As Peter Turchin observes, large-scale societies with dynamic hierarchies have outlasted and outcompeted more horizontal models since the beginning of the Holocene. Meanwhile, those who try to do away with hierarchy fail to produce anything but corruption and sclerosis. Lenin rightly argues that even revolutionary Marxists need a vanguard; for better or worse, the question of elite production is inescapable.

We can visualize competing ways to select elites by imagining a two-by-two matrix in which the first axis opposes meritocracy to aristocracy, and the second axis opposes moral desert to functionalism.

The first axis deals with our definitions of excellence. At face value, the distinction between meritocracy and aristocracy seems illusory. Indeed, meritocracy is a modern echo of aristocracy: both point to a system in which hierarchies elevate those who possess a select set of virtues. But the kind of excellence which modern meritocracy selects for is altogether different. Aristocracy, in the ancient sense, was tied to certain traits of character which demonstrated a great soul: wisdom, prudence, intellect, and courage. Meritocratic achievement is linked to results rather than soul, demonstrated through productivity and expertise. The definitions of excellence assumed by America’s ruling class evolved over the generations from ones defined aristocracy to ones derived from meritocracy. The panoply of virtues that underpins our elite-selection pipeline corresponds to the utilitarian virtues of a liberal, market-based society in which managerial types have long replaced the Renaissance men of the founding generation.

The second axis is easier to grasp. It deals with the distinction between desert-based and functionalist models. Desert-based systems legitimize hierarchies by claiming that those who rule deserve their position and privileges. By contrast, functionalist societies seek to build political systems in which the virtuous and competent rule because they serve the common good, regardless of who owns these achievements. Questions of moral desert have dominated America’s national conversation for more than twenty years. Do the test scores of Ivy Leaguers justify their influence? Do Elon Musk’s achievements explain his wealth? But this obsession with desert, however well-intentioned, obscures the need for more systematic thought on the creation of hierarchies that serve functional ends.

The institutions that identify and empower elites operate on the same frameworks as the classes they broadly serve. Among the building blocks of America’s elite-selection pipeline, none plays a greater role than top universities. With endowments greater than the GDP of entire countries, centuries of accumulated prestige, and networks at every level of the ruling class, the likes of Harvard and Yale wield a unique kind of socio-cultural influence. Diving into the pathologies of these schools will allow us to understand the broader reasons why America is stuck in a dysfunctional desert-oriented meritocracy, one that struggles to produce a competent and principled class of statesmen.

The Aristocratic University

America’s elite universities have long fused the myth of meritocracy with the reality of aristocracy. As early as 1820, critics accused Harvard—then a bastion of the Boston upper-class—of elitism, a charge to which administrators responded by introducing difficult entrance exams. These tests did not change the institution’s makeup, and deliberately so. From Latin and Greek to political philosophy, Harvard’s faculty selected themes and questions that no one but students from a handful of preparatory schools could address. In fact, the function of the new admissions process had little to do with access, and much to do with legitimacy. Hiding behind the convenient veil of meritocracy, Harvard could claim the mantle of equal opportunity while remaining exclusive.

Every time public schools managed to adapt and prepare their middle-class students for the entrance exam, the university would change the test’s structure to make it impossible for commoners to compete. In 1850, the exam lasted eight hours; by 1865, it lasted three days and covered twice as many subjects. Harvard justified these changes by re-affirming their desire to become more meritocratic. Far from a gatekeeping tool, the ever-changing exam would prevent the undeserving sons of the elite from corrupting an institution wherein achievement alone prevailed—or so the administration claimed. Of course, the leaders of the college knew that Harvard would remain as aristocratic as ever. But they understood the need to use the meritocracy narrative to protect the university from attacks in the name of democratic consistency.

Every elite needs a story to legitimize its status. In secular democracies, where neither birth nor divine authority suffices, the search for legitimating mechanisms must operate in subtler, more opaque ways. Democratic elites are in constant self-denial, preserving privileges whose existence they cannot acknowledge in public. From the classroom to the boardroom, the ruling class has to adopt the language of egalitarianism while preventing its material realization.

To fulfill both of these objectives at once, the American elite has built a stack of social technologies around the concept of meritocracy. On paper, every institution of elite production is accessible to all who deserve access. But the players who control the definition of merit and the metrics of achievement have evident incentives to limit the democratization of status. There lies the genius of meritocracy as we know it: the public mind does not grasp that a handful of institutions shape our perception of merit, that the selection processes change to protect dynastic privileges, and that meritocracy at-large consists of little more than a legitimating mechanism by and for elites. Dressed in the garb of equality, meritocracy allows hidden bastions of aristocracy to thrive in democratic societies.

America’s top universities have long embraced this framework, mobilizing the language of merit to protect institutions of elite production and reproduction. In fact, despite its internal contradictions, this dual structure serves vital functions. The egalitarian spirit of democracy makes us vulnerable to uniformity. Obsessed with erasing distinctions in rank, we run the risk of elevating mediocrity, failing to produce distinguished statesmen to steward the political order, and thereby endangering our own success.

The founding generation understood this inescapable tension. For them, aristocratic institutions were the best allies of democracies. To aspiring elites, the likes of Harvard provided a positive view of the good life, a sense of noblesse oblige, and a stellar education in the humanities. More than factories of statesmen, bastions of aristocracy served as a counter-cultural force, preserving sophisticated traditions of excellence against the vulgarization of popular culture. The hereditary character of these institutions facilitated their insulation. Responsible for the transmission of aristocratic virtues among a select set of families, elite universities ensured that a distinctive, functional approach to stewardship survived the corrosive entropy of time. Liberated from the pressures of society-at-large, distinguished colleges would act as incubators of elite creativity and talent.

America’s Mixed Regime

The American political order relies on a set of contradictory principles. The authors of The Federalist Papers recognized the need for a “natural aristocracy” to protect the state’s democratic outlook. They designed the Senate as a mechanism to identify and elevate proto-aristocrats, hoping to counterbalance the short-termism of the House. Where the lower chamber would attract popular leaders who cared about—and depended upon—the whims of public opinion, the higher chamber would select for refined personalities who had mastered the art of statecraft.

Of course, the Senate never fulfilled this function. If America did have aristocrats at all, the select few were shaped by institutions whose importance Jefferson, Hamilton, and Madison failed to grasp: elite universities. Detached from the immediate constraints of the outer world, academic ivory towers provided a space where the cult of genius thrived. Fusing the Renaissance’s dedication to the liberal arts, the puritans’ religious commitments, and the unabashed elitism of Oxford and Cambridge, America’s selective universities produced the very class of refined statesmen that the Framers envisioned. As former Dean of Yale Law School Anthony Kronman puts it in The Assault on American Excellence, the likes of Harvard acted as “aristocratic islands in a democratic sea.” Ultimately, the balance between democratic procedures and aristocratic institutions underpinned the stability of America’s mixed regime.

This balance no longer holds. Granted, elite universities today still bear a lot of their original institutional DNA. They still produce America’s ruling class, use meritocracy as a legitimating narrative, and adapt their admission processes to protect the interests of the few. But the values they instill have fundamentally changed. In the 19th century, selective colleges used the idea of meritocracy without abandoning a resolutely aristocratic view of education. By teaching canonical works, inculcating gentlemanly virtues, and encouraging physical exercise, these institutions shaped aspiring elites according to a specific conception of the good life.

As Harvard professor Irving Babbitt put it, the very idea of “humanistic education” implies that a certain kind of schooling makes us better at being human. There lies the essential difference between meritocracy and aristocracy. The former judges people by what they can do; the latter judges people by who they are. Meritocracy claims to build hierarchies on the basis of competence alone, without discriminating between different ways of life. To preserve the egalitarian outlook of liberal democracy, meritocracy distinguishes between skill and character; we remain equal in character, even if we differ in our abilities to perform productive tasks. By contrast, aristocracy focuses upon the kind of people we elevate to elite status. Beyond sheer competence, it seeks to establish hierarchies of virtue. In other words, where meritocracy is compatible with the classical liberal exhortation to “live and let live,” aristocracy presupposes the existence of higher ways of life—which aristocratic institutions aim to develop and preserve.

America’s elite universities have long abandoned the pursuit of higher ways of living. Where their former selves hid behind the noble lie of meritocracy, their current selves have embraced it outright. The transition began at the end of the 19th century and accelerated during the Cold War. The likes of James Conant, who served as president of Harvard University from 1933 until 1953, transformed these proto-aristocratic universities into meritocratic institutions obsessed with raw, quantifiable aptitude—a trend that culminated with the creation of the Scholastic Aptitude Test. The primary purpose of the university shifted from deep education into higher modes of life to pre-professional schooling in practical trades. As the managerial class replaced the elites of old, selective colleges turned into factories producing mostly consultants and financiers.

In 1820, Harvard paid lip service to meritocratic virtues while producing aristocrats. In 2021, Harvard pays lip service to aristocratic virtues while producing meritocrats.

Of course, elite colleges still inculcate substantive virtues. In theory, meritocracy seeks to judge people by their competence alone, thereby remaining agnostic about the ultimate ends of life. In practice, however, meritocratic institutions do promote a specific lifestyle. The managerial class’s relentless credentialism, obsession with expertise, disdain for leisure, unwillingness to marry before the age of 30, and workaholic disposition all constitute facets of a broader way of life. In this sense, meritocracy reflects the broader issue with liberal proceduralism—namely, that beneath claims of neutrality lie powerful but dysfunctional engines of social engineering.

Functionalist Cultivation of Elites

The publication of John Rawls’s Theory of Justice transformed the Western literature on meritocracy. Targeting the very idea of merit, Rawls argued that intelligence, conscientiousness, and all the other traits correlated with socio-economic success are morally arbitrary. Whether genetic or environmental, the factors that determine our ability to achieve extraordinary things remain by and large outside of our control. We may retain the ability to do much with what we receive, but the parameters within which we operate have little to do with individual choices. As a result, Rawls claims, hierarchies based upon “merit” are illegitimate and illusory.

Since then, opponents and proponents of meritocracy have articulated their debates around the notion of moral desert. Do elites deserve their privileges? Are their achievements truly theirs? To what extent can we build fair hierarchies? Such questions obsess Western theorists, who view the question of elite production as a matter of fairness, moral desert, and redistribution. Unable to justify inequality without appealing to moral desert, but stuck with the necessary reality of hierarchy, Rawl’s contribution ironically leaves us with the arbitrary privileges he argued against.

On the other side of the Pacific, however, a group of philosophers adopts an altogether different approach to this question. Drawing on the Confucian tradition, thinkers such as Jiang Qing and Bai Tongdong operate within the frame of “virtue politics;” that is, they try to construct a harmonious social order in which the common good determines the virtues that elite institutions cultivate. Rejecting the Western emphasis upon moral desert, these theorists of Confucian political meritocracy seek to build political systems in which the virtuous rule well—whether the achievements are “theirs” or not.

In this sense, these intellectuals adopt a functionalist approach to elite production. Their first-order concern lies with the production of a virtuous elite that serves the common good, with little attention paid to the metaphysics of individual desert. Nonetheless, Confucian meritocrats do not necessarily envision a rigid or hereditary ruling class; they seek to make every step of the selection process widely accessible. Like the American framers, Confucians realize that functional elites integrate talent from non-elite circles, balancing functionality with continuity. Still, the frame of virtue politics departs from the liberal tradition in one central respect. Where liberal philosophers build systems to restrain the power of potentially vicious rulers with strict procedures, theorists of virtue politics elevate the selection of rulers over the restriction of their power.

The Confucian legacy still underpins many of China’s institutions, where the ideal of functionalist aristocracy often translates into an imperfect form of functionalist meritocracy. For centuries, Confucian theorists worked on a stack of institutions—selective examinations, evaluation by peers, modes of promotion, and so on—whose main objective was not to restrain state power, but to elevate the right people to wield it. In a post-communist China shaped by the intellectual influence of Mao, Confucians have not yet managed to impose an aristocratic model in which the system selects for real character virtues, as opposed to mere competence. Still, Confucian thought provides a roadmap for reform towards functionalist aristocracy, one from which both China and America would benefit.

Where we grind away human capital by plunging our greatest minds into a never-ending rat-race through the unproductive spheres of America’s managerial elite, Confucian theorists invite us to produce statesmen and intellectuals who can steward the political order. Where we build systems whose main goal is to restrain the power of bad rulers, Confucians ask why our institutions produce incompetent and unvirtuous elites in the first place. Where we expect the invisible hand to harness talent for us, Confucians emphasize the need to plan the selection of qualities that have nothing to do with market forces. In short, while we remain stuck with the pathologies of desert-oriented meritocracy, Confucians exhort us to embrace functionalist aristocracy.

The distinction between desert-oriented and functionalist systems is not the difference between meritocracy and aristocracy. Historically, functionalist meritocracies emerge in uncertain times during which the state’s survival demands raw efficiency. The British navy, for instance, began to select for hyper-competence when hereditary cadres could no longer preserve the empire on their own. Similar situations explain the rise of meritocracy in Napoleonic France and Imperial China. In every case, the urgent needs of the moment—be it a war, an expansionist foreign policy, internal conflicts, or the management of complex societies at scale—lead sclerotic ruling classes to open their ranks to the competent few. These systems are functionalist insofar as meritocrats justify their political power by their contribution to the common good, but they remain non-aristocratic since meritocratic institutions select for brute-force competence, not refined character.

Conversely, while desert-oriented systems can be meritocratic or aristocratic, they inevitably accompany times of decline. When aristocrats can no longer justify their privileges by pointing to the ways in which their superior character serves the common good, they construct narratives of desert—divine rights, hereditary titles, and so on—that hide their lack of virtue, tame popular discontentment, and delay the emergence of revolt. Analogously, when meritocracies no longer seem to have evident benefits for the whole of society, the question of desert takes center stage. Critics of meritocracy obsess over the illusory nature of merit while incompetent meritocrats hide behind their credentials to defend their privileges. 

The Future of American Education

In a sense, America began as a functionalist aristocracy. The American Revolution, like other moments of instability and refoundation, allowed a set of extraordinary individuals to emerge. A simple glance at the biographies of the country’s first presidents should suffice to prove that America’s founding leaders possessed a rare panoply of virtues.

Better still, the elite-production pipeline first served a resolutely aristocratic mission: the likes of Harvard and Yale saw themselves as formative antechambers of intellectual experimentation and virtuous statesmanship. While top universities and other institutions soon began to hide behind the protective veneer of meritocracy, the elites themselves continued to operate on an aristocratic ethos. But what began as an excuse became the norm.

The Industrial Revolution and the rise of managerialism encouraged the development of meritocracy; the World Wars and the Cold War cemented its supremacy. The end of post-Cold War liberal triumphalism then exposed the sclerotic state of our elite-production pipeline. The ensuing rise in popular distrust and discontentment underpins our present moment of dysfunctional, desert-oriented meritocracy. We now find ourselves in a situation wherein prominent voices obsess over competing definitions of moral desert without envisioning any deeper functional remedy to the failures of our elite.

Since hierarchies are inescapable, the central task of politics is to design institutions that ensure that the elite remains talented, virtuous, and well-organized. More than ever, the fundamental purpose of elite universities—and institutions of elite production more broadly—lies in the identification, empowerment, and elevation of those who can rule well.

Whether our elite-production pipeline will be reformed from within or replaced from without remains an open question. Either way, we need to overcome our obsession with moral desert, embrace a resolutely functionalist approach to hierarchy, and reshape our institutions to elevate character over sheer competence. America’s central problem is not a lack of technical expertise but an absence of moral vision. We do not want for means to our ends; we thirst for a new class of elites dedicated to the functional stewardship of an organic social order. This is not a question of privilege and desert, but of virtue and orientation.

Ultimately, elite universities should serve this explicitly aristocratic function: a place where the talented can develop a broader historical and moral perspective, away from popular distractions; where aspiring elites cultivate virtues like asabiyyah and courage, not managerial activism; where education shapes statesmen and guardians of high culture, not consultants and Excel spread-sheeters.

Modern states created expert-led administrations to serve specific, subordinate functions. Certain questions required technical assessments, for which rulers had to employ competent advisers. But the Industrial Revolution expanded the need for this kind of structure far beyond its initial conception. The centralization of private power demanded the centralization of public power.  Faced with ever-expanding firms with clear objectives and coordinated hierarchies, the state found itself dealing with unprecedented legal, administrative, and industrial complexity at scale. Institution-builders restructured state power to deal with these challenges, one step at a time. Once a subordinate extension of conventional authority, technocracy metastasized into a large, independent authority of its own. The statesman-expert hierarchy has become a partnership upon which the functionality of the state depends. Just as the preservation of order in medieval kingdoms required symbiosis between priest and knight, so the preservation of state capacity in industrial societies requires symbiosis between expert and statesman.

Political and technocratic modes of power can no longer operate on their own. Without direction, bureaucracies degenerate into cold-hearted machines that reduce the human experience to a set of metrics devoid of higher purpose. Without structure and expertise, politicians simply cannot manage the social systems of modern life to carry out any particular vision. Both modes, therefore, need each other to thrive and survive. Working in unison, political leaders provide the end to the technocracy’s means and the moral purpose of the machine’s inner workings. Conversely, experts can enlighten the decisions of statesmen, temper their dynamism, and bring detachment to the chaotic whims of the moment. Ultimately, modern, industrial states are faced with this central challenge: to re-establish the primacy of the political over the technocratic without destroying the necessary symbiosis between the two.

Few regimes, if any, have found the right balance. In the West and beyond, political representatives delight in delegating their power to administrators. Two incentives explain this love of abdication: First, outsourcing represents a handy way to avoid policy-making, responsibility, and personal accountability. Second, outsourcing frees up time to fundraise, campaign, and build a media-savvy persona. On the other end of the trade, technocrats welcome their ever-expanding authority by consolidating their status and influence without worrying about elections. Over time, the unchanging administration captures the influence that elected offices once possessed; every time, power flows from the temporary and fragile to the permanent and secure.

This trend results in an unbalanced structure wherein political leaders turn themselves into actors in a televised pantomime while experts, internalizing the hubristic idea that technical skill and statesmanship are one and the same, rule behind the scenes. In theory, this model applies the division of labor to politics. Theatrical players, selected for their charisma, dominate surface-level institutions while technical players, selected for their brute-force competence, control the superstructure. In practice, however, this imbalanced order fuses the worst of both technocracy and mob rule. Unelected, directionless bureaucrats reign supreme while demagogues distract the masses. Devoid of discipline, coherence, and moral purpose, technocrats cannot even deal with strictly technical issues like pandemic management, even as they undermine and absorb the whole political structure.

Industrial societies thus face a dilemma. On the one hand, modern forms of social organization demand the symbiotic alignment of technocratic and political modes of authority. On the other hand, bureaucracies as we know them tend to accumulate power while the political center becomes the concierge of its own abdication.

Few statesmen understood the magnitude of this challenge as early as 1950. Fewer still were in a position to create a new stack of social technologies in order to escape from the dilemma. Among those who fit both categories, Charles de Gaulle—the founder of France’s Fifth Republic—stands out. Fusing the institutions of the Ancien Régime, Napoleon, and revolutionary France, he built a model that has since gained traction far beyond France itself.

The Gaullist Model

De Gaulle rose to power in unique circumstances. In 1945, years of German occupation and Vichy-led collaboration had shattered the French state to the ground. The country needed re-organization and De Gaulle had carte blanche to reshape the nation’s institutions as he pleased. A celebrated hero who embodied France in exile during the war, he enjoyed unparalleled popular support. Devastated at the material, political, and spiritual level, the country begged for an era of renewal.

De Gaulle did not merely re-build the country; he re-founded it. Since the revolution of 1789, France had undergone a succession of dysfunctional republics, empires, and royalist restorations, none of which had managed to establish a stable order. The monarchy lost control and never truly regained it; the empire failed to organize its own succession; obsessing over consensus-building, the republics struggled to get anything done. Mindful of these difficulties, De Gaulle proposed a grand synthesis that would bring the continuity of the monarchy, the Napoleonic leadership of the empire, and the meritocratic technocracy of the republic together. He thereby supplied a blueprint for modern states seeking to balance expertise and statesmanship.

France’s technocracy arose under the patronage of powerful executives. Napoleon founded the “grandes écoles,” the country’s hyper-selective bastions of meritocracy, to produce the social and intellectual capital of the Empire. Right from the start, these institutions had a clear mandate: identify the country’s high-performing talents, turn them into civil servants, and shape the elite that could administer the country under the guardianship of a charismatic leader. A fervent admirer of Bonaparte, De Gaulle brought this model into the industrial era.

Where Napoleon’s grandes écoles educated Renaissance men, De Gaulle’s aimed to produce cultured and competent technocrats. The French president reformed existing universities, created new ones, and built a comprehensive pipeline from high-achieving students to life-long civil servants. Every step of the way, a coordinated network of social institutions would shape future administrators. Teenagers would dream of becoming distinguished technocrats and every technocrat would find glory in serving the state with tact. Once formed, this new elite would act as the managerial octopus of the state’s dirigisme—structuring the French economy, empowering public-private partnerships, and restraining zealous sources of corporate power. Ultimately, De Gaulle did anticipate the ever-expanding growth of expert-led bureaucracies. But he did not find this expansion threatening, so long as the technocratic machine remained under the control of civil servants shaped by decades of state-of-the-art social engineering.

De Gaulle also understood the value of mixed regimes. Beyond sheer competence, experts provided continuity and stability in a democratic system that would otherwise oscillate from one election to the next, incapable of accumulating institutional memory. De Gaulle and his successors had to secure some degree of buy-in from the technocratic elite, but those who managed to domesticate the bureaucracy could wield its power in the service of a coherent political vision. Far from a naïve optimist, De Gaulle by no means welcomed the rise of the administrative state. But he did believe in the ability of strong executives to tame and command the beast.

In fact, De Gaulle built the institutions of the Fifth Republic around the figure of the president. When Emmanuel Macron declared “the French elect a president to be a king,” he was not indulging in hyperbole—he merely repeated standard Gaullist tropes about the status and importance of the role. Right from the start, De Gaulle envisioned the president as an elected Caesar who would celebrate the country’s past, shape its future, guard its institutions, and supply France’s bureaucratic behemoth with a clear moral vision.

The Gaullist model—on which the French state is still built today—endows the president with three kinds of authority. First, he embodies the will of the majority. Elected via popular vote in a two-round election, the president is the only legitimate representative of the people as a cohesive whole. The two-round structure also ensures that the president has both a broad appeal and a dedicated base to mobilize at will—as De Gaulle did when he ended the chaos of the May 1968 revolt by massing a million people on the Champs-Élysées in a counter-demonstration. This intimate connection to the populace contrasts with the technocracy’s detachment; if unelected bureaucrats feel zealous enough to challenge the president’s designs, they will have to face the wrath of a charismatic leader who possesses the sort of popular authority that experts lack.

Second, France’s constitution gives the president formal powers that transcend the domain of conventional republican executives. By himself, the president can appoint and remove administrators, diplomats, special prosecutors, and ministers; he can also declare war unilaterally and dissolve the national assembly at will. This panoply of legal tools allows the executive to apply pressure on every cog in the state’s machine. Against a rebellious parliament, dissolution; against disagreeable ministers, removal; against obstructionist bureaucracies, instant re-organization. These mechanisms do not turn the French president into a wild autocrat, but they do empower him to act swiftly and decisively. In this sense, the structure of the executive complements and counterbalances the power of the technocracy. In contrast to the slow and steady influence that experts accumulate over decades of networking and coordination, the president brings the dynamic and decisive arm of his office.

Third, the president embodies the state and its traditions. Beyond the formalities of the written constitution, De Gaulle organized the hierarchies of the Fifth Republic around a clear set of aesthetics. More specifically, he revitalized a series of rituals that place the president in the role of the monarchs and emperors of old. The inauguration ceremony is just one example. Once elected, the president walks through the majestic halls of the Élysée palace while the national orchestra plays a solemn march. He thereafter becomes the Grand Chancellor of the Legion of Honor—the republic’s highest order—and receives a 21-gun salute. All of these symbols come from times past: Napoleon created the Legion of Honor, and royal troops used the 21-gun salute to welcome the new king under the Ancien Régime. By aggregating this mosaic of influences, De Gaulle gave the president a form of symbolic authority. Where the technocracy remains a cold, opaque, and de-aestheticized machine, the president personifies millennia of traditions designed to affirm his authority as the embodiment of the nation.

This tripartite form of authority—an intimate relationship with the people, a panoply of formal powers, and a mosaic of symbolic rituals—equips the president with the tools necessary to domesticate France’s technocratic ministries and agencies. In this model, not only does the executive personally control the administrative elite, but he also supplies the two components of proper governance that experts fail to provide: a narrative and a clear political vision.

De Gaulle believed that every nation needs a “roman national,” or national story around which people and institutions coalesce. He filled all his speeches with historical references, turning France’s past into the uninterrupted story of a great people. Far from an incoherent set of influences, the ancien régime, Bonapartism, and republicanism fused into a cohesive cultural whole. The deliberate construction of a grand narrative did not merely serve a rhetorical purpose; afraid of the mechanistic character of modern politics, De Gaulle wanted to inject an element of romanticism in an age of cold, calculating reason.

At heart, the central duty of the French presidency is to occupy the country’s narrative center—that is, to write the story from which the state derives its sense of purpose. During his term, De Gaulle embarked on a series of national projects, erecting public-private giants in the fashion, defense, and automobile industries that remain functional to this day. More than an expression of statism, these grand aspirations reflected a broader desire to give direction to the country. He did not view presidential authority merely as a toolkit for restraining the expert-class, but also as a necessary power with which to orient, direct, and mobilize the state’s machinery towards a higher national vision. In fact, he managed to cement this understanding in France’s political culture.

Building the Modern State

All modern states face the daunting task of balancing expertise and statesmanship. In most cases, the inescapable growth of expert-led administrations devours the state, thereby turning industrial societies into directionless technocracies.

In theory, the Gaullist model combines the managerial competence of experts with the romantic élan of statesmen, thereby securing the best of both worlds. In practice, the model relies upon two demanding preconditions: the construction of an elite-production machine that churns out competent technocrats en masse, as well as the establishment of mechanisms that identify and elevate charismatic statesmen to lead the nation. Both of these conditions require complex, coordinated networks of institutions that few states have proven capable of building. In fact, most of France’s current malfunctions have to do with the country’s ability to do the first but not the second: the grandes écoles do produce competent technocrats, but the democratic process has not identified successors who match De Gaulle’s vision.

Still, despite its imperfections, the Gaullist model provides a blueprint for modern, industrial states. Around the world, many states have adopted variants of its symbiosis, balancing the rise of expert-led bureaucracies with strong executives. Most importantly, the world’s two dominant players—China and the United States—are also moving in this direction.

In China, the ruling party has long become a hyper-selective technocracy. Relying upon exams and competition between local bureaucrats, the Chinese model organizes itself around the principles of Confucian meritocracy—among which lies the idea that the more competent and knowledgeable should rule. Recently, however, this structure has witnessed the rise of Xi Jinping, who has gone from bureaucrat-in-chief to Caesarean leader in two decades. Expanding the realms of his powers, Xi has secured his control over the state’s intricate machinery. But he has also positioned himself as the country’s narrative center, charting a comprehensive vision of China’s future in speech after speech. Xi has mobilized grand narratives of Chinese history, fusing Confucian, Maoist, nationalist, and imperial ideals into a cohesive story that transcends shallow materialism. In this sense, despite the vast differences separating contemporary China from 20th-century France—the most obvious being the one-party structure—China has converged upon the Gaullist conception of modern, industrial states.

As for the U.S., three trends are pushing the country towards the Gaullist balance between executive authority and technocracy. First, successive presidents have strengthened the executive’s formal and symbolic powers. The primary-general election structure parallels the two-round process that De Gaulle envisioned and selects for figures that have a significantly more intimate relationship with the populace than America’s founding statesmen did. When Andrew Jackson ran in 1828, his opponents called him “populist” because he delivered fiery speeches in front of public audiences; now, we would just call him a standard politician. This shift in expectations, accompanied by a series of court decisions that reinforce the powers of the executive, has brought the American presidency closer to the charismatic leader that De Gaulle envisioned. Empowered, the executive remains the only institution that speaks for the nation as a whole.

Second, while legislators have given their influence away, America’s administrative state has grown in size and power. Congressional capacity—or the quality and efficiency of the institution’s structure—has reached new lows. Over the past twenty years, the number of congressional staffers has decreased, as has the time that legislators spend in Washington. These trends reflect the generalized abdication of the legislature, which has outsourced its powers to numerous technocratic bodies that are often accountable only to the executive. Expert-led bureaucracies have become a non-negotiable part of the state’s machinery. The American president does not have as much power as his French counterpart; he cannot, for instance, remove the heads of certain administrations at will. But the scope of the executive’s powers has expanded considerably in the last few decades, thereby moving the president’s relationship to the technocracy closer to the Gaullist ideal. Presidents are not yet capable of taking control of America’s technocracy, but they might be soon enough.

Third, the U.S. thirsts for a national story. Cold War liberalism, which supplied the country’s narrative consensus during the 20th century, finds itself attacked from both left and right. Beneath the debates opposing 1619 to 1776 lies a fervent desire for a clear moral narrative. In this context, the American people do not merely look for bureaucrats-in-chief who can implement sound policies and rule with tact. They seek leaders who can act as narrative centers, builders who champion a specific political vision, storytellers who can inject an element of romanticism into public life. In short, they yearn for an American De Gaulle.

Nevertheless, neither America nor China has managed to replicate the Gaullist model. Both suffer from countless malfunctions, from disorganized bureaucracies to frivolous elites devoid of vision. But the great powers are converging around a statesman-expert structure that combines a strong executive, a hyper-selective technocracy, and a national narrative. Consciously or not, De Gaulle provided the blueprint for advanced, industrial societies in search of vitality. More than a theoretical framework, the unity of political and technocratic power provides new axes of competition upon which state capacity depends. Many states already understand how to educate generations of experts; none has found systematic ways to create a class of charismatic leaders—there lies the grand challenge of our time.

The 21st century will judge states according to their ability to build symbiotic hierarchies between statesmen and experts, produce competent technocracies, and elevate rulers to lead the state’s machinery with vision and tact. Those who succeed will secure order, dynamism, and cohesion. The rest will be devoured by a mindless Leviathan.