In 1789 the Confederation Congress formed after the American Revoluti

OFFICIAL EXPLANATION


• Strip the sentence
In 1789, the Confederation Congress formed after the American Revolution rejected the Articles of Confederation in favor of the Constitution because of their lack of provision for the creation of either executive agencies or judiciary institutions.

The Confederation Congress ... rejected the Articles of Confederation ... because of their lack of provision for the creation of either executive agencies or judiciary institutions.

This sort of sentence is similar to what you might see in RC.
You should know or recognize that a congress is a national legislative body (to which President-inspired terrorists laid waste this week in my country).

The Congress rejected the Articles of Confederation; they failed to provide for two important things.

Takeaway: The strongest way to talk about causality is the most straightforward: the word because followed by a clause.
→ Correct, better: The old buses were replaced because they failed to provide access for people in wheelchairs.
→ Correct, worse: The old buses were replaced because of their lack of provision of access for people in wheelchairs.

This guideline is part of "rhetorical construction."
I will briefly discuss rhetorical construction in Notes, below.

I don't quite understand the rejections of option D.
They has one logical antecedent: the Articles of Confederation.
Congress is singular. Constitution is singular.

They refers to the Articles of Confederation.
The Articles failed to provide for "the creation of either executive agencies or judiciary institutions."
To provide for means "to allow, to stipulate," here.

I am wondering whether people are seeing "a provision" in options A and B.
Neither option uses an article.
I mention that I think some of you are seeing an article where there is none because options A and D mean the same thing—or close enough, and (D) is by far the better sentence.

Google To make provision for.
I think many of you do not understand that to lack provision for and to fail to provide for mean the same thing in this context—it involves a legal document—a founding contract/charter.

• Split #1: due to vs. because or because of

As most of you know, GMAC writers deeply dislike due to.
I don't blame them.
When you see due to in an option,
(1) be suspicious of the option, and
(2) substitute "caused by."
If caused by works, then due to is logical.
If caused by fails, then due to is incorrect.

Options B and C use due to.
Substitute caused by in each option.
The sentences are not logical.
Caused by and due to need the noun rejection, which is not in the sentence.

ELIMINATE B and C
(Option B is better than option C because (B) uses a dedicated noun, provision, which is almost always preferred to a gerund (a verbING noun) such as providing.)

• Split #2: WHEN and logic

Myth: On the GMAT, when may only be used to depict an actual time.
In zero conditionals (which express general truths), when can be used in place of if: When water is frozen, it expands.

Fact: When is almost never an effective word to express cause and effect.

The use of when in option E to convey causality is ineffective and not preferred.
Compare (E) to (A) or (D). The latter two are clearer because in English, those words unequivocally convey causality.

ELIMINATE E

• Split #3: Active verbs vs. noun phrases

Now we are down to options A and D.
Option A is grammatical.
But Option A creates a much weaker sentence than option D does.

Almost always, active verbs are preferred to every other construction, including prepositions + noun phrases.
I cannot stress this point often enough.

Because they did not provide for is rhetorically more forceful than because of their lack of provision for.
→ To express causality, because + clause is usually more direct than because of.
In this case and most cases, because is followed by an active verb: did not provide.
By contrast, the compound preposition because of is followed by a noun phrase: lack of provision.

Verbs trump nouns.
You're gonna have to take my word for this proposition if you can't quite see or hear its gist yet.
Nouns are inert. Boring. Not dynamic.
Action verbs are dynamic. Not boring.
In English, active verbs drive good prose. Option D's verb is better than option A's noun phrase.

Concision: Let's say that you are flustered because these two sentences are both grammatical.
You cannot remember what the heck anyone said about verbs and noun phrases or because and because of.
Your head spins.

Simplify. What do you know?
Option D says the same thing as Option A says—but (D) uses fewer words.
Choose the shorter version.

Eliminate option A.

The best answer is D

Notes

In harder SC questions, rhetorical construction will come into play more often than in easier questions.

Rhetorical construction refers to how well a sentence is written.

That latter phrase means . . . what I have been practicing since I was four years old.
So yeah, what that phrase encompasses may seem daunting.

But there are a few guidelines to follow.
You can get an an excellent overview in Mike McGarry's post, here.
Another of his posts on the matter is here.

→ Active verbs create better prose than noun phrases.
(In fact, some companies, B-schools, and headhunters run your essay through a computer scan, looking for active verbs that suit the job, program, or endeavor.)

→ Concision matters. (Concise sentences, by the way, often deploy active verbs or strong causal links or both.)

→ Clarity matters.
I don't want to see a which-clause ten miles away from its noun.

The easiest way to learn Sentence Correction for native and nearly-fluent speakers, and the only way for anyone to learn effective rhetorical construction, is to read.

Here is a collection of columns by Eugene Robinson, a Pulitzer-prize winning editorialist.

George Will—with whom I deeply disagree politically—is a beautiful writer.
He, too, won a Pulitzer.
Will's latest column is here.
Although I am usually hollering at the piece itself when I read his work (while simultaneously admiring his prose), this time I completely agree with his assessment of three human stains on the American body politic.
You do not have to agree with what these people write.
You do need to read editorials often. Here are more of Will's editorials.

Read editorialists from the New York Times; the Washington Post; the Wall Street Journal (not my fave, but you all may like the subject matter); and those from other cities in the U.S.
I'd tell you to read editorialists from around the world, but GMAT prose is U.S. English.

COMMENTS

noobieTopro and SShareef , welcome to SC Butler.

I confess that I am slightly surprised by these stats.

These stats tell me that people are being steered slightly wrong.
I think the message goes something like this: grammar rules will get you by on SC and reading is for Reading Comp practice.

No.
Read.

We have an easy fix for what is evidently a widespread habit of not reading.
In a world without solutions, this problem has one.

Correct answers with explanations whose time stamp is before the OA was revealed get kudos. Stay safe, everyone.