Нужно составить 10 вопрос к этому тексту. . as the public service evolved with the other institutions of government in the united states, critical decisions about design were made. many of those decisions reflected major political movements and trends. widespread patronage was linked to mass democracy and to populism, as was the strong reliance on simple common sense as the basic qualification for public jobs. politics more generally provided the justification for the incremental way in which merit and neutral competence replaced patronage. the passage of the first civil service legislation? the pendleton act? was not a rejection of the overt politicization of the federal service. it was a classic political solution to the problems that patronage posed: merit would be introduced, but slowly, and through executive orders of the president, rather then trough legislative action. politics and merit became legally, and inextricably entwined. as it has developed, the civil service system designed to cover 10 per cent of the existing workforce in 1883, expanded to cover most federal employees. because it expanded incrementally and generally at the will of the president, however , the civil service system or the merit system, as it is often called could grow only in competition with, and at the expense of, the political patronage system it was intended to correct. from the beginning the relationship between the civil service on the one hand and elected officials and their appointees on the other was not a partnership. but an association filed with wary antagonism. it is not surprising then that the merit system was intended to create and protect has become a frequent target of political criticism. at the same time, the role of the civil service and its power in government have grown larger. the role of the civil service and the characteristics and skills of its personnel had to change to meet new demands. the civil service reform act of 1978 was intended to make the service, particularly ar the top level of management, more flexible, more responsive, and more productive. the civil servic commission was abolished and new agencies were created to help with that task. the civil sevice system remained burdened by thousands of pages of rules and regulations and did not work. additional reforms were undertaken; training and development were reemphasized and compensation was made less standard.