Spoils system

In memoriam--our civil service as it was, A Political cartoon by Thomas Nast showing statue of Andrew Jackson on pig, which is over "fraud," "bribery," and "spoils," eating "plunder." in Harper's Weekly, 1877 April 28, p. 325.

In the politics of the United States, a spoil system (also known as a patronage system) is a practice where a political party, after winning an election, gives government jobs to its voters as a reward for working toward victory, and as an incentive to keep working for the party—as opposed to a system of awarding offices on the basis of some measure of merit independent of political activity.

The term was derived from the phrase "'to the victor belong the spoils" by New York Senator William L. Marcy, referring to the victory of the Jackson Democrats in the election of 1828.

Similar spoils systems are common in other nations that are struggling to transcend systemic clientage based on tribal organization or other kinship groups and localism in general.

Peak and Reform of the Spoils system

Previous to March 4, 1829, moderation had prevailed in the transfer of political power from one presidency to another. President Andrew Jackson's inauguration signaled a sharp departure from past presidencies. An unruly mob of office seekers made spostmasters were deprived of their positions, most with extensive records of good service. The new emphasis on loyalty rather than competence would have a long term negative effect on the efficiency and effectiveness of the federal government.

Presidents after President Andrew Jackson continued the use of the spoils system to encourage others to vote for them. But by the late 1860s, reformers began demanding a civil service system. Running under the Liberal Republican Party in 1872, they were harshly defeated by patronage-hungry Ulysses S. Grant.

After the assassination of James A. Garfield by a rejected office-seeker in 1881, the calls for civil service reform intensified. The end of the spoils system at the federal level came with the passage of the Pendleton Act in 1883, which created a bipartisan Civil Service Commission to evaluate job candidates on a nonpartisan merit basis. While few jobs were covered under the law initially, the law allowed the President to transfer jobs and their current holders into the system, thus giving the holder a permanent job. The Pendleton Act's reach was expanded as the two main political parties alternated control of the White House every election between 1884 and 1896. After each election the outgoing President applied the Pendleton Act to jobs held by his political supporters. By 1900, most federal jobs were handled through civil service and the spoils system was limited only to very senior positions.

The separation between the political activity and the civil service was made stronger with the Hatch Act of 1939 which prohibited federal employees from engaging in many political activities.

The spoils system survived much longer in many states, counties and municipalities, such as the Tammany Hall ring, which survived well into the 1930s when New York City reformed its own civil service. Illinois modernized its bureaucracy in 1917 under Frank Lowden, but Chicago held on to patronage in city government until the city agreed to end the practice in the Shakman Decrees of 1972 and 1983. Modern variations on the spoils system are often described as the political machine.

See also

• List of United States political appointments that crossed party lines
• Nepotism

References

Secondary sources

• Griffith; Ernest S. The Modern Development of City Government in the United Kingdom and the United States (1927)
• Hoogenboom, Ari Arthur. Outlawing the Spoils: A history of the civil service reform movement, 1865-1883 (1961)
• Ostrogorski; M. Democracy and the Party System in the United States (1910)
• Rubio; Philip F. A History of Affirmative Action, 1619-2000 University Press of Mississippi (2001)
• Van Riper, Paul. History of the United States Civil Service Greenwood Press (1976; reprint of 1958 edition)