she was an International Postdoctoral Fellow at the School of Philosophy, Wuhan University, China, and a recipient of the 2019 China International Postdoctoral Exchange Fellowship. She completed her doctorate degree in Political Philosophy in June 2018 at the King’s College London and the National University of Singapore Joint Ph.D. programme.
Ziliotti applied the "Page 99 Test" to her new book, Meritocratic Democracy: A Cross-Cultural Political Theory, and reported the following:
Page 99 discusses the epistemic contributions of political leaders in contemporary democracies. The page assumes an ‘epistemic’ perspective on democracy. In other words, it understands democratic systems as a kind of political mechanism through which different ideas and views come together to define our collective societal problems and identify possible solutions to them. Based on this idea of democracy, the page explains that political leaders can be helpful in the democratic search for political solutions because they can bring new topics or ideas into the debate. From this perspective, ‘political leaders are often capable of playing a substantive imaginative function in democracy through their creative agency’. The page discusses Nelson Mandela as a clear example of a good political leader who could play this imaginary role in society. However, it argues that other political leaders can function similarly because of their social position. Unlike other citizens, political leaders have close collaborations with international agencies and other key political players. This can allow them to develop a unique perspective on the political situation and perhaps anticipate problems.Visit Elena Ziliotti's website.
If browsers opened my book to page 99, they would get a good sense of the topic of the book, which is indeed about democracy and political leaders. So, kudos to the Page 99 Test! However, reading page 99 is insufficient to get a sense of the whole work. The book does not consider only political leaders' positive contributions to democratic politics. It is also very much about the effects of bad political leaders on democracy. It also discusses at length the question of how we can ensure that political leaders work for democracy, and not against it.
Another critical aspect of the book that does not emerge from page 99 concerns how I address these issues. Unique to this book is that it reflects on democracy through a cross-cultural approach. It puts together insights from two different sets of philosophical debates: ideas on democracy that are discussed in Western political philosophy and ideas on good political leaders that emerge in contemporary debates in Confucian philosophy (one of the most ancient intellectual traditions that originated in East Asia).
Finally, I should mention that the book is not just about ‘democracy’ and ‘political leaders’ but also about ‘political parties’, which page 99 does not mention at all. The book argues that political parties retain the valuable function of pre-selecting the future political leaders in contemporary democratic societies. Because of this, it proposes a system of 'partisan juries' at the party level to enhance the quality of political leaders.
So, all things considered, the "test" may be a poor browser shortcut. However, it is not a terrible shortcut, given that it has identified two of the book's three main topics!
--Marshal Zeringue
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