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A great and mostly unknown prophet of our time is Michael Young, whose book ''The Rise of the Meritocracy,'' published way back in 1958, both coined the term in its [...]

Autocrats around the world won't gain from the United States' pain. Is the political disarray in the United States really ''a godsend for America's critics'' or a ''propaganda coup'' for [...]

Does the white upper class feel exhausted and oppressed by meritocracy? In 2001, when I was still attending college, David Brooks wrote an essay for The Atlantic called ''The Organization [...]

''If meritocracy exists anywhere on earth, it is in Silicon Valley,'' wrote David Sacks in an email to The Times's Jodi Kantor. Kantor was working on an article, published in [...]

Economic policy in the United States is ruled by gridlock. That's the common belief, and it's easy to see the evidence for it in the daily headlines. Immigration reform didn't [...]

Through most of the 19th and 20th centuries, the Protestant Establishment sat atop the American power structure. A relatively small network of white Protestant men dominated the universities, the world [...]

For years, Pakistan has ignored the Obama administration's pleas to crack down on militants who cross from Pakistan to attack American forces in Afghanistan. Recent cross-border raids by Taliban militants [...]

LIBYA'S new electoral law, passed by the National Transitional Council last month, provides guidelines for selecting the country's first-ever democratic government. Many, including the United Nations, hailed the law's passage [...]

Sadly, the transitional government in Egypt today appears determined to shoot itself in both feet. On Sunday, it will put on trial 43 people, including at least 16 U.S. citizens, [...]

MOSCOW -- It has been a long time since a Russian billionaire attacked the political system. In the past, it has not ended well. On Thursday, Mikhail D. Prokhorov described [...]

CORRECTION APPENDED GENEVA -- A slim figure in a dark suit, Brahumdagh Bugti, 30, could pass for a banker in the streets of this sedate Swiss city. But in truth [...]

BEIRUT, Lebanon -- As Syria continues its most relentless assault yet on a five-month uprising, killing more than a dozen protesters Wednesday, cracks have begun to emerge in a tight-knit [...]

WASHINGTON - Here is the bad news forPresident Obama and incumbents in both parties: it can get worse - and stay that way for a long time. That might sound [...]

WASHINGTON -- Early in June, President Obama and House Republicans met at the White House to bridge differences. Republicans complained that Mr. Obama was demagoguing their Medicare plan. The president [...]

BEIJING -- China's main Communist Party newspaper bluntly rejected calls for speedier political reform on Wednesday, publishing a front-page commentary that said any changes in China's political system should not [...]

Seven long months after parliamentary elections, Iraqis still don't have a government. Yet Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki was on another international road trip Monday -- this one to Tehran, [...]

History is unlikely to be kind to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel. He disastrously mismanaged the 2006 Lebanon war. And now, besmirched by financial scandals, he has announced plans […]