Stratification by Design: Meritocracy and the Reproduction of Inequality

Meritocracy is often celebrated as a fair system for allocating social rewards, promising that education, employment, and prestige are distributed according to individual ability rather than inherited privilege. Yet, evidence shows that meritocratic systems routinely reproduce and legitimize inequality. In this article, I argue that such outcomes are not failures of meritocracy but constitutive features of how it operates. Drawing from existing research in sociology, psychology, and management, I identify three mechanisms through which elites sustain their dominance in ostensibly merit-based systems: consecration, or the power to define and evaluate merit; adaptation, or the unequal capacity to cultivate valued traits; and co-optation, or the strategic use of meritocratic ideals to resist challenges to privilege. I then discuss how the underlying premise of meritocracy—that some individuals are more deserving of societal rewards than others—legitimizes and entrenches social hierarchies in a way that is especially pernicious and can result in the dehumanization of marginalized groups. I conclude by suggesting that genuine fairness requires not simply coming up with less biased metrics of merit but deeper structural transformations that reduce the extreme stakes of stratification itself.