The rise and rise of meritocracy

Introduction: Reviewing meritocracy / Geoff Dench

The Labour Party as crucible / Asa Briggs

Meritocracy in the civil service, 1853-1970 / Jon Davis

A tract for the times / Paul Barker

We sat down at the table of privilege and complained about the food / Hilary Land

The chequered career of a cryptic concept / Claire Donovan

Looking back on meritocracy / Michael Young

A brief profile of the new British establishment / Jim Ogg

Face, race, and place : merit and ethnic minorities / Michelynn Laflèche

Marginalised young men / Yvonne Roberts

The unmaking of the English working class / Ferdinand Mount

Age and inequality / Eric Midwinter

Ship of state in peril / Peregrine Worsthorne

The moral economy of meritocracy, or, The unanticipated triumph of reform and the failure of revolution in the West / Irving Louis Horowitz

Japan at the meritocracy frontier : from here, where? / Takehiko Kariya And Ronald Dore

Just rewards : meritocracy fifty years later / Peter Marris

What do we mean by talent? / Richard Sennett

Resolving the conflict between the family and meritocracy / Belinda Brown

Meritocracy and popular legitimacy / Peter Saunders

The new assets agenda / Andrew Gamble And Rajiv Prabhakar

New Labour and the withering away of the working class? / Jon Cruddas

A delay on the road to meritocracy / Peter Wilby

Putting social contribution back into merit / Geoff Dench

Ladder of opportunity or engine of inequality? / Ruth Lister

The future of meritocracy / David Willetts.