Meritocrats advocate a half way system between a meritocratic selective process and a collective decision making. The selection should be according to a meritocratic process.
And, at the final end of the process a vote between person concern in order to guarantee the right to reject an alternative or a decision maker.
If the meritocratic process come to offer one alternative, the final democratic choice will consist on accepting or refusing. So, in the case of the refusal, the system should be blocked until a better alternative (or a decision maker) is presented to them.
The meritocrats intuitively accept that idea that all functional post (including prime minister) could (and should) stay vacant until a proper person is selected and democratically accepted.
It is also a common view between meritocrats to consider that the right of petition is the right way of democratic expression and not voting. The meritocrats consider if a threshold of 50 % of people is opposed by a petition (easier to do by internet or by telephone than on the street) the alternative has been refused.
In may place like France, meritocracy is confused with totalitarism and opposed to democracy. One reason is that the last party who strongly advocate meritocracy is the national-socialism (nazism) of Adolph Hitler which is the symbol of totalitarism. In America or Asia, meritocracy has been advocated as well by democratic party than by extremist party. So, meritocracy could be categorized:
Democracy: Choice and acceptation by the persons concern
Meritocracy: Choice by a meritocratic process and acceptation by the person concern
Totalitarism: The acceptation is not presented to person concern as the decision could be made whatever the majority opinion of person concern. Some totalitarism system (like the Chinese communism system or South-korea and Chile before the democratization) could adopt a meritocratic process to select alternative or decision maker does not make them a meritocracy as the acceptation is not proposed to the majority of the person concerns.
Meritocrat consider that the democratic choice of decision maker bring to power dishonest person and professional liar. There is no guarantee that this professional are competent to the position as they only need to know a little bit more than the majority voting for them.
Meritocrat could be more democrat than "normal" democrat and join the view of ultra democrats as meritocrats that democratic process work better applied to acceptation (or refusal) of an alternative, a law or a national decision (making nuclear test for example) and the right of refusal of the majority should be guarantee (which is not always the case in western democracy). The difference between meritocrats and ultra democrats is that mericrats consider that the majority is not capable of selecting the priority issue and the real problem.
Copyright 1994