MARK ARIBA

Hello! I am a PhD candidate in the Department of Political Science at the University of Toronto. I am a Junior Fellow at Massey College. I am also affiliated with the Clusters of Scholarly Prominence Program, working with Professor Triadafilos Triadafilopoulos in the Education and Training for the 21st Century Workforce (ET21) cluster.

I am a political theorist whose research focuses on how meritocracy—as a practice, system, and governing disposition—has come to serve as a source of political legitimacy in liberal democratic states. I am especially interested in the historical development of meritocracy and its transformation into a dominant mode of social organization in contemporary political life. My current work explores the civil service and education systems in the United States and the United Kingdom as key sites where meritocratic norms are institutionalized and contested.

In earlier graduate work, I examined the limits of descriptive representation as a response to historical exclusion and explored its implications for democratic legitimacy. More broadly, I am interested in the normative foundations of the state, the moral obligations embedded in administrative practices, and the ways liberal states justify authority.

Outside of my academic work, I enjoy literary fiction published before 2010 and take great interest in aesthetic forms across a wide range of disciplines, including ballet, Art Deco architecture, classical music, pre-war literature, poetry, symphonic composition, and literary translation.