PTA.S1.Q3 - In a Democratic society, when a political....

Catherine M.

I've been struggling with MSS questions, so I drill every day. I would love someone's explanation of why D is correct. I chose B. I find myself I think making assumptions instead of taking everything I need for my answer from the stimulus. Along with this, any strategies for MSS questions??? Thank you!!!

Admin Note: Edited title. Please use the format: "PT#.S#.Q# - brief description of the question.

LSAT Lizard

In general- the usual question stem for MSS questions, "most strongly support," makes it sound like sometimes you'll have two answer choices that are supported by the stimulus and you have to choose which one is more supported, or even that sometimes none of the answer choices will be fully supported and you have to choose whichever one has the most partial support. But cases like these never really happen on the test. There are always four answers that are not properly supported by the stimulus, and one answer that is completely and fully supported by the stimulus. It's important to categorize MSS AC options in a binary way ('not supported' vs 'is supported'), rather than compare them on a spectrum (e.g. 40% supported vs 60% supported vs 80% supported).

If an AC is fully supported (the correct answer), then it shouldn't be possible for the stimulus to be true while the AC is false. This means that if you can think of a single case where the stimulus is true and the AC is false, that AC is wrong!

 
AC A. The stimulus indicates that political groups can become less influential after a certain, specific size threshold is exceeded. But it doesn't make any claims about what happens before that threshold is reached. Imagine that most political groups start out very small and expand slowly, taking many years to reach the critical threshold. Are stable periods generally more influential than growth periods during that pre-threshold time? We have no idea, since the question is outside the scope of the stimulus. It's possible that the answer is no. But if the answer is no, then this AC is false while the stimulus is true- AC A is wrong.

 
AC B. The stimulus makes no comments whatsoever about democratic societies functioning effectively. It also makes no comments about political groups interacting with each other, via compromise or any other means. Imagine that most political groups are evil cabals of lobbyists for industries that harm society. If they make compromises with each other, maybe it helps all of them get stuff done to advance their society-destroying goals. This hypothetical is compatible with the stimulus, which says nothing about political groups being good for society. But the hypothetical causes AC B to be false- AC B is wrong.

 
AC C. The stimulus makes one comment about large groups of people: diverse and sometimes conflicting economic interests can be found in almost any of them. Does that mean politicians are unable to ignore those large groups? We don't have a good reason to think so. Imagine that most large groups of people are poorly coordinated, and members rarely vote. Why should the politician pay attention to them, if they aren't even really influencing elections?

 
AC D. Something to notice here is that the claim being made is very, very soft. All that is necessary for AC D to be true is for it to be merely possible for a political interest group to lose their influence by becoming too big. This means that for AC D to be false, it would have to be the case that it is completely impossible for any political group to lose influence by becoming too big. Can that be the case while the stimulus is also true? We just can't make that happen. The stimulus tells us that sometimes a political group exceeds a certain size, develops diversity of economic opinions, and loses unity (and unity is necessary for a group to have influence). Either the stimulus is false (not allowed), or AC D cannot be false. So AC D must be true, based on the stimulus- that's full, complete, rock solid support.

 
AC E. It could be the case that the majority of political groups are completely ineffective from the start. Maybe they're usually poorly managed, or poorly funded. Or maybe they do tend to start out effectively, but don't usually lose effectiveness because they usually don't get big enough to hit the critical threshold. There's just so many ways for AC E to be untrue, and nearly all of them are compatible with the stimulus.

Catherine M.

Thank you so much!!!! This is so helpful. )