spoils system

The postelection practice of rewarding loyal supporters of the winning candidates and party with appointive public offices.

The systematic sacking of one's opponent's appointees, and substitution by appointees of one's own, on winning an election. The spoils system was an accepted part of American federal government throughout the nineteenth century. It continues in a diluted form today with the presumption that the top appointed federal offices are vacated on a change of administration. The term is also applied to the systematic filling of low-level posts by one's own appointees as a reward for political loyalty such as helping in an election. Critics of quangos and (since 1979) privatized agencies in British government argue that they give the incumbent party an opportunity to exercise a similar spoils system on behalf of their political supporters.

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The "spoils system" of distributing government jobs as a reward for political services takes its name from an 1832 speech by the Democratic senator William L. Marcy of New York. Defending President Andrew Jackson's partisan dismissals from office, Marcy avowed that he and his fellows saw "nothing wrong in the rule, that to the victor belong the spoils of the enemy."

Although Jackson is usually credited with inaugurating the system, he never justified it on Marcy's blunt grounds. Under the long reign of Virginia Democratic-Republican presidents, permanent tenure had become the de facto rule in many federal offices. Honoring tradition, Jackson's predecessor John Quincy Adams refused to remove even overt political opponents. Despite this, Jackson accused the federal establishment of opposing his election in 1828. He proclaimed a policy of "rotation in office" to curb official arrogance and corruption and democratize opportunities for public service. Disclaiming anyone's inherent right to continue in office, Jackson dismissed political foes along with some career bureaucrats, replacing them with partisan newspaper editors and other active supporters.

Opponents condemned Jackson for introducing political "proscription," but soon learned to follow his example. By the 1840s both Jackson's Democrats and the opposing Whigs routinely wielded patronage to inspire and discipline party workers. Partisan removals grew ever more extensive, reaching down from Washington bureau chiefs and clerks to land and customs and territorial officials to village postmasters. Thousands of eager supplicants besieged each new administration, making the redistribution of offices every four years a major undertaking.

By the 1850s the spoils system was thoroughly entrenched as an instrument of political warfare both between the parties and among factions within them. Calls for reform surfaced before the Civil War and gathered impetus during Reconstruction from Andrew Johnson's attempted purge of Republican office holders and the scandals of the Grant administration. Chastising the system for promoting official incompetence and corruption and for adulterating the purity of elections, critics demanded that federal employment be removed from party politics and grounded on merit as determined by competitive examination.

Eradicating the spoils system became a major crusade in the 1870s, championed by good-government reformers, cautiously advanced by presidents, and vehemently opposed by congressional party chieftains. President James Garfield's assassination by a "disappointed office-seeker" undermined resistance and led to the passage of the Pendleton Civil Service Act in 1883. The act inaugurated a merit system of employment for certain classes of federal employees under the supervision of a bipartisan Civil Service Commission and banned the common practice of dunning office holders for contributions to party coffers.

In the remainder of the century, presidents put more offices under civil service protection, largely replacing the spoils system with a career bureaucracy. Political patronage survives in some federal as well as state and municipal appointments, but its range has been drastically curtailed. Scholars disagree whether politicizing government service improved or damaged its efficiency, integrity, and responsiveness. For good or ill, the spoils system certainly opened office to a broader range of citizens. It also buttressed the operations of mass political parties, and rose and declined in tandem with them.

Bibliography

Hoogenboom, Ari. Outlawing the Spoils: A History of the Civil Service Reform Movement, 1865–1883. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1961.

White, Leonard D. The Jacksonians: A Study in Administrative History, 1829–1861. New York: Macmillan, 1954.

———. The Republican Era: 1869–1901, A Study in Administrative History. New York: Macmillan, 1958.

The practice of appointing applicants to public offices as a reward for their loyalty to the political party in power. The term comes from a statement by a senator in the 1830s: “To the victor belong the spoils.” Reform of the system commenced in the 1880s with the introduction of merit as the basis of appointment to office. (See James A. Garfield, machine politics, and patronage.)

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