A is the correct answer.
The Pendleton Act was designed to make sure that people in government were actually qualified for their jobs and just not there for patronage.
Patronage was a great way for the Executive branch to get stuff done, so it had an impact.
C) populism
For future reference: an easy way to remember the causes is to use the acronym MAIN (as in the MAIN causes) to remember that they are militarism, alliances, imperialism, and nationalism.
Hope this helps :)
The killing of unarmed blacks like mike brown started it ?