Defining Elements of Lack of Meritocracy and Clientelism in Transitional Societies and Less Mature Democracies: A Utilitarianist Approach to Rights

Abstract

This paper will look into the side-effects of lack of meritocracy and the application of clientelistic practices in transitional societies and less mature democracies that lack pluralistic features. In these countries democratic practices need to be consolidated institutionally and within a normative-utilitarianist mode of governance in order to bring optimum results. Through an overt or covert spec-trum of utilitarianism, lack of meritocracy will be investigated against a number of independent varia-bles such as brain drain, democratization, social stratification and clientelistic practices based on pow-er relations between patron and clients. Implicitly these relate to individual rights and social progress. The approach will seek causation patterns for the application of favouritistic practices through anal-yses of social and political given. In a causal relationship one event precedes another or the second event appears unlikely to have happened without the first even having occurred. The approach adopt-ed is utilitarianist, normative, formulated through a twofold functionalist and liberal prism.