A Useful Inequality or a Reproduced Privilege? A Political Science Reappraisal of Social Stratification in American Functionalism in Light of the Moroccan Case

Every hierarchical society must, at some point, justify why some individuals occupy higher positions than others. In 1945, Kingsley Davis and Wilbert Moore addressed this question in terms of functional necessity, arguing that inequality was indispensable for attracting the most competent individuals to the most demanding positions. Melvin Tumin countered with an equally influential critique, arguing that such a justification primarily served to preserve the advantage of those already occupying dominant positions. This article offers a political science reinterpretation of this foundational controversy and its main extensions, from Parsons to Merton and Lenski, and subsequently from Lipset, Zetterberg, and Glass to Blau and Duncan.
The study is based on documentary analysis, drawing on a critical and integrative review of the American and British functionalist literature. An analytical framework constructed from Weber and Mills is used to examine, for each paradigm, the source of legitimacy attributed to social stratification, the mechanism invoked to explain the persistence of inequalities, and the relationship between scientific description and normative justification, all within the broader debate on distributive justice articulated by Rawls. This framework is subsequently confronted with an independent body of Moroccan literature addressing political elites, administrative recruitment, and occupational mobility.
The findings show that criticism of the functionalist justification never eliminates the question of the legitimacy of inequalities; rather, it merely shifts its terms, from functional necessity to individual internalization, then to comparative mobility, and finally to its statistical objectification. The confrontation with the Moroccan case reveals the persistence of a gap between the formal affirmation of merit and selection mechanisms linked to social origin and networks of allegiance. Social mobility, no more than its statistical measurement, is therefore sufficient on its own to establish the legitimacy of the social order

social stratification, functionalism, political legitimacy

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