A story ran a few days ago in the Canadian newspaper, The Globe and Mail, about a friend of mine, Daniel A. Bell, who works to demonstrate the contemporary relevance of ancient Chinese, and especially Confucian, thought:

Prof. Bell, believed to be the only foreign scholar to hold a
philosophy post at a Chinese university, is making waves on campuses
and websites across the country with his ideas for reviving Confucian
beliefs and applying them to modern politics. He believes China can
successfully reform its autocratic political system by drawing on the
theories of the ancient philosophers.

    When I was in Beijing in October we had lunch together just outside the gate of Qinghua University and, when he had to leave for his son’s birthday party, I had the pleasure of wandering about the picturesque campus; very nice.  But I digress.  Here is one of his main ideas:

His most controversial idea is a simple one. A future China should
be ruled by a "modern Confucian democracy," with a democratic lower
house and an elitist upper house whose members would be selected on
merit, based on exam results — just like the traditional method of
choosing civil servants in East Asia.

"The country would have a group of talented and disinterested
individuals ready to act for the common good," he writes in his book, Beyond Liberal Democracy.

A system based on meritocracy "would resonate with traditional
political culture, it could be supported by interest groups at a
constitutional convention, and it could be readily adapted from an
existing political institution," he says in the book. "It would be
Chinese-style democracy: rule by the people, with Confucian
characteristics."

 I think Bell is serious and important thinker and this idea is worth thinking about but I will register my skepticism here.  On the one hand, if a selection process could be created that was truly beyond the influence and manipulation of particular interests, then a chamber of Confucian "gentlemen" (obviously women would have to be eligible as well – or, maybe, it should be all women since, as I have argued elsewhere, women tend to be better on Confucian ethics than men…) would be an improvement over the current decrepit Communist Party dictatorship.  Bell’s notion could be an incremental improvement to Chinese politics.

     On the other hand, the idea of "a group of talented and disinterested individuals ready to act for the common good" strikes me as optimistic in the extreme.  It seems to me that whenever political institutions are created, they become objects of political struggle.  "Special interests," especially monied interests, will find ways to capture legislatures and bureaucracies and turn them away from the "common good."  This happens fairly often in modern democracies; maybe it always happens.

     What is good about democracy is not an idealist realization of a "common good"  but the avoidance of the worst abuses of tyrannical power.  We should not expect people – even Confucian "gentlemen" – to be able to transcend their particularistic interests completely.  We might ask them to be open to the arguments and interests of others, but it is probably too much to ask them to be "disinterested."  Perhaps I am just too American on these sorts of issues.  James Madison makes sense to me: don’t try to create a system that abolishes all factions, which is really not possible, but build a system that allows for the profusion and balance of many factions.  It is not perfect.  It will create gridlock at times.  But it will, under most circumstances, effectively limit the abuse of centralized power and protect a realm of social and personal freedom.

     Maybe Madison was more of a Taoist than a Confucian…..