The political and social forces that may facilitate a dictator’s rise

The political and social forces that may facilitate a dictator’s rise to power include
sudden crashes in the economy, discrimination and other methods of finding
scapegoats, inciting the masses to rebellion, and their protesting that the current
government may still be inadequate.

'incitement' keeps the parallelism

(A) inciting the masses to rebellion, and their protesting that the current government may still be inadequate
(B) inciting the masses to rebellion, and a protest that the current government may still be inadequate.
(C) an incitement of the masses to rebellion, and a protesting that the current government may still be inadequate.
(D) an incitement of the masses to rebellion, and a protest of the still inadequate current government
changes the meaning.
current government DOES NOT protest.
(E) an incitement of the masses to rebellion, and a protest that the current government may still be inadequate.
Correct.

Dear TaN1213,

Thank you for asking a very thoughtful and well-formulated question. I'm happy to respond.

Usually, the MGMAT questions are superb--those people are brilliant! This one feels a little formulaic and unsatisfying. Typically, a good GMAT SC OA follows all the rules and is an incredibly well-written sentence. This one has an OA that, but in following the rules, it lands on something awkward.

The point you are raising is a legitimate issue in this question. Here's the thing, though. The word "inciting" could be read as either the third element of four in parallel, or as the modifier of the second element of three in parallel. That's ambiguity, and ambiguity is always wrong 100% of the time on the GMAT.

If we wanted to indicate clearly that "inciting" modifies the second element, I think we would have to rearrange the sentence:

The political and social forces that may facilitate a dictator’s rise to power include sudden crashes in the economy, a protest that the current government may still be inadequate, and discrimination and other methods of finding scapegoats, separative techniques that incite the masses to rebel.

That version has no ambiguity, but it seems to have a meaning different from what the intelligent folks at MGMAT intended.

I don't know. Choice (B) feels most natural, although I understand that this version doesn't follow the GMAT rules to the letter. Choice (E) is technically correct but screamingly awkward. I don't know. I find this questions unsatisfying, one of the exceedingly few MGMAT questions that leaves me feeling this way.

Does all this make sense?
Mike

I saw the word finding and chose B. Finding --> Inciting for a parallel structure.

avik5503, Can you please explain what role does the word finding play here?

E. There is a list and A and B are out due to parallelism error because they must be nouns. Further in C there must be a noun after and to finish the list hence C is out. D is out because of meaning and modification error.

Of Finding is a prepositional phrase. Similar phrases are modifying the noun elements in the list.

Sent from my XT1562 using GMAT Club Forum mobile app

nitred "discrimination and other methods of finding scapegoats" is an adverb of manner - how "sudden crashes in the economy" is achieved.

Even if we consider you point, then "of finding" becomes parallel to "inciting". Then "and a protest" must be parallel with the initial noun phrase "sudden crash"
The political and social forces that may facilitate a dictator’s rise to power include sudden crashes in the economy [and]
The political and social forces that may facilitate a dictator’s rise to power include a protest that the current government may still be inadequate.
Now, technically we need another "and" to join "finding" and "inciting". Eliminate B.

option A . has their ,which has not any clear antecedent and also ing is wrong modifier here
option B . same as A ing is wrong modifier
option C . run-on sentence
option D. and protest should be followed by that as two action being done here forces and protest .
hence option E left concise and clear .

hope it helps
please correct me where i am wrong

There are many good explanation in the forumBut I just want to add an extra information.

Option B would be correct if it were written as the inciting of the masses to rebellion.compound gerrund is always parallel to noun.

The political and social forces that may facilitate a dictator’s rise to power include
sudden crashes in the economy, discrimination and other methods of finding
scapegoats, inciting the masses to rebellion, and their protesting that the current
government may still be inadequate.

(B) inciting the masses to rebellion, and a protest that the current government may still be inadequate.

mikemcgarry

Hello Mike,
Hope you're doing well. Please assist me with my query.

In spite of the comma before 'and', why can not the red part act as a modifier for the previous item of list -'discrimination....' , there by making the 'a protest..' third item of the list ? Where am I at fault in understanding the question the following way ?

The political and social forces that may facilitate a dictator’s rise to power include
1. sudden crashes in the economy
2. discrimination and other methods of finding scapegoats, inciting the masses to rebellion
3. a protest

Thank You.

Thank you Mike. My thoughts were absolutely in consensus with yours.

MANHATTAN REVIEW OFFICIAL EXPLANATION:

The early part of the sentence, the part which we cannot change, does not use a gerund. Parallel structure dictates that gerunds not be used in the latter part of the sentence either. Eliminate A and B. ‘A protesting’ in C is incorrect. D could imply that the current government makes the protest. E is correct.

Looking at the three-two split here, we can tell that options A and B are not correct. Both of these have an obvious parallelism error in ‘inciting’. ‘inciting is a verb and cannot be compered to the rest of the list, as they are all nouns. For the same reason, we can take out C for ‘protesting’. Also because ‘a protesting’ is not the correct form. D has a meaning error. ‘a protest of the still inadequate government’ signifies that the protest is the government’s, which is not the intended meaning.



Thus, E is the right answer.

I narrowed it down to D and E and I'm still not getting why D is wrong; some of the explanations say that the "of" implies the protests belong to the government bc it's possessive, but i've looked it up and "protest of sth" is used in a lot of news articles when that sth is the thing being protested. In general, looking up "protest of" comes up in countless situations where the noun after "protest of" refers to what is being protested, and this is used colloquially and in formal settings so I don't buy this explanation.
So it makes sense to say protest of the still inadequate government. Then D is shorter than E and is better.

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