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Political theorist: The chief foundations of all governments are the legal system and the police force; and as Support there cannot be a good legal system where the police are not well paid, Conclusion it follows that where the police are well paid there will be a good legal system.

Argument Summary: Flawed Reasoning

The political theorist opens with a statement about the legal system and the police force being the "chief foundations of all governments." This is more of a contextual statement, since we don't really return to this idea of the government's foundations. The theorist's key premise is in the next sentence, that "there cannot be a good legal system where the police are not well paid":

/police well paid → /good legal system

The theorist concludes that "where the police are well paid there will be a good legal system":

police well paid → good legal system

Hopefully you can see that this conclusion doesn't follow from the premise. At most, the contrapositive of the premise would tell us that if there is a good legal system, we know that the police are well paid:

good legal system → police well paid

But nothing in the stimulus lets us conclude that where the police are well paid, there will definitely be a good legal system. The argument relies on a sufficiency/necessity confusion.

The reasoning in the argument ██ ███ █████ ███████ ██ █████ ██ █████████ ████

Question Type

Flaw or descriptive weakening

As we discussed in our analysis of the stimulus, the argument assumes that because having a well-paid police force is necessary for having a good legal system, paying a police force well will be sufficient to ensure a good legal system, without separately establishing that this is a sufficient condition.

many governments with ███ █████ ███████ ████ ██████ ████ ██████ ██████

Incorrect. (A) would be a fact consistent with the argument, but the flaw in the argument isn't that it fails to establish that "many" governments with bad legal systems also have poorly paid police forces.

bad governments with ████ █████ ███████ ████ ████ ██████ ████ ██████ ██████

Incorrect. (B) actually contradicts the argument, since, according to the argument, it's not possible to have a "good" legal system if the police are poorly paid.

a well-paid police █████ ██████ ██ █████████ ███████ █ ████ █████ ██████

Incorrect. The argument doesn't tell us anything about what makes a police force "effective" once it is well-paid. The "effectiveness" of a police force isn't relevant to this argument, so the argument doesn't need to establish (C).

10%

a well-paid police █████ ██ ██████████ ██ █████████ █ ████ █████ ██████

Correct. (D) accurately summarizes what we described in our analysis above: the argument concludes that a well-paid police force is sufficient to guarantee a good legal system, while it has only established that a well-paid police force is necessary for a good legal system to exist.

85%

some bad governments ████ ████ █████ ███████

Incorrect. The argument doesn't tell us anything about "good" or "bad" governments in general, only about the relationship between having a well-paid police force and having a good legal system.

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PrepTest 16 - Section 1 - Question 8

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