Hierarchy, Efficiency, and Merit

Many people think that structuring at least some of our organizations in a hierarchical way is inevitable, even in modern liberal democracies. When trying to justify this practice, the notions of desert and merit have historically played a major role. However, in recent times, most philosophers have been deeply sceptical about these notions, instead attempting to justify hierarchies by referring to considerations of efficiency. I argue that this comes at a price. More specifically, I argue that although we neither need to nor should refer to merit to justify the mere existence of hierarchies, the notion provides important justificatory resources within hierarchies, i.e., regarding who occupies which position and how the people in a hierarchy should relate to each other. We thus have reason to be hesitant to discard merit altogether when it comes to the of justification of hierarchies.