The invention discloses a method and device for selecting a master node in a distributed system, wherein the method is applied to any node in the distributed system; and the method comprises the stepsof: obtaining authorized information sent by at least one target node, wherein the target node is a node, the performance parameter value of which is not less than a pre-set numerical value, in the distributed system; and, when a master node reselection condition is satisfied, determining a master node from the target nodes sending the authorized information, wherein the priority level of the master node in the target nodes is the highest. In the embodiment of the invention, only the node, which has the authority as the master node, sends the authorized information to other nodes; the node, which does not have the authority as the master node, does not send the authorized information to other nodes; therefore, the communication time of the whole system is reduced; simultaneously, the master node is only selected from the nodes having the authority as the master node; furthermore, only the priority levels of the various nodes need to be compared; and thus, the master node selection speed is speeded up.