Q3

[ohthatpatrick]

What does the Question Stem tell us?
Inference (Most strongly support)

Break down the Stimulus:
Read for Causal, Conditional, Contrast, Quantitative language.
This has some causal/conditional language. Big sized group --> conflicting economic interests --> no unity. The contrapositive of that chain would be "if you want unity, you need harmonious economic interests, which means you shouldn't exceed a certain size". The contrast language of "YET" creates the friction point. The last sentence is saying "Influencing legislation ---requires--> political impact ----requires--> unity", so we could extend that all the way from "influencing legislation" to "do not exceed a certain size".

Any prephrase?
There is a big chain (although the wording is hedged, so I wouldn't expect something strongly worded). Influencing legislation requires political impact, which requires unity, which requires harmonious interests, which requires staying under a certain size.

Answer choice analysis:
A) Extreme, "generally". New comparison, "More/less influential". The stimulus only spoke of yes/no influential (relative vs. absolute language). Also, the trigger for losing influence is "exceeding a certain size", not "expanding".

B) Extreme, "it is necessary". And "effective functioning" of a democracy is out of scope.

C) Extreme, "ignore with impunity".

D) Yup, this looks like it's tesitng the connection between "influencing legislation" and "exceeding a certain size".

E) Extreme, "generally". Also, "over time" is not the same as "exceeding a certain size".

The correct answer is D.

Takeaway/Pattern: When we see chains are being tested, stuff mentioned twice (like "conflicting interests" and "unity") are the roadmap to the 'missing link' between the ideas mentioned only once: "exceeding a certain size" and "having the impact required to influence legislation".

#officialexplanation

[lolitatrekkie]

When I did this question I was stuck between A and D but eventually picked D (which ended up being the correct answer) and I want to make sure my reasoning for picking D is correct?

A is wrong because no where in the stimulus does it mention about how influential political interest groups are when their membership is numerically stable. All we know is that when membership to a political interest group exceeds a certain size it's hard for members to unite concerning conflicting interest which I thought answer choice D follows logically.

Is answer choice B wrong because the stimulus isn't talking about how a democratic should effectively function but rather about political interest groups to effectively function (a group must be united) to impact legislation?

Thanks!

[XbdD569]

Hello, I'm confused that, D uses the word "ineffective" while A has the exact word of "influential", so I chose the wrong answer A.

I think "ineffective" is not the same as "not influential". Is there a gap in D? Thank you!

[ohthatpatrick]

A couple things:

1. You should never base your decision to pick an LSAT answer simply based on whether it repeats a word. A lot of trap answers have this "word match" and a lot of correct answers have a paraphrased "meaning match".

2. This is 'most strongly support', so the answer doesn't need to be perfect. And it is very weakly worded, saying that "it CAN be effective".

Nevertheless, I think it's totally fair to say that if a political interest group didn't have the power to influence legislation then we would consider it ineffective. The whole purpose of a political interest group is to influence legislation.

[XbdD569]

Thanks!!!