Logical Reasoning

PT117 · S4 · Q8 Insurgent political parties that are

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Insurgent political parties that are profoundly dissatisfied with the dominant party’s reign and justificatory ideology always produce factions whose views and aims differ as greatly from each other’s as they do from the dominant party’s. Although these factions ignore their own disagreements for the sake of defeating the dominant party, their disagreements inevitably come forward upon victory.

Setup Ideas

When an insurgent party forms that is angry at the dominant party and its ideology, that insurgent party always produces factions whose goals and views are as different from each other's as they are from the dominant party's.

They ignore these disagreements for the sake of toppling the dominant party, but then their disagreements inevitably come forward upon victory.

Evaluate

Since this is prefaced by a Conclusion indicator like "Therefore", we're drawing a conclusion from these claims. In other words, we're making a supportable inference (like on Most Supported).

The first and second sentence both had causal/conditional words. Insurgent parties always produce factions Victory over dominant party inevitably leads to disagreements among factions coming to surface.

They don't quite chain together, but they do both mention these factions within the insurgent (and eventually victorious) political party.

Fill-in-the-Blank Goal

It sounds like we're being led up to a moment of, .

When they had that common enemy, they ignored their disagreements with each other (even though those disagreements were just as vast as those with the dominant party).

So once that common enemy is gone, they'll start bickering with each other.

8.

Which one of the following is the most logical completion of the argument?

  1. no victorious insurgent party ever

    Too Strong

    Too Strong: no party ever Out of Scope: stay in power longer This is harshly worded idea that deals with something we never talked about: the duration of time the dominant party was in power vs. the amount of time the victorious insurgent party is in power. Since our author never spoke to duration of reign, we wouldn't have her conclude this extreme statement that no insurgent party has ever matched the duration of the dominant part's reign.

    2% picked this

  2. Correct

    a victorious insurgent party must

    Why this is right

    This is very harshly worded, so not very tempting on a first pass, but it's ultimately our most supportable idea. It does reinforce where we thought this paragraph was going: once the insurgent party is in power, they'll start fighting within themselves, since their internal factions disagree profoundly with each other. Do we know for sure that if they failed to address the disagreements between factions it would end up dooming them to lose power? No. But again, it's the best available option. If you read it more like a human and less like an LSAT student, it can sound pretty common sensical: they better address their internal differences if they don't want to splinter their winning coalition! "Reading it more like a human, less like an LSAT student" is a gear I resort to if I didn't find an answer on the first pass that I liked as an LSAT student.

    Skill tested: Most Supported · how this choice captures the argument's function is the move to repeat next time.

    71% picked this

  3. the heretofore insurgent party will

    No Support: keeping old ideology

    This is by far the most safely worded answer, so I would start by considering this one, but we have zero support for this idea. It's saying that sometimes an insurgent party, which we know was profoundly dissatisfied with the old party's ideology, will sometimes just keep the old ideology rather than disseminating a new one once it comes to power. We only have evidence to the contrary, that they badly want to replace the old party's justificatory ideology.

    17% picked this

  4. a victorious insurgent party always

    Too Strong: always

    It seems plausible that the just-defeated, formerly-dominant party would try to rally and take down the just-victorious, formerly-insurgent party in the next election cycle. But does that always have to be true? We're only biased to think that way in America because we've been stupidly oscillating between two political parties for a century or more. But in any country with more than 2 political parties, where there is some fluidity to rising and declining ranks of membership to various political parties, it's entirely possible that a dominant party gets defeated and never is popular enough to be a serious challenger again. The author says nothing to guarantee that the defeated party always comes back with a revenge motive. Did the author rule out the possibility that some

    5% picked this

  5. it is impossible for the

    Too Strong: impossible

    This is similar to (B), but this is eternally pessimistic. (B) recognized that a potential problem was brewing and hedged it's wording: "if you don't figure out how to squash the beef amongst factions, you're going to topple from power". This answer is just definitively saying, "you are absolutely in 100% of cases going to topple". On Most Supported / Must Be True tasks where we want the most provable answer we can find, if we're down to 2 versions of a similar idea, we'll be leaning towards the weaker language.

    6% picked this

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