Q8 - Insurgent political parties that are

[scottflanary]

Hello! I'm sorry, but I do not understand why B is the correct answer here. I don't see anything in the text that would lead me to infer anything about what a party needs to do to stay in power. Help...and thanks!

[Raiderblue17]

I will give this a go, I got it correct, but it wasn't easy...

What we learn: Insurgent parties don't like the current regime, and although they work together to remove the current regime, they also really don't like each other. So when the insurgent party gets into power, __________ what might happen?

Well if the party that is finally in power, can't get along, they probably won't get much done, and when nothing gets done you tend to lose your job.... Unless your congress (Joking....)

Anyways, so what answer choice says this: B does.

A uses "as long as the party it displaces" we have no idea the truth to that.
C says, will not create new ideas... it seems close, but I eliminated it b/c the stimulus is about disagreements btw members of a party.
D: ALWAYS... ignored.
E: IMPOSSIBLE: IGNORED.

when something follows logically unless the terms always or never is included just ignore anything that says ALWAYS or NEVER, because it CANT BE PROVEN. WE HAVE TO PROVE the chocie correct with the evidence in the stimulus.

Direct message me if you need further help

[maryadkins]

Good discussion here. This is absolutely one of those frustrating inference questions in which the right answer is only "most" likely to be true. It's FAR from definitely true as you noted since there is nothing in the stimulus about what a party needs to do to stay in power. But Raiderblue17, you're right--since we know they are as different from each other as they are from the party in power (that they're toppling), we can infer that when these differences become apparent (which we're also told), they'll have some issues. From there, we absolutely have to make an assumption about them needing to resolve the issues to stay in power.

A uses "as long as the party it displaces" we have no idea the truth to that.

Yes!

C says, will not create new ideas... it seems close, but I eliminated it b/c the stimulus is about disagreements btw members of a party.
D: ALWAYS... ignored.
E: IMPOSSIBLE: IGNORED.

(C) Agree that it seems close. The problem is we don't know how promulgating a new ideology relates to the disagreements that surface after victory. And if you say, "But (B) talks about staying in power and that's not in there, either!" I'm with you. Looks like (based on some quick googling) this question caused some controversy among test-takers after the administered exam centered around this (B) or (C) issue. Ultimately, both require an assumption to be made, but (B) explicitly deals with the factions.

(D) and (E) - Careful here. Extreme terms are certainly red flags, but you do not want to "ignore" answer choices altogether because of them. As an example of why, consider (C) again. It uses "always" but in the context of saying "not always"--which just means what? Sometimes/at least once. That's not a very extreme statement, but if you just skimmed the answer choices, spotted "always" and eliminated it for this reason, you'd be knocking it out based on a false characterization of it.

(D) talks about it (always) facing opposition from the party it ousted; unsupported conclusion.

(E) You are right here that "impossible" makes this unsupported.

[dandrew]

I'm still having trouble with (C). For inference questions, isn't the general rule of thumb to sometimes lean towards the milder answer choice? (B), the correct answer, is prescriptive, while the entire passage is descriptive. (C), on the other hand, merely says a party will not always have a unified ideology once it is victorious (assumption: because it has factions) and it sticks with the descriptive manner of the text. It seems like (B) requires an even larger assumption, one that makes disagreement between factions a sufficient condition for defeat. We don't even know what led to the dominant party's defeat--did they lose because they, too, were divided?

Could it be that (B) is a better answer choice partly because of the unique stem of this question? Unlike "must be true" or "most strongly supported" inference questions, #8 asks that we find a conclusion. In this case, (B) seems better because it makes more of a statement.

[maryadkins]

Could it be that (B) is a better answer choice partly because of the unique stem of this question? Unlike "must be true" or "most strongly supported" inference questions, #8 asks that we find a conclusion. In this case, (B) seems better because it makes more of a statement.

Yes. Good point. It's an inference question, but the "therefore" suggests we want to complete the argument in some way, and (B) does a better job of that than (C). Still a tricky question.

[deedubbew]

Would you say that in these "most logical" inference questions that the correct answer is the one that you can infer from the premises if you add an assumption? I can't see any other answer choices where you can make the inference even with an assumption.