Bureaucrat: The primary, constant goal of an ideal bureaucracy is to define and classify all possible problems and s...

Mehran on November 26, 2013

The conclusion of this argument is, "for this reason, an ideal bureaucracy will have an ever-expanding system of regulations." How do we know this? Well an ideal bureaucracy provides an appeal procedure for any complaint and if a complaint reveals an unanticipated problem, the regulations are expanded to cover the new issue.

This is a Strengthen with Necessary Premise question so we are looking for the answer choice that not only strengthens, but that is also necessary to the argument (i.e. destroys the argument when negated). So first, we want to make sure the answer choice strengthens, and then if it does, we want to negate it to make sure it is also necessary.

Let's take a closer look at the correct answer choice:

(C) strengthens the argument by pointing out that an ideal bureaucracy will never be permanently without complaints about problems that are not covered by that bureaucracy's regulations. If this is true, it would strengthen the conclusion that an ideal bureaucracy will have an ever-expanding system of regulations. Now let's negate to make sure that (C) is also necessary to the argument. The negation of (C) is: "An ideal bureaucracy will sometime be permanently without complaints about problems that are not covered by that bureaucracy's regulations." If this were true, the argument's conclusion would be destroyed because it would not be true that an ideal bureaucracy will have an ever-expanding system of regulations because at some point, there would no longer be any more complaints. As such, (C) is the correct answer.

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