ It is equally unrealistic to expect reasonable citizens to be able to stay absolutely neutral regarding their comprehensive doctrines when participating in public reason. ¹⁶ In the world we actually reside, societies consist of people who endorse a wide variety of comprehensive doctrines, such as Catholicism, Islam and Confucianism. Some elements of the constitutional essentials, even if the latter are legitimation-worthy, could become problematic at least for some of citizens (Ferrara 2014, 90). ¹⁷ But this does not mean that there is simply no way that citizens can still endorse the constitutional essentials. Sungmoon Kim recently proposes what he calls a pragmatic theory of Confucian democracy by combining the Schumpeterian and instrumental conception of democracy with the Deweyan and intrinsic conception of democracy. According to Kim, being pragmatic about Confucian democracy means that the instrumental value of democracy should be emphasized in the initial and transition stage of democratization. The Schumpeterian model looms large ‘because the instrumental value is the key motivating force of regime transition on which this model of democracy is undergirded’ (Kim 2017, 241). This pragmatic turn is necessary because people are more likely to be motivated by the instrumental than the intrinsic value of democracy. According to Kim, the purpose of pragmatic Confucian democracy when it comes to realize the instrumental value of democracy is

not so much to faithfully serve what classical Confucianism requires ethically by means of state perfectionism as to theorize a principled way in which democracy both as a political system and as a way of life can acquire its instrumental and intrinsic values in a way intelligible to citizens of East Asia. (p. 246)

As a matter of fact, PPL is capable of capturing dynamism, novelty and instability of human political practice suggested by the concept of hybridity. By virtue of reconceiving the constitutional essentials not as written and often static authoritative documents, PPL regards them as the source of legitimacy without losing sight of the possibility for sociopolitical shifts. As we shall see in the next section, PPL is also highly novel in the sense that it offers an adaptive perspective of political legitimacy and avoids the traditional binaries, such as East/West, democratic/nondemocratic or traditional/modern. Finally, the central motivation behind PPL is precisely the fact that our sociopolitical reality is highly unstable, to the degree that purely liberal democratic ideas need to be reconsidered and adjusted when applying in East Asian societies. PPL thus follows the general spirit of hybridity while being specific enough to offer some novel possibilities. Nevertheless, it will be recalled that the drawback of hybridity is that it does not provide us with substantive guidance when it comes to political legitimacy in pluralistic societies. PPL, on the other hand, is specific enough to generate substantive implications, to which we now turn.

In contemporary discourse on legitimacy, democratic ideals and institutions are often the precondition of discussion. One implication of PPL is that this precondition is unnecessarily restrictive. Nondemocratic meritocracy, such as the Confucian meritocratic state imagined earlier, need not be illegitimate. If the majority of citizens genuinely subscribe to and actively practice Confucianism, then it is reasonable to assume that the constitutional essentials understood as a structured complex of interrelated institutions and principles regulating the functioning of the state are also inspired and even dictated by Confucian ideals and doctrines. Instead of one person one vote, the leader of the state can be selected through a combination of local election, national examination and meaningful recommendation based on Confucian understanding of merit or worth. From a liberal and democratic perspective, such a Confucian meritocratic state would not be legitimate, primarily because the authority of the state is not democratic. However, according to PPL, this Confucian meritocratic state can be nondemocratic but not illegitimate. If the vast majority of citizens can endorse the constitutional essentials from within Confucianism, and the rest of the citizens can offer their endorsement based on partially Confucian and partially prudential reasons, or based on fully prudential reasons, then this nondemocratic state can be considered legitimate. By thinking of Rawls’s liberal principle of legitimacy not as the definitive understanding of political legitimacy but as a liberal example of a broader concept, we are able to avoid adopting a liberal democratic lens before examining the issue of legitimacy.

Two objections naturally arise at this point. First, one might argue that the principle of legitimacy without liberal and democratic restraints risks legitimizing state actions that take advantage of citizens’ endorsement. What if citizens have prudential reasons (economic incentives, for example) to condone state actions that obviously infringe upon their human rights, will such a state still be legitimate? The short answer is no, but it is worth dissecting the reasons. On the one hand, it is possible that the rights-infringing state actions are not constitutional, then the state clearly loses it political legitimacy. On the other hand, it is also possible that the rights-infringing state actions are constitutional, meaning that such actions can find justification in the constitution, which in turn is supported by comprehensive doctrines, such as Confucianism. In this case, the state loses its legitimacy because it does not meet the minimum standard of decency for nondemocracy, by which I primarily mean the rule of law and protection of basic human rights. It is not my intention to go into details regarding these two requirements. Needless to say, it is possible to make the argument that a Confucian state can and should maintain the rule of law and the protection of basic human rights as either a direct measure or a fallback strategy. ²⁰ Finally, as Ferrara rightly suggests, the legitimacy of authority ‘need not be an all-or-none concept, but may admit of degrees on a continuum’ (Ferrara, 2020). Depending on how citizens relate to the constitutional essentials, the legitimacy of the state’s political authority can vary.

The second objection challenges my claim that PPL maintains a sense of dynamism as the concept of hybridity suggests. The objection takes issue with my example of the Confucian meritocratic state in two ways. First, my example assumes a rather static understanding of the constitutional essentials in that Confucianism maintains its dominance and that some citizens are required to utilize their prudential reasons to endorse such political authority. Second, my example is simply unrealistic because of the diversity of comprehensive doctrines adopted by people in East Asia. Although Confucianism is arguably the most influential, there is no denying that citizens also turn to other comprehensive doctrines for their ways of life. However, this objection misses the mark by mixing the theoretical question of political legitimacy with the practical question of political reality. The Confucian meritocratic state in my example remains legitimate because it meets PPL, but its share of reality in East Asia does lead to the issue of practicality. In other words, given the increasing diversity in East Asia, will a theoretically legitimate Confucian meritocratic state make practical sense? If not, what kind of lesson can PPL teach us when it comes to East Asia’s political future? By way of conclusion, I will respond to these two questions in the final section.

Between democracy and antiperfectionism

Recently, Jonathan Quong proposes a matrix to map the relationship between liberalism and perfectionism by asking two questions: ²¹

Must liberal political philosophy be based in some particular ideal of what constitutes a valuable or worthwhile human life, or other metaphysical belief?

The first question determines the scope of liberalism. Those who answer ‘yes’ to the first question adopt a comprehensive view of liberalism, whereas those who answer ‘no’ adopt a political view of liberalism. The second question determines whether or not perfectionism is compatible with liberalism. A matrix of different positions will come out of answering these two questions. John Rawls’s political liberalism, for instance, answers ‘no’ to both questions. Although the two questions are intended for liberalism and liberal societies, they still provide insight relevant to our discussion. Sungmoon Kim borrows this matrix to make the point that ‘only comprehensive Confucian perfectionism can be a plausible normative position’, because ‘Confucianism, unlike (though arguably) liberalism, is already a self-contained ethical system and a comprehensive doctrine’ (Kim 2016, 39). In other words, East Asians’ decision ‘to remain Confucian is already a perfectionist decision’, which means that ‘it is impossible to be perfectly neutral in regard to other competing values, hence the implausibility of antiperfectionism’ (p. 40). Confucian meritocracy, such as Jiang Qing’s Confucian constitutionalism, is necessarily predicated on comprehensive Confucian perfectionism. However, Kim goes on to propose what he calls ‘public reason Confucianism’ by juxtaposing a ‘partially comprehensive Confucianism’ with John Rawls’s political liberal understanding of public reason. The motivation behind this unorthodox move is that Kim sees in some East Asian societies, South Korea in particular, an interplay between Confucianism and liberalism, which is on clear display in the South Korea’s liberal constitution. In Kim’s opinion, although certain Confucian values, such as filial piety, were never declared by the South Korean court as constitutional values, they are publicly acknowledged and even promoted in the cases Kim examines, which grants them ‘quasi-constitutional’ status (p. 123). Kim refers to this type of constitutionalism as ‘indirect constitutionalism’, according to which certain cultural values attain public-constitutional significance even if they are not constitutional values in a strictly legal sense (p. 124). By distinguishing between fully and partially comprehensive Confucianism, and between direct and indirect constitutionalism, Kim is thus reserving a special place for Confucianism to interact with liberalism, at least in certain East Asian societies. As I argue elsewhere, Kim’s strategy eventually backfires because it lets liberalism and indeed other non-Confucian comprehensive doctrines in through the backdoor. ²² The reason is simple, public reason Confucianism begs the question of ‘why Confucianism’. In Kim’s view, the central goal of public reason Confucian constitutionalism is ‘to produce a coherent public identity of Confucian and democratic citizens by weaving two perfectionist commitments – liberal and Confucian – into a single coherent constitutionalism’ (Kim 2016, 136). To achieve this goal, cultural negotiations will take place between Confucian values and practice, and liberal democratic values and rights. But this sort of cultural negotiation cannot be reserved exclusively for Confucianism and liberalism, since there is an undeniable plurality of other comprehensive doctrines, even if Confucianism is still the most influential one.

If this critique of public reason Confucianism stands, then it seems that a theoretically legitimate Confucian meritocratic state as we described in the previous section makes little practical sense. In a recent survey by the Association of Religion Data Archive, South Korean citizens who practice Confucianism amount to only 10.9%, whereas those who practice Buddhism and Christianity amount to 24.8% and 33.4%, respectively. ²³ In addition, Doh Chull Shin’s comprehensive empirical studies demonstrate that South Korea is by no means an exception. In none of the five historically Confucian countries (Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, China and Vietnam) is the Confucian way of life the most popular cultural type. Instead, more people have embraced the egalitarian or individualist way of life, to the extent that East Asia as a whole is now even more individualistic than any of the four other non-Western cultural zones (South Asia, Latin America, Africa and the Muslim zones) and only less so when comparing with the democratic West and ex-communist West (Shin 2012, 104). ²⁴ Although these empirical studies by no means show that Confucianism has lost its sociocultural significance, they are strong enough to demonstrate that Confucianism has become one of the many comprehensive doctrines adopted by East Asians. Although these empirical studies by no means show that Confucianism has lost its sociocultural significance, they are strong enough to demonstrate that Confucianism has become one of the many comprehensive doctrines adopted by East Asians. Therefore, the second objection is correct in insisting that a Confucian meritocratic state, though legitimate, does not make practical sense in contemporary East Asia. In other words, what ultimately defeats Confucian meritocracy is not its lack of (liberal and/or democratic) legitimacy but its incompatibility with contemporary sociocultural condition of East Asian societies.

So what kind of lessons can PPL teach us? Let me mention two as possible directions for future research. First, although the concept of hybridity offers little specific guidance, it nonetheless advocates the virtue of open-mindedness, which goes both ways. On the one hand, one ought to be open-minded about the evolution of pluralism in East Asian societies and its political implications. On the other hand, one also ought to be open-minded about the possibility for a state to maintain its legitimacy without being a liberal democracy. This latter point leads to the second and more important lesson. Recent literature on Confucian political theory has been focusing on whether and how democracy and liberalism can be compatible with Confucianism. One neglected direction, which happens not to be covered by Quong’s matrix, is the possibility for a nondemocracy to still maintain an antiperfectionist position. Our previous analyses already established that it is possible for a nondemocracy to nonetheless be legitimate. So now the question becomes: can a state adopt an antiperfectionist position while still being a nondemocracy? Our previous example of nondemocracy is Confucian meritocracy. But it is also possible to imagine a type of meritocracy that does not subscribe to any particular comprehensive doctrine. For example, let’s imagine that instead of one person one vote, two of the central criteria used by the ruling class to select leaders are how genuinely candidates are respectful to different comprehensive doctrines adopted by citizens and how knowledgeable and capable candidates are when it comes to domestic and international affairs. Moreover, the constitution essentials also dictate that a natural stance must be adopted when laws and policies are made. This is clearly not a democracy, but relevant political elements are so designed as to stay neutral towards competing comprehensive doctrines. It is also likely that there will be three types of citizens: citizens who can endorse the antiperfectionist stance of the constitutional essentials from within their own comprehensive doctrines, citizens who can only partially endorse the constitutional essentials from within their own comprehensive doctrines and must supplement this partial endorsement with prudential reasons and citizens who think state neutrality is a mistake but nonetheless endorse the constitutional essentials for purely prudential reasons. ²⁵ Applying PPL here will lead to the conclusion that this nondemocratic yet antiperfectionist state can be legitimate. If so, then it seems that we have another genuine contender in the race towards the most reasonable political structure for East Asian societies. The advantage of this antiperfectionist nondemocracy is twofold. First and foremost, it bypasses the problematic question of ‘why Confucianism’ confronting theories that try to bridge liberal democracy with Confucianism. Since the state is antiperfectionist, it does not favour any one comprehensive doctrine over the other. The question of ‘why Confucianism’ need not arise. Second, it at least partially resolves the debate between democracy and Confucianism. Instead of seeing the two as mutually exclusive, compatible or hybridizable, there can be another option where a nondemocratic state does not publicly endorse nor banish Confucianism. There are obviously issues with this proposal. For instance, one might question the meaningfulness of such a model: what is still left if both democracy and Confucianism are taken away? It is not within the scope of this article to address this question. My goal is simply to offer a brief outline and to demonstrate that there is indeed a theoretical possibility, which provides future research with an alternative and potentially fruitful direction.