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Mediocracy is a condition of society in which people of mediocre ability are dominant. Mediocracy is also a theme in criticisms of cultural products and institutions, in which the term is implicitly contrasted with meritocracy, the rule of the most able.

Culture and Ideology
Honoré de Balzac writes of mediocracy as the product of the downfall of traditional religion and an obstructionist political system. "As for the district mayors, the number of those who do not know how to read and write is really alarming, and the manner in which the civil records are kept is even more so. The danger of this state of things, well-known to the governing powers, is doubtless diminishing; but what centralization (against which every one declaims, as it is the fashion in France to declaim against all things good and useful and strong), - what centralization cannot touch, the Power against which it will forever fling itself in vain, is that which the general was not about to attack and which we shall take leave to call the Mediocracy... In France the general levelling begun in 1789 and continued in 1830 has paved the way for the juggling dominion of the middle classes, and delivered the nation into their hands without escape."

- Honoré de Balzac

Whereas Balzac's critique of mediocracy was targeted at the French middle classes of the 19th century, Tassano suggests that the group boundaries of a modern mediocracy are defined by conformity to a mediocratic ideology, rather than membership in a social class. According to Tassano, mediocratic ideology has the following features:
 * Dumbing down
 * In a mediocracy, art must be stimulating to the masses, although not comprehensible to them, with an emphasis on sex, implicit political messages, and abandonment of traditional aesthetic standards. The works of Tracey Emin are examples of mediocratic art.
 * Jargonism
 * A mediocracy's contribution to language consists mainly of jargon, which is employed in line with social rules to form new productions in entertainment, media, and academia.
 * Individual ability is attributed (often solely) to the effects of the social environment. This entails that a lack of ability is due to some deficiency in education, upbringing, etc., while exceptional ability can be credited entirely to the society surrounding the individual.
 * Physicality
 * Mediocratic culture identifies "reality" with bodily functions, sex and violence, and "realism" with the graphic, taboo-breaking portrayal of such. **Features of mediocratic political philosophy
 * Justice as Fairness
 * "The elimination of any inequality that has not been democratically sanctioned."
 * Anti-capitalism
 * Increasing wealth through private capitalistic activity is only tolerated to the the extent that the wealth can be redirected to agents of collective control.
 * Authoritarianism
 * Style over substance

Institutional Dynamic
Hans Eysenck argued that mediocracy is the inevitable result of a failure to actively promote meritocracy. According to Eysenck, IQ tests are the most accurate predictors of academic ability. If other, inferior measures are used for academic placement, students of high ability will be less likely to be classified as such, and the educational system will tend to promote the mediocre.

Mediocracy can arise from incentive systems that do not reward high productivity or punish low productivity. Highly productive members of an organisation tend to hold more desirable positions than less productive members. If a productive member fails to move up the ranks, her fallback position is more desirable than that of her less productive colleagues, who would see a larger relative improvement from a move up the hierarchy.

Lobbying can be a highly productive alternative to work for a political party. Because the highest salaries available from lobbying are higher than the highest available from party politics, the most productive politicians have an incentive to become lobbyists. The least productive political operatives are insufficiently productive for party work, but may still be hired as low-paid lobbyists. Politicians of middling skills, therefore, remain as the group with an incentive to enter party politics. This effect offers a possible explanation for the middling qualifications of elected officials. In the context of cooperative software projects, weak formal organisations and subjective judgment of project outcomes can create a mediocracy. In a software-development mediocracy, low product quality is guaranteed by strictly enforced social norms. "...employees who are truly competent and are eager to make a genuine contribution to the department soon resign from a mediocracy, leaving behind them the dross of nonproducers and internecine warriors. I term this effect the Inverse Gresham’s Law: A mediocracy hoards mediocre people and drives good people into general circulation."

- Meilir Page-Jones