Passage Discussion

[LSAT-Chang]

Scale for this passage?

A -- authoritarian rulers undertake democratic reforms due to intrinsic commitment or conversion to democratic ideals

B -- authoritarian rulers undertake democratic reforms because certain changes in society make it impossible for them to hold on indefinitely to absolute power, and this is their only hope of retaining at least some power.

Any feedback??? A pretty long scale.. also, no one in side A.. is this common or am I just not finding the right scale?? I feel like at least 2 or 3 passages out of 4 passages in a section don't have clear sides or if there is a clear side, there is only support for one side so I have no clue who even stands on the other side.

[timmydoeslsat]

You are doing fine.

The scale is a tool to keep you engaged mentally in a passage. This will keep you focused about how to line up evidence what that evidence supports.

When you have a case where a scale is not clearly showing two sides, then that is actually an OK thing! Do not be bummed about that at all! That means it is less complicated in a certain respect.

You essentially have a mass of evidence used to hammer a point.

If you were able to see the mental scale I had in my mind for this one, it would look like this:


Authoritarian rulers institute democratic reforms to hold on to power they might otherwise lose for good

Once I created that part of the scale, I was anticipating perhaps someone that disagreed with this claim. Maybe a scholar goes really deep in thought and provokes a statement like, "Authoritarian rulers must do these reforms out of democratic ideals because it is impossible to institute such reforms without a commitment to democracy."

Of course, we did not get that in this passage. Rather, we are given 3 major types of changes that bring about such action from an authoritarian regime.