The merit system is the process of promoting and hiring government employees based on their ability to perform a job, rather than on their political connections. It is the opposite of the spoils system.
Famous quotes containing the words merit and/or system:
“Merit at Courts, without favour, will do little or nothing; favour, without merit, will do a good deal; but favour and merit together will do everything.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)
“Those words freedom and opportunity do not mean a license to climb upwards by pushing other people down. Any paternalistic system that tries to provide for security for everyone from above only calls for an impossible task and a regimentation utterly uncongenial to the spirit of our people.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)