More elections can actually destroy smart government by letting "tribal" leaders hire their friends instead of experts.
SSRN · March 18, 2026 · 6417878
The Takeaway
The research shows that in societies with strong group identities, meritocratic candidates often lose 'primaries' to rivals who promise specific favors to their own tribe. This suggests that more democracy can sometimes create a 'race to the bottom' where professional competence is traded for group loyalty.
From the abstract
The model suggests that the adoption of tribalism over meritocracy is not only related to characteristics of the underlying societies (tribal identities, patronage reach, meritocracy surplus, and relative beneficiaries thereof), but also the mechanisms of leadership selection. More democracy can hurt meritocracy, because contenders who would otherwise prefer to govern meritocratically would lose their intra-tribe "primaries" to more tribal rivals. It is often the case that when even just one of