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:
“Certainly the best works, and of greatest merit for the public, have proceeded from the unmarried, or childless men.”
—Francis Bacon (1561–1626)
“Authority is the spiritual dimension of power because it depends upon faith in a system of meaning that decrees the necessity of the hierarchical order and so provides for the unity of imperative control.”
—Shoshana Zuboff (b. 1951)