Why spoil system is bad

It was supervised by several 'syndicates' and 'ad-hoc task forces'! This 'most happening mission ever undertaken by the Indian government' was headed by a former Harvard Professor and World Bank economist who hardly had any knowledge about India and its administrative system! There was nothing surprising in all these.

Because, the only knock the PMO heard was that of the multi-national and corporate carpetbaggers carrying sacks of FDI and FII and not the wailings of country's teeming millions suffering from poverty, hunger, corruption, repression, inequity and injustice. The objective, therefore, was not to equip civil servants to deliver basic governance — an ambience and atmosphere for the common man to work and live with equity, justice and dignity. Instead, it was meant to facilitate a 'corporate culture' through LPG, with some crumbs thrown to the ordinary citizens.

The former Prime Minister confined himself to training and equipping the civil servants to be professional. But the present one has gone several steps ahead and is importing 'professionals' themselves in place of civil servants.

Under his watch, the PMO has become a specialist in demolishing and even destroying institutions and instruments of governance. The Aayog has virtually become a corporate consultant, urging the privatisation of all institutions, infrastructure and services. Now they want to privatise the IAS, which is the most potent instrument of democratic governance covenanted in the Constitution Article Numbers are being put out to justify this serious move of 'lateral entry' into the IAS.

According to recent statistics given to Parliament, there are 4, IAS officers as against their total authorised strength of 6, leaving a shortage of over 1, The government has increased the annual intake of IAS officers to during the last four years. Without analysing and understanding the reasons for this shortage, which is mainly due to the archaic recruitment system and chaotic cadre management, the GoI has opted to abandon the constitutional scheme of things and run to the market. The Spoils System is prevalent in the US, which has a presidential form of government.

Because of the privilege of a directly elected president to form his own team to run the government, he has the right to choose his top bureaucrats from anywhere, along with their confidential assistants without any competitive procedures. But there are limits and checks and balances in which the career civil servants predominate and are safeguarded from arbitrary dismissals and adverse actions from political appointees. In fact, political appointees cannot, willy-nilly, occupy positions traditionally served by career federal employees.

There are 1, senior leaders, chosen by the president, including cabinet secretaries and their deputies, heads of most independent agencies and ambassadors, who must be confirmed by the Senate. A "Schedule C" is a type of political appointment in the US who serves in confidential or policy roles immediately subordinate to other appointees.

In , there were 1, "Schedule C" appointees. They do not need Senate confirmation. Jackson came to office as a reformer with a promise to end the dominance of elites and what he considered their corrupt policies. As a result, at his inaugural reception on March 4, a huge crowd of office seekers crashed the reception.

The peak of the spoils system came under James Buchanan, who served from to Even Abraham Lincoln, who followed Buchanan, made extensive use of the system, replacing at least 1, of the 1, officials then subject to presidential appointment. The number would have been higher but for the secession of Southern states, which put some federal officials out of his reach.

The tide began to turn in the late s following public revelations that positions had been created requiring little or no work and other abuses, including illiterate appointees , and a congressional report about the success of civil service systems in Great Britain, China, France and Prussia. In , President Ulysses S. Grant established a Civil Service Commission that led to some reforms, but just two years later a hostile Congress cut off new funding , and Grant terminated the experiment in March The number of jobs potentially open to patronage continued to soar, doubling from 51, in to , in But across the U.

He was the President's one personal confidante in a cabinet made up of near-strangers. Just before the inauguration, Eaton had married Margaret O'Neale Timberlake, the vivacious daughter of a Washington hotelier. Scandalous stories circulated about "Peggy" O'Neale, whose first husband, a purser in the Navy, had died abroad under mysterious circumstances not long before her marriage to Eaton.

Rumor said that he committed suicide over her dalliance with Eaton. Cabinet wives, including Calhoun's wife Floride, regarded Peggy with abhorrence and conspicuously shunned her. In the snubbing of Mrs. Eaton, Jackson saw the kind of vicious persecution that he believed had hounded his own Rachel to her death. He also believed he spied a plot to drive out Eaton from his cabinet, isolate him among strangers, and control his administration. The master of the plot, Jackson came to decide, was Calhoun.

He was also shown evidence that during the controversy over his Florida incursion back in , Calhoun had criticized him in Monroe's cabinet while publicly posturing as his defender. Jackson now accused Calhoun of treachery, initiating an angry correspondence that ended with the severing of social relations between the two.

The Eaton scandal cleaved Jackson's own household. Eaton, and Emily's husband, Jackson's nephew and private secretary Andrew Jackson Donelson, backed her up. The one cabinet officer who stood apart from the snubbing was a man with no wife to contend with—Secretary of State Martin Van Buren of New York, a widower. Jackson was drawn to Van Buren both by his courtliness to Peggy Eaton and his policy views. Van Buren wished to return to the minimalist, strict constructionist governing philosophy of the old Jeffersonian party.

In practical political terms, he sought to rebuild the coalition of "planters and plain republicans"—put concretely, an alliance of the South with New York and Pennsylvania—that had sustained Jefferson. Van Buren opposed the American System, but on broad philosophical rather than narrow sectional grounds. As Jackson separated from Calhoun, he became more intimate with Van Buren.

By , the Eaton imbroglio threatened to paralyze the administration. Eaton and Van Buren created a way out: they resigned, giving Jackson an occasion to demand the resignations of the other secretaries and appoint a whole new cabinet.

To reward Van Buren, Jackson named him as minister to Great Britain, the highest post in the American diplomatic service. The nomination came before the Senate, where Vice-President Calhoun, on an arranged tie vote, cast the deciding vote against it. Van Buren, who had already assumed his station abroad, came home as a political martyr, Jackson's choice for vice-president in , and his heir apparent to the presidency.

As Van Buren rose and Calhoun fell, the tariff controversy mounted to a crisis. Congress passed a new tariff in that reduced some rates but continued the protectionist principle. Some Southerners claimed this as a sign of progress, but South Carolinians saw it as reason to abandon hope in Washington. In November, a state convention declared the tariff unconstitutional and hence null and void.

South Carolina's legislature followed up with measures to block the collection of federal custom revenues at the state's ports and to defend the state with arms against federal incursion. Jackson responded on two fronts. He urged Congress to reduce the tariff further, but he also asked for strengthened authority to enforce the revenue laws.

Privately, and perhaps for calculated political effect, he talked about marching an army into South Carolina and hanging Calhoun. In December, he issued a ringing official proclamation against nullification.

Drafted largely by Secretary of State Edward Livingston, the document questioned Carolinians' obsession with the tariff, reminded them of their patriotic heritage, eviscerated the constitutional theory behind nullification, and warned against taking this fatal step: "Be not deceived by names. Disunion by armed force is treason. Are you really ready to incur its guilt? Henry Clay, leader of the congressional opposition to Jackson and stalwart of the American System, joined in odd alliance with John C.

Calhoun, who had resigned his lame-duck vice-presidency for a seat in the Senate. They fashioned a bill to reduce the tariff in a series of stages over nine years. Early in , Congress passed this Compromise Tariff and also a "force bill" to enforce the revenue laws.

Though the Clay-Calhoun forces sought to deny Jackson credit for the settlement, he was fully satisfied with the result. South Carolina, claiming victory, rescinded its nullification of the tariff but nullified the force bill in a final gesture of principled defiance. The Compromise of brought an end to tariff agitation until the s. First with internal improvements, then with the tariff, the American System had been essentially stymied.

The congressional Clay-Calhoun alliance foreshadowed a convergence of all Jackson's enemies into a new opposition party. The issue that sealed this coalition, solidified Jackson's own following, and dominated his second term as President was the Second Bank of the United States. The Bank of the United States was a quasi-public corporation chartered by Congress to manage the federal government's finances and provide a sound national currency. Headquartered in Philadelphia with branches throughout the states, it was the country's only truly national financial institution.

The federal government owned one-fifth of the stock and the President of the United States appointed one-fifth of the directors. Like other banks chartered by state legislatures, the Bank lent for profit and issued paper currency backed by specie reserves.

Its notes were federal legal tender. By law, it was also the federal government's own banker, arranging its loans and storing, transferring, and disbursing its funds. The Bank's national reach and official status gave it enormous leverage over the state banks and over the country's supply of money and credit. Opposition to it was one of the founding tenets of the Jeffersonian Democratic-Republican party.

That party allowed the Bank to expire when its twenty-year charter ran out in But the government's financial misadventures in the War of forced a reconsideration. In , Congress chartered the Second Bank, again for twenty years. Imprudent lending and corrupt management brought the Second Bank into deep disrepute during the speculative boom-and-bust cycle that culminated in the Panic of Calls arose for revocation of the charter.

But the astute stewardship of new Bank president Nicholas Biddle did much to repair its reputation in the s. Which of the following BEST defines the spoils system? The correct answer is the second one. President Jackson believed American Indians had to give up their territory to white settlers. Historians view Jackson as the perfect example of presidential leadership: an intelligent, law-abiding citizen with a penchant for reflection and discussion.

Historians view Jackson as a power hungry dictator who used the spoils system to create loyal political party centered around him and his cult of personality. Andrew Jackson, the 7th President of the United States, was: bigoted, impulsive, brave and brutal. Andrew Jackson March 15, — June 8, was an American lawyer, soldier, and statesman who served as the seventh president of the United States from to Begin typing your search term above and press enter to search.

Press ESC to cancel. Skip to content Home Essay What did the spoils system do? Ben Davis May 8, What did the spoils system do? Why did Andrew Jackson defend the spoils system? When was the spoils system used? Why is the spoils system a bad thing? Which president eliminated the spoils system? How did the spoils system create government corruption?