PrepTest 110, Section 1, Question 2
Most authoritarian rulers who undertake democratic reforms do(449 more words not shown)
The author's attitude toward authoritarian(11 more words not shown)
- Auncertainty whether the(11 more words not shown)
- Bpuzzlement about the(13 more words not shown)
- Cconfidence that most(13 more words not shown)
- Dinsistence that authoritarian(8 more words not shown)
- Econcern that authoritarian(11 more words not shown)
Reading the passage
My first impression is that the writer is analytical: these rulers recognize incentives and respond to them. We aren't simply being told to condemn them. The choices may identify a more specific judgment, so we need to distinguish the writer's view from our own opinions about authoritarian government.
Working the answers
- A
A strategic motive doesn't tell us whether the reforms are substantial or superficial. A ruler could make real changes for self-interested reasons. The writer doesn't express uncertainty about their depth.
- B
The motives aren't a puzzle here. The opening explains them, and the ending returns to the calculation: concede some power to avoid losing it all.
- CCorrect
The final paragraph says authoritarian rule tends to generate the very changes that undermine absolute control. Calculating rulers recognize that reform is their sole chance to preserve a measure of future authority (paragraph 5). That account supports confidence in a general movement toward more democratic government. It doesn't require a guarantee that every regime follows the same course.
- D
We might consider authoritarian rule inherently unjust, but the writer doesn't develop that judgment. Describing repression and demands for freedom isn't the same as insisting on this general moral principle.
- E
The writer describes retaining some power through democratic reforms. There is no expressed concern that rulers will discover how to retain it without reforming.
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