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:
“Give nobly to indigent merit, and do not refuse your charity even to those who have not merit but their misery.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)
“The United States is unusual among the industrial democracies in the rigidity of the system of ideological control—”indoctrination” we might say—exercised through the mass media.”
—Noam Chomsky (b. 1928)