Public sector reform and merit: principles, practices, and pushback

Merit is a bulwark of bureaucracy. Yet it involves myths and quite a bit of conceptual mess. For administrative reform to utilize the ideas and objectives of merit, it needs to be clear, precise, and purposeful in its deployment. This chapter surveys the latest scholarship on how merit principles have been applied in public sector practice and with what pushbacks to the concept as it is traditionally understood. Merit is often conflated with performance and can involve structural bias demanding attention. Many confuse the merit concept with seniority or the mere production of technical qualifications rather than capability. Views are divided as to whether merit is an ideal in itself that ought to define public service structure and practice, or part of a suite of tools designed to ensure the achievement of other important goals such as impartiality and equality. Merit applied without thought can result in grave unintended consequences.