October 2010 LSAT Section 3 Question 3

Commentator: If a political administration is both economically successful and successful at protecting individual li...

Rebeccaburd on August 20, 2020

Subsidiary Conclusion

How come "bureaucratic mechanisms are engineered to resist change" is a premise, rather than a subsidiary conclusion? Can it be both?

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Victoria on September 8, 2020

Hi @Rebeccaburd,

Happy to help!

A premise can also be a subsidiary conclusion; however, for a premise to also be a subsidiary conclusion, there must be more than one premise in the stimulus.

In this example, the premise cannot also be a subsidiary conclusion because there is no additional premise to support it. The statement "bureaucratic mechanisms are engineered to resist change" is a fact that is used to support the conclusion that "it is unlikely that bureaucracies will be simplified."

Hope this helps! Please let us know if you have any further questions.