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 Contents

Introductory Notes

Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iii

Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . v

Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii

I Part 1: Parliamentary Debate Basics (Kyle Dennis)

1 Introduction to Parliamentary Debate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

2 Tournament Procedures and Resolutions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

3 Basic Debate Speaker Duties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

4 PMC Case Structure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

5 Flowing the Debate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

6 Sample Debate Flows (NPTE, 2015) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29

7 Topicality and Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45

8 Disadvantages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
9 Kritiks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63

10 Counterplans . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67

11 Asking Questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79

12 Tips, Tricks and Drills . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83

II Specific Issues in Parliamentary Debate

13 Preparation: Foundation of Success . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89

K ORRY H ARVEY ................................................

14 The PM Constructive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119

B EN R EID .....................................................

15 The LO Constructive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137

J OE H YKAN ...................................................

16 The MG Constructive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149

K YLE D ENNIS ..................................................

17 The MO Constructive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163

A DAM T ESTERMAN ...............................................

18 The LO Rebuttal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171

L AUREN K NOTH .................................................

19 The PM Rebuttal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181

J OSH R AMSEY .................................................

20 Topicality and Accuracy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195

B RANDON M ERRELL AND TODD G RAHAM ................................

21 Reading Critical PMCs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203

K ATIE B ERGUS AND M EGAN G AFFNEY ..................................

22 Conditionality and Advocacy Status . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213

B RANDON M ERRELL AND TODD G RAHAM ................................

23 A Treatise on Opposition Strategy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221

J EFF J ONES ...................................................
24 Debating the Government Case . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229
M ATT R EISENER .................................................

25 Politics Disadvantages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237

K EVIN G ARNER .................................................

26 We Were Not a ‘Project’ Team . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 247

B RANDON R IVERA ...............................................

27 Answering Criticisms in the MGC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 257

JARED B RESSLER ................................................

28 The Case for American Hegemony . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267

K EVIN CALDERWOOD ............................................

29 Permutation Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 283

J OE A LLEN ...................................................

30 Student-Run Programs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 293

R ACHELLE H ARRIS , N ATHAN J EFFRIES , & W ILLIAM VAN T REUREN .................
Introductory Notes
 Preface

This is a community-driven textbook project that began in the summer of 2013, shortly following
the NPDA National Tournament at University of the Pacific. In April of 2013, I sent out an initial
e-mail to a group of folks who, in my opinion, were the absolute best at a particular aspect of
parliamentary debate. I asked them to share the lessons of their combined years of participation
in NPDA/NPTE-style debating. We have not paid for professional copyediting and no individual
author will receive financial compensation for their contribution. If you have not already, please
purchase a copy of this book at www.parliprepbook.com. Rather than protect this text through an
aggressive DRM process, we have elected to provide DRM-free downloads to anyone purchasing
a copy of this text through the website. The DRM-free nature of this text gives you flexibility on
your devices and ensures that anyone in need is able to secure or share a copy.
All proceeds from the sale of this text go directly to the National Parliamentary Tournament
of Excellence to support and grow the activity of collegiate NPDA/NPTE-style parliamentary
debate – including reduced entry fees for student-run programs, supporting attendance of the
National Parliamentary Tournament of Excellence (offsetting entry fees), and increasing quality
award/acknowledgement opportunities for first-year and 2-year school attendees. Our authors
recognize that most competitive debate formats reward resources – paid coaches, scholarships,
and travel budgets. We believed that we could create a teaching manual to increase access to
parliamentary debate by leveraging the lessons of many of our most successful competitors and
coaches.

– K YLE D ENNIS
 Acknowledgements

I want to thank each coach or former competitor that contributed to this text. Each author put
forth a substantial effort to compose their chapter and, though many of them would never say this
about themselves, they are experts – the absolute best – at discussing their given content item. This
project would not have been possible without their dedication, willingness to share their experiences
and their interest in helping developing debaters. Our community owes them a debt of gratitude.
When you run into these folks at tournaments, I encourage you to thank them personally for their
contribution.

I also want to thank my wife, Jess, for putting up with all of the hours that I have spent working on
this text, editing chapters, and writing lengthy e-mails to track down late submissions. This text
has been a labor of love for me and I am extraordinarily grateful to have a partner that understands
debate. I am ecstatic about the final product.

Finally, we all owe a huge thank you to Brandon Merrell. Brandon was the first person to respond
to my e-mail asking for submissions and was the first to submit his completed chapter. Brandon
has been a supporter of this project from start to finish. In the two years since this project started,
Brandon worked with Todd Graham to expand his paper on conditionality and to write a separate
paper on topicality in parliamentary debate (we are lucky enough to have both included here with
links to expanded papers submitted for publication). Brandon and Todd have are in the process
of submitting both papers to the NPDA Journal for publication. It is my hope that, in some
tiny way, this project renews the push for the National Parliamentary Debate Association (the
major professional organization that serves collegiate parliamentary debate coaches) to reestab-
lish the regular publication of an academic journal with high quality submissions on the topic of
parliamentary debate. Brandon also volunteered his time to complete the final typesetting and
formatting of this text. The final product is outstanding and that is because Brandon really got
behind the community-driven, volunteer, selfless nature of this textbook. I cannot thank him enough.
vi Chapter 0. Acknowledgements

Please enjoy and, to a certain extent, cherish this text. I cannot count how many times I have
read and re-read this text. Each time, I pick up something new. The wealth of knowledge con-
tained within these pages is immense. I sincerely hope that the parliamentary debate community
at large finds it to be a valuable contribution to the ongoing conversations taking place in our activity.

Enjoy!

– KD
 Overview

My experience indicates that argumentation and debate textbooks, particularly those dedicated to
parliamentary debate, often masquerade as formal argumentation and advocacy primers rather than
as well-developed resources that prepare students for competitive engagement. These texts are
placed in the hands of high school and college competitors across the United States, ostensibly to
facilitate their preparation for live tournaments. To date, all existing texts have either over-reached
by attempting to discuss foundations of argumentation in place of practical experience and/or are
too dated to provide modern, useful advice on how to engage in the current trends and practices in
parliamentary debate. This text directly rejects the illusion that you need to read hundreds of pages
about logical fallacies or Aristotle in order to begin participating in parliamentary debate.

This text is divided into two parts. “Part 1: An Introduction to Parliamentary Debate,” introduces
students to the basics of parliamentary debate: tournaments, speaker duties, flowing, constructing
useful academic debate arguments, and provides general advice for success. “Part 2: Specific Issues
in Parliamentary Debate,” consists of substantial contributions from many successful participants
and coaches in collegiate, NPTE/NPDA-style parliamentary debate. All authors have sought to
meet developing debaters where they are. We understand that folks may come to this text without
experience in any form of competitive debate, some may have limited experience and some may be
seasoned competitors. Our goal is to create a text that is lasting, dense, and continually valuable.
We want to formally acquaint you with the concept of structured parliamentary debate, with the
intricacies that make parliamentary debate unique, and provide in-depth articles on topics selected
by the editor and contributors.

Foundational to the pedagogical aim of this text is the belief that top-level instruction should not be
exclusively available to those with access at historically dominant programs. Parliamentary debate
lacks the textuality of other forms of debate – we do not read easily shared evidence and we do
not possess open-source files from which competitors can learn by example. We have adopted
many of the features of policy debate without, as a community, providing quality resources for
beginners. As we seek to expand the increasingly complex activity of parliamentary debate, the
democratization of knowledge has become a necessity.
viii Chapter 0. Overview

If practiced within current community conventions, competitive parliamentary debate is an experi-

ence unlike “debates” you see in political contests or in movies. Rather than speaking slowly, folks
involved with competitive debate often choose to deliver their arguments rapidly, attempting to
out maneuver their opponents. Rather than pointing out formal logical fallacies or inconsistencies,
debaters take pride in often arguing the opposite of their opponent for the sake of sport. Rather than
debating factual-based or value-based claims, competitive debates typically revolve around a very
specific set of precisely defended textual advocacies embedded in a web of facts and values, all of
which are up for debate. Parliamentary debaters typically understand that it is unlikely that they will
truly persuade the person judging the debate; they merely hope to win a game – a game in which all
of the rules are debatable. Currently, “national circuit” parliamentary debate has adapted a style that
is closer to a high-speed game of verbal chess than a persuasive public speaking competition and the
game possesses numerous moving pieces. The topic changes every single round and tournaments
have varying practices for preparation. Much like chess, there are, theoretically, a finite number of
moves available to a debater in a given scenario. Imagine a scenario where you end up participating
in a game where the rules are unclear, the game is occurring at a break-neck speed, and many of the
practices seem counterintuitive – think about speed chess with pieces on the board that are foreign
to you. At the onset, many beginners feel unequipped to compete in the activity and consequentially
become disinterested in continued participation.

Students and coaches often report feeling overwhelmed, intimidated and unwilling to adapt to the
strategies that have become increasingly necessary to achieve success at the national-level. Even
still, this complex, intellectually stimulating game intrigues many. Some students simply want
to take a debate class that will equip them with a comprehension of basic public speaking skills
while others are attracted to the competition provided by the unique intellectual community of
debate. In many cases, the NPDA/NPTE-style of parliamentary debate is used in high school and
college classrooms for students to practice their debating skills. Given that the primary reason
that one would begin to learn about competitive debate is to practice the skill of debating at
competitive tournaments, we will assume that this text should be used as a resource to help you in
your preparation for those tournaments.

At a basic level, a “debate round” revolves around five things: yourself, your partner, your opponents,
your judge and, finally, attempting to persuade your judge to agree that you won the debate. You will
present a series of structured and semi-structured arguments, rebutted by the opposing team. At the
end of the debate, your judge will render a decision on the debate and award speaker points for each
individual debater in the room (typically 0 through 30). You will win some individual arguments
and lose some individual arguments – but your goal is to win the overall debate. If you attend just
about any debate tournament, you will find coaches and competitors that like to think that academic
debate is a game that can be judged objectively. Though many of the judges might not behave
exactly objectively, conventions do exist that guide judge behavior, making the rules somewhat
predictable. You will often receive feedback from your judge (in the college environment, this will
typically be a faculty member, hired coaching staff of another institution or experienced competitor
who has completed their undergraduate degree and is hired by the tournament). Typically, the judge
will tell you if, in their mind, you won or lost the debate. When you attend a parliamentary debate
tournament, you will obviously seek to win as many debates as possible. Few activities can provide
the immediate gratification or the amount of intellectual exertion of a competitive debate.

There are a few pieces of advice offered to those beginning your first serious endeavor into
competitive debate:

Try not to become discouraged by early failure. As your proficiency in a competitive a debate
setting increases, so too will your ability to accumulate decisions in your favor. In many ways,
 ix

early in your debate career, you will disagree with many of the decisions that judges make against
you – like an uninitiated chess player that has a hard time understanding the rules of a chess
game.
Even in defeat, competitive debate is a useful academic endeavor. Parliamentary debate requires that
you develop new academic skill-sets, judge adaptation skills, and critical thinking skills beyond that
of your average high school or college student. Debate demands your attention, your knowledge,
and your dedication. To be successful, you must dedicate yourself to a constant process of learning
and reevaluation. Like many of the tasks that you encounter in your life, debate will give to you
what you give to it. If you are a student who seeks to move successfully from a two-year to a
four-year institution, two years of community college participation can determine scholarship
opportunities. If you seek to pad your resume while developing some basic argumentation and
research skills, that too holds purpose.
You have become part of a larger community. In a given year, thousands of students from around
the United States will compete in NPTE/NPDA-style collegiate parliamentary debate. Many of
these students will become your best friends, many you will never meet, and many will become
adversaries with whom you will never see eye to eye – and all of that is valuable. Attending one
tournament initiates you into a club of which most people will never be a part.
There is always something to be learned from every single round you lose. The most successful
debaters will learn more from their defeats than their victory. When you are not awarded the judge’s
ballot at the end of the debate, there is always some knowledge taken from that interaction. Listen
to all of the feedback that you are given regardless of disagreement. If you plan to become a
consistent participant in parliamentary debate tournaments, you will often have that particular judge
again – the knowledge that you gain from carefully listening to their reason for decision (RFD) is
invaluable to your future success.
Part 1: Parliamentary Debate

I
Basics (Kyle Dennis)

1 Introduction to Parliamentary Debate . . . . . 3

2 Tournament Procedures and Resolutions . . 7
3 Basic Debate Speaker Duties . . . . . . . . . . . 15
4 PMC Case Structure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
5 Flowing the Debate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
6 Sample Debate Flows (NPTE, 2015) . . . . . . 29
7 Topicality and Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
8 Disadvantages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
9 Kritiks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
10 Counterplans . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
11 Asking Questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
12 Tips, Tricks and Drills . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
 1. Introduction to Parliamentary Debate

I NTRODUCTION TO PARLIAMENTARY D EBATE

Many structural differences (rules, procedures, processes) separate parliamentary debate from other
forms of competitive debate. It is important to embrace and understand these unique aspects early in
your parliamentary debate career so that you might receive the full benefit of the experience.
Parliamentary debate centers on a topic announced to all competitors approximately twenty to thirty
minutes before the scheduled start of the debate (depending on tournament rules and procedures).
The topic in parliamentary debate changes from round to round. In a four-year competitive
collegiate career, it is unlikely that you will ever debate the exact same resolution more than once.
Still, you will encounter similar topic language, similar topic areas, and many overlaps in research.
This fact alone makes the format unique. Lincoln Douglas Debate (NFA-LD), Policy Debate
(CEDA/NDT) and Public Forum all offer a single stated topic before the tournaments (or season)
begin. For example, the 2014-2015 competition topic for CEDA/NDT debate was, “Resolved:
The United States should legalize all or nearly all of one or more of the following in the United
States: marihuana, online gambling, physician-assisted suicide, prostitution, the sale of human
organs.” The 2014-2015 competition topic for NFA-LD was, “Resolved: the United States Federal
Government should increase its development of the Earth’s moon in one or more of the following
areas: energy, minerals, and/or water.”
Dissimilarly, parliamentary debate selects a different topic for each debate. Instead of emphasizing
a single topic for an entire competition year, for better or worse, parliamentary debate provides
students with the opportunity to debate a variety of topics over the course of their competitive career.
Debaters often refer to this idea as depth vs. breadth – whereas the policy debate format focuses
primarily on depth of argumentation on a precisely worded topic, parliamentary debate presumes
that discussing a wide variety of topics achieves a particular, valuable educational outcome.
Parliamentary debate also prohibits the usage of quoted evidence. Though it has become in-
creasingly common for debaters to orally cite the origin of facts, figures or statistics used in a
4 Chapter 1. Introduction to Parliamentary Debate

parliamentary debate, you will not directly read an exact selection of carded evidence in the same
way that you would in a CEDA/NDT or Lincoln Douglas format. Debaters enter the round with
the material that they have written themselves during the allotted preparation period. The limited-
preparation nature of parliamentary debate develops competencies that are different, but equally
important to the skills developed in evidenced-based formats. It is often assumed, albeit incorrectly,
that “average” CEDA/NDT debaters or successful high school NFL/TOC policy debaters might
easily transfer their skill-sets to parliamentary debate due to the speed, complexity, and research
intensity of the policy format. While this is certainly the case in some instances, it is far from
a granted outcome. The emphasis on limited preparation and the removal of quoted evidence is
often challenging for these students – as challenging as the format change would be for a seasoned
parliamentary debater moving to an evidenced-based format.

Parliamentary debate also does not include a dedicated cross-examination period and, as mentioned
above, does not include “preparation” time available immediately before any speech – though the
NPTE has changed these rules for the 2015 National Parliamentary Tournament of Excellence
Championship Tournament and changes at regular season invitational tournaments are likely to
follow. Participants ask questions during their opponents allocated speech time. Community
norms govern how often speakers will yield to an opposing question and these norms fluctuate.
In 2003-2004, for example, debaters normally yielded to at least 2-3 questions. In 2014-2015, it
is common to see a debater complete their speech without directly answering a single question
from their opponents. Participants in a policy or Lincoln Douglas debate format can also expect
time dedicated for in-round preparation. If the 1st Affirmative Constructive (1AC) speaker in a
policy debate round delivers a case for which the 1st Negative Constructive (1NC) speaker was
not prepared, the 1NC may choose to use a portion of their allotted preparation time to prepare
their speech, leaving the balance of their allotment for usage prior to remaining negative speeches.
Parliamentary debate does not provide that luxury – speakers must immediately begin their speech
upon the conclusion of the prior speech (with reasonable grace provided for taking a drink of
water, setting your time, arranging your papers, providing the judge with a “roadmap”, etc.). Even
considering the 2 minutes of experimental “flex” time that the NPTE has currently proposed, the
difference in preparation between a parliamentary debate and policy or Lincoln-Douglas formats is
significant.

The speech structure of parliamentary debate also differs from policy debate formats. In a typical
policy debate, you would see two, two-person teams debating against each other, with each
participant delivering two speeches (eight speeches total). Parliamentary debate maintains a
traditional two-versus-two format, but one member from each team will only speak once, truncating
the debate round to six total speeches that last approximately forty minutes.

The structures of the activity mentioned above make parliamentary debate a unique form of debate
that should ideally possess universal accessibility to a wide variety of individuals from different
backgrounds and levels of experience. Parliamentary debate structurally limits the necessity for
debaters to spend countless hours preparing evidence on a season-long topic since, in theory, there
is eventually limited utility in preparing such evidence. Whereas almost every piece of prepared
evidence can be predictably valuable in a policy or Lincoln Douglas format, parliamentary debate
is structured to be intentionally unpredictable. You can gain a significant advantage in policy and
Lincoln Douglas formats by simply producing more carded evidence than the opposing team – this
same advantage is rarely present in parliamentary debate. Since parliamentary debates do not feature
participants reading physical pieces of evidence, parliamentary debaters must practice a unique
form of extemporaneous argument creation and delivery not practiced in other formats.

Because of the unique skills that it develops and the limited barriers to entry, parliamentary debate
 5

is sometimes preferred on the junior/two-year college level. It is somewhat rare for a CEDA/NDT
champion to ascend to nationally successful ranks without significant high school NFL/TOC policy
debate experience. Many highly successful national competitors in parliamentary debate had limited
to no high school experience – a greater number have no substantial experience with policy debate,
with their only measurable high school experience occurring in a Lincoln-Douglas or Public Forum
format. These distinctions should dispel common myths about parliamentary debate and convince
you that parliamentary debate is a unique format that is worth learning and that the structure of the
event advances a uniquely valuable set of public speaking/argumentation skills.
 2. Tournament Procedures and Resolutions

PARLIAMENTARY D EBATE T OURNAMENT P ROCEDURES AND R ESOLU -

TIONS

So, you have decided that you want to do parliamentary debate? Much of this explanation will
seem relatively base for students who have prior debate experience in a competitive debate format,
but this particular section may be useful for true novices. Once you have joined a parliamentary
debate team (or formed your own student-run team), the intuitive outcome is to physically attend
parliamentary debate tournaments. Before the tournament begins, there are a few items to consider
so that you may avoid in-tournament distractions. First, make sure that you have gathered your
supplies – plenty of your preferred pens, your preferred size and color of paper, at least one reliable
timer (a backup timer is recommended), a water bottle, and appropriate electronic devices. If you
have a laptop, you will want to make sure that your “file” is up to date and organized. Teams have
different methods of file organization. As a newer debater, it is unlikely that you will lead this
effort. Still, you can prepare well in advance of the tournament to ensure that you are familiar
with the organization system, keywords, etc. If you have a laptop (or other device) that you will
use to access the Internet during the preparation period, it is advisable to arrive to the tournament
with the device fully charged. Eliminating the need to tether yourself to a wall outlet during your
preparation is a small, but important advantage. You will also use your cell phone more than you
would think at a debate tournament and you never know how a potentially poor service area will
drain your cell phone battery; bring a charger for your phone. Since you are typically unfamiliar
with the campus space provided for your private preparation, it is helpful to pack things that may
not be available– a power strip for charging multiple devices, dry-erase markers, several small trash
bags (to alleviate the constant concern of one small overflowing trash can), Wi-Fi Hotspots (if your
team possesses one of these devices), and snacks.

Make sure that you have read the tournament invitation for relevant policies, procedures, and
schedules. If you do not know where to find this information, ask your coach or sponsor. They
will be happy that you are taking the responsibility for this type of preparation. Speaking from
8 Chapter 2. Tournament Procedures and Resolutions

personal experience, it is distracting when debaters need to discuss details about the tournament
(schedule, location and policies for provided meals, elimination round schedules, etc.) that are
easily accessible simply by reviewing the publicly tournament invitation. If you happen to have a
smart phone, it is advisable to save a copy of the tournament invitation on your device, if not save a
copy on your laptop or tablet, or print a physical copy.
One of the unique aspects of parliamentary debate is that the “resolution”, or the topic for the
debate, changes from round to round. In a measurable way, parliamentary debate naturally
rewards individuals with expansive knowledge on a variety of differing topics. When you attend
a parliamentary debate tournament, tournament administrators will provide the topic twenty to
thirty minutes before each debate (depending on the tournament rules, physical location of the
competition rounds, etc.). Once the resolution is announced, preparation time begins. Every debater
should have a reliable timer set to count down to the start of the debate. The expectation is that
the debate will begin at the conclusion of the allotted preparation time – not that you will begin to
travel to your competition room – the debate should begin when the time hits “0:00.”
Topics are announced in one of two ways – either at a centralized topic announce or via the Internet
(usually as a supplement to centralized topic announcement). Most tournaments will perform a
“roll-call” before the resolution is announced for a given debate, though some will not. Make sure to
familiarize yourself with the tournament invitation for these rules and procedures. If the tournament
intends to strictly maintain their topic announcement schedule without a role call, they will usually
declare their intent to do so.
Once the resolution is announced, your allotted preparation period for the debate has begun. In
addition to your standard debate supplies (pens, timer, extra flow paper, etc.), you may take anything
that you can write onto paper during this period into the debate round for your use. The resolutions
(also referred to as motions, topics, etc.) that are debated in NPDA/NPTE-style parliamentary
debate differ from high school and collegiate policy debate formats. As discussed previously,
in a NFL/TOC or CEDA/NDT format, one topic is debated for an entire academic year. Policy
debate topics are also heavily juried – the topic committee for a year long resolution begins
developing precise topics during the proceeding season, participating schools are given a voice
in the democratic process of selecting the topic, and the topics usually reflect a fair amount of
precision. Parliamentary debate topics, for better or worse, are disposable. While there is typically
care put into the constructing the exact wording of the resolutions, the determination of a “good
topic” vary greatly from person to person. Since the precise wording of the topic is typically
concealed from the participating debaters, judges and coaches until the start of their preparation
period, a certain degree of secrecy and flexible autonomy is typically given to volunteer resolution
writers. As a result, resolutions often vary in length (word count), specificity, and the inclusion of
an “actor” – ultimately making the activity fairly unpredictable, one of the greatest strengths of the
parliamentary format.
The 10 most recent examples of CEDA/NDT collegiate policy debate topics have been:
(2014-15) Resolved: The United States should legalize all or nearly all of one or more of the
following in the United States: marihuana, online gambling, physician-assisted suicide, prostitution,
the sale of human organs.
(2013-14) Resolved: The United States Federal Government should substantially increase statutory
and/or judicial restrictions on the war powers authority of the President of the United States in one
or more of the following areas: targeted killing, indefinite detention, offensive cyber operations, or
introducing United States Armed Forces into hostilities.
(2012-2013) Resolved: The United States Federal Government should substantially reduce restric-
 9

tions on and/or substantially increase financial incentives for energy production in the United States
of one or more of the following: coal, crude oil, natural gas, nuclear power, solar power, wind
power.

(2011-2012) Resolved: The United States Federal Government should substantially increase its
democracy assistance for one or more of the following: Bahrain, Egypt, Libya, Syria, Tunisia,
Yemen.

(2010-2011) Resolved: The United States Federal Government should substantially increase the
number of and/or substantially expand beneficiary eligibility for its visas for one or more of the
following: employment-based immigrant visas, nonimmigrant temporary worker visas, family-
based visas, human trafficking-based visas.

(2009-2010) Resolved: The United States Federal Government should substantially reduce the size
of its nuclear weapons arsenal, and/or substantially reduce and restrict the role and/or missions of
its nuclear weapons arsenal.

(2008-2009) Resolved: that the United States Federal Government should substantially reduce
its agricultural support, at least eliminating nearly all of the domestic subsidies, for biofuels,
Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations, corn, cotton, dairy, fisheries, rice, soybeans, sugar and/or
wheat.

(2007-2008) Resolved: that the United States Federal Government should increase its constructive
engagement with the government of one or more of: Afghanistan, Iran, Lebanon, the Palestinian
Authority, and Syria, and it should include offering them a security guarantee(s) and/or a substantial
increase in foreign assistance.

(2006-2007) Resolved: The United States Supreme Court should overrule one or more of the
following decisions: Planned Parenthood v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833 1992); Ex parte Quirin, 317 U.S.
1 (1942); U.S. v. Morrison, 529 U.S.598 (2000); Milliken v. Bradley, 418 U.S. 717 (1974).

(2005-2006) Resolved: The United States Federal government should substantially increase diplo-
matic and economic pressure on the People’s Republic of China in one or more of the following
areas: trade, human rights, weapons nonproliferation, Taiwan.

Even though these topic examples are drawn from the collegiate policy debate format, these sample
resolutions should reasonably acquaint you with the basic structure of the resolutions that you can
expect in a parliamentary debate format. However, since parliamentary debate will use hundreds of
resolutions per year rather than one, you can expect a few predictable, familiar variances.

One such variance is that parliamentary debate resolutions will typically limit the ground for the
“government” team (“affirmative” team in a policy format). For a policy debate team, the 2006-2007
resolution gave the affirmative the choice to overrule, “one or more of the following decisions:
Planned Parenthood v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833 (1992); Ex parte Quirin, 317 U.S. 1 (1942); U.S. v.
Morrison, 529 U.S.598 (2000); Milliken v. Bradley, 418 U.S. 717 (1974).” A typical parliamentary
debate resolution will not ask the government team to make such a broad choice. A predictable
parliamentary debate adaptation of the 2006-2007 policy debate resolution would read, “The United
States Supreme Court should overrule it’s decision in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833
(1992).” Selecting one court case, ideally, gives both sides of the debate an equal amount of time
to prepare arguments as to why Planned Parenthood v. Casey should or should not be overturned
by the USSC. The policy format preferences depth on four cases, holding that debaters of the
2006-2007 topic should be well versed on the particulars of all cases included in the year-long
resolution. In this way, we can see that parliamentary debate emphasizes a different and equally
10 Chapter 2. Tournament Procedures and Resolutions

valuable skill. Students must be prepared to research the resolution and formulate arguments to
support their position during a high-pressure, limited preparation period.

Parliamentary debate also varies in the timeliness of its resolutions. Extending the previous
example, it should be apparent that parliamentary debaters must be flexible enough to research
and debate any Supreme Court case. In any given round, the resolution could read, “The United
States Supreme Court should overturn it’s decision in vs. .”
The manner in which Supreme Court topics are constructed in parliamentary debate illuminates
one unique benefit – flexibility to adapt to current events. In the 2006-2007 policy debate topic,
the most recent Supreme Court decision specifically mentioned in the resolutions was U.S. V.
Morrison (2000). Undoubtedly, the debaters on the 2006-2007 CEDA/NDT topic discussed
current court decision trends and pending cases, but parliamentary debate possesses the unique
ability to present debaters with current events inspired topics, often in real time. It is common to
debate topics at a parliamentary debate tournament that would never find their way into a policy
debate resolution, given the need for the topic to be relevant for an entire academic year. In the
“ vs. ,” example above, parliamentary debate tournaments
often include resolutions about Supreme Court decisions yet to occur – phrasing the topic, “In the
case of vs. , The United States Supreme Court should rule
in favor of .” Whereas the 2006-2007 CEDA/NDT topic example emphasizes
that debaters can gain knowledge on the existing implications of a prior decision and the outcomes
to a reversed ruling, the parliamentary debate formulation of this resolution emphasizes a predictive
model that asks participants to envision the outcomes of a ruling yet to occur.

Parliamentary debate is also uniquely valuable since it can utilize different, changing actors
or agents within resolutions. In order to fully explain this concept, consider the 2011-2012
CEDA/NDT resolution, “Resolved: The United States Federal Government should substantially
increase its democracy assistance for one or more of the following: Bahrain, Egypt, Libya, Syria,
Tunisia, Yemen.” With the exception of a few very dated examples, all modern, year-long policy
debate resolutions begin with some variation of “The United States Federal Government should,”
placing the “United States Federal Government” as a central “actor” in the resolution. For many,
parliamentary debate offers a welcome variation in topic discussion. A given parliamentary
debate resolution could read, “The Federal Republic of Germany should substantially increase its
democracy assistance to Egypt,” – replacing the need for the United States Federal Government to
be at the core of all topics and offering a welcomed change of pace to many debate participants.
Since the topic committees in charge of formulating the year-long policy debate topics have not
selected to include a topic that asks debaters to imagine an action performed by a government
outside of the United States, parliamentary debate is uniquely situated to take advantage of education
deriving from inclusion of actors other than “The United States Federal Government.”

Finally, parliamentary debate resolutions offer a unique benefit in their disposability, flexibility, and
impermanence. The policy debate format is commonly praised for forcing debaters to exhaustively
research and grapple with a single, year-long topic. However, the policy debate community seems to
have a contemporary internal disagreement on the virtue of their yearly adoption of resolutions that
begin, “The United States Federal government should. . . ” In fact, parliamentary debate originated
as a series of schools disenchanted with the precision, speed, plan-focus and evidence focus of elite
policy debate teams in the mid-1990’s. Parliamentary debate offers the flexibility to include negative
action and passive voice – two types of resolutions currently discussed by CEDA/NDT participants
on collegiate policy debate message boards.1 Ironically, as modern parliamentary debate develops
methods to chase, duplicate and replicate policy debates, precisely these types of resolutions have a

1 http://www.cedadebate.org/forum/index.php?topic=4753.msg10194%22 %5Cl %22msg10194

 11

history at the core of our activity. “Negative action” puts the government team (affirmative) in a
position to advocate against the status quo, without necessarily proposing the implementation of a
new “policy.” For example, the 2012-2013 policy debate resolution “Resolved: The United States
Federal Government should substantially reduce restrictions on and/or substantially increase
financial incentives for energy production in the United States of one or more of the following:
coal, crude oil, natural gas, nuclear power, solar power, wind power,” could be re-written as in a
“negative action” formation as follows, “Resolved: The United States Federal Government should
substantially change financial incentives for energy production in the United States of one or more
of the following: coal, crude oil, natural gas, nuclear power, solar power, wind power.” Replacing
“. . . reduce restrictions on and/or substantially increase financial incentives. . . ” with “substantially
change” makes the resolution multi-directional – that is, debaters supporting the topic could choose
to advocate for increasing incentives or decreasing incentives. Given the modified wording, a
debater may argue that capitalism is the sole incentive for energy development in the status quo and
that we should remove profit-based incentives for energy production by advocating for a system
that strips powerful energy companies of their ability to profit from environmentally damaging
energy production methods.
A “passive voice” resolution removes the actor entirely. Using the previous example of the 2006-
2007 CEDA/NDT topic, “The United States Supreme Court should overrule one or more of the
following decisions: Planned Parenthood v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833 (1992); Ex parte Quirin, 317 U.S.
1 (1942); U.S. v. Morrison, 529 U.S.598 (2000); Milliken v. Bradley, 418 U.S. 717 (1974),” the
revised resolution might read, “Planned Parenthood v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833 (1992); Ex parte Quirin,
317 U.S. 1 (1942); U.S. v. Morrison, 529 U.S.598 (2000); and/or Milliken v. Bradley, 418 U.S.
717 (1974) should be overruled.” In parliamentary debate (accounting for the limited scope of the
preparation period), the resolution may read, “Planned Parenthood v. Casey should be overruled.”
In this style of resolution formulation, the actor is removed and any exact prescription for how one
should “overrule” Planned Parenthood v. Casey is absent from the stated resolution. Simply put,
there is no element of the resolution creating the expectancy for the government or affirmative team
to use the United States Supreme Court to overrule the decision – allowing for debaters to support
the resolution through non-traditional means.
Traditionally, parliamentary debate has developed the distinction of negative action and passive
voice through a somewhat convoluted system of dividing resolutions into three separate categories
– resolutions of fact, resolutions of value, and resolutions of policy. This distinction is mentioned
to inform of sense of history, not to advance thinking that places parliamentary debate resolutions
into these discreet categories. I will briefly explain the supposed difference before explaining the
modern irrelevance of this type of distinction. It is worth mentioning, however, that historically
vague parliamentary debate resolutions might be excellent examples welcomed by those debating
modern resolution formation in the policy debate format.
A “resolution of fact” is a resolution intended as a statement of a debatable fact. For example, the
resolution could read, “America’s healthcare system is superior to Canada’s healthcare system,” or
“Single-payer healthcare systems are preferable to private insurance.”
A “resolution of value” is a resolution that states a normative, value-based claim (often including the
term “value” in the resolution) – i.e. “Regarding healthcare, America values personal responsibility,”
or “The failure of the Affordable Care Act is more valuable than it’s success.”
A “resolution of policy” typically includes the word “should,” an “actor” or agent of action,
and a somewhat precise prescription of an action. For example, “The United States Federal
Government should repeal the Affordable Care Act,” or “The United States Federal Government
should implement a single-payer, universal healthcare system.”
12 Chapter 2. Tournament Procedures and Resolutions

These divisions in resolution writing maintained relevance in the early years of parliamentary
debate, but have faded over the years. The division originated because coaches, administrators,
and tournament hosts understood that parliamentary debate has many roots in programs that split
from the CEDA/NDT community. Policy resolutions were familiar, but value and fact resolutions
were both intentionally included, providing an element of variety to the parliamentary debate
format. “Fact Cases” and “Value Cases” were formatted differently and typically did not directly
call for a policy action. When debaters and coaches initially started to blur the distinction, debaters
would simply present policy-based arguments when given fact or value resolutions. Some judges
responded with an unwillingness to reward ballots to teams that would advocate for a policy action
on an apparent fact or value resolution – choosing to strictly adhere to the unwritten rules of
the “trichotomy” of fact/value/policy”. For better or worse, as at the activity has matured, strict
adherence to the trichotomy has waned amongst most judges. Currently, judge adherence to a strict
conceptualization of this theoretical construct places a critic in a very small minority of participants.
There is not a “rule” governing the parliamentary format that reinforces the “trichotomy” distinction.
It is difficult to weigh values or facts without discussion of policy. Policy questions are embedded
with factual claims and value assumptions, value questions are embedded with factual claims and
policy examples, and factual claims are embedded with value assumptions and policy examples.
Current community norms widely interpret that any Prime Minister Constructive (PMC) resolution
interpretation contains the elements of all three types of resolutions mentioned above. When a
debater constructs background arguments that demonstrate the need for their plan, that debater
has constructed a fact-based claim. When a debater constructs impact arguments that demonstrate
situations we ought act to avoid, that debater has constructed a value-based claim. When a
debater advocates a plan to fix harm in the status quo, that debater has constructed a policy-based
claim.

As discussed above, parliamentary debate resolutions have shifted towards a traditional policy
orientation – typically including the word “should”, an actor or agent of action, and a precise
prescription of action. This shift occurred, in part, to avoid the trichotomy distinction. If all
resolutions meet the supposed requirements necessary for a policy case structure, we eliminate the
need for adherence to the trichotomy distinction. For better or worse, this shift has resulted in many
of the consequences listed above. Modern parliamentary debate more closely resembles a policy
debate format than the original formulation of the parliamentary format.

In an attempt to differentiate itself from policy debate, the parliamentary format originated with the
notion that the debate should be entirely extemporaneous, meaning that all of the preparation for the
debate should occur in the preparation period immediately preceding the debate. Historically, many
coaches and judges maintained ardent predispositions against the practice of “canning” arguments
or developing positions outside of the tournament preparation period, meant for in-round use and
re-use. Contemporary participants would find such an objection incredibly foreign, particularly
concerning government cases delivered in the Prime Minister Constructive. Nevertheless, some of
these ideas persist among a small subset of the parliamentary debate community with a few judges
maintaining opposition to “canned” or generic Leader of Opposition Constructive positions (Politics
Disadvantages, Kritiks, etc.). Currently, most teams possess a file of generic or common positions.
Teams develop these files by formally writing the positions used in practice and tournament debates,
completing evidence assignments on current events (assigned either by coaches or students), and
developing commonly used arguments. Developing a strong file of arguments from which to draw
during preparation time is invaluable in the parliamentary format. Contemporary policy debate for-
mats feature evidence sharing and disclosure norms that make developing your arsenal of arguments
somewhat straightforward. In the parliamentary format, however, there is not a centralized resource
of parliamentary debate files or arguments – currently, teams do not disclose or share their argument
 13

files with other teams, although the University of Texas at Tyler has made intentional effort to
establish some form of pre-round disclosure norm. Thus, as of this publication, parliamentary
debate maintains the illusions that the arguments read in debates are extemporaneously created,
when they are often anything but. Even at tournaments without pre-announced “topic areas”,
parliamentary debates are filled with practiced, “canned,” non-extemporaneous arguments. For
example, students can reasonably predict that they will advocate on behalf of cases that will resolve
an ailing United States economy. These circumstances incentivize pre-tournament development of
myriad reasons that, “the U.S. economy is collapsing in the status quo,” “the U.S. economy is key
to the world economy,” and “economic collapse leads to war.” Students know that these arguments
are likely to be useful; they often prepare and file this type of generic or canned argument. If a
student is unexpectedly given a resolution asking the government team to pass a specific economic
stimulus bill, all of the previously listed arguments are directly applicable to constructing a case
defending virtually any government argument that presumes to help a struggling U.S. economy.
While the debaters may have limited knowledge of the specific jobs stimulus mentioned in the
resolution, they only need to research areas in which that stimulus would help the economy to
develop a solid, well-researched advantage.
 3. Basic Debate Speaker Duties

BASIC PARLIAMENTARY D EBATE S PEAKER D UTIES

Speech Time Limits / Duties for Each Speaker

Parliamentary debate features six speeches and four debaters (two teams of two on each side)
– meaning that one team member on each side will speak once and one team member will speak
twice. Though competitors have explored variations of this division, NPDA rules state that each
debater must deliver one constructive speech. Typically, the same debater that delivers the Prime
Minister Constructive (PMC) will also deliver the Prime Minister Rebuttal (PMR), leaving their
partner to deliver the Member of Government Constructive (MGC). Similarly, the debater that
delivers the Leader of Opposition Constructive (LOC) will also deliver the Leader of Opposition
Rebuttal (LOR), leaving their partner to deliver the Member of Opposition Constructive (MOC).
The section that follows will discuss the primary, expected duties of each speaker and provide a
novice-level primer on terminology and best practice.

Prime Minister Constructive (PMC): 7 minutes

The purpose of this speech is to propose the case for the government side of the debate. Given a
certain motion (often referred to as the “topic” or the “resolution”), the PMC delivers a series of
organized arguments that attempt to support the resolution, prove the resolution true, or provide an
example of the resolution. The PMC may or may not advocate for the exact resolution. For example,
if the resolution provided before the debate states, “The United States Federal Government should
pass the Affordable Care Act,” the PMC has a relatively small amount of flexibility for the argument
that they can advance in the PMC. In this instance, it is generally accepted that the PMC should
avoid making an argument for a the adoption of a universal, single-payer healthcare system in
the United States, since this would not serve as an example of why the United States should pass
The Affordable Care Act. If the resolution stated, “The United States Federal Government should
16 Chapter 3. Basic Debate Speaker Duties

substantially reform its health care system,” it is generally acceptable for a PMC to advocate for a
single-payer healthcare system or to pass the Affordable Care Act (assuming that this legislation had
not already been adopted). This concept is referred to as “parametrics” – the idea that one chosen
example of the resolution essentially becomes the resolution for the debate from that point forward.
When faced with the resolution, “The United States Federal Government should substantially
reform it’s health care system,” a PMC that advances a plan for a single-payer system of healthcare
shifts the focus of the debate to that specific aspect of health care reform. The accepted assumption
becomes that the round is no longer a yes/no vote in support of generally reforming the U.S.
healthcare system – the debate now focuses on the specific proposal of the PMC. In this example,
opposing arguments that “ACA health care exchanges cannot make insurance affordable,” are not
directly responsive to the argument constructed by the PMC. If an opposing debater made such an
argument, it would be widely disregarded because it does not answer the PMC in a substantial way
because the implementation of the ACA has little to do with the PMC’s advocacy of a single-payer
healthcare system.
The PMC/Government team has quite a bit of flexibility to choose the specific focus for the debate
in the above “USFG should reform it’s healthcare system,” example. The flexibility to choose a
specific example of the resolution for proposal and debate is also met with many challenges. If
the PMC chooses a specific proposal within the scope of the resolution, the rest of the resolution
becomes ground for negative counterplans – choose wisely. In the case of a broad resolution, it is
advisable to choose a proposal that you can easily defend against the possibilities that you have
decided to forego, ground that you have now ceded to the opposition team.
As a novice parliamentary debater, the specific process for constructing your PMC (organization,
argument selection, style of delivery) will be a process of trial and error. Advice on how to exactly
construct your PMC is available elsewhere throughout this text. However, there are a few generally
agreeable practices that I would like to cover here:

• Defend (or be prepared to defend) that your plan or advocacy is an example that fits within
the parameters of the assigned resolution.

• Defend that the status quo possesses or will possess conditions that lead to something damag-
ing (harm to people, dehumanization, environmental disaster, etc.).

• Defend that the element of the status quo that you characterize as “damaging” is, in fact,
damaging.

• Defend that your plan or advocacy is substantially different from the status quo.

• Defend that your plan or advocacy, were it to be adopted, would be sufficient to overcome
the status quo conditions that create the need for your plan or advocacy.

• Develop advanced justifications that only your plan or advocacy, were it to be adopted, would
be sufficient to overcome the status quo conditions that create the need for your plan or
advocacy.

• Develop advanced justification that the status quo will not be able to alleviate the damaging
elements that you have isolated.

• Develop your arguments, from the ground up, as comparisons to predictable opposition
 17

arguments.

Leader of the Opposition Constructive (LOC): 8 minutes

The Leader of Opposition Constructive is tasked with creating the “case” for the opposition (often
interchangeably referred to a “negative”) side of the debate. The LOC consists of theoretical and
substantive arguments against the PMC – theoretical objections include topicality and other theory
arguments, while substantive objections include case arguments, disadvantages, counterplans, and
criticisms (K’s, critiques, kritiks).

It is helpful to think of the opposition “case” in two somewhat distinct categories – “on-case” and
“off-case” arguments. Novice debaters often learn this terminology and mistake the on/off-case
distinction for an “on-topic”/ “off-topic” distinction. Ideally, all of your arguments with directly
clash with the arguments presented in the PMC, even if they appear related to some other major topic
(i.e. The PMC discusses health care and the LOC argumentation might focus around investments
made by major US businesses). The “case” portion of the “on/off-case” language refers directly to
the government case.

“On case” arguments are arguments made directly against the case presented by the PMC. If the
PMC were to advance an argument for a single-payer healthcare system in the United States, the
LOC may contain multiple lines of argumentation indicating that “Canada’s single-payer system is
struggling” or that “studies indicate that single-payer healthcare result in delay of care.” If these
are presented as distinct, ten to thirty second lines of argumentation, debaters typically ask judges
to flow these attacks directly next to certain parts of the PMC. Off-case arguments are substantial
chains of argumentation that, if won by the opposition side of the debate, would be a reason that the
government or affirmative should not win. These arguments typically are allocated larger blocks
of the LOC’s time and are located on dedicated pieces of flow paper that begin with the LOC
argumentation, not the PMC case (i.e. a disadvantage or criticism). Consider the following example:

Plan:
The United States Federal Government should implement a single-payer healthcare system

Advantage One (Human Rights):

Thesis: “Health care is a human right, denying treatment treats persons without coverage in
an inhumane manner that results in the dehumanization of millions.”

Advantage Two (Economy):

Thesis: “Our current health care system has resulted in massive amounts of consumer debt
that slows the economy, causing millions to live in debt/poverty. Single-payer health care
solves for an impending economic collapse.

Example Off Case Argument (Economy DA):

A disadvantage that argues that expenditures on single-payer health care would cause excess
deficit spending, devaluing the dollar, causing instability in financial markets that would
collapse the economy.

Example On Case Argument:

One argument, placed on the flow next to Advantage Two that states that individuals who are
poor often still have access to free health clinics, etc. (known as “solvency defense”).
18 Chapter 3. Basic Debate Speaker Duties

Member of Government Constructive (MGC): 8 minutes

Immediately following the LOC, the MGC seeks to answer the LOC, defend against LOC attacks
on the PMC, and continue to advance still relevant (often specifically unanswered) portions of
the PMC. Ideally, the MGC will directly answer every argument that the LOC presents – not
necessarily every single point, but every argument. In the example listed above, MGC’s would
not be expected to answer every single point and sub-point of the off-case Economy DA, but they
would be responsible for developing a substantial line of argumentation against the entirety of the
position. In this scenario, the MGC might construct a series of answers indicating that:

1. “The United States economy is already strong in the status quo and is too strong to have
the expenditure of your plan cause any negative damage to United States economic welfare.”

2. “Financial markets would be made stable by a single-payer healthcare system.”

3. “The United States economy will not collapse because we are too valuable to the world
economy for other countries to allow that to happen – other markets would invest in order to
stabilize United States markets.”

In the example discussed above, the MGC deploys a strategy of grouping an off-case argument
and answering the thesis of the position on multiple different levels. This strategy is often not
available when the MGC answers on-case arguments. On-case arguments, placed on the flow next
to a relevant portion of the PMC, usually demand a point-for-point response. It is often remarked
that MGCs cannot win debates, they simply seek to avoid losing the debate by “dropping” (not
answering) substantial portions of arguments advanced by the LOC. This common wisdom is often
true – as the MGC, failing to respond to major arguments presented by the LOC often seals the
debate for the opposition, since rules prohibit the final government speech (PMR) from answering
specific arguments that were “dropped” by the MGC. However, an expertly delivered MGC can be
very damaging to the opposition team. Beyond “not losing”, the MGC can often decimate the LOC
strategy in a way that nearly guarantees victory for the government team.

A few general tips for the MGC:

• You should focus on developing your skills to maintain a very close to perfect flow of the
PMC – the arguments delivered by your partner in the PMC are the primary center of the
arguments that you will leverage in your MGC. A full understanding of your plan and/or
advocacy goes a long way to assist you in answering LOC arguments.

• Many MGC’s seek to understand the macro-level of LOC arguments, rather than focusing
on their minutia. In other words, many MGC’s are not primarily focused on developing a
perfect flow/record of the LOC, knowing that they need to answer the thesis of many of these
arguments, not the specifics. In the above example dedicated to MGC answers against an
Economy DA, the MGC simply needs to know the thesis of the argument – “expenditures on
single-payer health care would cause excess deficit spending, devaluing the dollar, causing
instability in financial markets that would collapse the economy.” From that understanding,
experienced MGC’s can develop a strategy that generally answers the position. Since there is
no ability in parliamentary debate to utilize dedicated “preparation time.” Once the LOC is
over, the MGC is expected to begin almost immediately. These circumstances dictate that
 19

the MGC speaker cannot spend the entirety of the LOC writing down only the arguments
made by the LOC, they must also prepare their own responses. As such, many success-
ful MGC’s focus more on listening to the LOC and writing their own arguments for the MGC.

• Remember that your responsibilities for participation in the debate have not concluded once
you have delivered the MGC. You are responsible for maintaining a perfect record (flow) of
the MOC and the LOR so that your partner does not miss a relevant argument in the PMR.

• The MGC is also primarily responsible for identifying and “point of ordering” new arguments
during the LOR. Since your partner will be preparing for the delivery of their PMR, they
are often distracted and unable to dedicate their full attention to possible round winning
arguments presented during the LOR.

Member of the Opposition Constructive (MOC/MO): 8 minutes

The job of the Member of Opposition Constructive is to select round winning arguments, “kick”
arguments (simply put, choosing to admit that you are not winning certain arguments and/or will
not select to advance them any further), and to answer all MGC responses on the positions that you
decide to advance. Since the LOC often features multiple ways to attack the government’s case, the
MOC selects the most viable opposition strategy after the MGC has a chance to respond.

Traditional wisdom dictates that opposition teams should not continue to advance every argument
made in the LOC – no matter your argumentative superiority compared to your opponents, you
will very rarely win all of the arguments and it is arrogant to think so. If you read two major
disadvantages to a single-payer healthcare system, you should select one of those disadvantages
and focus your time. This advice is common sense, because effective execution of a collapse in
your argument places the PMR at a twelve-to-five time tradeoff – that is, the PMR will only have
five minutes to answer focused MO and LOR analysis (twelve minutes, combined). If the LOC
spent approximately 3:30 reading an Economy DA, 3:30 reading a Politics DA, and 1:00 directly
answering the PMC case, assuming that the MGC spent an equal amount of time on each, the
MO/LOR collapse puts the government team at an unenviable disadvantage. In this scenario, you
will have spent 15:30 advancing an argument to your opponents expenditure of 8:30 – strictly
discussing quantity of speech time, the government will have only spent 54% as much time on
the argument. For every answer the MGC is able to develop against your disadvantage, the MOC
has the ability to answer that and construct additional explanations as to why they are winning the
particular argument.

The MOC is also responsible for the manner in which they select their MOC strategy. MOC’s
should typically consult with their LOC in order to receive counsel on selecting and narrowing the
arguments that you believe will win the debate for your side. Many coaches believe that MOC’s
should begin the process of crystallizing the debate (offering comparisons of time-frame, magnitude,
probability, etc.). This is, of course, a personal preference – and is covered in detail in later chapters
– better collapse strategies allow greater flexibility for tactics that begin to close down the debate.

Leader of the Opposition Rebuttal (LOR): 4 minutes

The LOR is the most widely misunderstood/ underutilized speech in parliamentary debate. It is
the first rebuttal (which means that new arguments are explicitly prohibited, but new examples are
acceptable). This does not mean that LOR must repeat, verbatim, the exact words of the MOC – it
simply means that the LOR is not able to advance a new line of argumentation that has not been
introduced by the opposition team. For example, the LOR could not make an argument that “single
20 Chapter 3. Basic Debate Speaker Duties

payer healthcare would collapse the U.S. economy,” when that argument had not been presented
by the LOC or the MOC (or when that argument was presented in the LOC and not advanced
in the MOC). At an initial glance, the LOR seems one of the easiest speeches in parliamentary
debate – it is the only speech where their partner immediately precedes a speaker, eliminating the
pressure of directly answering arguments with limited preparation time. In fact, the MOC functions
as built in preparation time for the LOR. At second glance, especially when reaching higher levels
of competition, the LOR includes immense pressure. The LOR must summarize the debate for the
opposition side (explaining why you have won the debate) while predicting and accounting for
potential PMR arguments made in the final speech of the round.

Prime Minister Rebuttal (PMR): 5 minutes

The PMR is the final speech in a standard parliamentary debate round. If you hold the “PM”
speaker position (meaning that you deliver the PMC and PMR), you are the person that the judge
will hear from first and last. Though their is certainly an art to constructing and delivering a well-
written PMC, you are tasked with delivering a seven minute constructive speech with twenty-plus
minutes of preparation, while the LOC, MOC, and MGC all occur in real time with no dedicated
preparation to answering the preceding speeches. This is why many consider the PMC to be the
easiest speech to deliver in parliamentary debate. If that is true, the opposite is true for the PMR.
You are responsible for overcoming the time tradeoff mentioned above. Given ideal circumstances,
the MGC maintained a one-to-one time expenditure on the LOC arguments. A solid MOC will
expand their time advantage (as detailed above) and you are forced to overcome twelve minutes of
argumentation with a five-minute speech.
While other chapters in this textbook will cover PMR strategies in detail, you should consider the
following tips as you acquaint yourself with this speaker position:

• Primarily, PMR’s have to answer new or newly developed MOC arguments. You have to be
able to separate what was said in the LOC (that your partner answered in the MGC, ideally)
and what has been added by the MOC. If an MGC argument intuitively answers an argument
advanced by the MOC, say so. If the MOC has expanded or developed an argument, new
responses from the PMR are necessary.

• In most debates, the LOR is built-in preparation time. Once the MOC shows the hand of the
opposition team, PMR’s only need to find a way to explain themselves out of the thesis of
the negative strategy. You are the only person, aside from the judge (ideally) that possesses a
perfect record of the entire debate. While this advantage seems small, it allows you to see the
debate as if you are judging it – PM’s are passive observers in many cases for the middle
twenty-eight minutes of the debate. Given the fever pace at which parliamentary debates
occur, PMR’s have the rare ability to see the debate from the outside. So, think like the judge.

• You have the opportunity to collapse, similar to the MOC. The PMR is not merely about
mastering the ability to answer an eight-minute speech in five minutes. A successful PMR
hinges on your ability to isolate elements of the MGC that were not fully answered by the
MOC, determine which arguments in the MGC can win you the round (either because they
were not handled properly by the MOC or because you can gain back your time advantage
by spending a substantial amount of PMR time on an argument that did not receive much
attention in the MOC). In essence, much like the MOC, the PMR has the ability to collapse.
To continue to advance the above example, if the MGC makes the answered listed above on
the Economy DA, the MOC/LOR may select to only advance the Economy DA, gaining a
 21

significant imbalance in time dedicated to the position. However, if neither the MOC/LOR
really answer the argument that, “The U.S. economy will not collapse because we are too
valuable to the world economy for other countries to allow that to happen – other markets
would invest in order to stabilize U.S. markets,” you can still win the debate, right? If you
win that the impact to their sole disadvantage will never happen, how can this be a reason to
reject your proposal to enact single-payer healthcare?
 4. PMC Case Structure

P RIME M INISTER C ONSTRUCTIVE C ASE S TRUCTURE

Introduction to Case Structure Once the resolution is announced, the debater that delivers the PMC
is typically responsible for constructing the Prime Minister Constructive (PMC), or “Government
Case.” In the first chapter of Part 2 of this text, Ben Reid discusses case construction of a standard,
traditional “policy” government case. In a later chapter, Katie Bergus, Megan Gaffney, and Brandon
Rivera all discuss “critical” PMC strategies, both elaborating on form and content. Debating on the
government side of a given resolution, in one form or another, you will typically advocate some
departure from the status quo. As Ben Reid mentions in the Prime Minister Constructive chapter,
“at the most basic level, there are three parts to your PMC: (1) everything that comes before your
plan text, (2) the plan text, and (3) everything after the plan text.”
As you gain experience, you will formulate unique strategies for PMC case construction. However,
as a novice, the following roadmap for basic case formatting might be helpful.
Typically, the PMC will begin with a reading of the resolution. This practice developed to ensure
that everyone participating in the debate shared a mutual understanding of the exact language the
PMC was tasked with affirming. For example, the resolution “The United States should militarily
intervene in Syria” possesses a different set of expectations for PMC advocacy than, a resolution
that says, “The United States should intervene in Syria.” It is a best practice to read the resolution at
the top of the government case, perhaps even before the delivery of the PMC. This practice ensures
that all parties involved, including the judge, have a shared understanding of the topic statement for
each debate.
PMCs typically include arguments about the background of the resolution/topic. These arguments
set the stage for the debate. They help novice debaters frame and justify their “plan” or “advocacy.”
For example, if the resolution is that the “United States should militarily intervene in Syria”, the first
thirty to ninety seconds of the PMC might include relevant background information about previous
United States military intervention, planning, support and actions in Syria. Often overlooked, this
24 Chapter 4. PMC Case Structure

section of the debate serves several distinct purposes. First, it allows inexperienced debaters to ease
their way into the debate. As an inexperienced debater, you might not be the most familiar with
complex advantage structure and/or discussing the consequences of U.S. military intervention, but
you can certainly bolster your credibility by providing a clear, succinct background to the topic
at hand. Second, discussing the background of the topic is often a way for novice debaters to fill
out their speech time. While you might not be the best, at least initially, at formulating detailed
“advantages” to your case, you are certainly capable of reading news stories and Wikipedia pages
and relaying statements that are descriptive of the status quo. While you should not rely on this
strategy in every debate, using background contentions to “fill out” the government case, in my
experience, eases the fear of novice debaters concerning their ability to fill speech time or fear that
insufficient topic knowledge will be apparent to the audience or other participants. At minimum,
thorough background arguments will offer your MGC a head start with argument “spikes” or
evidence from the status quo that might intuitively answer their disadvantages, counterplans or
kritiks.

When researching the background of the topic during prep time, it is advisable to keep your pen
moving. When the topic is announced, write the resolution twice (on two different sheets of paper).
The idea of writing “two copies” of the resolution is a strategy developing during my time at
SIU-Carbondale – having one sheet of paper with the resolution clearly written always gave us
something to refer back to in close topicality or theory debates. If you are debating in a tournament
with pre-announced topic areas/resolutions, you will, hopefully, already have a prepared PMC or
(at minimum) a basic plan for one. If you are debating at a tournament without pre-announced
topic areas/resolutions, the bulk of your preparation for the PMC will occur in the twenty to thirty
minutes before the debate begins. In some cases, you will know that you already have a prepared
PMC or a PMC that you can retrofit for the announced topic. If you do not have a pre-existing case,
you will need to construct the entirety of the PMC during the preparation period. As you begin
Googling keywords in the topic, start writing/short-handing things that you find in the background
section of your flow – remember, you can always cross these arguments out or simply forego
saying them out loud as your deliver your PMC. Writing while you research ensures that you are
not wasting time duplicating cursory background research once you understand the direction that
you plan to take for your PMC. Another helpful strategy is to search the topic in Google News
– a strategy that is so obvious that students often forget to deploy it. For example, given the topic
“The United States should militarily engage Syria,” it makes sense to navigate to Google and type
(“United States” OR “U.S.” AND “Syria” AND “Military”) – in some cases, you might not want
to include a phrase as specific as “military” in your search terms. It is helpful to use Google
sorting options to find information from the previous week or previous 24 hours. It is also helpful
to quickly scan the names of sources in Google News. For example, The Associated Press and
Reuters are going to give you different information than more elaborate, long form articles written
by The Economist. Depending on the topic, sometimes AP/Reuters-style reporting might be the
best for your specific needs. In the case that you have a standard PMC justifying United States
Military intervention abroad, The Associated Press and Reuters wires allow you to convey an
up-to-the-minute understanding of the topic, contextualized within your generic, prepared PMC.
For example, you may quickly locate an article that says that top United States Military officials
are planning for a ground-invasion now, that violence is escalating, that Russia is increasing their
involvement in the region, etc. All of these things are likely relevant items to know. In quickly
scanning and retaining this information, we see one of the unique benefits of the parliamentary
format – you develop skills that allow you to achieve complex understandings, often in a very
short timeframe. In other cases, using the beginning of your preparation time to read most of one,
well-developed long-form article is preferable – typically when you have limited or no knowledge
of the topic of the debate. This research process informs how you will construct the rest of the case
 25

both in situations where you are retrofitting a prepared template and in situations where you are
starting from scratch on your PMC case construction.
PMCs will typically include a specific plan advocacy or advocacy statement and solvency arguments
for that advocacy. After thirty to ninety seconds of background arguments, most PMCs will read a
textual advocacy or plan statement, taking numerous forms. It has become accepted as standard-
practice to write two copies of this advocacy before the debate begins or to provide a copy to your
opponents when they ask for it. Typically, a reading of “solvency” arguments traditionally follows
a reading of this text, or arguments that conclude that adopting your course of action or advocacy
(1) can happen and (2) would resolve some problem that you have highlighted. Increasingly,
PMCs have also used solvency arguments to anticipate answers to predictable disadvantages and
counterplans. In some cases, debaters have adopted the practice of locating solvency arguments in
varying areas throughout the PMC. Some debaters prefer to include solvency arguments within
specific advantages while others prefer to deploy labeled solvency arguments immediately following
the plan and in specific advantages.
At their most basic level, “Advantages” are the way that PMCs refer to the positive consequences of
adopting their position on the debate resolution – they are “net-benefits to the status quo.” That is,
if their position was advanced or adopted, these are the positive outcomes of such an advocacy. If I
wanted to construct an argument that the United States should intervene in Syria, the argument may
look something like this: (a) people are dying now, (b) United States military action can resolve
that, (c) death is bad and should it continue absent United States intervention, it will result in the
outbreak of global war. Using this basic example, I have fulfilled all or most burdens of a modern
advantage structure. I have (a) made a claim about the way things are now, (b) argued that my plan
or advocacy would be able to resolve a circumstance or consequence that is not preferable, and
(c) developed an impact to my description of the status quo or anticipated a coming “worst case
scenario” emerging from the conditions of the status quo.
 5. Flowing the Debate

F LOWING THE D EBATE

Flowing Basics
In a competitive debate round, regardless of format, debaters and judges will ideally keep a record
of all/most of the arguments made by the competitors – we refer to this process as “flowing”, “the
flow” or creating a “flowchart.” Theoretically, this specific method of taking notes will chart the
progression of arguments from their original presentation through several rounds of responses and
rebuttals. The ability to accurately transcribe and record the debate is essential to your ability to be
able to recall, accurately portray and respond to all arguments.
Consider: If you cannot recall the specific arguments made by your opponent, how can you refute
them? If you do not know your opponent’s arguments against your case, how can you defend your
position? Though competitive debate refines memory recall of most participants, a written record
is the best way to keep logical structure and organization.
In a parliamentary debate, you will keep a record of six speeches consisting of the Prime Minister
Constructive (7 minutes), Leader of Opposition Constructive (8 minutes), Member of Government
Constructive (8 minutes), Member of Opposition Constructive (8 minutes), Leader of Opposition
Rebuttal (4 minutes) and Prime Minister Rebuttal (5 minutes). Depending on your speaker position,
you will have varying “flowing” responsibilities. For example, the Prime Minister Constructive is
expected to have the case written and be ready to deliver in the PMC at the conclusion of preparation
time. In most cases, the PMC should flow the entirety of the LOC, MG, and MOC. The PMC will
not typically spend the entirety of the LOR flowing opposition rebuttal arguments since they will
deliver the last speech in the debate and are primarily responsible for answering the MOC. When
the debate concludes, the PMC/PMR will often not have a complete flow of the PMR, since they
are giving this speech in real-time and will often speak from only abbreviated notes.
The LOC will typically have a variety of arguments prepared during the allotted preparation period,
similar to the way that the PMC is prepared at the beginning of the debate to deliver the government
28 Chapter 5. Flowing the Debate

case. In many cases, organizing the LOC is a difficult endeavor. As the PMC is delivered, the LOC
is tasked with tailoring their LOC strategy to the PMC and obtaining enough of a written record of
the PMC that they can effectively establish specific answers to relevant points of the PMC case.
At the conclusion of the debate, LOC debaters will often have an incomplete record of the PMC
(compared to their partner), an incomplete flow of the LOC (since much of it may be delivered
“on the fly”), but they should possess a clear record of the MG, (in most cases) the MO, and the
PMR.
Similarly, the MGC might not possess a complete, perfect flow of their speech. Depending on their
tactical strategy, the MGC speaker might not even record much of the LOC – many MGC speakers
listen to the LOC and write answers only, rather than trying to transcribe an accurate record of the
LOC. It follows that the MGC speaker should likely possess a clearer record of the PMR than the
PMR might possess themselves. At the conclusion of the debate, a MGC speaker may only have a
record of the debate that accurately reflects the PMC, MOC, LOR, and PMR, with partial accounts
of the LOC and MGC.
The MOC may also end up possessing an incomplete record of the debate. They will flow the
entirety of the PMC, LOC, and most of the MGC. Similar to the MGC dilemma of needing to
simultaneously record the LOC and prepare the MGC, the MOC needs to simultaneously record the
MGC and prepare the MOC so that they can select arguments for the “MOC collapse” – selecting
which LOC arguments to abandon and which LOC arguments to advance. In many cases, the MOC
may decide early in the MGC which arguments they will later advance in the MOC. As such, MOCs
may possess a poor recording of large portions of the MGC, opting instead to dedicate their finite
time to thoroughly preparing MOC responses to relevant portions of the MGC.

Basic Tips for Flowing Success

As a beginner, learning to “flow” properly should be your top priority. You cannot compete in a
debate when you do not have the necessary record of arguments or if you are consistently unable to
establish a shared system of organization with your partner, opposing team and judge. You should
watch debates, both online and in person, and simply practice flowing. Develop systems that work
for you. One such system is developing a strategy of how you will determine when it is time for a
“new” sheet of paper. When flowing the PMC, typically, a best practice is to use one sheet of paper
for everything before the plan or advocacy (sometimes including the plan, though many debaters
prefer to keep the plan or advocacy of the PMC on a separate sheet of paper) and a separate sheet
for each advantage or dedicated “section” of the PMC (listen to cues from the speaker). As you
will learn, PMCs typically include very specific breaks, pauses, or titles that will intuitively signify
that it is time to start flowing on a new sheet of paper.
You should use legal sized, loose paper oriented vertically. Though some may advise you otherwise,
best practices hold and you will find nearly every debater and judge at the NPTE flowing debates
in a manner that is consistent with this orientation. Develop your own shorthand. You certainly
cannot write down everything that you or your opponent says – start small. Write the “tags” (the
main point of each argument) first, then, try to flow complex records of their arguments beyond
the tags. Flowing a debate is a process that is heavily reliant on muscle memory – how quickly
can you transcribe, process/understand arguments, switch pages, and write responses? You should
commit to a certain type of pen. For example, many debaters prefer Pilot G-2s in specific sizes,
while others prefer standard BIC roller-ball pens. You will find that, after a period of sustained use,
“flowing” using alternative writing instruments might feel disjointed or awkward.
 6. Sample Debate Flows (NPTE, 2015)

S AMPLE D EBATE F LOWS (NPTE, 2015)

After the 2015 National Parliamentary Tournament of Excellent championship debate, two judges
provided their ”flow” of the final round. I have enclosed those flows in this section. It is important
to remember, as a teaching tool, that no single ”flow” is perfect, not even those belonging to
your judges. One major difference between a policy debate format and a parliamentary debate
format is the built-in limitation of recall – judges are responsible for writing down and recalling
as much of the debate as possible, with no assistance. In a policy debate format, judges are often
provided (either on a jump drive or via e-mail) the entirety of carded evidence read in a given
speech. When this is not the case (often in paper-based high school policy debate), judges still
have the ability to ask for cards at the conclusion of a debate. As such, flowing the debate in
a paperless method is increasingly possible and judges are much less likely to miss (outright),
misinterpret, or misunderstand arguments made in the debate. In addition, the “pen time” associated
with carded evidence marks one major difference between flowing policy and parliamentary debate
formats.

I have often argued that high-level parliamentary debates place significant pressure on judges to
recall, process, and decide arguments with little assistance, a pressure not found in other formats.
Providing these flows allows you to watch the 2015 NPTE Championship Debate on YouTube and
follow along with the flow of two different judges. This exercise may be valuable even for seasoned
veterans of parliamentary debate since it should put into context the written record of two highly
preferred, quality debate critics. Which arguments are they writing down? Which arguments are
they missing? How do their flows differ? How might this impact the debate? Can you see how one
or more of the judges might make a decision in the opposite direction given an argument or specific
point that they might have missed?

This is a very straightforward debate. The PMC (University of Texas-Tyler) consists of a case
with two advantages. The LOC includes two disadvantages and a series of case arguments. After
30 Chapter 6. Sample Debate Flows (NPTE, 2015)

the MGC response, the MOC collapses to one disadvantage and a handful of case arguments.
This debate was decided for the opposition from Southern Illinois University-Carbondale on a 6-1
decision (Will Van Treuren, Zach Tschida, Cory Freivogel, Liz Van Winkle, Jordan Cohen, McKay
Campbell*, Marten King). This particular debate is an excellent teaching tool. It is demonstrable
of a well-constructed PMC case, detailed and organized disadvantages, excellent MGC responses
to the LOC, a textbook MOC collapse, a shining example of a debater giving purpose to the LOR
to sum up the debate and a very clever, admirable effort by the PMR to win back the debate.
 31

Sample Debate Flow #1

Top of Case
Contention 4
Contention 5
NOAA Overstretch DA (Front)
NOAA Overstretch DA (Back)
Oil DA (Front)
Oil DA (Back)
38 Chapter 6. Sample Debate Flows (NPTE, 2015)

Sample Debate Flow #2

Top of Case
Contention 4
Contention 5
NOAA Overstretch DA
Oil DA
LOR ONLY
 7. Topicality and Theory

T OPICALITY AND T HEORY

Topicality

In a policy debate format, using a year-long topic, there has traditionally been the expectation
that affirmative cases fit within, or affirmed the given topic statement. Using the example of the
2006-2007 collegiate policy debate topic, “Resolved: The United States Supreme Court should
overrule one or more of the following decisions: Planned Parenthood v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833
(1992); Ex parte Quirin, 317 U.S. 1 (1942); U.S. v. Morrison, 529 U.S.598 (2000); Milliken v.
Bradley, 418 U.S. 717 (1974),” it would not be “topical” for the affirmative to advocate that the
USSC overturn their decision in Mitchell v. Helms, 530 U.S. 793 (2000).
As a convention, “Topicality” holds that, regardless of how well the affirmative debaters may
be able to make the case for overturning Mitchell v. Helms, that is not the stated topic for the
debate – therefore, they have not fulfilled a primary burden of the affirmative team to present a
“topical” plan or advocacy. There is a variety of reason that judges evaluate this argument. Reasons
range from it being a “stock issue”, various logic-models that would dictate that advocating for the
overturn of Mitchell v. Helms would not prove the agreed upon resolution true and that such a case
does not serve as an example of the resolution, to justifications that indicate that the affirmative
debaters have an obligation to present an argument that could be reasonably predicted by the
negative team, facilitating an educational exchange of arguments and ideas. The reasons that
“Topicality” is a convention of academic debate vary greatly and I cannot possibly do all of them
justice. That said, know that topicality is, somewhat inevitably, an issue that you will encounter in
parliamentary debate.
As policy debate formats have accelerated disclosure norms, a formal process of revealing con-
structive arguments (1AC and 1NC) read in the debate, the importance of topicality as a tool for
46 Chapter 7. Topicality and Theory

the negative has faded, though it is still present from time to time. In the parliamentary format,
the practice of advancing topicality arguments (by the opposition) against the government case
is somewhat common. That argument is deployed in a variety of different ways, most of which
are functionally summarized by the notion that, after the resolution is announced, the opposition
debaters must construct an idea of what they expect the PMC to advocate. That is, what type of
plan or advocacy can they reasonably predict that the PMC will advance? For example, if the
announced resolution is that “The United States should militarily intervene in Syria”, the opposition
debaters might be well justified in expecting the plan or advocacy of the PMC to contain the targeted
deployment of one or more branches of the United States Military (Army, Navy, Marines) to the
nation of Syria. The opposition debaters may also expect the plan or advocacy of the PMC to
contain a military offensive – a non-passive, military operation.
Operating on the basis of these expectations, the LOC may spend their preparation time on one
argument that indicates that, “United States Military intervention in Syria would trigger a Russian
backlash due to concerns over their sphere of influence,” and one argument containing the central
thesis that, “U.S. military involvement will be met with domestic backlash and U.S. forces will
exacerbate an existing conflict.” They may also prepare a counterplan for any number other entities
to act in place of the United States.
If the debate begins with the PMC advancing a plan text that says, “The CIA should conduct
targeted drone surveillance of Bashar al-Assad,” the negative might object to this advocacy on the
grounds of topicality.
Given the two expectations listed above, can you explain why the PMC plan might not be topical?
If the LOC prepared the arguments discussed above, does it make sense to advance them in the
debate? Do they intuitively link to this advocacy?
This is just one example of a situation where the LOC might argue against the topicality of the
PMC plan or advocacy. The LOC might argue that the CIA is (1) not a predictable branch of the
United States Military (Army, Navy, Marines) and/or (2) that drone surveillance does not meet their
expectation of a military offensive.

The following example is representative of a somewhat standard LOC “shell” for topicality:

“A. Interpretation: U.S. Military intervention means to offensively deploy, in a targeted fash-
ion, members of one or more branches of the United States Military (Army, Navy, Marines).”

The clarity of the interpretation is a critical first step to advancing a topicality argument. Imagine
a scenario where the LOC advanced an interpretation indicating, “military intervention means to
engage in combat in Syria.” In this example, the MGC would be able to argue that they meet that
interpretation by arguing that extensive drone surveillance operations are a combat operation that
would take place inside of Syria.
One commonly accepted ad hoc distinction on topicality is the division between prescribing plan
or advocacy behaviors that, in your interpretation the PMC must or cannot engage in. That is,
some interpretations will say, “you must do X,” while others will read that you “cannot do Y.” An
nuanced understanding might indicate that these prescriptions are one and the same – by saying
“you must do X”, it may be understood that LOCs are saying that “you must only do X.” Regardless,
this pattern of thinking about topicality debates is often a helpful way for thinking about topicality
as a novice. What do you think that the PMC must advocate or include in their plan? What do you
 47

think that they should not be allowed to advocate or include in their plan?

“B. Violation: The PMC advances a plan text that utilizes the CIA to deploy surveillance
drones to monitor the movements of surveillance of Bashar al-Assad in Syria and do not
include one or more branches of the United States Military (Army, Navy, Marines).”

“C. Standards
1. Limits – the interpretation provided by the opposition provides a predictable limit
(parameter) for the debate. It is expected that the PMC will argue for deployment of
U.S. ground troops, which was the basis for the arguments prepared by the opposition
during the preparation period.

2. Literature – the interpretation provided by the opposition is the best-situated liter-

ature that contextualizes U.S. Military interventions. These scholars (give a specific
example) would not refer to drone surveillance as military intervention. Thus, the most
predictable interpretation grounded in the topic literature is the interpretation advanced
by the opposition.”

You will notice above that I have mentioned the predictability of both limits and literature. You will
encounter many debaters and judges that will say that “predictability” is a standard on topicality. I
do not intend to take a position on the issue of what your standards should be, other than to say that
you should think of your standards as reasons why your interpretation is the right interpretation.

“D. Voters
1. A Priori

2. Fairness

3. Education

4. NPDA Rules”

Novice debaters have a difficult time understanding why “fairness” and “education” are voting
issues on topicality and not standards. The truthful answer is that, in many debates, debaters will
argue that fairness and education are standards with which to evaluate their definition – their are no
real, established rules as to what constitutes or differentiates a standard from a voter. However, it
is useful to conceptualize it in this way – “voters” are reasons that topicality should be a voting
issue or reasons that it should be evaluated first by the judge. Consider the above scenario in which
you expected the PMC to advance the U.S. military into Syria, but they, instead, opted to advocate
for surveillance. If you did not spend any portion of your preparation time readying yourself
for a debate about drone surveillance, you are likely to be at a great disadvantage in that debate,
right? You will need to explain why you predicted a certain interpretation of the topic – those are
standards. However, winning that alone does not win you the debate. You must also win that the
offense perpetrated by the PMC is a reason that they should lose the debate. Plainly, a “standard” is
a reason why you were not ready for the debate and a voter is the reason that someone should be
punished for the behavior that caused you to be unprepared.
In modern parliamentary debate, voters are the most overlooked and underdeveloped level of a
48 Chapter 7. Topicality and Theory

standard LOC topicality shell. In the examples that I have provided above, each has a varying set of
norms and processes that inform how they are argued in each debate, but there are two that should
have further explanation: the idea of topicality being “a priori” and the idea of “NPDA Rules” (also
referred to as “rule of the game”). First, NPDA “rules” literally say, “The proposition team must
affirm the resolution by presenting and defending a sufficient case for that resolution.” In some
circles, this has been interpreted to mean that the “rules of the game” insist that the PMC must
present a topical plan text. Others rightly point out that “affirming the resolution by defending a
sufficient case for that resolution,” does not necessarily mean that you have to be “topical” – the
rules say that you need to affirm the resolution and even that is up for debate. Nevertheless, this
convention is worth mentioning since, while many judges will not openly admit that the NPDA
rules document is the reason for their adherence to the belief that the PMC plan text or advocacy
statement should be topical, many judges still believe that topicality simply is a voting issue.
Second, most topicality arguments will include some discussion of the phrase “a priori.” Debaters
are famous for incorrectly interpreting that “a priori” means, “to come first.” While that is not a
technically correct Latin translation, debate communities have come to accept that the argument
that “topicality is a priori” means that judges should evaluate topicality first, before considering
substantive portions of the debate (in this instance, the portions of the above example where you
may poorly attempt to answer the specifics of the PMC case about drone surveillance). That is, “a
priori” colloquially means that, when determining who wins the ballot, judges must evaluate this
particular issue first, before looking at other issues in the debate. As my understanding of debate
grew, I began to understand the issues of topicality have to be evaluated first because, were they
not to be evaluated first, they would never be competitive with substantive arguments. That is, the
position that I was somehow wronged in the debate pales in comparison to the fact that there is
civil unrest in Syria or that Bashar al-Assad may be a ruthless dictator. There is no comparison
between these two arguments and, were there to be a direct comparison, my topicality objection
seems trivial, correct?

It is important to remember that topicality is not only a tool for when you have been wronged and
your preparation time is made useless by a clever PMC interpretation of the resolution. Topicality
is also evaluated like a game. You might advance a topicality argument without ever advancing
the argument that any portion of your preparation time was rendered obsolete. You might read an
interpretation that says, “the debate should be about X” and a violation that advances that “the PMC
advocated Y, not X,” – and this may have nothing to do with your preparation, perhaps you simply
believe that having a debate over X would have been more educational or productive than having a
debate over Y. This formulation of topicality is not only common, it is quite prevalent. Thus, when
you are scheduled to debate on the opposition, during preparation time, my advice is always to
have a few sheets of paper handy to write your Leader of Opposition flow for a couple of topicality
violations. As the Leader of Opposition, it was always one of the first tasks that I would complete
during the preparation period. I always asked myself one question – what reasonable interpretation
might limit out a significant number of cases that I believe that the PMC might advance? In this
way, topicality becomes a weapon in your arsenal. You may not be the best CP or K debater on the
circuit, but you can become a skilled topicality or theory debater.

One item of special note is that topicality debates place a premium on the plan text or advocacy
statement of the PMC. If you consider the example that we have discussed throughout, “The U.S.
should militarily intervene in Syria,” you might already recognize that many of the advantages
derived from advocating such an action have little to do with intervening in an ongoing Syrian
conflict, specifically. It is reasonable, given this example, opposition debaters might think that
intuitive PMC advantages may pertain to some ongoing conflict or removing Bashar al-Assad,
right? However, it is possible for the PMC to argue that the U.S. should intervene in Syria for
 49

reasons that have little to do with these predictable justifications. For example, the PMC may argue
that U.S. military leadership is declining and that a United States invasion would shore up the global
perception of the United States as a waning hegemon. In this scenario, the PMC might demonstrate
complete indifference to an ongoing civil war or the tyranny of Bashar al-Assad. Novice debaters
are often quick to think that this means that the PMC is not topical. However, that might not be the
case – remember, topicality is determined by the action included in the plan or advocacy text, not
advantages. Consider another example. Perhaps, the resolution is that “The United States Federal
Government should approve the Keystone XL Pipeline.” The PMC may contend that President
Obama should XO the passage of the pipeline. The primary PMC advantage might be “Presidential
leadership on oil independence.” Whether or not the Keystone XL is a success might be a secondary
question to the PMC deploying this argumentative strategy. Thus, the text/advocacy of the PMC is
topical, while the advantages derived from that text are not necessarily so.

Theory Debates

Debaters refer to topicality as a “theory” argument – that is, topicality is a debate about debate that
helps determine the parameters for the round. In addition to challenging the topicality of the PMC
plan/advocacy text, there are many other common “theory” debates or “theory objections” that
might be offered by either side of the debate. Simply put, these arguments advance the notion that
“X thing is defined as Y”, “Y is bad for some reason,” “the judge should do Z if it is determined
that you have done Y,” and finally, “the judge should evaluate the status of X before the substantive
debate (similar to topicality).”
One common theory objection is the “status” of a counterplan (unconditional, conditional or
dispositional). Consider the example where the LOC reads arguments directly against the PMC
case, two disadvantages to the plan/advocacy advanced in the PMC as well as an alternative proposal
(counterplan). In this scenario, depending on the strategy choices of the MGC, the MOC may
be able to win the debate solely based on one of the two disadvantages, electing not to advance
the discussion of the opposition’s counterplan. This scenario is an example of a “conditional”
counterplan strategy – that is, the opposition team reserves the right to “kick” or discontinue
advancing the counterplan at any given time. Typically the government team will ask the LOC the
“status” of their counterplan so that they are able to forecast the types of strategies that they will
use in the MGC to answer the counterplan. For a variety of reasons that will become apparent as
you grow into your debate career, certain genres of answers are desirable against a team that you
know will advance the counterplan in the MOC versus situations where the MOC might choose
not to advance the counterplan. I should stipulate that, in all or nearly all debates, the government
team will ask the status of the counterplan and most opposition teams do not consider this an
unreasonable request. In fact, many teams declare the status of their counterplan as it is read.
For example, debaters from Southern Illinois University- Carbondale, one of the most successful
programs in parliamentary debate, will typically say, “the unconditional counter plan text is. . . ”
– declaring that, regardless of the outcome of arguments made by the MGC, the MOC will advance
the counterplan for the opposition. “Conditional” or “dispositional” counterplan strategies mean
that the focus of the opposition after the MGC might change. “Dispositional” means that the
opposition reserves the right to abandon the counterplan given a prescribed set of circumstances, of
which there is not an established community norm. “Conditional” means that the opposition may
be free to abandon the counterplan at any time.
As you can imagine, MGCs often find conditional and dispositional strategies objectionable. When
the opposition team declares that their counterplan is “conditional” in the LOC, the MGC might
50 Chapter 7. Topicality and Theory

utilize a “theoretical objection” to the counterplan – that is, an argument that might not substantively
address the solvency or the net-benefits of the counterplan, rather challenging the legitimacy of the
counterplan to exist in the first place. If the LOC reads a counterplan that “the problem area isolated
by the government team should resolve itself absent the plan,” that would intuitively seem unfair,
right? Similarly, many debaters challenge the notion that the MOC is free to jettison the counterplan
while the PMC must continue to defend their plan/advocacy text without alteration.
Using the example in the introduction to this section of the form of a standard theory objection, we
see a practical example of a “theory” argument in practice:

1. “X behavior is defined as Y.”

2. “Y is bad for some reason”

3. “The judge should do Z if it is determined that you have done Y.”

4. “The judge should evaluate the status of X before the substantive debate (similar to
topicality).”

Or

1. “Conditional counterplans are defined by the opposition declaration during the LOC that
they reserve the right to abandon the counterplan in the MOC”

2. “Conditionality is bad because it forces the MGC to debate in two separate worlds (one
with the counterplan and one without). These two worlds are not reciprocal because no
speech delivered by the government team is typically allowed to propose and, later, choose to
abandon a course of action. This behavior disadvantages the government team in the debate
because the opposition holds a 12 to 5 minute time advantage in the last three speeches.”

3. “The judge should reject the team because. . . .” or “The judge should reject the counterplan
because. . . ”

The first option means that, if it is determined that the opposition was, in fact, conditional and
that “conditionality” is bad, that the judge should award the ballot to the government team. The
second option means that the judge should not be allowed to factor the counterplan into their
decision on the debate, because, presuming that the above conditions are met, the position created
an unfair advantage for the opposition team – but they may still win the debate on the merits of
their disadvantages or case arguments.

4. “A decision on the status of the opposition counterplan should be made before the substan-
tive debate. If the government team is subject to topicality (non-substantive) challenges to
their PMC case, reciprocally, the LOC should be subject to theoretical challenges to the their
arguments.

This example is just one of the many options available to make “theoretical” objections to argu-
ments made by your opponent. In virtually any circumstance that results in thinking, “I don’t think
 51

that they should be able to do that,” you are free to craft and deliver theory objections. Theory
arguments only necessitate that you name, define, and develop justifications for the avoidance of or
the prescription of certain behaviors within the debate. Thus, it is a debate about debate.

Common Mistakes Involving Theory Objections

The previous section indicates that theory objections are fluid, flexible and impermanent. Theory
arguments are fluid because they are often formulated in the moment, during the debate once a team
has observed an objectionable behavior or strategy. Theory arguments are flexible because there
is no set definition of most of the concepts or ideas that they discuss. Finally, theory arguments
are impermanent because winning a theoretical objection to the type or status of a counterplan
does not necessarily indicate that argument should be prohibited in future debates, you have simply
won that the argument should not be allowed in one, particular debate. The fluidity, flexibility and
impermanence of theory arguments often complicate their execution and, ultimately, their strength
as a round-winning argument.

Debaters commonly neglect to properly define their objection. In many cases if you lose the theory
argument that you advanced or defeat a theory argument advanced against you, perhaps it was
because the “shell” or original objection poorly defined the objection in the first place. Using
the example provided above, the MOC might argue that a conditional counterplan is defined as
a “counterplan that is not advanced in the MOC,” thus, if the MOC does decide to advance this
argument, the opposition team is not “conditional,” because they never “kicked” the counterplan. In
this example, we have clearly defined our objection to “the opposition declaration during the LOC
that they reserve the right to abandon the counterplan in the MOC,” not whether the MOC advances
the counterplan or not. As such, the MGC would not be in a situation where their definition
was particularly unclear. However, you can imagine many circumstances in which the original
theory interpretation might be unclear. Imagine a situation where the government team objects to
a “delay counterplan” read by the LOC – a type of counterplan that delays the implementation of
the plan/advocacy until a particular point in the future, avoiding a disadvantage that may occur if
the plan/advocacy were adopted immediately. The MGC might say, “The negative is not entitled
to delay counterplans.” The MOC may very justifiably argue that the LOC counterplan is not a
“delay counterplan” because it, too, would be adopted immediately; implementation would just be
delayed until after an election (for example). In this scenario, we can see that the MGC has been
unclear. By failing to define a “delay counterplan,” they have given the MOC leeway to say, “delay
counterplans might be bad, but we are not a delay counterplan.”

Debaters often assume the preeminence of theoretical objections. From time to time, the PMC will
not be “topical” in any obvious sense, usually intentionally. As such, many government teams will
“critique” the LOC usage of topicality arguments to “exclude” or otherwise dismiss the PMC case.
In this scenario, the government team interrogates a common assumption – that topicality should be
evaluated before the substantive debate. Still, when debating other theory arguments, debaters often
forget to both establish and challenge these arguments as a prior question to the substantive debate.
Failure to establish that your theoretical objection should come before the judge’s evaluation of
the substantive nature of the LOC, for example, might create a circumstance where the MOC
might argue that the judge should evaluate certain LOC argument before any number of theoretical
objections to the LOC. A substantial number of the debates that I judge include the assumption
that theoretical objections hold a prioritization status similar to topicality. This fact might reflect
the prevailing opinion of judges, but it might also reflect laziness or shortcuts taken on behalf of
debaters.

Debaters also rarely warrant the reason for their prescription that the judge takes a particular action.
52 Chapter 7. Topicality and Theory

Similar to the manner in which prevailing trends fail to establish the preeminence of theoretical
objections, many debaters also lack sufficient warrants for instructing judge behavior in the instance
of a theoretical objection. As mentioned above, theory objections typically prescribe a course of
action for the judge in the event that they determine that a violation has occurred. I commonly
evaluate debates where the most instruction that I will receive from the debaters is “reject the team”
or “reject the position” – rarely an additional justification. From the perspective of a judge, being
told to “reject the team/position” is a statement/direction without any warrant. It is, by definition,
an assertion. Given the example where an MGC may object to the legitimacy of the form/status of a
counterplan illuminates this example. If the MGC simply says, “reject the team” with no additional
justification, the MOC can efficiently address the argument by arguing that, “in the instance of a
violation of the theoretical objection, that the judge should only reject the argument.” Substantially
elaborating on this argument, combined with an MOC collapse to one disadvantage or several case
arguments, allows the MOC to address the theoretical objection in a succinct manner while still
maintaining the advantage of their MOC collapse. In this example, had the MGC simply included a
few additional warrants, the MOC collapse would be more challenging.
Debaters should always advance the maximum possible penalty for theoretical violations. As
discussed throughout, theoretical objections often allow debaters to choose between “reject the
position” and “reject the team” – it alludes me why a debater might not ask that the judge “reject the
team,” awarding a ballot in their favor. Among other concerns, when reading a “reject the position”
in the MGC, the MOC is allowed to simply agree and not advance the position any further, making
their MOC collapse considerably less complicated. I often ask competitors, after I evaluate these
sorts of debates, why they neglected to say, “reject the team,” instead choosing just to say “reject
the argument.” They typically cannot produce a well-reasoned answer and mostly just default to
admitting that they had not particularly thought out that level of the debate. I would encourage you
to think about every part of a theory debate since every part is important and affects your ability to
collapse to the position in the MOC/LOR or PMR.
Parliamentary debate should also develop more event-specific theory arguments. Many of the theory
arguments commonly deployed in parliamentary debate are simply recycled shells from policy
debate, only altered slightly for format changes. As Brandon Merrell and Todd Graham discuss
in the “Conditionality and Advocacy Status” chapter, there are numerous structural differences in
the activity that might make conditional arguments, for example, undesirable in a parliamentary
format. Offering event-specific details in your theory arguments increases the likelihood of your
success when deploying these arguments because the argument is responsive to present conditions,
not general ideas about debate.

Answering Topicality/Theory

When tasked with answering theory arguments, you should commit a few common methods to
memory. Below, I will discuss basic, commonly accepted strategies for answering theory arguments,
specifically topicality. However, these arguments are also applicable when answering most common
theory arguments. Instead of offering a “counter-interpretation” of the words in the topic, you will
offer a “counter-interpretation” of “conditionality,” for example.

“1. We Meet.” This is the first argument you should always make against topicality. You should
always argue that whatever their interpretation is, you meet it. For example, if their interpre-
tation is that the resolution calls for you to use the “United States Federal Government” and
instead, based off a technicality, you used the United States Army, you could argue, “We Meet:
 53

The United States Army is a part of the Executive Branch of the United States Federal Government.”

“2. Counter Interpretation.” Your counter-interpretation could be that “The United States federal
government is any active body under the control of the Legislated, Executive, or Judicial branches
of the United States Federal Government.”

“3. Counter Standards.” This is where you isolate why your counter-interpretation is better for
debate. Usually this is something that depends on your definition and how you may want to frame
it when compared to your opponents. This could be for any number of reasons.

“4. We Meet Our Counter Interpretation.” This should be the easiest portion of answering topicality.
You will ideally have an interpretation that you meet; you just need to make sure that you have this
argument in your answers to topicality.

“5. Your Interpretation Is Bad.” This is the time where you place arguments about why the govern-
ment teams interpretation is bad for debate. Find a couple of reasons and put them here. This is a
very simple place for you to place analytical arguments as to why you do not think that you should
lose to the opposition teams topicality position.

“6. There Is No In-Round Abuse.” You might want to challenge that you have engaged in behavior
that has made your opponent unprepared to engage in the debate. This argument is often paired with
the argument below, indicating that the judge should not vote on a Topicality or theory argument
unless a team can evidence that they have been materially disadvantaged in a meaningful way.

“7. Do Not Vote On Potential Abuse.” This argument, as mentioned above, indicates that the judge
should not vote on “abuse” or “ground loss” that cannot be named or otherwise demonstrated.

“8. There is No Right to Predictable Ground in Parliamentary debate.” In my opinion, this is an

underutilized argument in theory debates in the parliamentary format. Consider challenging whether
the opposition has a right to a predictable strategy in this debate format. While we may intuitively
seek predictability in many debate formats, parliamentary debate might not be one that should
guarantee a predictable debate. At minimum, consider defending this position and consider how
the parliamentary format might change the expectations for what is and is not predictable.
 8. Disadvantages

D ISADVANTAGES

It is often said that a judge should vote for the government side of the debate if the government’s
plan/advocacy would result in more good than harm. In order to establish harm to adopting the
ideas of the PMC, LOCs often deploy an off-case “disadvantage” or “DA”. A “disadvantage” is an
argument that attempts to establish that the government plan/advocacy would be disadvantageous
to the status quo or a competing policy option. In a very basic sense, the structure of a disadvantage
argument is as follows:

A. Uniqueness: Claims about the status quo.

B. Link: How/why the plan causes something in the status quo to change.
C. Internal Link: How/why the link will result in a particular outcome.
D. Impact: X outcome is bad.

Uniqueness Arguments
Novice debaters often mistake “uniqueness” to mean that a particular disadvantage, read by the
LOC, is common or generic. For example, a “politics disadvantage” where Republican senators
backlash against a particularly liberal plan might be applicable against a variety of PMC advocacies,
right? However, this fact alone does not mean that the disadvantage is not “unique.” Uniqueness is
simply a description of the status quo as it pertains to the content of the disadvantage. Disadvantage
uniqueness is similar to the “background” arguments made in the PMC. Uniqueness arguments
establish the foundation for the rest of the disadvantage. Imagine that you are reading a Politics DA
that argues that comprehensive immigration reform would be derailed by the plan advanced in the
PMC and that passage of comprehensive immigration reform would be desirable. In this way, your
DA attempts to evidence that there is an opportunity cost to the PMC by presenting the argument
that if the judge would like to achieve the benefits presented by the PMC advantages that they must
56 Chapter 8. Disadvantages

forgo passage of comprehensive immigration reform.

In order to win this Politics DA, the opposition team must win the argument that comprehensive
immigration reform will pass now. If comprehensive immigration reform will not pass now,
this cannot be an opportunity cost to the PMC, right? In this scenario, can the PMC result in a
circumstance where comprehensive immigration reform will fail more than it is currently failing?
If so, does that matter? Regardless of whether you think you might be able to win this argument, it
is not advantageous for the opposition team to deploy such an argument. If you want to win that
the plan derails comprehensive immigration reform, you will want to argue that comprehensive
immigration will pass now.
Another common mistake is to think that “uniqueness” might only be found in the top-level discus-
sion of a disadvantage. Links, internal links and impacts are also often framed to possess their own
“uniqueness” which is more like the mistaken understanding of “uniqueness” among novice debaters
discussed above. Given the example Politics DA discussed throughout this section, the opposition
may argue that the PMC results in the Republican blockage of comprehensive immigration reform
that results in a total collapse of the United States economy. The government team might argue that
the United States economy is already collapsing or will collapse for a variety of reasons. In this
scenario, the government team has challenged the “impact uniqueness” of the LOC disadvantage.
Similarly, the government team might argue that another, similar liberal action is going to happen
in the status quo that would also result in derailing comprehensive immigration reform. In this
scenario, the government team has challenged the “link uniqueness” of the LOC disadvantage.

Link Arguments
As a part of a disadvantage argument, “links” locate the elements of the government plan/advocacy
that result in or begin to trigger the chain of events that lead to a set of negative consequences to the
plan/advocacy. The strongest link arguments that an LOC can utilize in a disadvantage are typically
actions advocated by the government that the LOC could directly isolate in the plan/advocacy text.
Continuing to advance the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Politics DA example, the link
might be that “the plan angers congressional Republicans who are fundamentally opposed to your
plan.” Similar to topicality, disadvantages might also want to retain a focus on the particular plan
text. For example, if the PMC reads a plan text that says, “The United States Supreme Court should
rule in favor of X in the case of X vs. Y,” the LOC might have a difficult time generating a Politics
DA link from this plan text, right?
Still, this scenario does not mean that the LOC cannot generate a link to their favorite Politics
DA. Think back to the discussion of PMC advantage construction – there are multiple levels to
the advantage presented in the PMC. All of those levels are areas where you might generate
disadvantage links. In this case, if the Supreme Court decision advocated by the government
team would result in a major democratic win, it may still possess the capacity to derail com-
prehensive immigration reform. If you visualize the location of these arguments on a timeline,
“links” to disadvantages might occur immediately or they may be reliant on some later implemen-
tation of the PMC plan. That is, the PMC would immediately stop nearly complete negotiations
or it may argue that some result of the plan will eventually result in blockage of immigration reform.

Internal Links
“Internal links” presume that you have won one or more link arguments. In many situations, debaters
conflate “links” and “internal links” – something that we are, perhaps, guilty of in this Politics DA
example. In a basic sense, the link argument is “plan angers Republicans” and the internal link
is that “Republicans block CIR.” You might also view this Politics DA in a way that makes the
 57

link “plan angers Republicans and they block CIR” while the internal link is that “CIR is key to the
United States economy.” Neither of these two views of what constitutes a link or internal link is
necessarily correct, but the nuance is worth notice. Acknowledging the distinction between links
and internal links, and how this distinction is often blurred, is critical to constructing, answering, and
understanding disadvantages. The distinction will help you execute a collapse to the disadvantage
in the MOC and will help you to better answer LOC disadvantages in the MGC.

Impact
The “impact” is a reason that a judge should preference a disadvantage over a PMC advantage.
An impact is also a reason that the judge should care about and a mechanism for evaluating your
disadvantage. In the scenario of comprehensive immigration reform, can you think of at least two
different reasons that you might argue that passage of comprehensive immigration reform is good?
You might argue that comprehensive immigration reform is critical to the United States economy
since passage of CIR would result in shoring up a potentially waning economy. You might also
argue that CIR is the only thing that will resolve anti-immigrant sentiment in southern border states
that results in violence against folks that would benefit from a path to citizenship. As you can
see, while these two impacts might be somewhat related, it is possible to win that CIR is good for
people while losing the argument that CIR might not necessarily create a boom for the economy.
In this way, you might see the advantage to having more than one level of impact to a particular
disadvantage. Perhaps the Government team can win that their plan would be good for the economy.
In this scenario, it would be beneficial for the opposition debaters to have an additional impact level
(anti-immigrant violence) to compare to the case advantages (economy).

Theory as a Disadvantage

In an effort to avoid a protracted discussion of “theory as a micro-level disadvantage,” you should

know that many debaters find it helpful to think about theory and topicality arguments in the context
of disadvantages. Replace uniqueness (claims about the status quo) with “A: Interpretation,” links
with “B: Violation,” internal links with “C: Standards” and impacts with “D: Voters.” Voters are the
impact to topicality or theory.

General Discussion of Disadvantages

It is often said that, “uniqueness controls the direction of the link.” Other authors in this text
provide additional explanation of this phrase, but it is useful to grasp this concept in the context
of understanding disadvantages in general. I often teach this directionality using arrows. Assume
that an “up” arrow (") means that something increases or is good and assume that a down arrow (#)
means that something decreases or is bad.
Consider the disadvantage that we have discussed throughout this section:

"U: CIR will pass in the status quo.

# L and I/L: Plan blocks CIR
" I: CIR is good.

The arrow helps you to visualize the directionality of your disadvantage. If we presume that you
are using the disadvantage to defend the status quo against the government case and you argue that
CIR will pass now, your impact needs to go in the same direction, that CIR is good. Consider the
58 Chapter 8. Disadvantages

opposite example:

"U: CIR will pass in the status quo.

# L and I/L: Plan blocks CIR
# I: CIR is bad.

Does this make sense? Could you win a disadvantage structured in this way? If the status quo
will result in the passage of CIR and CIR is bad, why is that a reason to reject the PMC’s case?
Consider this formulation:

#U: CIR will not pass in the status quo.

" L and I/L: Plan helps the passage of CIR
# I: CIR is bad.

Does this DA formulation make sense? It should. If you can win that CIR will not pass in the
status quo and that CIR is bad, you might be able to successfully argue a link/internal link that the
plan will result in circumstances that allow CIR (a bad policy) to pass. Consider the following
formulations of a very basic United States hegemony disadvantage:

"U: United States hegemony is high in the status quo.

# L and I/L: Plan decreases United States hegemony.
" I: Decreasing United States hegemony is bad/ High United States hegemony is good.

#U: United States hegemony is low in the status quo

"L and I/L: Plan increases United States hegemony
#I: Increasing United States hegemony is bad/ Low United States hegemony is good.

In these scenarios, if the uniqueness argues that United States hegemony is high now, intuitively,
the impact arguments would need to indicate that high United States hegemony is desirable. If
you want to defend the status quo (especially), if the uniqueness arguments say that United States
hegemony is low now, intuitively, the impact arguments would need to indicate that low United
States hegemony is desirable. Imagine the following scenario:

"U: United States hegemony is high in the status quo

"L and I/L: Plan increases United States hegemony
#I: Increasing United States hegemony is bad/ Low United States hegemony is good.

Would you be able to win a disadvantage formulated in this way? If United States hegemony is
already high, might you have a difficult time quantifying or qualifying why United States hegemony
being higher is bad? In a typical debate, we would say that you might have a problem winning a
disadvantage formulated in this way. You might want to argue that United States hegemony is bad,
but if it is already high and there is no argument to indicate a possibility of the arrow going in the
other direction, you might have a difficult time winning that argument.
All of this explanation is to say that you may want to use this simple arrow organization system
 59

to understand disadvantages. In an ideal disadvantage argument formulation, the arrows on the

outside will run opposite the arrow in the middle, associated with the link level of the disadvantage.
Thus, you understand why “the uniqueness controls the direction of the link.”

Now, write some basic disadvantage structures on a variety of topics – consider a Relations DA, an
Economy DA, and an Environment DA – write each DA in both directions:

– U.S. / China Relations DA –

#U:
"L and I/L:
#I:

"U:
#L and I/L:
"I:

– Economy DA –

#U:
"L and I/L:
#I:

"U:
#L and I/L:
"I:

– Environment DA –

#U:
"L and I/L:
#I:

"U:
#L and I/L:
"I:

As you begin to understand basic disadvantage formulation, it is useful to understand the idea
of “predictive uniqueness.” Sometimes, “uniqueness” is not as simple as a description of the
status quo alone. For example, U.S. hegemony might be high now, but there might be a predictive
scenario presented where U.S. hegemony will be low. Similarly, there may be an agreement for
Comprehensive Immigration Reform to pass now, but there may also be a scenario that will result
in a collapse of the CIR deal, right? In constructing the argument in this way, you have made a
predictive uniqueness claim.
60 Chapter 8. Disadvantages

Answering Disadvantages

There are a variety of strategies that you may deploy in the MGC to answer disadvantages. Some of
the material below is similar to the “Winning the Debate in the MGC” chapter. The items discussed
below are a sampling of numerous methods that you could use to answer disadvantages:

“1. Non-Unique”
You may argue that the LOC had incorrectly assessed the uniqueness of their disadvantage. For
example, if the LOC says that, “U.S. hegemony is high in the status quo,” you may argue that “U.S.
hegemony is low.” If the LOC argues, “CIR will pass in the status quo,” you may argue that “CIR
will not pass in the status quo.” If you can win that the disadvantage is non-unique, you win that
the LOC has not set up a proper foundation for a reason to prefer the status quo.

“2. No Link”
You might argue that the LOC has incorrectly assessed the link of their disadvantage. If the LOC
claims that your plan will hurt United States hegemony, you can simply construct a series of
responses indicating that claim is untrue. They might say, “your plan angers Republicans,” and
you might respond with “Republicans are unconcerned with our plan, no link.” Assuming that CIR
will pass or that United States hegemony is high (their uniqueness argument), winning a “no link”
argument evidences that the uniqueness will remain unchanged – that is, you have not significantly
altered the status quo in relationship to their disadvantage.

“3. No Internal Link”

You may also argue that the LOC has incorrectly assessed the internal link to their disadvantage.
In the CIR example mentioned above, the MGC might be able to concede that the plan would
anger Republicans but that they would not backlash on CIR – thus there is no “internal link” to the
disadvantage.

“4. No Impact”
Somewhat intuitively, you can claim that there is no impact to the disadvantage. For example,
think of a scenario where the LOC argues that your plan derails CIR. If you can win that CIR will
ultimately be ineffective and inefficient, never resulting in any positive outcome were it to pass in
the first place, you could argue that passage of CIR has no impact. That is, perhaps you do prohibit
the passage of CIR. However, if CIR were useless, why would that matter? In this example, you
have won that there is no impact to CIR.

“5. Link or Internal Link Turn”

You may argue that your PMC case can do something to solve either the link or internal link to
their disadvantage. For example, you may make an argument that your case actually increases the
likelihood that plan would result in the passage of CIR. If you made the argument the Republicans
actually like your plan, you could intuit that your plan increases the likelihood of CIR passage. You
might notice that this argument is built to pair with “non unique” arguments. Paired with a link or
internal link turn, if CIR will not pass now, the only action that might increase the likelihood of
CIR passage is the plan.

“6. Parallel Impact Turn”

 61

Although this argumentative strategy is more often deployed on the opposition, you can argue that
triggering some link or internal link on the DA solves some other large impact that is not necessarily
the same as the impact to the disadvantage. For example, perhaps you could argue that there is
bi-partisan support in the status quo for a bad financial regulation package. You might argue that
your plan does upset Republicans, conceding portions of the link, but that they are more likely to
backlash on the bad financial regulation package than CIR. Using this strategy of argument, you
have created an additional offensive reason to vote for the case while simultaneously winning a link
takeout to the LOC disadvantage.

“7. Impact Turn”

A very common strategy is to argue that the impact to their DA is actually good. For example, if
the LOC says that you collapse a deal on CIR, you may argue that collapsing that deal is good. You
might say that avoiding passage of CIR is good because it makes room for another, better piece of
legislation. In a more extreme circumstance, you might say that CIR, in general, is bad and that we
should not seek CIR passage. Be careful when pairing “impact turn” arguments with “link turn”
arguments – you should never argue that your case actually causes or helps something that you
later argue is bad.
 9. Kritiks

K RITIKS

“Kritiks”, “critiques”, “Ks” or “criticisms” (functionally, these terms are used interchangeably
by most competitors and coaches) are philosophical objections to the PMC. One element that
separates a kritik from a disadvantage is that the kritik typically does not include justification for
the “uniqueness” of the argument. If you recall the example of a “non-unique” disadvantage given
in the preceding disadvantage section:

"U: United States hegemony is high in the status quo.

"L and I/L: Plan increases United States hegemony.
#I: Increasing United States hegemony is bad / Low United States hegemony is good.

For all practical purposes, this is an example of a criticism, though a kritik would not typically
include a formally structured “uniqueness” section. In the disadvantage section, we suggested
that a kritik might seek to challenge United States hegemony without following the uniqueness
structure that we have discussed prior. In the disadvantage section, we suggested that if United
States hegemony is already high, you may have a difficult time explaining why an increase in
United States hegemony to a higher level is an undesirable outcome that the judge may want to
avoid – this is precisely the focus of a kritik-style argument.

Another defining factor of a kritik-style argument is the outcome produced by voting for such
an argument. In a traditional disadvantage structure, the judge is theoretically able to avoid the
outcome of the disadvantage by rejecting the plan/advocacy presented in the PMC. Consider the
following Politics DA discussed in the previous chapter:

"U: CIR will pass in the status quo.

64 Chapter 9. Kritiks

# L and I/L: Plan blocks CIR.

" I: CIR is good.

In this scenario, the judge is able to avoid the failure of CIR by voting for the opposition team or
against the government team. Reconsider the hegemony scenario discussed above.

"U: United States hegemony is high in the status quo.

"L and I/L: Plan increases United States hegemony.
#I: Increasing United States hegemony is bad / Low United States hegemony is good.

In this scenario, the judge might not be able to avoid the increase of United States hegemony
for a variety of reasons external to the debate at hand. In fact, the judge might not be able to
avoid surging United States hegemony at all, but must the judge endorse United States hegemony?
Kritiks typically challenge the notion that the “uniqueness” of impacts or links should be a primary
consideration when determining the most desirable outcome in a given set of circumstances. In
fact, winning a kritik-style argument presupposes that the “uniqueness” of your argument should
not (necessarily) be a primary consideration.

Kritik-style arguments also may not derive their “link” directly from a plan or advocacy text read
during the PMC. For example, an opposition debater seeking to criticize United States hegemony
might not be reliant on the PMC’s advancement of any particular increase in United States hegemony
(that the government team deployed a “Hegemony Advantage” to the case, for example). Perhaps
the PMC has merely taken for granted that the United States is the actor in the resolution. If
the LOC selects to critique capitalism, the PMC might not engage in any sustained defense of a
capitalist economic system. Perhaps the PMC argued that the plan/advocacy would bolster the
United States economy. In this scenario, the LOC might choose to critique notions of capitalism
embedded in the PMC. While the PMC did not directly support capitalism in this case, their
argument included assumptions that might support a capitalist economic structure – thus, a “kritik
debater” would say that the PMC did directly support capitalism.

Kritik-style arguments may also derive their link from the language or behavior of the opposing
team. A few example – the PMC might have repeatedly referred to “China”, while you have a
reason that we should use “People’s Republic of China”; the PMC might refer to “ISIS” and you
believe that this group should be referred to as “Daesh.” In these examples, we have offered a
substitute for language used by the PMC. In other situations, the objection might not be as clearly
defined. Imagine a scenario where the LOC objects to the PMC’s characterization of “nuclear
war” impacts or the way in which the PMC characterizes “terrorism.” In these scenarios, LOC link
arguments derive from the language used by government debaters, not the direct content of the
arguments. In addition, some kritik-style arguments object to the manner in which the PMC chose
to engage in the debate space – for example, their style or manner of debating or delivery.

Finally, some kritik-style arguments are commonly referred to as “project” arguments. I hesitate to
categorize these arguments and will leave their discussion to later chapters. However, this style
of kritik argument may place little or no importance on a direct link to any argument assumed or
directly advanced by the PMC.
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Answering Kritiks: The Basics

Answer the critique while paying special attention to any framework arguments made by the
opposition. One very important lesson that you can adopt for critique debates is that it is not helpful
to make impact comparisons, impact turns, or impact defense if the criticism has a framework that
would necessarily preclude your argument from being true. For example, if the opposition team is
making an argument that says that, “in the government framework, there is no value to life,” you
must first answer that claim before you can start weighing the lives that you “save” versus the
alternative to the criticism.
Reverse the order of a critique when you answer it in the MG; at the very least, change it up. Rarely
will the LOC criticism be presented/ordered anything like the way in which you need to answer it.
For example, the link debate is probably one of the least important parts of the debate. If your plan
solves for the economy and the opposition critiques capitalism, it is going to be very hard for you
to win “no link” arguments. You might want to spend more time on impact offense than on “no
link” arguments, an area in which you are intuitively behind.
Make link turn arguments about how your case can solve back the “bad” portions of whatever their
argument is critiquing, while preserving the “good” parts. As mentioned before, if the other team is
critiquing capitalism, it is going to be very difficult to argue that you, in fact, break down capitalism.
You can argue, however, that you solve some of the bad portions of capitalism, while preserving
parts of capitalism necessary for beneficial social ordering (for example). This still allows you to
play offense on the majority of the impact portion of the debate while still conceding some of their
impact claims.
Do not simply answer framework by saying the opposite, make offensive arguments against the
kritik framework. Argue that the framework with which the critique operates should not function
within the decision calculus of the debate round/judge. As mentioned above, if the opposition
kritik makes an argument that “life has no meaning in a capitalist system,” you my be tempted to
say, “life does have meaning in a capitalist system.” While this strategy is likely part of a solid
framework strategy, it is incomplete. You will want to answer such an argument “offensively”
– explain why, for example, since capitalism is inevitable, this method of calculating decisions is
particularly damaging. By separating the framework arguments, you are able to develop “offense”
that is separate from the content objection of the kritik.
Challenge their kritik alternative. As mentioned above, the LOC order for a kritik is rarely the
best order for the MG to follow. In the LOC, the alternative portion of the debate usually comes
last. Usually the alternative is something that is optimistic, or at the very least, it is the weakest
or most poorly reasoned portion of the criticism debate for the opposition team. This is why it is
strategically disadvantageous to locate the alternative on the bottom of the MGC order. If you run
out of time, does it make sense to get to potentially the weakest portion of their arguments with the
least amount of time left? Why would you spend an insignificant amount of time on a portion of
the debate that they are typically required to win in order to win the kritik?
 10. Counterplans

C OUNTERPLANS

In most parliamentary debates, the plan/advocacy presented in the PMC will isolate harms to the
status quo. In many cases, these harms make a defense of the status quo untenable for the LOC.
Defense of the status quo may be undesirable because the harm isolated in the PMC is intuitively
not one that the opposition would want to defend or because the PMC commits a substantial amount
of time developing the argument that, absent some intervention, particular impacts are inevitable.
In these scenarios, you might want to advance a “counterplan,” commonly referred to as a “CP.”
But, how might you develop a counterplan when you do not know the PMC plan/advocacy text
until the debate begins?
In a policy debate format, a non-rotating topic allows for the development of sophisticated negative
counterplans due to norms associated with disclosure of affirmative plan texts, evidence expectations,
and general predictability of affirmative cases. When debating on the opposition in the parliamentary
format, the only guaranteed access you have to the PMC plan/advocacy text is the resolution
and your ability to make inferences during the preparation period. As you gain experience in
parliamentary debate, you might eventually begin to craft counterplans during the PMC, shortly
after you are aware of the PMC plan/advocacy text. In this section, I will discuss the elements
of basic counterplans, a few common types of counterplans, a few basic skill items that might
make you successful when advancing a counterplan in the LOC, and basic strategies for answering
counterplans.

Basic Elements of Counterplans

I hope that you have a basic understanding at this point of the typical structure of a PMC case in
parliamentary debate. It is helpful to think of a counterplan as an argument that seeks to provide
an alternative mechanism or process to “solve” the harms discussed in the PMC. However, simply
68 Chapter 10. Counterplans

finding a different way to resolve the harms discussed by the PMC is not enough to win the debate
alone – neither is merely suggesting a better way. If you advance a counterplan on the opposition,
you must win that your counterplan is both (a) net-beneficial to and (b) competitive with the
plan/advocacy advanced in the PMC. Intuitively, this should make sense given a very real-world
example.
Assume that I want to work on my physical fitness and I have resolved to lose thirty pounds. After
I have surveyed all available options to achieve this goal, I develop a workout routine comprised
of running and weight lifting. You may disagree with this training plan. You may suggest that
I should swim and lift weights. While your workout suggestion would undoubtedly help me to
achieve my goal also, you have not evidenced that the course of action that I have proposed is a
bad idea. Do you see how you might be able to frame the two fitness plans as competitive? Why
might I be unable to do both at the same time? Does my ability to engage in a regimented 3-mile
running routine hinder or preclude my ability to also swim continuously for 45-minutes each day?
Perhaps. Perhaps not. You would have to make that argument. Without first establishing why I
cannot complete both activities, I do not have a forced choice between the two training programs.
Is swimming somehow more useful as a workout than running? Perhaps. Perhaps not. You might
argue that a swimming and weights routine would allow me to achieve my goal with less effort and
a lower time commitment than a fitness plan that includes running and weights. Remember, winning
this alone also means nothing. You have to evidence to me why I should care about achieving my
goal quicker or with less effort – maybe I just like running? Evidencing to me that I have a forced
choice and that I could achieve the same goal is a good start, but I am still not convinced because I
like running. You might try to convince me that running is bad for my knees. Sustained impact on
the knees of runners is a nearly unquestionable disadvantage to adopting a training program that
involves frequent running, especially if I am not a frequent runner now. At this point, perhaps you
have me convinced. You have indicated that (1) you also have a plan, (2) it is competitive with my
plan, and (3) that it is net-beneficial to my proposed course of action because your plan does not
involve a future knee replacement.
For the sake of argument, pretend that I am still not convinced. Your proposal to replace running
with swimming sounds good, but I do not have access to a gym with a lap pool, so I cannot engage
in this training program without incurring a significant cost. I also might be less likely to engage
in this type of training program because I can always go for a run. Even at the local YMCA, one
cost-efficient option, I do not have 24-hour access to a lap pool, so I would be more likely to miss
scheduled workouts. That is, your plan is not without disadvantages also. In addition to all of
this, I have decided that I am probably going to need a knee replacement anyway. However, the
impending knee replacement would occur far off into the future and there is a high likelihood that
swimming might cause similar stress on joints in my shoulder, so I am trading one joint problem for
another. Thus, at this point, I am unwilling to factor this possibility into my decision. Do you see
what I have done? I have questioned whether your training proposal would result in the outcome
that I expect because I might be unmotivated to follow through on the plan. I have constructed a
disadvantage to your proposal due to the cost associated with swimming rather than running. I
have also suggested that I am both unable and unwilling to calculate knee-harm as a cost of my
desire to run. Proposing a good idea that should result in the same outcome does not mean that it
will result in the same outcome, nor does it mean that your alternative training program is without
disadvantages. Finally, if harm to my knees, or some other equally important joint, is inevitable,
why should I consider that element into my decision at all?
At this point, assume that I am exhausted by the forced choice that I have been given. Maybe I want
to run and I want to swim? Rather than choosing one or the other, I might choose both. After all,
there is evidence to indicate that a substantial commitment to swimming would naturally strengthen
 69

all of the relevant muscles that may make me susceptible to knee injury – and knee replacements
are becoming cheaper, more painless, and I will probably need one anyway if I engage in any
regimented workout plan. For the time being, I think that I should focus on my overall health, so I
am resolved to do both. I have permuted your counterplan.

Common Types of Counterplans

We will discuss five common types of counterplans: advantage counterplans, plan inclusive coun-
terplans (PICs), agent counterplans, process-based counterplans and plan exclusive counterplans
(PECs). Each type of counterplan serves a unique purpose and each possesses perceived benefits as
well as drawbacks. This section discusses and attempts to define each type of counterplan, provide
examples of each, and elaborates on some of the strengths and weaknesses of each.

Advantage Counterplans
In their simplest form, an advantage counterplan seeks to capture one or more advantages of
the PMC case while, somewhat explicitly, not capturing others. If I have a plan to run and lift
weights and you have an advantage counterplan to only lift weights in addition to a “runners knee”
disadvantage, you have advanced an advantage counterplan. You explicitly seek to capture the
health benefits of weight lifting while turning the part of my plan to run against me. Imagine
a scenario where the resolution is, “The United States should significantly expand one or more
guest worker visa programs.” The PMC might advance a case to double the number of H1B visas
issued to workers in the technology sector. Suppose that the PMC presents two advantages – that
the government plan would address a particular worker shortage in the technology sector of the
economy (Advantage 1) and that the plan might create political circumstances that would allow
for the passage of comprehensive immigration reform that is necessary to strengthen the overall
United States economy (Advantage 2). In this scenario, the PMC includes and advantage indicating
that there is harm present in the status quo (shortage of H1B visas for tech workers) and one
advantage that (for the sake of the example) argues that a failure to pass comprehensive immigration
reform does irreparable future harm to the United States economy. In this scenario, we have two
opportunities for “advantage counterplans.”
We could read a counterplan to pass S.744 (The Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and
Immigration Modernization Act of 2014). This counterplan should resolve Advantage 2, right?
We would then want to read arguments against the Advantage 1 that somehow indicate that
the PMC plan/advocacy harms the tech industry. We might also argue something like (a) “the
technology industry in the United States will not collapse” and (b) “a massive influx of H1B
workers would devastate the tech sector of some other country.” Alternatively, you may argue
that passing legislation specifically aimed at protecting trafficking victims would actually derail
immigration reform. When we really think about it, this argument seems somewhat intuitive. In
this scenario, you might argue that passing CIR alone is the only way to develop a politically
sustainable comprehensive immigration policy. If you decided to take this route, you are “link
turning” Advantage 2 and either reading your S.744 CP or developing arguments that the status quo
will result in S.744. However, I assume that the PMC in this case would have read arguments on
Advantage 2 that say “CIR will not pass now” in order to give uniqueness to their advantage.
We could also read a CP that increases incentives for businesses to train/hire domestic employees
for technology firms. Presumably, this CP would resolve Advantage 1 because it would give us the
ability to hire enough tech workers to resolve the shortage of tech workers before any significant
harm occurs to the U.S. economy. In this case, we have constructed an advantage CP for Advantage
70 Chapter 10. Counterplans

1, not Advantage 2. Since our CP has little chance to resolve Advantage 2 (assuming that this
plan would be interpreted as domestic stimulus, not a prompt for a discussion of immigration
reform), we would need to generate some reason that it might be good that our CP does not solve
Advantage 2. In this case, the LOC would be well served to read turns against CIR (i.e. CIR is bad
for the economy, CIR militarizes borders, CIR leads to decreases in visa programs, CIR leads to
deportation, etc.). Executed properly, again, we have resolved one advantage while indicating that
it is not preferable to resolve both advantages.
As you develop your debating abilities, you should tune-in and listen for possible advantage
counterplans during the debate. I commonly see debates where government teams will justify their
PMC position by arguing something like, “super weapons are being developed by the United States
in the status quo,” arguing that we must commit to some drastic course of action (De-Development)
to prevent their occurrence. This type of argument is susceptible to an LOC “Ban Superweapons
CP” while reading disadvantages to other elements of the drastic course of action taken by the
PMC. Advantage counterplans are also the reason that, while you might want to have a Politics
DA to read in the LOC, you typically should not read a “Politics Advantage” because they are
susceptible to advantage counterplans – the LOC only needs to counterplan to pass the bill related
to your impact (similar to the CIR example above).
Understanding the difference in these two scenarios is important – in one case, the PMC has
observed something that is happening now that is worthy of redress; in the other, the PMC indicates
that a certain impact might be happening now, but that it will happen absent some intervention. As
our discussion of disadvantages indicated, “predictive uniqueness” is a useful concept worthy of
your consideration. Predictive uniqueness arguments occur with greater frequency in the PMC case
than any other area of the debate. PMC cases will often make predictive claims about something
that is going to happen, rather than something that is happening now. Whether you are assigned to
support the government side of the resolution or to oppose the government, one of the first questions
that you ask yourself during preparation time is whether or not the likely impacts of the PMC are
happening now or if they will happen absent some intervention – in many cases, the answer is both.
Answering this question should allow you to fully consider counterplan options available to the
opposition.
Consider the resolution, “The United States should grant the President of the United States Trade
Promotion Authority (TPA).” If the president had TPA now, would they be able to do anything
useful with that? If there is not a current trade deal ready to present to congress for an up/down
vote, there is likely not an impact to the president’s absence of TPA now, correct? As such, it is
likely that the PMC will say that “X trade deal is coming in the status quo and the lack of TPA will
cause the deal to fail.”
Consider the resolution, “The United States should withdraw from the North American Free Trade
Agreement (NAFTA).” In this scenario, NAFTA exists now, whereas the prospective free trade
agreement in the previous example does not. As such, it is likely that the PMC might isolate harms
arising from NAFTA in the status quo and attempt to resolve those harms. It is important to note
that this formulation does not preclude the PMC from arguing that an additional harm will exist in
the future. In fact, a skilled PMC will argue both.
Later chapters (Jones and Reisener) both discuss the advantages, in many cases, of advocating
the status quo. However, in some cases – most notably situations where the PMC has advanced
a largely true claim that a particular harm exists now – it is tremendously advantageous for the
opposition team to defend an option other than the status quo. As you will later read, you might be
able to argue that that the status quo will resolve the harm that exists now. In this way, you may be
able to leverage the status quo as a pseudo-counterplan against the PMC.
 71

If the harm is coming in the status quo and you have read a counterplan that resolves the impending
harm, it may still be useful to make arguments that indicate that the harm will never come to be.
Using the TPA example from above, imagine a situation where you have constructed a counterplan
to resolve a majority of the PMC impacts relating to TPA. It may be useful to pair this CP with
case arguments that indicate “X trade deal will collapse before it ever makes it to congress.” If
“X trade deal” makes it to congress, you have a counterplan to resolve that, right? If you win the
argument that “X trade agreement collapses”, there is not a harm to the government case, correct?
It is beneficial to investigate and deploy these arguments because they do not directly link to the
process of your counterplan or the government’s plan/advocacy. They allow you to powerfully
leverage the external net-benefit developed for your counterplan.

Plan Inclusive Counterplans

A “plan inclusive counterplan” is often referred to as a “PIC.” This type of CP is a relatively simple
idea for students to catch onto because a PIC, quite literally, picks a portion of the government team
advocacy or plan and advances a CP that includes all or most of the government plan/advocacy text
excluding one or more elements (not to be confused with a “plan exclusive” counterplan discussed
later).
Assume that the given resolution states, “The United States should pass S.744 (The Border Security,
Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act of 2014).” Section Four of the bill
includes the establishment of a “boarder security commission.” Perhaps, as an opposition debater,
your LOC might advance a CP that says, “The United States should pass S.744 (The Border Security,
Economic Opportunity and Immigration Modernization Act of 2014) excluding the Section Four
establishment of a U.S. Border Security Commission.” This CP text PICs out of Section Four,
which the government team, presumably must defend. This counterplan alone is not enough to
win the debate – you must (a) pair your PIC with a disadvantage to the establishment of a boarder
security commission and (b) indicate that your CP will still be able to solve for the advantages
in the case presented by the government. Sure, avoiding a disadvantage might be a preferable
outcome, but if doing so means that your CP cannot resolve a significant portion of the case, your
CP might not be net-beneficial to the advocacy of the government team.
Though this concept is discussed in greater depth by other authors, this is a relevant place to
mention that you should begin to anticipate PICs when you are constructing your case on the
government side of a given resolution. Might you be able to anticipate the PIC that we have
discussed above? How would you begin to advance a defense against such a PIC? The answer is a
double-edged sword – while you might want to spend some time in the PMC advancing arguments
that all parts of a given bill or plan of action are necessary, you do not want to spend too much
time building a defense against every possible PIC. As discussed in the theory section, once the
Leader of Opposition proposes a PIC, the Member of Government might object to the theoretical
legitimacy of such a strategy. In contemporary practice, it is my opinion that judges have a relatively
high threshold for voting for such an objection. If the LOC advances a PIC, the MGC might argue,
“PICS are bad when the PMC has to defend a specific bill.” The Member of Opposition has the
opportunity to respond, but the opposition team is only given one opportunity to respond, while
the Prime Minister Rebuttal is typically afforded the opportunity, in most cases, to “go for” this
argument alone in the PMR. Increasingly, nationally competitive parliamentary debate teams have
made up for the truncated nature of the event (lack of two additional rebuttals compared to policy
debate) by beginning to advance theory frameworks that proactively exclude or include certain
types of LOC arguments. Using the previous example, rather than expending PMC time to justify
the establishment of a boarder commission, the PMC might read a theory argument that says,
“When the resolution requires that the government team advance a specific bill, the LOC is not
72 Chapter 10. Counterplans

entitled to a PIC.” Similarly, in an effort to get ahead of MGC theory, a LOC might want to include
a theoretical justification for a PIC when the PMC is asked to defend a bill in it’s entirety. Doing so
allows the MOC the opportunity to have “second-line” responses, rather than positioning them as
the only opposition debater to generate answers to MGC theory. In many cases, especially with
a PIC strategy on a bill, MGC theory is one of the strongest arguments made by the government
team. MGC theory gives the government team a 2-1 tradeoff, since they are functionally allowed to
use the PMR to generate new answers to necessarily new MOC arguments on the theory position.
In addition, as I have mentioned before, the MGC is able to “go for” MGC theory alone, allowing
a collapse ratio of (5 minutes) vs. (the amount of time that the MOC spent answering the MGC
theory position).

Agent Counterplans
An “Agent Counterplan,” typically, advances an advocacy similar to the government team while
using a different entity as the “agent of action” in the resolution. This is a logical place to mention
that an agent counterplan, depending on your definition of a “PIC” can still be considered a PIC.
If the resolution says, “The President of the United States should do X” an intuitive agent CP
might be to advance that the Secretary of State should “do X” instead. If the resolution asks for
the United States to pass X bill, a common agent CP is to have the states individually pass X law
(known as a “States Counterplan”). In these examples, a different agent replaces the “agent” in
the plan/advocacy text of the government team and, as mentioned above, the opposition team must
read some offensive reason why the agent advanced by the PMC is less than ideal.
Suppose that the resolution is that “The United States Federal Government should pass the DREAM
Act.” If the debate plays out in a standard manner, the PMC will advocate for the passage of
this particular piece of legislation. The LOC might advance an Agent CP with a text that states,
“The President of the United States should issue an Executive Order that persons presently in
violation of U.S. immigration law may obtain temporary residency for a six-year period conditioned
on enrollment in a secondary or post secondary educational institution. Applicants should be
eligible for permanent citizenship application after making 2 years of satisfactory progress towards
an undergraduate degree or obtaining an undergraduate degree from a U.S. Higher education
institution.” While this text is unquestionably lengthier than the presumed PMC plan text, the CP
text removes all references to the United States congress and the DREAM Act. Operationally, the
CP achieves the same ends as the DREAM Act, without using the congressional agent. The LOC
might also read a “Politics DA” against the PMC, indicating that the passages of the DREAM Act
upsets an impending deal on comprehensive immigration reform or some other issue. Ideally, the
LOC would also advance solvency arguments that the President’s Executive Order (referred to
colloquially as an “XO”) would resolve all or most of the benefits of the DREAM Act.
If you complete a quick Google search of “The DREAM Act,” you will find that included is an
ability to gain citizenship through military service. Does the CP text that I have advanced above
mention anything about military service? Presumably, the PMC advocacy for the DREAM Act
would include the same provisions listed in the bill that actually exists in congress. Failing to
include this element in the CP text indicates that there is a significant net-benefit to passage of The
DREAM Act, rather than passage of this XO CP, right? The MGC could easily advance arguments
indicating that the military service citizenship path is essential to the success of the DREAM Act,
right? Similarly, the LOC might use this to their benefit – perhaps, in addition to the Politics DA,
the opposition reads a criticism of the “militaristic mindset” embedded into the Dream Act (i.e.
an argument that it is unethical to coerce non-citizens to sign up and potentially die just to obtain
citizenship when “birthright” citizens are not subject to mandatory military conscription). In this
way, the LOC has generated two net-benefits to the PMC and has provided a CP that presumably
 73

solves a substantial portion of the PMC.

As mentioned above, this example illuminates one important point – it is possible for a CP to be
both a PIC and an Agent CP. It is important to remember that these categorizations are extremely
fluid. When the time comes for the MGC to make theoretical objections to the CP, the MGC
might argue that the removal of a military path to citizenship is what makes the CP objectionable,
not the alternative agent element of the CP. As you advance your debate career, you will become
familiar with common combinations of alternative actor CPs. For example, many debaters read a
“Courts CP” with a “Politics DA” with some level or regularity. An Executive Agency CP is also
incredibly common when the PMC, presumably, would be enacted or enforced by a particular agent.
Again, using the Executive Agency CP example, the lines between a “PIC” and an “Agent CP” are
blurred. Perhaps S.744 (mentioned above) delegates certain responsibilities to U.S. Immigration
and Customs Enforcement. It is possible that the LOC would like to advance an argument that these
particular duties would be better situated with U.S. Customs and Border Protection and advance a
CP text to reflect that advocacy. In this example, the LOC has constructed (debatably, of course)
both a PIC and an Agent CP, correct?

Process Counterplans
A “Process Counterplan” is exactly as it would seem – it alters the process of the PMC plan
or advocacy in either a minor or a major fashion. There are two examples that are commonly
understood to explain Process CPs – Consultation CPs and Delay CPs. For a variety of reasons, the
“Delay CP” has fallen out of fashion in most competitive debate circles, but it is an example that is
instructive, nonetheless. Consultation CPs are still somewhat common in parliamentary debate, so
developing a full understanding of this type of CP is a necessity for competitive success.

Assume that you are debating at the season-opening parliamentary debate tournament in a mid-term
or presidential election year and the resolution is, “The United States Federal Government should
legalize marijuana.” If the Federal Government legalized marijuana 2 weeks before a major election,
the consequences would be substantial – maybe it would lead to a massive increase in left-leaning
voter turnout, maybe it would lead to a massive increase in right-leaning voter turnout, or maybe
these two consequences would balance out? In either event, it is safe to say that the PMC might have
a difficult time winning an argument that advances a dire need to legalize marijuana today, right?
So, if the LOC could construct a Politics DA that indicates that the plan is an incredible liberal
victory that would spike Republican voter-turnout enough to sway an election that is presently
trending in favor of Democrats and that a Republican victory would lead to a specific harm, it might
make more sense to hold off on legalizing marijuana until after the election, right? This is what is
commonly referred to as a “Delay CP” – delaying the passage or implementation of the plan until
after a set date, by which a significant disadvantage is avoided.

Imagine that the resolution states, “The United States should provide civilian nuclear energy
technology to Iran.” Somewhat intuitively, Israel would be none too happy with this action,
right? For this situation, there is the “Consult CP.” A Consultation CP includes several elements
that make it prime for the discussion of it’s status a commonly accepted example of a “process”
counterplan – it includes a commonly accepted text, the outcome of the counterplan is debatable,
and the implementation of the PMC case (if that is the outcome of consultation) is not necessarily
immediate. All of these areas are prime areas for MGC attacks against this type of counterplan, but
they are also strengths of the strategy that make it difficult to defeat. Assume that the diplomatic
relationship between the United States and Israel is somewhat strained because of ongoing US
negotiations with Iran, which Israel sees as lopsidedly accepting Iranian nuclear development.
It follows that, were the U.S. to provide civilian nuclear energy technology to Iran, that the
74 Chapter 10. Counterplans

United States relationship with Israel would become increasingly strained. Perhaps, Israel would
take actions to preemptively strike known Iranian nuclear sites (a possibility for which there is
a significant amount of predictive literature). However, perhaps high-level, prior, genuine, and
binding diplomatic consultation with Israel would be able to resolve this outcome. Thus, a Consult
CP text might read, “The United States should enter into prior, genuine, and binding consultation
with Israel regarding United States transfer of civilian nuclear energy technology to Iran.” There
are several elements of note in this CP text – among the most important is that the consultation is
“prior,” “genuine,” and “binding.” This language indicates that United States should (in the world
of the CP) consult Israel before the transfer (prior), take Israeli concerns seriously (genuine), and
implement the outcome of the consultation (binding). You might find yourself asking, “Wouldn’t
Israel just say no?” You might be correct, and that is an excellent argument that the MGC can use
against all or nearly all Consult CPs. Nevertheless, the LOC will typically include arguments that
“X party will say yes to the plan, which means that our CP solves the PMC case.” In this case, the
LOC might advance the argument that the United States consultation would be able to calm Israeli
fears and convince Israel that they would be in a stronger position to take action if Iran continued
to develop a nuclear weapons program after the provision of peaceful, monitored civilian nuclear
technology. Through this example, we see that the LOC is functionally arguing for a different
process to implement the plan/advocacy contained in the PMC.

Process-based CPs are somewhat common in parliamentary debate. Since most CP texts are often
written during the PMC, process-based CPs are among the most susceptible to MGC offense
(disadvantages to the CP, arguments indicating the CP does not solve the PMC case, etc.). Again,
we should see the necessity for the LOC CP shell to advance two major arguments: (a) the CP does,
in fact, solve the case and (b) that there is a net-benefit to the CP that is gained by neither the PMC
plan/advocacy or a combination of the PMC plan/advocacy and all or part of the LOC CP text.

Plan Exclusive Counterplans

A “Plan Exclusive Counterplan”, commonly referred to as a “PEC,” excludes the PMC plan text or
prohibits implementation. For example, the resolution might be that, “The United States should
authorize the construction of the Keystone XL Pipeline.” A PEC text, in this circumstance might
be, “The United States should ban the construction of new oil pipelines in the United States,”
or “The United States should ban the construction of the Keystone XL Pipeline.” Consider an
LOC strategy that included a disadvantage advancing the argument that, “even if the President or
Congress authorized the completion of the Keystone XL Pipeline, various land-ownership issues
would challenge the construction of the pipeline in US courts. However, if the federal government
simply banned the completion of the pipeline, TransCanada would move on to other projects.” This
disadvantage, in theory, could argue that Keystone will never come to fruition and that the PMC
plan/advocacy only slows a process towards inevitable roadblocks that will force TransCanada to
shift operating capital to another project. Some portion of the CP may argue that, in order to solve
unstable oil prices and investment issues, the United States only needs to make a definitive decision
on the fate of the pipeline and that markets will stabilize accordingly. An additional net-benefit
might be a disadvantage that argues that, “the completion of the Keystone XL pipeline would
significantly damage the environment in some catastrophic way,” another impact that would be
resolved by the CP that the PMC plan/advocacy would be unable to obtain. In this scenario, the
LOC has “excluded” the plan from the CP – rather than authorizing the Keystone XL pipeline, the
LOC advances an argument indicating quite the opposite. Still, LOCs advancing a PEC typically
see the need to argue that they solve some or most of the case. As is the case with an Advantage
CP, the LOC is typically obligated to answer the parts of the PMC case that their CP is unable to
resolve. Using the Keystone XL example, a “Ban Keystone XL CP” would not be able to resolve
 75

an argument in the PMC indicating that, “completion of the pipeline would result in increase
employment in the United States.” However, the LOC might be able to win the argument that the
“Ban Keystone XL CP” would signal a sustained commitment to alternative energy and would spike
investment in that area. The LOC may also be able to “turn” the increased employment arguments
by indicating that any employment created by the PMC is short term and would result in layoffs
once the pipeline is completed, causing greater economic stress and uncertainty. So, as you can see,
while your PEC might not solve all of the PMC plan/advocacy, you might be able to construct an
argument that it does resolve much of it, leaving unresolved elements characterized as either (a)
unimportant or (b) disadvantageous elements of the PMC case.
If you read various debate theory Wikis that discuss CP types/theory, you will often see a “Disband
the USFG CP” as an example of a PEC. That is to say, the LOC might critique the system of
government embedded into and assumed by the PMC in addition to arguing for a CP that abolishes
that system of government. This CP maintains the same level of mutual-exclusivity as the Keystone
XL example above – it is not that you cannot do both at the same time; rather, doing one or the
other is most net-beneficial. I am not predisposed to this type of strategy or particularly skilled at
coaching it, so I have chosen to forego using this example. I mention it because, as an instructive
tool, this example does click with some students as a means of understanding PECs. It is also
worth noting that, to a certain extent, there is some debate about the definition of a “plan exclusive
counterplan” or “PEC.” Some may read the above passage on PICs and argue that my examples
of PICs are really examples of PECs. I believe that those people are incorrect, but that does not
necessarily mean that they are 100% wrong. The classification/definition of a CP type is always up
for debate – the classifications, definitions often overlap, and a CP is rarely only an example of one
type of CP genre.

Status and Permutation Issues (Permutations)

For an advanced discussion of permutations and permutation theory, please read Joe Allen’s chapter
in Part 2 of this text. For the time being, if you are working your way through this text as an
inexperienced debater, know this – your CP must be competitive with the PMC plan/advocacy
– that is, you need to win that you cannot or should not do both, as discussed in the workout example
above. The MGC will commonly read an argument referred to as a “permutation” of opposition
advocacies/CP plan texts. Think back to all of the examples CPs that we have discussed in this
chapter. If your plan is that “Plan: The USFG should pass the Keystone XL Pipeline”, is a CP that
“Plan: The United States should pass Comprehensive Immigration Reform,” competitive? That is, if
the MGC advanced that argument that both could happen at the same time with, “Perm Text: The
USFG should pass the Keystone XL Pipeline and The United States should pass Comprehensive
Immigration Reform,” have they demonstrated that your CP is not competitive? This sample
permutation text is commonly referred to as a “do both permutation.” However, as discussed in
later chapters, a legitimate permutation is commonly accepted to include “all of the plan text and
all (or part) of the counterplan/alternative text.” In this scenario, has anyone evidenced that passing
Comprehensive Immigration Reform is an opportunity cost to passing Keystone XL?
Consider this scenario – if you have a group of eight friends planning an evening get together and
four friends wants to see a movie (PMC) and the other four want to get dinner (LOC), can the group
not both see a movie and have dinner? Thus, getting dinner and seeing a movie might be the best
or most preferable option. At minimum, the lack of inherent competition between the two tasks
indicates that the cohort wishing to see a movie should not be rejected simply/only because the
other four friends want to get dinner. Thus, the permutation (MGC) might be to get dinner and
to see a movie. Think back to the above example of developing a workout routine. Remember, I
76 Chapter 10. Counterplans

said that I wanted to run and lift weights (PMC). Your CP was that I should swim and lift weights
(LOC). In the MGC, I may indicate that running, swimming, and lifting weights is actually the
most preferable option, right? If you do not evidence that your CP trades off in some manner with
the PMC plan/advocacy (either because you cannot do both or that doing both would still incur
a significant disadvantage), you have a difficult time proving that the CP is competitive with the plan.

Counterplan Status
As discussed above, the sole job of the opposition in parliamentary debate is to oppose the govern-
ment team, in some form or fashion. When you do not advance a counterplan or kritik argument in
the LOC, it is presumed that the opposition team is defending the status quo. When the LOC has
advanced a counterplan, in particular, or a kritik with an explicit alternative text, you will often
hear debaters, coaches, and judges refer to or ask the “status” of that text/advocacy. That is, does
the opposition team intend to advance that advocacy regardless of the MGC responses, independent
of the MGC responses, or dependent on the MGC responses? It is increasingly common for teams
to declare the “status” of their advocacy around the time that it is read, but most LOC speakers will
yield to a quick question after reading their advocacy text allowing the government team to inquire
about the “status” of the argument. When I say “argument,” I mean CP or K – any “argument” that
contains an “advocacy.” However, there is some theoretical contestation regarding whether the
LOC is truly “advocating” a CP text in the same way that the PMC might be “advocating” for the
PMC plan/advocacy text. For the sake of this section, I am comfortable using the term “advocacy”
to describe CP and K Alternative texts.

Unconditional
This “status” means that the MOC/LOR will continue to advance the CP/K alternative text regard-
less of the form or content of MGC objections/arguments. Unconditional arguments are the least
susceptible to MGC theory objections because it is generally agreed that unconditional advancement
of an argument provides a predictable situation for both the MGC and PMR.

Conditional
This “status” means that the MOC/LOR reserve the right to abandon the CP regardless of the form
or content of MGC objections/arguments. Conditional advocacies are the most susceptible to MGC
theory objections because it is generally agreed that conditionally advocating an argument allows
the MOC any number of strategic collapse strategies, which would be difficult for the MGC to
predict. Imagine a scenario where the LOC advanced two counterplans (each with their own “text”),
one kritik with a textual alternative advocacy, and a series of case turns or disadvantages. In this
circumstance, there are at least four “worlds” that the MOC could collapse to for the MO/LOR
block. As you can imagine, this magnifies the importance of precision in the MGC, causing many
MGCs to object to this type of LOC strategy.

Dispositional
This “status” is typically understood as “if the MGC reads a permutation, we reserve the right to
abandon the counterplan.” That is, if the MGC sufficiently evidences that the CP is not competitive
with the PMC plan/advocacy, the MOC should be allowed to revert to a defense of the status quo.
It is my opinion that, in modern national-circuit parliamentary debate, dispositional counterplans
are an underutilized argumentative tool. Dispositional counterplans address the logical fallacy
constructed by the choice between a bad plan and a worse counterplan (were the counterplan
advocated unconditionally) and, in theory, balance the debate in a way that is fair for both teams.
 77

If the government team reads a permutation in the MGC, the PMR now has the choice to “go for”
the permutation text in the PMR, right? Thus, reciprocally, a dispositional counterplan allows
the MO/LOR to revert to a defense of the status quo for each argument that the MGC is able
to “permute.” This means that the MOC, ideally, may avoid finding themselves defending an
undesirable counterplan alternative to the PMC plan/advocacy merely for the sake of a prior
commitment.

Answering Counter-Plans: The Basics

As the MGC, you are tasked with answering counterplans. First, you should always attempt to
win an argument indicating that there is some portion of your case that the counterplan cannot
resolve. As such, the MGC should maintain a laser focus on the distinction between the plan and
the counterplan, never taking for granted that the counterplan solves the case just because the LOC
argued that it does. What are the differences in solvency mechanisms? Would both the plan and the
counterplan happen on the same timeframe? Does the counterplan resolve the internal links to your
advantage/impacts in the same manner? If the CP is a PIC or an Actor CP, have you or the other
team read a justification for why your actor or method of action is best? Using the S.744 example
above, perhaps the LOC has read a PIC out of the border security elements of the bill. Remember,
just because you did not read a direct advantage related to border security in the PMC, this does
not mean that you cannot read those arguments as disadvantages to the PIC presented in the LOC,
especially if this area has not been isolated as a net-benefit to the CP.

Regarding any portion of the case that the counterplan cannot solve, you will often hear this phrase
– “X argument in the case is a disadvantage to the counterplan.” If the counterplan is able to solve
your economy advantage, but not your global warming advantage, the inability to solve for global
warming is a disadvantage to the counterplan (or a net-benefit to doing the plan), right? There are
always parts of the PMC that the counterplan cannot solve. As soon as you isolate those areas,
utilizing these solvency-deficit arguments should be an area of emphasis for any MGC. Moreover,
the portion of the case for which the counterplan cannot solve, should now be a reemphasized
internal link to your entire case solvency. You may also argue that any portion of the case that the
counterplan is unable to resolve, would cause a domino effect that causes something else bad to
happen – allowing you to isolate an external disadvantage to the counterplan.

I teach MGCs to think about answering counterplans the way that an LOC would think about
constructing disadvantages to a case – develop as many as you can. LOC counterplans are often
constructed on the fly, meaning that the texts often have catastrophic errors or contain obvious
inroads for offense. If the LOC is unclear about some element of their counterplan, take that
as an opportunity to clarify for them and turn those clarifications into offense. Given the above
example, “The United States should enter into prior, genuine, and binding consultation with Israel
regarding United States transfer of civilian nuclear energy technology to Iran,” take the opportunity
to generate MGC offense situated in the lack of a clearly articulated process. What does “genuine”
mean? Does this mean that the United States will cave to every demand of Israel? You might
argue that negotiations are likely to break down because the United States will continue to push for
their proposal, collapsing relations. What does “binding consultation,” mean? Does this mean that
the United States will make Israel sign a deal? You might argue that Israel would be unwilling to
engage in negotiations that would require publicly signing-off on Iranian civilian nuclear power
procurement, collapsing relations and guaranteeing that the counterplan cannot solve the case. In
sum, maintain focus on the text and, when you can use it to your benefit, run with the lack of clarity
in many counterplan texts.
78 Chapter 10. Counterplans

You should always attempt to argue that the counterplan links to the net-benefit. You may have
noticed that I have already provided an example of this strategy. In the Israel example above, it is
somewhat intuitive to argue that (a) “The United States commonly acts without directly consulting
Israel” and (b) “the most likely scenario for a collapse in the United States/Israel relationship will
be through lengthy, binding consultation in which neither party is willing to move on the issue of
Iran.” Imagine a scenario where the PMC has advanced a popular, liberal solution to immigration
reform. The LOC might read a Politics DA to the plan/advocacy and read a CP to advance a popular
Republican solution (thus, at least in theory, not linking to the Politics DA). As the MGC, can
you imagine a scenario where you could make a case that Democrats would trigger the link to the
Politics DA also?
Finally, the MGC should always advance one or more permutations of the LOC counterplan.
Permutations are discussed, in depth, in a later chapter by Joe Allen. For now, start to consider the
commonly accepted definition of a permutation text for permuting a counterplan strategy – all of
the plan + all (or part) of the counterplan text. Can you begin to imagine scenarios where the MGC
could read a permutation of the following plan text and the following counterplan text that features
all of the plan text and part of the counter plan text?

“The United States should provide civilian nuclear energy technology to Iran.”

“The United States should enter into prior, genuine, and binding consultation with Israel
regarding United States transfer of civilian nuclear energy technology to Iran.”

Consider the following example:

“Perm: The United States should provide civilian nuclear energy technology to Iran AND The
United States should enter into prior, genuine, and biding consultation with Israel regarding
United States transfer of civilian nuclear energy technology to Iran.”

Due to the imprecise nature of the counterplan text, hypothetically, the argument would follow
that the United States could unilaterally provide nuclear energy technology to Iran while still
maintaining consultation with Israel regarding the transfer of that technology, correct? This
is the type of focus on ”texts” that the MGC must maintain when expertly answering LOC
counterplans.
 11. Asking Questions in Parliamentary Debate

A SKING Q UESTIONS IN PARLIAMENTARY D EBATE

This section has been included despite fall 2015 changes in the rules for debating at the NPTE
National Tournament (the inclusion of cross-examination/flex time after each speech). In all
likelihood, it will not take long for standard collegiate invitational tournaments to follow suite,
so this section may become an extraneous issue. Still, since all tournaments might not eagerly
adopt flex time (since it does certainly change the fundamental nature of the event), it is worth
including this section. I would argue that the move towards flex prep/cross-examination time does
fundamentally alter the event and should be thought of only as a way to differentiate the NPTE
National Tournament from the NPDA National Tournament – as of publishing, I estimate that the
likelihood of the NPDA membership following suit and adopting rules add flex-time is low.

In parliamentary debate, as discussed earlier, there is no set time for cross-examination commonly
found in other formats of debate. Essentially, you are able to ask questions at any point during the
first four speeches (PMC, LOC, MGC, MOC), providing that the opposing team will recognize you
for a question. Since many debates rely on the effective deployment of strategically timed questions,
consider following this advice to gain a strategic advantage in this element of the debate.

Try to time your questions appropriately. Perhaps after the other team has made a particularly
outlandish claim or have made a claim that it might be hard for the judge or judging panel to accept
at face value. Perhaps you know that the speaker will not recognize you for a question at that
time. Consider this a ”freebie” – even if the other team does not recognize you for a question, your
judge makes a mental note of an argument that might seem outlandish simply because you have
raised your hand or called attention to a particular moment of the debate. This can only help your
perception in the debate. Perhaps an MGC has only left themselves around one minute to answer a
disadvantage. If you notice, from the start of the speech, that their time allocation is imbalanced,
save your question until the end of the speech. Typically, debaters will take at least one question,
out of fear of losing to the “you must take one question” theory argument. If you are able to disrupt
80 Chapter 11. Asking Questions

an imbalanced MGC when their time allocation has already buried them on a disadvantage, for
example, you may gain a strategic advantage regardless of the content of the inquiry.

Try prefacing your questions. In other words, explain to the other team why you are asking the
question before you get to the point and ask the question. You might mention the importance of
their answers (i.e. “Your answer to this question is very important for my Business Confidence DA
answers in the MGC” or “I believe that this element of the debate implicates the topicality debate,
so I have a question that needs a careful answer”). This strategy allows you to make the speaker
slow down and deliver an intentional answer, with the added benefit of, perhaps, making them think
that they have made contradictory arguments that will be damaging to their chances of winning the
debate. You might want to be honest when you deploy this strategy or you may deliberately attempt
to head-fake them (the MOC might ask the MGC, “Hey, I’m probably going to go for topicality, so
can you explain this one answer a bit more”). In this example, the MGC might re-allocate time to
go back to a theory page, when you may never intend to actually advance this argument.

If possible, ask more than one question. Usually you can squeeze questions that you need into a
yes/no format. One tried and true strategy is to ask a quick question that requires a yes/no answer
immediately followed by a more involved, developed question. This is often strategic because it
allows you to put the breaks on a speaker, forcing them to answer two questions quickly, often
without the time to process beneficial responses. In many circumstances, speakers will ask you to
repeat one of your questions – evidencing that it is often beneficial to intentionally ask complex,
convoluted questions since these questions often necessitate prolonged engagement. Ultimately, the
more that you can prolong the interaction, the more of your opponent’s speech time that you have
deliberately co-opted.

When necessary, demand a follow up. If the answer that you get is not enough to secure stability
for the argument that you want to make, demand another question. Without appearing hostile, this
strategy is relatively simple – you just say something like, “that doesn’t answer my question at
all and we really need a clear answer here to figure out our strategy for the MG/LOC.” Usually a
debater takes a moment to reconsider the clarity of their answer and to consider if they will look
rude or incompetent in the mind of the judge or judging panel if they refuse to dedicate additional
speech time to answering your question. Again, this is another method to secure more time that
you are talking about your arguments, not theirs.

Include your partner in your question in some way. Typically, the LOC should not ask questions
of the PMC, the MG should not ask questions of the LOC, and the PMR should not ask questions
of the MOC. If, however, you are the LOC and you have a pressing question for the PMC, it might
be a better idea to have your partner raise their hand for acknowledgement by the speaker. When
they are called on, the partner may strategically yield their question to you. This strategy allows
you to be comfortable, allowing you to maintain focus on flowing and speech preparation at the
same time.

If possible, look for appropriate moments to interject questions. If you play your cards right,
there will be times where a good natured interjection (i.e. “Why?” or “Explain that”) can make
you look confident and comfortable without being over-bearing or obnoxious. This, however, is a
strategy that you might want to deploy sparingly and your ability to utilize this strategy is somewhat
dependent on your individual reputation – if you know your judge and your opposition, perhaps
a certain level of comfort may exist that might make this questioning strategy more acceptable.
Generally, the status of a counterplan should not require a question. Often when debaters plan to
allow one or two questions during their speech, one of them should not be used up on a question as
brief as “Status?” with an answer of “Conditional.”
 81

Always protect your right to a question. As we have mentioned throughout the section on
theory, avoid thinking that “procedural” style arguments are only for topicality violations. It makes
reasonable sense that, in a competitive space, you should have some right to clarification. If the
LOC does not take a question or if the PMC does not take a question, how is the LOC or MGC
supposed to prepare effectively? Structure a procedural argument stating that your interpretation
is that the “PMC and LOC must take at least one clarification question. Since they have not, we
believe that we should win the debate for the following reasons.” This type of theory argument
might take any variety of forms. Consider structuring a violation that says, “The LOC must take
at least one question immediately following the counterplan text,” or “The LOC should not read
an advocacy text in the last minute of the speech.” In order to win on this argument, similar to
Topicality, you must have a clear interpretation, they must not meet your interpretation and you
must explain why this particular theoretical constraint should be considered a voting issue by the
judge or judges.
When possible, avoid asking questions about the position that the speaker is talking about
at a particular moment. This is another tried and true strategy. If a LOC reads two topicality
positions and three disadvantages, it would be a good idea to ask an incredibly complex question
about the first or second topicality violation while they are reading their second or third disadvantage.
It is helpful to point to a specific argument on the flow, forcing the speaker to shift gears and re-visit
other sheets of paper within their flow. This strategy might throw off the speaker and, at minimum,
forces them to shift gears in terms of substantive versus theoretical levels of the debate. If the speaker
refuses to acknowledge your question, given the example above, simply because of the location of
the question, they risk appearing that they cannot handle the pressure of shifting gears and risks
making their initial position look week since they are unwilling to defend it via sparring/questioning.
Most importantly, in this exact scenario, you are able to make an argument that, “The judge should
err for the government on the theory arguments because the government team tried to ask one
question on the topicality portion of the debate and the LOC refused to acknowledge that question,
thus, complicating the development of an MGC strategy and questioning the overall clarity of the
LOC theory shell.”
Remember, there is no limit on questions. All too often, new debaters will let other teams get
away with taking one or two questions and saying, “Now, I’ll take your first of two questions,”
or “I’ll take your only question.” There is no rule or even an unwritten standard or community
agreement in collegiate parliamentary debate that would indicate that debaters should only receive
a certain number of questions. Do your best to secure your perceived right to questions when you
legitimately have them. I have seen many debaters, in recent years, feel like they are only allowed to
ask one question, even when the PMC or LOC is very confusing and does not intuitively make sense.
It is ok to preface a question by indicating that you do not understand the argument. It is ok to ask
the other team to slow down so that you might be able to engage better in the debate. Recently, the
community-norm has been to yell “clear” when a debater is speaking too rapidly – without a doubt,
this strategy is less effective than asking one question that says, “Look, I’m having a really hard
time understanding you, it would be awesome if you could slow down considerably. Please and
thank you.”
Like playing poker, occasionally, you might move “all in” and bluff with a question. Often
times you can just bluff people into doing all sorts of things that, in hindsight, are ill-advised. For
example, you can stand up for a question, make one, shot, damning argument against their position.
Typically, they will say, “What’s the question?” You might reply, “No question. That’s just my one
argument and it should make your entire disadvantage go away because it doesn’t link.” Perhaps
follow-up lightheartedly with, “Given that, don’t you just want to kick it?” More often than you
would think, people refuse to call your bluff – many debaters are shockingly willing to fold a losing
82 Chapter 11. Asking Questions

hand. The worst case scenario in using this strategy is that, when you make your one damning
argument in the LOC or MGC, it is the second time that the critic has heard and processed this
argument.
Always Point of Order the LOR/PMR. As discussed before, you are not allowed to make new
arguments in the LOR/PMR, thus, we typically do not ask question of these speakers. However,
you are allowed to “Point of Order” the LOR and PMR (opposed to the “Point of Information”
(POI) found during the constructive speeches). However, during the LOR and PMR, when a Point
of Order is raised, the clock for the speaker stops. As such, if you feel that the LOR or PMR is
advancing a new argument or interpreting an argument in a way that is new, you are allowed to call
a “point of order” and state which precise argument, in your opinion, is new – even in the middle
of the speech. This is almost always a good idea to do (at least once) because the point of order
will often require thirty-seconds to a minute of time for the judge or judges to adjudicate a ruling
on that point and, in some cases, to ask for clarification on the argument that you believe to be new,
and, in the best case scenario, necessitates a back and forth that allows you to speak during the
speech time of your opponent. This strategy provides several major competitive benefits – it may
disrupt a difficult to re-capture flow of the LOR/PMR at a critical moment, but, most importantly
(when deployed during the LOR), it buys your partner valuable prep time for the PMR. Finally,
when using this strategy, it is always advisable to wait until the opposing debater has finished
making their argument to point of order. Remember, the clock stops and, if the judge rules in
your favor on that point of order, the LOR or PMR do not get a re-do on time spent making a new
argument.
 12. Tips, Tricks and Drills

T IPS , T RICKS AND D RILLS

Develop an Independent Practice Strategy

As a debate coach, I often bemoan the position that you need your team to practice. This position
could not be further from the truth. There are numerous strategies that you can use to develop on
your own. These strategies will pay off – you should immerse yourself in debate and control the
controllable. If you are taking the time to read this text, it is already evidence that you are able to
learn without a coach – if you make that awareness part of your identity, you will benefit greatly.

Immerse Yourself in Debate

You cannot become a great debater until you understand what it means to judge debates. Undergrad-
uate debaters often report difficulty understanding how and why they have lost a particular debate.
As such, it is useful to practice evaluating from the perspective of the judge. “Judging” may mean
that you attend high school tournaments, but even this is unnecessary – you can watch debates
and pretend that you are making a decision (as if you were a judge), including writing an RFD
and delivering an oral rationale to a teammate. If you get a chance, watch a close, split-decision
elimination round and pretend that you are evaluating the debate. This strategy allows you to view
the debate from the outside. Competitors often lose themselves in the specific arguments without
viewing the entire debate as one cohesive event where a judge is asked to evaluate hundreds of
potentially complex interactions. In this scenario, it is about seeing the forest, not the individual
trees.

It is also useful to simply watch debates, even recreationally. You might not pretend to judge.
You might not even flow the debate. Just watch rounds for the nuances. Make lists of things that
debaters might want to do differently, and things that they do well. Internalize and remember those
lessons. Of course, you should not share these criticisms with anyone other than yourself, else you
risk having yourself become the annoying know-it-all of your debate team, but such an exercise
84 Chapter 12. Tips, Tricks and Drills

gives you a better prospective on your own competition rounds. This exercise is accessible to you
in the privacy of your own home, when no one else is around.
If you are struggling with a particular concept, idea, type or level of debate, seek out videos of those
debates. If you find yourself having difficulty catching up with quicker debaters, watch high-level
CEDA/NDT debates – these debates are usually faster than a standard parliamentary debate round.
If you can “keep up” in this environment, you are better suited to perform better in slower debates,
increasing your ability to actively engage in the debate. If you are the MGC on your team and you
find yourself losing to theory arguments presented in the LOC, watch debates where you know that
the LOC reads a substantial amount of theory – practice those speeches in response to the video,
write down and commit to understanding the arguments made in the debate. If you find yourself
losing to LOC “one-off” criticisms, watch those debates. Given enough commitment, you will
internalize and eventually memorize common responses.
Find rounds online and give any speech before (and after) you watch it. Find a copy of any debate
round online. Find the exact text of the resolution for that debate and results on “parlitourna-
ment.com.” Typically, you will work with the PMC delivered in the debate – take 20-minutes to
prepare for the LOC or MGC. Watch the debate until it is time to give the speech that you would
like to practice – at that point, give your practice speech. Then, watch the speech that you just gave.
Add to your speech. Are their arguments that you did not think of? Finally, watch the next speech.
In this example, if you wanted to practice the MGC, you would watch the MOC. Then, re-write
your MGC to preempt and defeat the arguments in the MOC collapse. If both partners are available,
this drill may be done as a team – if not, this is a drill that you can do on your own without a coach
and without other teammates.
Commit to a process of re-giving practice speeches from real tournaments. You will never give
a perfect debate speech. Save your flows after every debate and re-give a speech that you were
not happy with or from a debate that you lost. Consider the feedback received from judges and
the arguments made against you in that particular debate – use hindsight to your advantage. One
common drill is a time reduction drill. Give an eight-minute practice speech (an MGC, for example).
Give the speech again, only allowing yourself six-minutes; then again with a four-minute allowance.
This strategy helps you to develop your word economy (the idea that you can always be more
efficient in your language in order to save time and make more arguments). It also teaches you to
cut unnecessary arguments. Theoretically, you will have to eliminate arguments when you move
from an eight-minute speech to a four-minute speech, helping to sharpen your abilities to focus on
the best arguments rather than the most arguments. If you did not have to eliminate arguments, this
means that your “word economy” in your initial speech was poor.

Control the Controllable

Flowing is one area of a debate that is entirely within your control. You can control your partner’s
ability to understand your writing. As you develop your unique flowing style, you should have
deliberate, planned discussions with your partner regarding the shorthand that you use to signify
arguments. For example, if you always signify a turn as “T/“, your partner should be aware of this
strategy. As you develop a relationship with your partner that may necessitate sharing of flows or
written arguments, knowledge of shorthand used by your partner is an absolute necessity.
You can control your knowledge of arguments prepared well in advance of the tournament. At
times, the demands of creating assignments may seem overwhelming even without the push to
memorize specific files or arguments. While this is heavily dependent on team-level organization
strategies, before you attend a tournament you should (a) know which files are up-to-date and
which are not, (b) develop a plan for updating older, or commonly utilized files before or during
 85

each tournament, and (c) refine the organizational methods that you use to organize your debate
file. Remember, time spent finding arguments during preparation time trades off directly with
writing/preparing those arguments.

You can control your comfort with your physical tools. In general, it is important to practice with
the same equipment that you will use during tournament debates – timers, pens, paper, etc. For a
variety of reasons, it is advisable to have a timer that counts up as well as down. If you become an
observant student of the game, you will find that, during round after round, the top debaters often
place their timer in the exact same place, located in a position that is visible at all times. In addition,
your writing instruments are not an after-thought. If you practice debating with Pilot G-2’s and
loose-leaf legal paper, why would you compete in the actual debate using a BIC Roller-Ball and
printer paper that you lifted from the hotel?

You can control whether or not current events will be news to you. As such, you should read the
news every single day – not just for a couple of days before each tournament. Create Google News
alerts for predictable topics over the course of a season. Choose one or two news outlets that you
will browse every day, typically at least one large national newspaper (like the New York Times).
Subscribe to a daily news roundup e-mail (like Vox Sentences) and commit to reading it each day.
Follow long-form, non-traditional media. One successful method of developing a blog-roll for this
type of journalism is using an RSS subscription service (like Feedly).

You can control whether or not you have memorized generic, stock arguments. Do you have a Kritik
that you commonly advance in the Leader of Opposition Constructive? Do you commonly read
the same Politics Disadvantage? Do you debate in a region where teams will commonly contest
the legitimacy of advancing a policy case in the Prime Minister Constructive? Do you typically
advance a certain set of similar answers to Topicality arguments in the Member of Government
Constructive? Is the Member of Opposition Constructive overview memorized for your favorite
Kritik? Memorize these items, when possible.

Full-Prep Drills
For too many teams, the only time that they will prep with their coaches in a true 20-25 minute
“prep and walk” setting will be at an actual debate tournament. It is advisable to simulate the
real thing as often as possible. Are you used to prepping with your teammates? Similarly, when
simulating in-tournament preparation periods, do you find that you are overly reliant on advanced
debaters and coaches? If so, you might want to practice a more independent-style preparation.

Topicality Drills
Ask your coaches to write out a list of resolutions – typically a good item to keep on hand for all
teams. Write/experiment with a series of plan/advocacy texts. Provide the texts to debaters with an
established time parameter (twenty or thirty seconds) and see if they can determine whether the text
of the plan/advocacy is topical. Then, develop a topicality shell to challenge the PMC plan/advocacy
text. One popular extension of this drill is to have a debater deliver an MGC answering topicality,
using only their plan text to engage in the debate.

Uniqueness Drills
Develop uniqueness drills by maintaining a list of current topics, of which you should be able
to read uniqueness arguments on each side. For example, it might make sense to say that every
debater should have memorized answers before an election that “Republicans are winning now,”
“Democrats are winning now,” “X legislation will pass,” “X legislation will not pass,” etc. From a
86 Chapter 12. Tips, Tricks and Drills

macro perspective, you can begin to make lists of arguments like, “The United States Economy
is strong/weak,” “War with China is inevitable/not likely,” or “Greece economy will collapse/will
not collapse in the status quo.” These are just a handful of examples that you might maintain
on a “uniqueness drill list.” Once you feel generally comfortable with your list, have coaches or
teammates give you three (at random) and take thirty seconds or so to sketch down some responses.

Good/Bad Drills
Similar to the uniqueness drills listed above, it is useful to develop common “good/bad” arguments
– for example, “United States war with China is good/bad,” “Law of the Sea Treaty is good/bad,” or
“United States military hegemony is good/bad.” Be prepared for both sides of many common issues.

Other examples of common drills include:

• Offense-only in the MGC drill
• Case-only in the LOC drill
• Using PMC case arguments in the MGC to answer the LOC (emphasis)
• Giving both the LOC and MGC or MGC and MOC (answering yourself)
• A variety of speed drills
• Slow-drills (attempting to speak slower, utilizing better word economy)
• Delivering an LOC with no preparation time outside of the PMC
 Specific Issues in

II
Parliamentary Debate
13 Preparation: Foundation of Success . . . . . 89
K ORRY H ARVEY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

14 The PM Constructive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119

B EN R EID . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

15 The LO Constructive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137

J OE H YKAN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

16 The MG Constructive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149

K YLE D ENNIS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

17 The MO Constructive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163

A DAM T ESTERMAN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

18 The LO Rebuttal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171

L AUREN K NOTH . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

19 The PM Rebuttal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181

J OSH R AMSEY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

20 Topicality and Accuracy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195

B RANDON M ERRELL AND TODD G RAHAM . . . . . . . . . . . .

21 Reading Critical PMCs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203

K ATIE B ERGUS AND M EGAN G AFFNEY . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

22 Conditionality and Advocacy Status . . . . 213

B RANDON M ERRELL AND TODD G RAHAM . . . . . . . . . . . .

23 A Treatise on Opposition Strategy . . . . . . 221

J EFF J ONES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

24 Debating the Government Case . . . . . . . 229

M ATT R EISENER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

25 Politics Disadvantages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237

K EVIN G ARNER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

26 We Were Not a ‘Project’ Team . . . . . . . . . . 247

B RANDON R IVERA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

27 Answering Criticisms in the MGC . . . . . . . 257

JARED B RESSLER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

28 The Case for American Hegemony . . . . . 267

K EVIN CALDERWOOD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

29 Permutation Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 283

J OE A LLEN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

30 Student-Run Programs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 293

R ACHELLE H ARRIS , N ATHAN J EFFRIES , & W ILLIAM VAN T REUREN
 13. Preparation: Foundation of Success

P REPARATION : T HE F OUNDATION OF S UCCESS

KORRY H ARVEY – W ESTERN WASHINGTON U NIVERSITY

Introduction

After nearly three decades of involvement with various styles of either high school or college debate,
some of the best coaching advice I have ever heard, from a number of different people and in various
forms, essentially boils down to, “Debater, prepare thyself.” Put quite plainly, academic debates
are more often than not won by that team which was better prepared, not necessarily or simply
the team possessing the most raw talent. As such, it stands to reason that if you wish to improve
your chances of achieving success (regardless of whether that is defined in terms of competition,
education, personal development, or otherwise), perhaps the most basic and fundamental way to
go about that is to be as thoroughly prepared as possible. It must be plainly understood, that no
one else can really do this preparation for you – it is a process which requires a significant amount
of personal effort and dedication. However, as with nearly all other aspects of life, hard work and
perseverance often result in well-deserved rewards.
To be most effective in your preparation efforts, it is important to understand that “preparation” is
itself a multi-faceted process, particularly in competitive parliamentary debate. It involves far more
than simply the 20-30 minutes of official “Prep Time” that you are given after the announcement of
the topic and before the actual debating begins. Unfortunately, far too many debaters limit their
preparation efforts to just that pre-round preparation period, failing to avail themselves of the many
tools which could put themselves in a better position to be successful.
This essay is intended to help debaters, especially those who are either in the earlier stages of their
debate experience or those looking for a few ways to take their debate success to a higher level,
to be more effective and efficient in the preparation process. And it is exactly that: a process. It
90 Chapter 13. Preparation: Foundation of Success

involves not only the things that you do during the officially allotted “Prep Time” before each
individual debate, but also the many things you can do before ever even leaving home, as well as the
numerous steps that you can and should take even after a particular tournament is over. In the pages
that follow, we will look at the primary elements of preparation, why each element is important to
the overall preparatory process, and some suggestions for how each element can be best approached.

Everything’s Relative
It should be clear that, as with all of the recommendations made throughout this text and any other
debate training materials, the suggestions offered here in this chapter are just that – suggestions.
There is really no one “right” way to do nearly anything in an activity that is rooted so firmly
in the subjective realm of one person trying to persuade another. The practice of argumentation
and debate is designed to encourage both creative and critical thought toward the end objective
of persuading someone else. The great thinkers of history, hailing from a multitude of different
cultures and civilizations, have long understood that persuasion is a largely contextual process. And
parliamentary debate is highly contextual.

The very nature of parliamentary debate is ephemeral – in other words, it is ever changing. No
two debates are ever the same. Not only will you debate a different team in every round, each
with their own particular styles and preferences for types of arguments, but you will also have a
different person evaluating each round who will also have their own individual preferences with
regard to type of argument and style of presentation. This becomes even further complicated
when considering the fact that the topic of discussion changes for every single debate. In such
an extensively dynamic environment, the ability to be flexible in your preparation efforts and
to adapt to these constantly changing variables is critical to your success. Do not be afraid to
innovate and try different things. Each individual debater and team should experiment with different
approaches, techniques, and methods in order to discover what combination works best for them.
Theoretically this exploratory process will help debaters to develop the flexibility needed to adapt
their preparation process for specific circumstances and considerations.

That said, a proper balance has to be found between the somewhat oppositional values of adaptation
and consistency. Consistency, both in preparation and performance, is important because it helps
you to establish patterns and routines which make you more efficient. Ideally, it also means that
your process and technique become more and more refined and as a result you become better and
better at doing what you do. Consistency requires practice and repetition.

Adaptation, on the other hand, is crucial in adjusting your usual approach to specific circumstances
in order to deal with the constant nature of change in this activity. You never really know which
side of any number of issues you might end up on. In order to be successful, you have to do all that
you can to move as seamlessly as possible, not only between different advocacies and positions on
the issues, but also different styles of debating and types of arguments. One debate may see you
defending the political and ideological foundations of a market-based economy, while in the next
you might be arguing over which international organization is best suited to respond to a particular
humanitarian crisis, and yet another may hinge on the differing interpretations of a particular legal
statute, followed by a debate which will be determined not by social or political issues but rather
by a team’s ability to offer an ethical defense of their particular semantic choices and rhetorical
framing of the issues. Likewise, one debate might be filled with the highly organized and rapid
presentation of one factually-driven claim after another, while the very next may be predicated
upon making persuasive moral appeals with a much more conversational tone and pace. As a
result, focusing purely on fine-tuning and mastering one consistent approach will serve you well in
specific situations, but may leave you underprepared for a number of other circumstances. So your
 91

preparatory process, like basically all other aspects of debate technique and strategy, should ideally
strive to find a proper balance between consistency and adaptation.

Multiple Elements of Preparation

In the following pages, we will be exploring three primary elements to debate preparation: (1)
Pre-tournament preparation, (2) In-tournament preparation and (3) Post-tournament preparation.
Although these elements of preparation are somewhat unique, each with its own specific purpose and
individual set of tools and techniques. There is also a fair degree of interconnection and interplay
between them, with each serving to reinforce the others. When combined into an overarching
preparation strategy, they offer a much more comprehensive and holistic approach than any of the
individual elements purely on their own possibly could. We will now explore the purposes and
techniques of each.

What is Pre-Tournament Preparation?

Pre-tournament preparation involves everything that you, your partner, and your debate squad as
whole, do to get ready for a tournament before ever leaving your home or campus to attend a
competition. This includes general strategizing, skill-building drills and practice rounds, as well as
research and file production. Each is an important element of the overall preparation process.
In the policy debate format practiced by many colleges and high schools, where competitors debate
the same exact topic for an entire season, you will often hear the term “infinite prep” – because the
topic does not change, debaters have a tremendous amount of time to prepare well ahead of their
tournaments. While perhaps not actually an unlimited amount, there is plenty of time to do research,
strategize and prepare a number of different arguments with a great deal of depth and sophistication.
Although the situation is different in parliamentary debate, where topics are changing all the time,
you can still do a significant amount of work to prepare for debates even before you know the topic.
Part of this effort involves researching topics that you believe are likely to come up. In the days and
weeks ahead of an upcoming tournament, you should pay attention to the top stories in the news,
as they are likely to be relevant to many of the issues you will eventually debate about. You will
not always guess correctly, but when you do you are in a much, much better position going into
your debate. Part of this effort also involves working on your speaking skills and debate technique.
There are a number of speaking drills you can do with a coach, a teammate, or even by yourself
to improve clarity, word economy, time allocation, etc. All of these things will put you in a better
position to compete once you find out the actual topic that you will be debating.

Why does pre-tournament preparation matter?

Parliamentary debate has become increasingly sophisticated over the past several years, and it is
getting harder and harder to get by with lackadaisical preparation efforts. There may have been a
time when a debate team could manage to hold their own with just a quick wit and good speaking
skills. For better or worse, those days are largely gone. As previously mentioned, debates are
increasingly won by the team which is better prepared, not necessarily the best speakers (although
there is no reason why you cannot be both).
Competitive debate tends to compress time – prep time, as well as the individual speeches, are
both of rather limited duration, making deep and thorough exploration of the various aspects and
angles of any given topic fairly difficult. As a result of this compression, time becomes a precious
commodity and those methods and techniques which make its use more efficient are highly sought
after. This is particularly true for the opposition team – although the time advantage during the
92 Chapter 13. Preparation: Foundation of Success

debate itself rests with the opposition, the advantage clearly belongs to the government team until
the first speech begins. This is because only they know during prep time what they are going to
make the debate specifically about. The opposition can only guess, so they must use that time as
well as possible. Even though you may not know exactly what issues you will be debating, you can
make an educated guess. One of the primary objectives of pre-tournament preparation is to reduce
the number of variables beyond your control. By preparing ahead of time for a number of different
possibilities – different topics, different types of arguments, different styles of debate, etc., you will
improve your ability to react quickly and flexibly adapt to the circumstances, thus minimizing the
chances of either the topic or another team’s approach taking you by surprise. This will not only
deny your opponents an advantage, but will make you feel much more comfortable and confident,
which will carry to the judge.

Sounding like you know what you are talking about is critical in establishing ethos. Ethos is one of
the three methods or modes of persuasion developed by Aristotle and is defined as ethical proof
(the other two being logos, or logical proof, and pathos, or emotional proof). Ethos is essentially an
appeal to authority and is largely based on the level of credibility you have with your audience – do
you seem like an authority on this topic? The best and most simple way to sound like you know
what you are talking about, is to know what you are talking about. This creates a self-reinforcing
loop of good ethos – your degree of knowledge and familiarity with a topic will show to your
audience, and if you actually are familiar with the topic, that will make you feel more comfortable
in debating it, which will then make you seem even more credible. Preparing ahead of time will
only make your positions stronger – arguments made on the fly are typically not as well developed,
lack convincing and credible proof, are sometimes even contradictory to other arguments you may
make, and often lack strategic value. It is always best to prepare ahead of time as much as possible
then add specific details and connections that make your arguments more relevant to the unique
circumstances.

Ideally you will already know something about your topic when it is announced. This makes
prep time far easier, in a number of ways. Knowing some general information about your topic
helps with generating useful and relevant ideas, building complete positions out of prep-prepared
data you have gathered and allows you to keep your prep time smooth and calm, which facilitates
creative thought. Additionally, because pre-tournament preparation makes your prep time much
more flexible, since you do not need as much time to generate ideas, you can actually spend more
time figuring out the best way to apply your positions to the specific topic, making them more
strategic. You will also have greater opportunity to consider the likely counter-arguments and to
prepare additional contingencies, rather than having to spend the bulk of your limited prep time
simply trying to learn something about your topic. This allows prep time to be more about applying
the knowledge and prepared arguments that you already have. This will help your prep time run
much more smoothly, which will make you feel more confident about your debates.

There are many ways to make your arguments more persuasive, but being well prepared by having
done some significant research into a topic beforehand is simply the best. This offers the debater
the ability to refer to the actual literature base that exists about the given topic, and to base their
arguments in a valid and substantive foundation rather than relying on conjecture, supposition, or,
in the worst case, making things up – something that all debate practitioners should discourage.
Being prepared will not only increase your competitive success, but equally as important, being
able to identify supporting arguments in others’ work and being able to explain why they back up
your position is an invaluable academic and life skill.

How do you do pre-tournament preparation?

 93

General Strategizing
In addition to specific speaking drills, practice techniques, and your research efforts, you can also
engage in some more generalized strategizing. To begin, try to identify your own strengths and play
to them. Are there certain social, cultural, economic, or political issues that you are particularly
knowledgeable about? If so, you may want to develop argument positions centered around those
issues. Not only will you feel comfortable debating about things with which you are familiar, but
there is a good chance that this will give you a competitive edge. For example, if you have taken
several Women’s Studies classes, perhaps it makes sense to dive into feminist literature and prepare
arguments that will allow you to talk about those issues. If you have recently written an extensive
research paper about US-China relations, find ways to make that knowledge apply to some of your
debates by presenting a disadvantage about how China might react negatively to a particular action
of the United States. Maybe your mother or father is a school administrator deeply involved in
educational reform efforts, or maybe your family has only recently arrived in the US and you have
first-hand familiarity with the need for immigration reform. In other words, try to find ways to make
your debates about the things that you want to talk about. In politics they talk about “controlling
the message,” and that is essential what we are trying to do here. You will often find that many of
the issues you are particularly interested in are relevant across a broad range of topics, you just
have to take the time to identify the connections.

It is also very helpful to spend time before tournaments familiarizing yourself with the judging pool
and their varying approaches to evaluating debates. There are many different approaches to debate
and the judging thereof, so it makes sense to learn as much about your potential critics as possible.
Many tournaments require that judges submit a judging philosophy ahead of the competition so
that debaters can do just that. These philosophies will typically include the judge’s biases and
proclivities on certain types of arguments, and will be listed somewhere online for general access.
By learning a little bit more about what certain judges like and do not like to hear in debate rounds,
you can often tailor your arguments to their unique interests.

Drills and Practice Rounds

Not only should you prepare arguments and strategies ahead of your debates through research, but
there are also presentation and delivery elements you can work on ahead of time as well. These
include doing speaking drills, practice rounds, memorizing some content, working on adaptation
skills, and other techniques.

While each debate is unique, there are some things you can do to help your presentation abilities in
general. For any particular debate you will always want to remember your audience and their specific
interests, but these basic practice techniques will serve you well no matter the situation.

It may not be obvious at first, but debate is a physical as well as mental activity. While many people
have no problem talking for hours upon end with friends in social situations, most never have to
speak uninterrupted, often at a high rate of delivery, for several minutes at a time. Just as if you
were planning a bike race you would practice riding a bike to get used to the physical demands, you
will want to practice speaking out loud for extended periods to get your body used to that unique
challenge. A simple exercise is just to read a newspaper out loud while standing for several minutes.
Newspaper text is usually very dense and information packed, which is a good way to get used
to being verbally efficient. You may surprise yourself at how difficult it is to speak out loud for a
sustained period of time. You will begin to tax your breathing, your posture, and other physical
aspects that you never notice when you speak only in short, alternating messages with friends. You
will also become aware of your volume, rate, and pitch. As you become more fatigued you will
be quieter and slower, not something you want to have happen in a debate where you have just as
94 Chapter 13. Preparation: Foundation of Success

much need to make important points at the end of your speech as at the beginning. Of course you
do not want to just be able to speak for an extended period of time for simple duration; you want to
have good clarity and verbal dexterity with words as well. So in addition to reading out loud, there
are some drills you can do to give your vocal skills a real workout. These are also good ways to
warm up just ahead of your actual debates.

While rapid delivery may not always be appropriate for your debates, there are times when it is
not only appropriate but perhaps even expected. You will want to make sure you are physically
capable of doing so comfortably, which means some practice speaking at faster rates. Even if you
never speak fast in your debates, your practice at doing so is still going to strengthen your voice
and vocal capabilities so that a more leisurely presentation is still easy to do. One surprising thing
this drill can show you is how disconnected your eyes are from your mouth and your brain! Trying
to keep your vision, brain processing, and vocal abilities all in sync takes more skill than you may
think.

There is also the time-tested technique of practicing a speech with a pencil between your teeth. It
may look silly, but the idea here is to improve fluency and diction by making your speaking muscles
exert extra effort. When you hold a pencil in your mouth while you try to talk, you can immediately
tell all the muscles that have to work to speak and how difficult it is to enunciate. Try reading a
passage from a paper with the pencil in your mouth for one minute, and then take it out. You will
be amazed how easy it seems to speak once the pencil is gone.

As the saying goes, “practice makes perfect.” So it is with debate. It only makes sense to practice
the techniques and strategies you hope to use at an actual tournament. This gives you a chance
to locate and fix the weaker aspects of your arguments, and also simply makes you more familiar
with the material which will help you to feel more comfortable and appear more credible in your
competitive rounds. This is particularly helpful in parliamentary debate where we debate about so
many different topics over the course of the year, or even at a single tournament.

It is advisable to try a lot of different things in your practice rounds. Try something new. Use
arguments and positions that you are not generally accustomed to. It is far better to experiment in a
practice round, where the stakes are not so high and you can receive some feedback from a coach
or teammate about how to deploy that particular type of argument more effectively, than to do so at
a tournament (although I would encourage you to try new things at tournaments as well).

In addition to experimenting with new and different types of arguments, you should also practice
adapting to different situations that may arise. Have practice rounds where you assume your critic
is looking for a slower, more communication-oriented debate, and some where you assume the
critic wants you to have a highly technical approach with a faster rate of delivery. Because you will
encounter all kinds of judges, it makes sense to practice for that eventuality. You might also try
something like giving one team more or less time for their speeches, in order to increase/decrease
the difficulty level. Or you can go through a normal prep time, but then go into the practice round
without the notes you prepared in order to improve your ability to think on your feet and recall
things you prepared in prep time – after all, it has happened on more than one occasion when a
debater prepares great arguments in prep time but then misplaces their notes somewhere between
their prep room and the actual debate. Feel free to experiment with a variety of circumstances for
your practice debates.

It is also good practice to record these debates. While nothing beats a live audience for feedback,
recording yourself so you can hear and see for yourself what is going on is very helpful. Most
teams these days have fairly easy access to laptop computers or video cameras for this purpose.
This allows you to review the debate with a critical perspective and not only make adjustments to
 95

your arguments, but also your speaking patterns and presentation style. Although it can sometimes
be mildly embarrassing, it is also extremely educational to watch yourself and observe some of the
mannerisms that you display while speaking that could perhaps be modified for greater audience
appeal. Recording your debates also allows a coach or teammate to view the round at a later time
and offer valuable feedback.

Additionally, practice rounds are one of the best places available for coming up with the foundation
for writing really good pre-prepared positions. Take the positions that you create for your practice
rounds, then, based on the responses you hear, go about improving that position. What were the
main weaknesses? Where could you use a little more data to better warrant your claims? How
could you word the argument to be more clear? Essentially, this technique gives you a trial run for
your positions so that you can improve them for when it really counts.

Time Management
By practicing your speeches you not only become more familiar with the specific material you may
use in a debate, but you also become more aware of how much time it takes to make those points.
Debates can often come down to who can better manage and allocate their time. Your practice will
help you understand how much you can still say, or what to prioritize, if you find you have less
time left than you had hoped. This will also help you become more comfortable with merging your
spontaneously generated ideas with your pre-prepared arguments.

Research
Although it is a bit beyond the scope of this essay to offer thorough and comprehensive guidelines
for an effective and efficient research process, it will offer some direction. Becoming a proficient
researcher takes time and practice, and requires that you work with your coaches and teammates
to build these skills. You should also go to the library and seek out resources there that will help
you in the research process. For the purposes of this project, this section will focus on some of the
general strategies and procedures for research and file production.

Debate requires that we move beyond mere differences of opinion and begin to substantiate and
prove our positions. To do so requires collecting relevant supporting material that is sufficient
enough to thoroughly validate our claims and establish a more objective evaluation of the question
at hand, independent of the way we may personally feel about a given topic. Gathering supporting
material is an exploratory mission and it is important, just as in individual speeches, to have a well
thought out strategy and to stay as organized as possible.

It is perhaps also meaningful to note that research skills are one of the most transferable of abilities
that being involved in debate helps to develop and refine. Many find the search for supporting ideas
to be one of the great joys of being involved in debate. It certainly does provide a reward for the
intellectually curious. However, the research involved in debate is more than just a fact-finding
mission. Being able to put information in an argumentative context can add to the understanding of
the issue in unique ways. It will also serve as an important foundation for many of the other things
you will do in your academic experience and professional lives.

How to Begin
The first step is to begin with the obvious. This means starting with basic search terms and getting
background information on the issue to make you feel more comfortable going into greater depth.
You should make an effort to identify all the main issues that are relevant to your topic, even if
you decide later not to pursue all of them in detail. It is important to acknowledge that this is a
96 Chapter 13. Preparation: Foundation of Success

building process – you do not need to know everything as you begin working on your topic. You
will probably establish a steep learning curve as you immerse yourself in the topic. Reading a few
articles of general information and background about your topic early on can really help unlock
additional ideas and even open up new paths of investigation. As such, it may not be a good idea to
collect a whole bunch of materials without having read a few at the beginning in order to make sure
that you are collecting materials that will actually help you.
It is always helpful to at least sketch out some of the primary elements and basic structure of your
position in the early stages of the research process. This rough outline will help guide you toward
the materials and substance that need to complete your project, and will help you to target those
particular areas that may be in need of additional support. Be sure to take the time to brainstorm
those ideas that may support the opposing side’s arguments so that you are not caught by surprise.
As you move through the research process, you will always want to be mindful of information you
come across that might reveal ways to help you answer counter-arguments.

Online Search Engines

Some of the topics which are addressed in debate can be rather complex and sophisticated. Nev-
ertheless, as mentioned previously, beginning with a somewhat general approach may not be a
bad place to start your research efforts. Try to find some general knowledge and background on
your topic, as this will often help you to better conceptualize the overall controversy. If you begin
with a basic Internet search, you will need to strike a balance between the vast amount of general
resources you find and the equally vast minutia that presents itself. Web pages and sites that are
designed to summarize information, or are more encyclopedic in nature, can be a great way to
simply begin familiarizing yourself with the ideas, concepts, and terms associated with whatever
issue you will be debating. As you steadily increase your understanding of the topic, you will be
able to refine your search efforts and look a little more deeply.

Specialized Databases, Academic Journals, and Law Reviews

Once you have established a foundational knowledge base for your topic, try to move steadily
toward more sophisticated and specialized databases. Rather than relying solely on Internet search
engines, which often overwhelm the researcher with too many irrelevant and extraneous sources of
information, you should utilize the resources that are associated with academic libraries and the
portals they provide. These databases are incredibly helpful in gaining access to higher quality, and
more relevant, information and they usually operate in essentially the same way as most Internet
search engines. These databases will generally direct you toward academic journals and/or law
reviews, where you will find materials which have typically already gone through some form of
review before publication and thus provide evidence that can be used with fewer concerns about
their credibility. These databases also tend to include journals and reviews from a diverse range of
sources, allowing you to assess your topic from many different angles.
You might also choose to go directly to a relevant academic journal or law review. There, you can
browse the table of contents for applicable material. When you find something interesting, it is
sometimes wise, and certainly more efficient, to read the introduction, or abstract if available, to
determine if it is really what you are looking for before reading the entire essay. Finally, these
resources are usually the product of the author’s own research process and therefore are likely
to have an extensive bibliography that may end up being more useful than the original article in
pointing you to specific information about your topic.

News Sites
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Sometimes it is preferable to search specifically for news articles, rather than a general Internet
search which may return hundreds, even thousands, of sites, including commercial sites, blogs,
and others that may not have much value. Along with mainstream news sources, be sure to seek
out more regional, independent, and alternative sources as well. You will want to become familiar
with any particular perspectives they may represent. Are they commercially oriented or publicly
oriented? Are they government sourced? Government owned? Who are they quoting or inter-
viewing as the authorities? What journalistic devices are being employed that may be somehow
distorting the information? It is important to be critical of news sources and treat them as being
just as potentially opinionated as any other source you may encounter, even if unintentionally.
Nonetheless, news sources are a great way to stay informed of recent changes in your topic area,
allowing you to update your arguments as conditions demand.

Books
An increasingly underutilized resource is books. Admittedly, it can be daunting to think you have
to read an entire book or even several books just to do your debate research. However, it may be
worth taking a look at the relevant books because you may find some extremely helpful material
since books have the space to develop an idea far more completely than a newspaper or magazine
article. The right book might be a treasure trove of information specific to the position you are
researching. Finding one of these can really help you understand and organize your thoughts on the
issue. You probably also do not need to read the entire book, but rather just the chapter or two that
are relevant.

Government Documents and Policy Papers From Think-Tanks

For those willing to dig a little deeper, searching out relevant government documents can be a rich
source of data. You will want to search specifically for those government documents that represent
hearings by committees of Congress on the issues you will be debating. Often these hearings are
arranged to include a wide variety of perspectives on issues being considered for legislative action.
There are also a variety of organizations dedicated to studying and offering policy recommendations
to government and public actors, sometimes referred to as “think tanks”. These organizations bring
together experts to produce policy papers on a variety of issues, and they span the political and
ideological spectrum. The work they generate is often of very high quality. Of course, it always
possible that they may also be poorly founded diatribes that only feign intellectual content in order
to forward an ideological perspective, so you must still be critical in your assessment. These types
of documents can be found at an organizations’ web site, or sometimes are published as periodicals.
A general search engine may return them as well, or you can use search terms that increase your
odds of returning them in your search.

What are you looking for?

Of course, having research materials to look at is only part of the story. Just what is it that you
are looking for in those sources? Evidence and support can take a variety of forms beyond simple
statistics.

General Background and History

There are a great number of details and historical elements that may help provide context, even if
they do not necessarily add content to your actual debate positions. Sometimes that context can
help build the basis for analysis or explain data that can only be understood by knowing the timeline
of the situation. While it may not directly provide supporting evidence, looking up information
98 Chapter 13. Preparation: Foundation of Success

on the background of a certain situation may help you better understand the information that you
end up using as evidence. The general background information may help explain the dominant or
conventional wisdom on the topic you are debating. You do want to be careful, as often presenting
the history of the issue only seems like filler rather than being a reason to support your position. In
some cases, however, a proper understanding of the relevant history is essential to knowing what
has been tried, or past conflicts and the basis for them.

Statistical Data
Statistical data is always helpful in supporting your arguments. The difficulty with statistical data,
however, is that it can often be overly abstract and difficult to put into context. Even if what is
being measured is relatively straightforward, it may not in itself prove any particular claim without
the proper application. The value of statistical data is that it can be used to express numerical
significance in terms of quantifying impacts and costs. Statistical data can also be useful in cases
where what is being measured, and how it was done, is easily understood and the relationship
between what is being measured and the point being drawn is clear.

Expert Testimony
Often, much of what you are looking for is concentrated in the testimony or advocacy of noted
experts or authorities on the topic. These experts might be government officials who have addressed
the issue, members of the academic community that have studied the issue, or persons speaking
from their personal experiences. These sources may use statistics or historic examples in their own
testimony to help support their argument, which makes it easy for you to use their comments on
your behalf. Even if they are not offering supported arguments, their analysis and reasoning in itself
can often be useful for explanations about how things work or why they are good or bad.

Narratives
The use of statistics alone may indicate a large number, but the real impact of that number may
require a more narrative-based explanation for how the harm identified actually affects people.
Knowing a certain condition impacts hundreds of thousands of people is one thing, but to understand
what it means to one individual severely impacted can help emotionally amplify a number in a
vacuum. Narratives can also represent a viewpoint that is not present amongst the people involved
in the debate. Some people may be so marginalized that they do not have access to the privileges of
education or public participation. Including narratives can bring their perspective and voice into the
discussion. Narratives also represent an element of pathos that can help round out a strictly logic-
or reason-based argument.

Court Decisions
Court decisions typically include the rationale of the court, which can obviously be very useful
for supporting your position. In establishing an interpretation of the law, the basis for the decision
will often reveal the values or purposes of the law in terms of social good or order. In dealing with
issues of crime and the law, this type of information can be invaluable in making a more persuasive
appeal.

Some additional considerations for Pre-Tournament research

As parliamentary debate practices become increasingly complex, there are a number of additional
aspects of the research process you and your squad will need to consider.
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Topic Area Tournaments

It is increasingly common for some tournament directors to announce limited areas from which
the topics will be drawn several weeks before the actual competition (e.g., a particular tournament
may choose to address only Education Reform, US-Russian Relations, Alternative Energy, and
Space Exploration). This gives debaters substantially more time to prepare on a much more
specific set of issues. The intention behind this approach is that by limiting the possible debate
topics to a more narrow and exclusive array of options will encourage a more thorough and
comprehensive exploration of those topics, thus resulting in more detailed and substantive debates.
Knowing your general topic areas in advance allows for more fine-tuned and specialized research.
Tournaments with pre-designated topic areas tend to encourage somewhat greater depth of research
and knowledge, while tournaments without specific topic areas tend to encourage somewhat greater
breadth of research and knowledge. Offering a judgment on which is better or more important is
well beyond the intent of this essay, but it seems reasonable to assume that both are highly valuable
for different reasons.
If you know the general topic areas ahead of time, this allows you to really dig deeply into your
topics, building a more firm foundation of knowledge and understanding and more thoroughly
examining the finer nuances of the issue. As you do your research for topic-area tournaments you
will want to remember that although you have greater foreknowledge about your upcoming debate
topics – so, too, do your opponents. This means that their arguments and positions will also be
more nuanced and detailed, and that they will likely have taken the time to prepare more relevant
counter-arguments to your positions. As mentioned in the very beginning of this essay, the team
that is more thoroughly prepared is typically in a far better position to win the debate.
While tournaments with topic areas obviously focus your preparation efforts, you can still narrow
the focus of research even for tournaments that do not announce topics in advance. Some tourna-
ments may have somewhat predictable types of resolutions (e.g., at some of the more “traditional”
tournaments, you might expect a few value-oriented resolutions, while at the larger national circuit
tournaments you might expect resolutions to be very timely and closely tied to significant current
events). Also, some tournaments tend to consistently have topics about certain issues – economics,
social justice, nuclear weapons, court cases, etc. For these tournaments, brainstorm a list of likely
topic areas that may come up – new developments in ongoing current events, important upcoming
issues, economic trends, prominent cases in the Supreme Court, etc., then divide up the issues
amongst your team members and prepare for them. Remember that your topics could come from
anywhere, so try to prepare somewhat broadly. You might not always guess correctly, but when
you do it definitely makes the time before your actual debate much easier. Regardless of whether
your upcoming event has topic areas or not, the research you do ahead of time will serve you well
since it can serve as a basis for discussion about evidence formatting and structure, the content of
many practice debates, and further the development of your “team file”.

Creating Pre-prepared Argument Positions

To improve prep time efficiency, your team can keep a list with a wide range of possible topics and
a brief outline of various ideas for positions (possible cases, disadvantages, counterplans, critical
positions, etc.), in “shell” or “skeleton” form (this is a basic, rudimentary outline of the position
with some of the key information included; other elements, such as specific links to the topic
you are debating, can be added later). Referred to by debaters and coaches variously as “files”,
“evidence briefs”, “argument blocks”, etc., these pre-prepared positions will help speed up the
process of coming up with ideas during prep time. No matter how knowledgeable and clever the
members of your team, you will almost always be able to come up with more, and better, ideas in a
brainstorming session back in your own squad room or home, than during prep time with all of its
100 Chapter 13. Preparation: Foundation of Success

accompanying time pressure, tournament pressure, and other stressful distractions. The idea is to
organize pre-prepared positions on topics that you know you will want to talk about in your debate
as well as those you think may come up from the other side. These positions are very helpful in
organizing and pre-arranging relevant information and providing the necessary evidentiary support
to make your arguments more valid and persuasive.

How To Prepare Your Files

How you prepare your materials can vary greatly based on the type of arguments you prefer, the
region in which you typically compete, and several other factors. This chapter will offer basics on
this question, whereas other chapters of this text will delve into greater detail about how to organize
and structure particular types of debate positions. Remember that, often, trial and error is the best
way to find out what works for you. It is possible that you may see someone doing something
different than you that seems to work well. Do not be afraid to adopt others’ techniques. There is
no single right way to prepare your materials, but it is almost always true that the better prepared
your materials are, the better your debate will be.

Depth: Backgrounders, Fact Sheets, and Complete Positions

You will probably want to prepare some files with depth in mind. In other words, files designed to
increase your level of knowledge and understanding about a particular topic. These might include
“topic backgrounders” which provide a broad-based overview of the primary issues on the topic
– historical background, recent developments, cultural or demographic elements, economic or
political structures, key leaders, etc. These are meant primarily for pre-tournament education, not
necessarily prep time. The deeper your background on any particular issue, the easier prep time
will be, and the greater chances of your arguments being well-received by your critic.

You might also create a topic fact sheet with more specific data points that is more directly intended
for prep time. These documents might include precise bits of relevant information such as the
names of key leaders and officials involved in the situation, relevant legislation or court cases,
key economic data, etc. Included in this fact sheet, or perhaps in a separate document designed
specifically for updates, you will identify the breaking news and most recent developments of
the past week or so that are relevant to your topic. These documents provide the specific pieces
of information that you will need in your debate to validate your positions. And, of course, as
previously mentioned, you may want to create fully prepared positions with outlines, extension
arguments with additional evidence and examples, and even answers to the likely counter-arguments
you anticipate hearing. You can do this for cases, counter-plans, disadvantages, critical positions,
theory arguments like topicality, and others.

A Defense of Pre-Prepared Positions

Some may argue that this kind of pre-prepared, or “canned”, position is to be avoided. A few
reasons for this, such as encouraging the unique skill in parliamentary debate of being able to
think quickly and creatively on your feet, are perhaps more pedagogically sound than some of the
competitive reasons offered, such as claims that it is not fair for some teams to have done work
ahead of time while others did not – every team has at least the opportunity to do so. There are also
several good reasons why pre-prepared positions are beneficial. To begin, there is no rule anywhere
in parliamentary debate against preparing positions ahead of time. There is a rule, which should be
strictly followed in order to guarantee fairness, that debaters can only take those materials into a
debate which they themselves write down during the allotted preparation time. That does not mean
debaters cannot prepare an argument ahead of time then write it out during prep time.
 101

Beyond simply making prep time more efficient, it seems reasonable to assume that the amount of
knowledge and information that has been gathered ahead of a debate will be somewhat correlated to
the quality levels of arguments made during it. The more familiar you are with your positions, the
more smoothly you will speak, the better you will be able to defend your arguments against your
opponents’ positions, and the more persuasive you will likely be. The research and preparation part
of competitive debate is probably where you gain the greatest amount of actual educational value,
which seems reason enough to easily justify it. This is a highly important life skill. You are more
than likely to experience a situation where you need to organize a variety of materials in order to
support a project or proposal. Thinking of how you build a case and support it and what materials
you need to do that are skills you will be directly enhancing by participating in the preparatory
process of debate.

Breadth: Covering Your Bases

You will also want to cover a breadth of issues, especially for tournaments without topic areas. If
you do not know what kind of topics you might be debating, it only makes sense to prepare for a
variety of possibilities. Under such circumstances, rather than creating complete positions, it may
serve you better to simply create scaled-down versions of cases, disadvantages, etc., that can serve
as the foundation for more complete positions to be finished during your prep time.

Sometimes just a list of talking points is very helpful, particularly with a topic that is constantly
changing. If you spend a lot of time developing a lengthy position on a topic that is in a state of flux,
something may happen in the day or two before the tournament (or even during the tournament) to
dramatically change the situation, and now all the work you did is no longer useful. It might be
better with some issues, therefore, to simply keep a list of talking points on recent developments.
One example might be a list of talking points about current economic conditions, containing a
variety of data referring to recent employment rates, projections by significant economists, data
about the trajectory of consumer or business confidence, and other relevant data points that you
might want to reference during your debates. This data should come from a variety of different
sources and locations. By consolidating them into one document you have quick and easy access.
The same can be done for rapidly developing geopolitical crises, or natural disasters, or any situation
that is undergoing significant change.

“Big School” vs. “Small School”

Some debate programs have over twenty people competing while others may only have four or five
competing students. Do “big” teams have an unfair preparation advantage over “small” teams? The
bigger teams certainly seem to have the luxury of being able to divide up the research assignments
in order to spread the burden more widely than the smaller teams. Theoretically at least, this means
they should be able to cover a much broader range of issues and in a much shorter amount of
time.

However, while there are definitely some advantages that come with larger numbers of people,
there are a few potential drawbacks as well. First, although there is a broader distribution of the
research burden, there is no guarantee that having more people doing the research will produce
files that are of any higher quality than even a much smaller number of people. It is quite possible
that some people will simply not put in the time and effort necessary to create a useful position. It
is also rather likely that there will be a wide range of research and argument skills among team
members. Further, students on a large team are perhaps less likely to receive direct and individual
assistance in the research and argument production process from a coach than the students on a
smaller team. And finally, it is often much more difficult to truly understand an issue simply from
102 Chapter 13. Preparation: Foundation of Success

reading the argument files that someone else has produced as opposed to having done the research
and produced the file yourself. On a smaller team, you may have to work a little harder to produce
as much useful material, but you are likely to have gained greater insight and understanding because
of that effort.

If you are debating for a school with a small number of competitors, you will need to take extra care
to be efficient in your research and the producing of argument files. There are a number of ways
to do this. First of all, be sure to prioritize your research efforts. If a significant world event has
taken place shortly before a tournament – a military coup in northern Africa, a catastrophic natural
disaster in the Caribbean, a surprise missile test on the Korean peninsula, a controversial decision
by the Supreme Court, etc. – be sure to spend some time coming to a decent understanding of the
issue, as it is likely that at least one or two rounds of the upcoming debate tournament will use a
topic that addresses these timely situations. There are also a number of issues that make regular
appearances as topics at debate tournaments, such as economic policy, immigration reform, climate
change, health care, military aid, and many others. Because the probability is high that you will
debate one or more of these recurring topics, it only stands to reason that you should highlight them
in your preparation.

Another way to be efficient is to focus on your strengths, or perhaps even more fundamentally, to
create strengths. Focusing on the more generic kinds of arguments that are applicable under a wide
set of variables is a way to address a large number of topics without an overwhelming amount
of work. For instance, there is a reasonably high probability that a number of your debates will
involve the federal government applying more stringent regulations on industry (e.g., environmental
protections, worker safety laws, tax increases, greater transparency of financial transactions, etc.).
In these instances, a fairly good response is that increased regulation will harm the economy by
decreasing business confidence – when businesses feel they are over-regulated, they tend to invest
less, and sometimes they make up for lost profits by laying off workers, going overseas, etc. You
can simplify your research burden by concentrating on a variety of economic indicators in order to
know whether the economy is generally improving or faltering, and understanding the ramifications
of passing legislation which would likely dampen business confidence. If you become well versed
in the literature on this issue, its nuances and details, then you will be well prepared for a large
number of the topics you are likely to hear.

For bigger teams, spread the work around and use your numbers to your advantage. The luxury
of engaging in the division of labor will help you cover a broad list of issues with relative ease.
Also, encourage specialization – have people work on issues where they have a certain degree of
familiarity and expertise, as this will produce better overall results. However, because you have a
greater amount of material coming in, try to create some form of quality control guidelines, and be
sure that research assignments are turned in with plenty of time for everyone to go over them and
become familiar with the nuances before they have to defend the arguments in a debate.

The Value of Pre-Tournament Research

In summation, as you gain experience in debate, you will notice that you are multi-tasking at a
pretty high level. You may be listening, taking notes, thinking about what your answer will be,
and writing that answer down, all simultaneously. The more you have prepared before the debate,
the easier it will be. In parliamentary debate, with its ever-changing topics, you must be adept at
using your own analysis and evaluation of the arguments in the debate as a way of coming up with
responses to arguments made by the other side. However, rather than relying solely on coming up
with all of them in the debate as it happens, having thought about the arguments and hypothesizing
what you will say or how the other side may respond should give you a competitive edge. Each
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debate will vary, but being prepared and anticipating responses to your arguments is essential to
your competitive success.

In-Tournament Preparation: Efficiency and Vigilance

In-tournament preparation involves everything you and your team can do to prepare after arriving
at a tournament site. This includes, but is not limited to, the official “Prep Time” before each
debate. As mentioned, debaters too often think of prep time as the only preparation to be done
while at a tournament. While we will look at prep time, we will also cover other important ele-
ments of in-tournament preparation that a debater can (and should) engage in, such as scouting
or intelligence-gathering, updating your pre-prepared positions, making adjustments based on the
feedback you receive from your judges, and utilizing available time to work with your partner,
teammates, and coach to learn a little more about debate. Although there is a great deal of crossover
between them, this section will be divided between pre-round preparation, in-round preparation,
and post-round preparation.

Why does in-tournament preparation matter?

As it is the preparatory element perhaps most directly relevant to your actual debate rounds, the
significance of in-tournament preparation seems fairly self-evident. Prep time is typically the first
time you will know exactly what the topic is that you will be debating, which side of the topic you
are defending, and who your opponent and critic will be. Until the moment a topic is announced,
the bulk of your preparation efforts are largely based on educated guesses. However, as with
pre-tournament preparation, we can do things at a tournament even before the topic announcement
to decrease the chances of being taken by surprise and having little to say.
It is also important to remember that many other debate teams are not sitting idly by doing nothing
at the actual tournament. They are constantly adjusting and improving their own arguments, so
it is important to keep pace. Sometimes a team will introduce a new argument at a tournament
that they have been working on at home for several weeks. It is important to communicate with
other debaters, both from your own school and others, to learn about such things. Likewise, the
world does not stop simply because you have attended a debate tournament. It is essential that you
do your best to stay abreast of the changes and developments in significant current events. It has
happened on many occasions when a major political, economic, or social development has taken
place during a debate tournament which fundamentally alters that issue. If you are not aware of
these changes, your arguments may become invalidated.
Finally, the in-tournament element of the preparatory process is the one time when you are taking
part in actual competitive debate rounds. This is often where the greatest amount of learning in
academic debate takes place. You are no longer researching, hypothesizing and anticipating, but
rather you are now putting your arguments and persuasive skills to the test against others. You are
also receiving direct assessment and feedback from your audience – in this case, your judge(s).
The more we do to work with and take advantage of this dynamic, real-time learning environment,
the more we are likely to accomplish, both competitively and pedagogically. It is often the little
things that make a big difference.

How do you do in-tournament preparation? Be organized. Be efficient. Be productive.

Be Organized
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Be clear on the procedure for things like getting the pairings and the topic. Be consistent regarding
how your prep room is going to be set up, and what each person is expected to do during prep time
and throughout the tournament. Know the schedule and be on time. Have a clear procedure for
gathering and sharing information about what other teams are doing.

Be Efficient
In order to be efficient, first be organized. Ideally, your pre-tournament preparation should have put
you in a reasonably good position so that when you find yourself debating either a particular topic or
a particular team, you have minimized the chances of being caught off-guard and unprepared – you
already know what you have to do, now you just have to go about calmly and effectively doing it;
your anticipation has paid off, now you just have to execute. Be sure that you are establishing a
clear division of labor in prep time, as well as properly allocated your time and efforts. Establishing
an efficient prep time is very much about creating a “rapid learning environment”. Sometimes this
involves simply sitting at a computer and quickly transcribing arguments you have pre-prepared,
while other times it involves listening intently to a knowledgeable person sharing succinct and
concise information about the topic at hand, while still other times it means conducting a very
targeted Internet search

Be Productive
In order to be productive, first be organized and efficient. While debate tournaments are indeed
an opportunity to socialize with people from both your own school and others, it is still import
to use your time wisely. Gather intelligence on other teams, judges, and topics. Update your
pre-prepared positions to account for recent developments. Spend time becoming more proficient
with the positions you commonly rely upon or learn about new positions you might want to try out.
Familiarize yourself with the research and positions your teammates have compiled.

Pre-round preparation

Basic logistics
As with pre-tournament preparation, there are several things we can do at a tournament to prepare
for a round before a topic is announced. Some of these are very basic, such as checking the pairing
before each round to be certain about which side you are on, who you are debating, who your
judge is, and where the debate will occur. These are important pieces of information which will
guide your pre-round preparation both argumentatively – you should always try to frame your
arguments in ways that are more persuasive to a particular judge or more strategic against a certain
team, as well as logistically – you should estimate how long you have to actually prepare before
needing to walk to the room you are debating in. Remember, every minute is valuable. Be sure to
familiarize yourself with the campus layout so that you are able to get to your room efficiently. Most
tournaments will include either a printed map of the campus in the registration packet or provide
a link to an online map. These might seem like rather simple tasks, but coaches are constantly
bewildered by how often a team does not know these things before the topic is announced. Because
your actual prep time is so limited and precious, you do not want to waste it by having to look up
this information after the topic is announced.
You should also try to read your critic’s judging philosophy before the topic announcement whenever
it is available (it is becoming increasingly common for tournament directors to make these available
via an online database), especially if it is someone that you are not already quite familiar with.
This is highly valuable and targeted information regarding how best to adapt your positions and
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strategies to meet the preferences of that particular critic. It makes little sense to make arguments
or pursue strategies that your judge has already plainly indicated in their philosophy as something
they do not like or have a predilection against. At the end of the day, academic debate is still an
audience-centered communication activity, which means you should make every effort to adapt to
your critic’s preferences, even if they are not your own.

Updates and developments

It is quite common that you will find yourself debating issues that are rapidly changing and de-
veloping. You will want to do what you can to pay attention to breaking news in order to make
adjustments and updates to your pre-prepared positions. It is also possible that relatively new issues
may come up during a tournament that affect the kinds of arguments people make. For example, if
the stock market plunges or new unemployment figures are announced on Friday, that may well
impact a number of things that you might debate about on Saturday. If an important political leader
is assassinated in a war-torn nation, or a border skirmish breaks out in an unstable region, it may
have significant ramifications for a variety of your positions. There are a number of online news
sites that can keep you attuned to the latest developments in the world, or you can always pick up
an old-fashioned newspaper each morning.

Warm-up drills
Just as a musician, singer, or dancer warms up prior to a performance, so, too, should a debater
– after all, debate is just a particular type of performance. There are any number of different warm
up exercises you might use to get ready for a debate, some of which are outlined above in the
pre-tournament preparation drills. One exercise that seems to make sense is to simply read some
of your pre-prepared positions out loud – not only does this warm up your voice, but also builds
your level of familiarity with your materials. Regardless of the exercise, the most important thing is
simply to get your mind and vocal chords in a state of readiness.

The prep room

It is becoming regular practice at most tournaments to simply assign prep rooms to each school
on a random basis. However, if you attend a tournament that does not do this, try to arrive a little
early to find a good place for your squad to prep. This typically means somewhere that avoids
outside distraction, is large enough to comfortably accommodate your squad, and is reasonably
close to both the place where the topics might be announced and where your actual debates might
take place. Also, if there is someone on your team that requires accommodation due to mobility
issues, be sure to contact the tournament director well before the event to let them know so that
they can assign you an appropriate room.

Once you have located your prep room, there are a few additional things to bear in mind. Try to
come up with a prep room process that encourages success. Your prep room should be orderly and
efficient. This involves both good group communication processes as well as physical organization
or layout. In other words, you may want to set up the desks or tables so that not only the teams
on each side of the topic but possibly even speaker positions are separated from one another in
order to allow people on the same side and same position to work together cooperatively. Perhaps it
makes sense to separate the more experienced debaters who can do more to prepare themselves
from the new members of the team who might need a little more direction and assistance from a
coach. Sometimes the room is divided according to particular strategies that will be deployed. As
with most things in debate, there is no one “right” way, so experiment with a few different things to
determine what works best for you and your squad.
106 Chapter 13. Preparation: Foundation of Success

Regardless of what layout your team determines as the best one for your particular needs, there
are a few additional things that seem universally applicable. For instance, everyone who has one
should have their computers, tablets, smartphones, and other assorted electronic devices on and
logged in to the internet if available. If your team has created any electronic resources, such as a
Dropbox or Google Docs account where you store your pre-prepared positions, be sure to have
those ready as well. And, of course, have plenty of paper and pens available. If you need to fill up
a water bottle or take a bathroom break, try to do these things well before prep time starts. You
should be completely ready to devote your time to writing down arguments as soon as possible
after the topic has been announced. Finally, try to keep your room clean and tidy – not only is it
likely that other teams will be debating in your prep room, but we should all show some respect
and appreciation for the host school by trying to keep their rooms in good shape.

Getting the topic

Although many tournaments now use an online announcement process, many also still use a central
verbal announcement. If you attend a tournament in which the latter is the case, you will need a
clear process for getting the topic. This usually means sending a trustworthy and dependable person
to the place where the topic is being announced who will then quickly bring back the topic to the
prep room, or, preferably, will call or text someone in the prep room with the exact wording of the
topic. It is wise to check the connectivity of your phones beforehand, and be sure that whoever is
receiving the topic repeats it word-for-word back to the person sending the topic to ensure accuracy.
More than a few debates have been lost, and some embarrassment caused, simply because a topic
was not relayed accurately. This should be an easy thing to control, but sometimes the “easy” things
are the most difficult to remember.

Prep time
At this point, a topic has now been announced and we have finally reached the point at which too
many people assume preparation actually begins. As we have already seen, a great deal of time and
effort can and should be put into preparation well before this. Once the topic has been announced,
one of the most important things to remember to do is to start the clock! Not only do you want to
monitor your progress and allocate your time as efficiently as possible, but you most certainly want
to be sure that you do not stay too long in your prep room and end up forfeiting a debate because
you arrive too late. Some tournaments are extremely strict about this, with teams automatically
losing if they are not in the proper room ready to speak within one minute of the end of the allowed
preparation time.

With regard to what each person should be doing during prep time, there are many different
opinions, strategies, and philosophies. And again, you should experiment until you find the one
that works best for your circumstances. Indeed, you may even approach individual prep times in
very different ways depending on the situation. Generally speaking, it is optimal if everyone does
their own prepping with as little assistance as possible. Theoretically, this would mean that you had
anticipated the topics well in your pre-tournament preparation, and now all you have to do is spend
time writing down arguments you have already produced. This will make your prep time smooth
and efficient, which should allow you some extra time to consider ways to adapt your pre-prepared
positions to the specific topic you are given, the team you will be debating and the particular judge
you will have. It will also afford you the opportunity to brainstorm some alternative options in case
the other team does something unexpected.

Prepping as much on your own as possible also means you will be more likely to have a firm grasp
of how your positions operate, both alone and in context to one another. A pretty good position
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that you put together mostly on your own, and that you understand well, is often of far greater
in-round utility than even a really, really good position that your coach or a teammate put together
for you but that you do not really understand. Again, that is the ideal situation, but it usually takes
some time before debaters feel comfortable with completely prepping themselves. A good way
to develop this skill is to have practice debates where no one but you and your partner help one
another during prep time.

There is an abundance of models to choose from (e.g., highly controlled coach-led recitation,
loosely organized and student-led efforts with guidance along the way, entirely student-driven, etc.),
and there are both pros and cons to each. Some will work for you while others may not. That said,
there are some general guidelines that are somewhat widely adhered to in terms of how to most
optimally apply your effort during prep time.

The first few minutes: analyze and brainstorm

If you are attending a tournament with pre-announced topic areas, you may have already considered
the issues well enough and prepared enough positions ahead of time that you can simply start
writing out your pre-prepared arguments. If not, then the first thing you will want to do after hearing
the topic is to spend a couple of minutes quickly analyzing the topic to be sure that you understand
it and are able to identify the main issues. You may need to determine what type of topic it is – is
it a resolution of fact, a resolution of value, or a resolution of policy? How does your judge feel
about that distinction in the first place? What is the resolution asking? What does it mean? It is
imperative that you understand the topic before preparing, otherwise how do you know that your
arguments are even applicable?

Once you are sure that you understand the topic and what it is asking, spend a moment quickly
brainstorming your options, as there are usually several. You do not always have to go with the very
first idea that pops into your mind. In general, the quicker the better, but do not jump too hastily
at the first idea that comes to mind. Sometimes your best ideas are not necessarily the first ones
to present themselves. At the same time, you will want to be efficient – the longer it takes you to
settle on a strategy, the less time you have to actually prepare that strategy.

Hopefully, the topic will be something you have anticipated and have prepared several relevant
arguments. At the very least, it is helpful if you have created a background document with some
of the most relevant information in order to get started. If not, someone on your team, coach or
student, might still be very knowledgeable about the topic and be able to quickly catch everyone up
to speed. Otherwise, you will have to either brainstorm or execute an Internet search as efficiently
as possible. Try to use specific and detailed search terms to help filter the number of options the
search engine will return. Sometimes news sites will give you more up-to-date information, but an
encyclopedia-type site might give you more complete topic knowledge.

If you have gone more than four or five minutes without finding what you feel is a winning strategy,
you may simply have to just pick from your existing options. Similar to the previous sentiments
about prepping yourself, sometimes a merely decent strategy that you are able to spend fifteen
minutes developing is more likely to be successful than a really good strategy that you only have
five minutes to work with. Once at least you and your partner are on the same page and you have
settled on a basic strategy, whether that is an government case or opposition positions, then you are
ready to really get to work.

The next 5-15 minutes: who does what?

Prep times vary from tournament to tournament, partly depending on the size of the campus and
108 Chapter 13. Preparation: Foundation of Success

partly depending on the philosophy of the tournament director, but are usually between twenty and
thirty minutes. Initially that may seem like hardly enough time to prepare for a complicated debate.
However, when you think about it, 20-30 minutes is not that bad for a 45 minute debate in which no
individual debater speaks for more than 12 minutes, and half the participants speak for only eight
minutes. It is plenty of time, if used well.
Ideally, if you have been very productive and thorough in your pre-tournament preparation efforts,
the bulk of your prep time will simply be spent writing things down that were already essentially
complete. If not, then you will need to efficiently do as much as you can. An orderly division of
labor is invaluable in producing a positive outcome. In other words, no one should be inactive or
idle during prep time – there is always something else that can be done to be better prepared for the
next debate.
In formalized, competitive academic debate, each speech is somewhat unique with regard to its
function and objective. It only stands to reason that the preparatory process for each speaker will
likewise be somewhat particular and specialized as well. It is important to remember that debate
is a team activity, and in order to be successful, you must learn to trust your partner. While other
chapters of this text will offer a more in-depth assessment of the specific roles and functions of
particular speeches as well as how to construct specific types of arguments such as government
cases, disadvantages, counter-plans, and critiques, here we will take a simple look at what each
person might be expected to accomplish during prep time.

Government
On the government side, the first speaker or “Prime Minister” (PMC) should probably write the
case as independently as possible. Not only does the second speaker or “Member of Government”
(MGC) have plenty of things to do as well, but the first speaker is the one who will have to read
the case, so it is best if they know best the original arguments presented in the debate for the
government side. They should, however, obviously seek assistance if it is needed. The first speaker
should let their partner know the general idea (preferably, the exact wording) of the plan text as soon
as possible so that the second speaker can make their extension arguments specific and applicable.
While preparing the case, this person should take note of those areas they feel are perhaps not as
strong as they would like them to be and share that with their partner so that they are aware of the
areas that may need extra support in later speeches (MGC “add ons”). Likewise, they will want to
identify those areas that are particularly strong, as those will become key points that they will want
to be sure are extended throughout the debate.
It is also helpful for the first speaker to write their case as strategically as possible. This might
include writing in arguments that are likely to answer an opponent’s positions even before they
have made them. This is sometimes referred to as anticipatory refutation, and not only helps shield
you from opposing claims but also increases your credibility with the judge because it indicates
that you have taken a broad and critical approach to your position – you have actually considered
the counter-arguments and still think your point is valid. This can be very effective in denying the
shock value or persuasive appeal of opposition arguments if the first time the judge hears them is in
your opponent’s speech.

Opposition
On the opposition, which debater preps which positions depends on a lot of different things – skill
levels and relative strengths of debaters, strategic choices for a particular round, judge preferences,
individual knowledge of the topic, and other considerations. This will probably be individualized
on a per team basis. Some people feel the first speaker, or “Leader of Opposition” (LOC), should
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write the most important issues because they are the one who is going to have to read them and
also give the rebuttal speech (LOR), where the overall “weighing” of arguments typically happens.
Others feel the second speaker, the “Member of Opposition” (MOC), should have the responsibility
of writing the arguments that have a high likelihood of emphasis because they are the one that must
extend them and answer the other side’s responses, so they need to be more familiar with the finer
details of the issue. In this way of thinking, the first speaker only has to read the argument, but the
second speaker has to be able to defend it. Again, there is no one “right” answer. What is important
is that each partner is actively working on something that might be useful and that this division of
labor is clearly determined either before prep time begins or quickly after the topic is heard (since
sometimes the topic itself heavily influences this decision).

It is commonly agreed that it is wise for opposition teams to prepare a variety of options during
prep time. This is largely because you typically do not know what the government team is going to
do until they begin speaking, which gives them a 20-25 minute advantage of knowing exactly what
the debate is going to be about. This time advantage switches heavily in the other direction once
the debate begins. Having a few different options gives you the flexibility to adapt to whatever you
hear. This means you might have one partner working on a “straight up” strategy with specific case
arguments against what you think the other team might say, while the other prepares a more generic
critical or philosophical argument that you can shift to in case the other team does something
unexpected and your more traditional strategy does not apply well. This approach, wherein you are
developing contingencies plans and alternative strategies, will help protect you against surprises.

Second speakers
It may initially seem that the “second speakers” do not have much to do until after the first speeches
of the debate actually take place, but this is far from accurate. Remember once more, the team that
is best prepared is the one that usually wins the debate. If you have prepped effectively, you will be
in a much better position to respond to many of the arguments that you will hear. This means the
second speaker must also be actively engaged in the prep time process.

To begin, the second speaker should always be ready to assist their partner in creating a case/opposition
positions. Again, it is a team effort. Despite the fact that each speaker has different responsibilities
in and before the debate, you still need a cooperative effort to come up with what you agree are the
best options. You may have a lot of good ideas for your partner to use. It is especially important for
you to be available to help your partner if they are having trouble completing the initial positions
you are going to defend in the debate.

It is also important for second speakers to be familiar with the arguments and positions you will be
debating. You cannot extend an argument very well if you do not understand it. Hopefully you will
have been able to go over some of the positions your team has created ahead of time so that you are
more comfortable with the ideas and concepts, putting you in a much better position to effectively
develop and defend the positions initiated by your partner. At the very least, pay close attention
during prep time to any discussion of the finer details of your positions. Sometimes they will have
subtle nuances and/or strategic “tricks” that you should be aware of.

It is also primarily the responsibility of second speakers to anticipate likely counter-arguments

you are going to hear and to prepare responses. You may think quickly on your feet, but the more
you narrow down the things you have to be prepared for during prep time, the more effective your
in-round thinking will be.

On the government side, the second speaker (MGC) has the specific task of preparing what are
commonly referred to as “front lines” – the first set of responses you will offer to the major positions
110 Chapter 13. Preparation: Foundation of Success

you are likely to hear from your opponent. These might include your first line of defense against a
likely topicality violation, or a disadvantage that you know is commonly used by the team that you
are debating, etc. These should not only be your best arguments, but should also be diverse and call
into question many different aspects of your opponent’s position rather than relying solely on the
one or two responses you think are simply “right”. In a court of law, a defense attorney does not
offer just one reason why their client is innocent simply because they think it is a good reason, but
rather they offer as many different and varied defenses as possible.

The second speaker should spend some time looking critically at their own case, trying to identify
potentially weak points and preparing a more through defense for them in case the opposing team
also identifies that point as a weak one. Just as your opponent has to prepare for a number of
different possibilities, so too must the second government speaker (MGC) – you never know exactly
what the other team is going to say until you actually hear them say it, so prepare accordingly.
You will want to prioritize your time by focusing more heavily on what you think are the most
likely arguments, but do not overlook spending at least a couple minutes also preparing a few basic
responses to the less likely options. Even a few arguments prepared ahead of time will be beneficial
in the event they become necessary during the debate, when you have less opportunity to think of
additional answers.

On the opposition side, the second speaker (MOC), if not preparing a particular position for a
specific purpose, should be doing a combination of identifying potential weaknesses in their own
positions and preparing contingency options to fall back on in case the government team advances
an unpredictable/unexpected argument. If nothing else, the second speaker can spend time quickly
searching your team’s files or online resources for additional tidbits of information that will help to
better warrant your positions. Some teams like to spend a few minutes of prep time simply scouring
websites for specific details about the topic – recent developments, statistics, names of significant
people, specific examples, etc., that they will then be able to use during the round to show that
they have credible knowledge about the topic. The more topic-specific knowledge you are able to
present in the debate, the more persuasive your claims will be.

Final minutes: walk and talk

Perhaps the most important thing about the final minutes of prep time is – to reiterate a previous
point – be on time to your debates! Not only will this help you avoid a pointless forfeit, but
also helps in other ways. First, even if a judge does not automatically disqualify you, many are
increasingly frustrated with teams showing up late because it means they have essentially “cheated”
by using more prep time than officially allotted. Even if you did not intend to do so, this can
seriously impact both your credibility in that particular debate and your broader reputation in
general. Additionally, on a pragmatic note, you should avoid running behind and having to rush
to a round, showing up out of breath and flustered. Sometimes your prep room is far away from
where you will be debating, be sure you know how long it will take to get there.

These final few minutes, as you make your way to your assigned debate location, are also a chance
to reconfirm with your partner that you are both on the same page and understand your overall
strategy and any last-minute revisions that might be necessary. Be sure to share the subtle nuances
of the arguments you prepped in order to optimize the persuasive effect of your claims. It is also a
time to identify any major concerns about potential weaknesses in your position so that you can
be mindful in the debate to protect those areas, as well as identifying and addressing any possible
conflicts or contradictions between your positions. Does your plan really solve the advantages you
claim? Is there anything in your plan text that goes beyond the scope of the resolution and might
open you up to a topicality argument? Are there elements of your plan text that are unnecessary?
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Does your counter-plan inadvertently link to the disadvantages more than the government plan?
These are all things that you should ask yourselves as one final check on the consistency and validity
of your individual positions and overall strategy. If you identify any of these problems in the final
few minutes, you can still work quickly in the early moments of the actual round to try to resolve
them.

Additional Considerations

Stay calm
A quiet and calm environment is not only best for creative productivity, but will also help keep anxi-
ety at bay. Try to stay relaxed and work cooperatively as a team. Do your best not to waste valuable
time fighting with your partner or a coach. Have a process in place that allows for differences of
opinion to be dealt with quickly and productively. Even if you end up having a poor prep time, it
just means you are going into your round not as well-prepared as you might have liked. You are still
very capable of coming up with winning arguments in the heat of the moment during your round.
And even if that does not happen and you lose your debate, it is far from the end of the world. Each
debate is a learning opportunity, regardless of the decision. If you have prepared for the tournament
properly in the pre-tournament preparation stage, you may have a significant amount of practice
debating with limited prep – making you comfortable with this inevitable scenario.

Note-taking
Everyone will have their own techniques and methods that work best for them. The suggestions
here may help. To begin, keep your notes as neat and organized as possible. After all, what good is
something you wrote down during prep time if you cannot read or understand it during the debate?
This is especially true if your partner is going to using any of your notes. It is also helpful to develop
your own style of short-hand and abbreviations that make sense to you (and your partner). Before
you arrive at the tournament, you should have a discussion with your partner about handwriting
legibility, agreed upon shorthand, and the circumstances that will necessitate the sharing of your
flows. Still, you simply do not have enough time to write everything out completely. You will need
to become skilled at extemporaneous speaking – a planned speech but delivered with little or no
notes. You will want to write clear and detailed outlines, but much of the substance that fills in the
outline will have to come from your thoughts. You should also use a separate sheet of paper for
each major argument position (i.e., a different page for each disadvantage, counter-plan, etc.) in
order to keep your notes from getting all jumbled together and confusing. Be sure to write your
notes during Prep Time in an organized and orderly way that also allows you to write down your
opponent’s arguments on the same sheet of paper, so that all the individual arguments about that
position are essentially in the same place.
Many teams like to use sticky note paper (e.g., Post-It notes), which work quite effectively for
some. Sometimes there are specific points you know you will want to make during a debate, you
are just not sure where they will apply. Sticky notes allow the flexibility of simply “posting” the
argument where it is needed. They can also be used to keep running lists of various examples that
might support your general strategy as you come up with them during prep time. Examples serve
as proof, and a lack of examples will hurt your persuasive appeal. Examples also connect your
arguments to reality. And if you end up not using these notes, little harm is done.

Work backwards
Envision how you want the round to conclude and prepare accordingly. What issues do you want
112 Chapter 13. Preparation: Foundation of Success

the debate to come down to? Which arguments do you think are going to win the debate for you?
If you have a little bit of extra time, spend some of it prepping the final speeches – likely not
“word-for-word”, since you will still need to adapt to the specific situation, but at least general
outlines and overviews. Think strategically and anticipate the things, both general concepts and
specific details, that you will need in the final weighing of arguments.

In-Round Preparation
Ultimately, the more effective and productive you were in prep time, the easier your in-round
preparation efforts will be. But just because the actual debating has finally begun does not mean
you are done preparing. You can still come up with plenty of arguments by thinking quickly on
your feet. While this may be a difficult skill to master, anyone can at least try, and there are some
things you can do to make it easier. Similar to prep time, one of the most important things to
remember is to be active – with such limited time available, you do not have the luxury of sitting
idly during any point of the debate – if your pen is not moving or you are not deliberately ex-
ecuting an element of strategy, you are not as actively engaged in a parliamentary debate as possible.

Points of information
Unlike some debate formats that give each side 5-10 minutes of “prep time” during the debate to be
used however and whenever you like, in parliamentary debate you have very limited time available
to prepare arguments during the round, so you must use this time wisely. “Points of Information”
(POIs), or simply questions, are vital in this regard. Beyond establishing some clarification, a
question can also give you much needed time to quickly write out a few responses while the speaker
is answering the question. It is usually good practice to have the person who is not speaking next
ask the questions. Sometimes you have to stand or raise your hand for an extended time before
your question is recognized, and it takes time to actually ask the question and get an answer. This is
valuable time for the next speaker to use filling in blank spaces in their speaking column. If you are
speaking next but have a really important question that you would like to be asked, either whisper it
to your partner, or jot it down and have them ask it.

Selective note-Taking
It is not always necessary to write down every single thing the other team says. In order to give
yourself a little bit of time to write your own responses, there are some places in an opponent’s
speech where you can listen to their arguments but write your own. This is primarily true for
those arguments that you are already reasonably familiar with. For example, if you are the second
government speaker (MGC) and your opponent begins reading a disadvantage related to the cost of
your plan, as long as you listen to make sure there is not anything unusual about it, you may simply
write “Spending DA” at the top of the column and begin writing your own responses. However, be
aware that this is a technique with some risk – it is very important that your partner is listening
and flowing closely to make sure he/she catches anything unusual or particularly damaging to your
case.

It is also not necessary to write down everything you are going to say. Not only do you simply
not have the time to do so, but as eluded to earlier, extemporaneous speaking is often one of the
most effective forms of persuasive discourse. Of course you want to have as many of the basics
written down as possible, and particularly those things that are really important, but the more you
can use abbreviated outlines the better. More experienced debaters will work to commit certain
kinds of arguments that they use regularly to memory so as to eliminate the need for having to
write them out each time they use them. This can make both the note-taking and the speaking itself
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more efficient. It can also help you get out of a difficult position if you do not have a lot else to
say.
Finally, it is great if you are prepared to simply jump right up and begin your speech when your
opponent finishes. However, sometimes you may need to take a moment or two of your actual
speech time to collect your thoughts and quickly come up with an additional argument or two, and
perhaps even have a brief conversation with your partner about what you should do. That is not only
perfectly acceptable, but is even becoming a much more common practice among the most skilled
and prepared debaters. Once more, it is probably better to have just a few really good arguments
than lots of mediocre ones, even if it takes up a little bit of your actual speech time to come up with
them.

Post-Round Preparation

Effectively using feedback

Even though the debate round is over, it does not mean you do not have more debates to come. The
things we learn and process immediately after a debate are sometimes the most important with
regard to preparing for future rounds. This is perhaps more true of the post-round feedback you
receive from your judge than any other element. Your judge’s “RFD” (reason for decision, also
referred to as an oral critique) is a great opportunity to receive some immediate guidance on things
you can do to improve your arguments and presentation style, even if you won the debate. It is
also feedback that you receive while the actual debate is still very fresh in your mind, making it
arguably more valuable in many ways than reading a ballot later or talking about the round with
your coach (who probably did not see the debate themselves).
It is helpful to write down some of the main elements of your critic’s feedback, both to have a
record of some of the things you can do to improve, but also because it gives you some additional
insight into what that particular judge likes and does not like, in case you have them as a judge
again. They will also likely offer some valuable advice about how to improve your positions, not
only for future tournaments but maybe even for the very next round.
Debate easily takes us out of our comfort zones. This feedback that you receive from your judge is
one of the things that can be most difficult to handle, particularly in a competitive setting where
one team wins and one team loses. This feedback can come in many forms, such as an oral critique
at the conclusion of a debate, a written ballot, or even the informal nonverbal responses from your
judge and even the other team as you are speaking. No matter the form, debate is set up to elicit
a response that is unique from most other forms of public speaking. Dealing with the criticism
you receive can be difficult, but most comments can be useful in trying to improve, even negative
ones.
The key is to keep the feedback in context. Just as the other side of the debate is challenging your
arguments rather than attacking you personally, the judge who does not vote for your argument is
not saying you are a bad person or that they do not like you. A judge who is not persuaded to vote
for you is not rejecting you personally, but rather the intellectual idea that you were presenting. Due
to the nature of “switch-side” debating, it is quite likely that you may have simply been advocating
the arguments relevant to the side you were assigned rather than your own personal feelings on the
matter, so there is no need to see a negative outcome or response as a referendum on your personal
worth.
As you receive feedback, try to determine what elements of the debate the judge’s comments
specifically relate to. Was the comment directed at what you said or how you said it? Also, the
114 Chapter 13. Preparation: Foundation of Success

comments may be empathetic to your position, but simply question how you chose to present it.
Someone might even preface their comments with acknowledgment that, in principle, they may
agree with a lot of your position, but may not have understood clearly the entirety of the argument
you were presenting. Even if they state a disagreement with your position, knowing the specific
element that they had issues with can be a means to research that point further, or reconsider how
you might approach that element differently in the future. It might also reveal a perspective on
your arguments that that you may have never even considered before, giving you a new avenue to
explore.

Just as you receive comments on the papers you write for your classes with the goal of making you
a better writer, comments you receive on your debate performance are a means of helping you grow
as a debater and speaker. Many competitive debaters find that getting feedback that is not positive
is far superior to getting no feedback whatsoever, even if they won the debate. Remember, the value
of the feedback is in its ability to help you to improve your critical thinking and presentation skills.
Ultimately, winning or losing a particular debate is far less important than being able to effectively
receive feedback and to be self-reflexive about what others have to say regarding your arguments
and your presentation of them.

Save your “flows” and/or record rounds

You should also save your notes, or your “flow”, of the round since it is quite possible you will use
similar positions again, even at the same tournament. Record as many of your rounds as possible.
While this adds an additional element to your preparation before the round (setting up a flip camera,
laptop or tablet in addition to often being asked by opponents to share the recording with them as
soon as possible), the added investment is certainly worth your time. Having a record of a previous
debate with that position will help you to improve it because now you will have heard another
team’s responses and you can prepare answers to them. Keeping your flows is also very helpful
because it gives you an outline of your opponent’s positions, which you can cross-check with the
recorded version of the debate. When you have downtime, you can prepare better responses to
opposing arguments, developed mimic versions of successful arguments made by your opponents,
and re-evaluate your overall round performance (flowing, partner communication, overall strategy,
etc.). Later, you can also evaluate these materials a coach or teammate to get a better understanding
of what you could have done differently.

Debrief with your partner and/or coach

It is often a good idea, especially after a debate that might not have gone so well, to go through a
brief review of the debate with both your partner and a coach or teammate. Not only might this
help further explain something that may have been confusing, but it also helps to clear the air and
make sure that you and your partner are able to remain positive rather than getting upset about how
things are going. Remember, this can be a difficult activity and it takes everyone time to build up
their skill set. It is also a useful skill to be graceful in both victory as well as defeat.

Gathering intelligence
Many schools are becoming increasingly sophisticated in the way they track other schools’ argu-
ments. By scouting what other teams are doing, it not only helps you to prepare for their more
common arguments ahead of time, but it might also give you ideas for your own positions. One
very simple way to do this is simply by creating a database of the rounds that teams from your own
school are in. Soon after each debate, the various partnerships on your team can enter some basic
information into a shared document that outlines the basic arguments they heard. This includes
 115

general things like case lists, disadvantages, and counter-plans, but you can also expand these lists
to include more specific and detailed (particular solvency mechanisms, their primary answers to a
particular disadvantage or critique, hidden tricks, or commonly used modular impact arguments).
By tracking these things, you are in much better shape if one of your school’s teams debates one of
those teams in the future.
Your intelligence gathering is also not limited to just the rounds that teams from your school has
been in. Once you have had a chance to get to know some of the people from other schools, it is
not only acceptable but even quite common to ask people from other schools about what particular
teams have been doing in their debates. If you know someone who has already debated the team
you are about to meet (which is a good reason to keep a copy of the pairings from previous rounds),
you could ask them if that team did anything in particular or if there were certain things that they
either did really well or had trouble with. This is really no different than the way sports teams will
scout their competition.

Additional Considerations for In-Tournament Preparation

Watch rounds
One of the very best ways, especially for beginning debaters, to learn more about debate and its
nuances, theories, and techniques, is to watch other people debate. If you were not fortunate enough
to reach the elimination rounds at a tournament, take the opportunity to observe those teams who
did and try to model some of their practices. The teams in elimination rounds are typically the
most experienced and skilled competitors at the tournament and it is highly likely that you will
pick up some very helpful pointers. This will serve the added benefit of scouting other schools’
positions, which is especially valuable if a team from your school is still in the competition and
may yet debate that team in a later round.

Wellness
As with any demanding activity, taking care of yourself is a crucial factor in effective preparation.
If you are not feeling well, you are not likely to be in the best position to debate to your fullest
potential. This means getting enough sleep (relying too heavily on caffeine throughout the day
can have unfortunate consequences), eating well (relying on sugar throughout the day can have
unfortunate consequences), staying hydrated (relying on carbonated beverages throughout the day
can have unfortunate consequences), and minimizing activities that might impair your ability to
be in the best condition to perform at optimal levels (again, unfortunate consequences). Debate
can be extremely stressful, and although we want to be as productive as possible, sometimes it is
important to your overall wellness to simply take a break between rounds and listen to some music,
hang out with friends, or go on a quiet walk around a college campus. Winning may be important,
but it is not everything. Fortunately, more and more people in the debate community are coming to
understand this.

Post-Tournament Preparation

The line between post-tournament preparation and pre-tournament preparation is somewhat blurry.
In fact, in many ways post-tournament preparation is simply the pre-tournament Preparation for
your next competition. It is essentially a cycle, and you are now returning to all those things in that
previous section of the chapter. However, there are also some things that make post-tournament
preparation slightly distinct. It is a time to review your situation and utilize the feedback you have
116 Chapter 13. Preparation: Foundation of Success

received to work on specific areas in your skill set that need some attention. It is a time to improve
the positions you have created and to write new ones from the ideas you gathered at the tournament,
as well as to prepare answers to the positions you had trouble responding to. Post-tournament
preparation is basically a time to reflect and revise.

Why Does Post-Tournament Preparation Matter?

No one is perfect, and yet we can work towards becoming so. We all have things we can work on
to improve both our skills and our knowledge base. Similar to the practice-makes-perfect mentality
of pre-tournament preparation, with post-tournament preparation you are still practicing, you just
have a few more resources to work with. Now that you have been to a tournament you have some
feedback and personal experience to work with – you have probably had a half dozen rounds or so
and have heard from as many judges with some unique and targeted guidance for improvement.
Theoretically, these extra resources should improve your ability to prepare even more effectively
for the next round of competition. Always remember that learning to become a better debater is a
process. It takes time. But with some dedication and a little bit of guidance, anyone can do it.

How Do You Do Post-Tournament Preparation?

The post-tournament period is a time to improve. If you reflect on your experiences after each
tournament, both on your own and with your partner and/or coach, you will be able to identify what
went well and what could have gone better. Prioritize a couple of specific things to improve on
before your next competition, whether that is in your argument positions, your presentation and
performance, your flowing skills, or some combination thereof.

Create better positions

Your debate experiences, and especially the feedback you received from your judges, should help
you to assess the major weaknesses of your arguments. What was missing? Where did they break
down? Use your time before the next tournament to fill in the gaps of your more favorite arguments.
How can you make them applicable to more topic areas? How can you give them your arguments a
higher probability, larger magnitude or quicker timeframe? You can also do some investigation into
some of the issues or positions you lost to in order to increase your knowledge on that subject and
prepare yourself for the next time you might encounter it. Or you might have been so impressed
with a particular argument you heard that you will want to do some research and create a similar
position for yourself. Either way, the experiences you had at the previous tournament can be a
useful guide in directing your ongoing research and preparation efforts.
It is also worth bearing in mind that while you are preparing responses to the argument positions
you have heard other teams advocate, they are probably going to do the same for your positions.
If you do little to update or improve your positions simply because they were successful the last
time, you might find the next time you meet a team that you had previously defeated to be a very
different story. You should consistently adjust and fine tune your arguments and ideas in order to
keep them fresh and strategically viable.

Improve your performance

One of the areas we are constantly working on in debate is our performance – both personal and
team performance. Presentation styles in debate are very unique from virtually any other form of
 117

communication, and they take practice and perseverance to master. In addition to the speaking
drills addressed earlier in the chapter, now that you have some debate experience under your belt,
you have more materials to work with.
One commonly recommended drill is to redo speeches from your last tournament experience. By
giving the speech again, maybe several times and perhaps with a coach or teammate observing,
you can make steady adjustments and improvements. This will help you not only recognize the
mistakes you were making, but will also allow you to fix them. Perhaps you needed to improve
your word economy, or the organizational layout of your argument positions. Maybe you needed
additional explanation of a particular part of one of your more important positions, or maybe you
need to learn how to answer a particular kind of argument that you are not yet very familiar with.
Just as a baseball player who struck out several times in the previous game because the opposing
team’s pitcher had a mean fastball will spend several hours in batting practice before the next game,
the debater who lost to a particular argument at the previous tournament should spend some time
redoing their speech until they have figured out how to defeat that position.
You can also tailor your practice rounds to address specific arguments or situations that you had a
difficult time with. Perhaps you ran into a counter-plan for the first time in your debate experience,
and the judge’s decision might not have been in your favor. Now you can have some practice
rounds that focus on building your ability to deal with counter-plans. Using this as an example,
you should also have practice rounds where you defend a counter-plan, as one of the best ways
to learn how to answer particular types of positions is to learn how to deploy them yourself. By
increasing your familiarity with whatever issue or type of argument is in question, you will become
more comfortable and confident when debating them, which will make you more credible and
persuasive. These practices and drills will both keep your mind attuned to the process and test your
development in order to help identify areas to prioritize.

Managing the intelligence you have gathered

While at the tournament, you were gathering information about what other teams were doing, as
well as learning about specific judge preferences. Now you need to work to effectively organize
and utilize that resource. Your team should come up with an efficient way to collect and synthesize
the information you gather about other debate programs. By properly managing this database you
will be better prepared in the future when you meet a team you have already debated or have the
same judge you have had before. If there are teams that you know you are likely to meet again at
upcoming competitions, you can prioritize their arguments and positions as the ones you need to
prepare for. Obviously the topics will change, but many teams tend to run similar arguments over
and over again because they are comfortable with them and may have experienced a fair amount of
success with them. Just as it is a good idea for you to develop pre-prepared positions that you are
comfortable with and that you will try to make relevant to a large number of topic areas, the same
is true for other teams as well.

Conclusion

To conclude, always remember that there are a multitude of things you can do to prepare for a
debate beyond just the limited time allotted before each of your rounds. The more prepared you are
ahead of time, the better and more efficiently you will be able to use the actual prep time before
your individual debates. Prep time is obviously the part of preparation most directly relevant to
the immediate debate – at this point you know the topic, your opponent, your side, the judge, etc.,
but the quality of that Prep Time is heavily influenced by how thoroughly you have prepared long
118 Chapter 13. Preparation: Foundation of Success

before having ever arrived. Likewise, just because the debate is over does not mean you cannot use
that experience to help you prepare even further for future debates. Competitive academic debate
is a process, one that takes time, effort and perseverance to master. Try to find a balance between
vigilant dedication and being patient with yourself. No one learns how to do all of these things
efficiently all at once, but with a good attitude and a reasonable level of commitment, you will see
rapid improvement and the rewards that brings, both in terms of greater competitive success and,
more importantly, valuable education and important life skills.
Ultimately, these preparatory skills and techniques are rather good practice for the things we
encounter in everyday life, whether it is the various demands of the workplace, the challenges of
interpersonal relationships, politics, social issues, etc. All of these things can change and fluctuate
rather swiftly, usually without any prior notice. In many ways, parliamentary debate is really
not all that different than conversation itself. It typically moves rapidly and seemingly without
considerable conscious effort from one issue to the next. One topic of discussion quickly gives
way to another, sometimes with little to no noticeable connection between them, and yet you have
to immediately formulate thoughts and opinions. In this important way, the ever-changing and
evolving nature of parliamentary debate simply mimics the dynamic lives that we lead. By learning
to prepare in an efficient and orderly manner, we are building a firm foundation from which to
ready ourselves to face whatever challenges may come our way.
 14. The PM Constructive

P RIME M INISTER C ONSTRUCTIVE : B UILDING THE G OVERNMENT C ASE

B EN R EID – M C K ENDREE U NIVERSITY, S OUTHERN I LLINOIS U NIVERSITY

Introduction

This chapter provides a practical education, specifically regarding the effective construction and
deployment of government cases in what may be considered an average parliamentary debate envi-
ronment. It is composed of an introduction to and explanation of what I consider to be best practices
for the crafting of government constructive arguments to be used effectively at any competitive level.
While most of my knowledge and experience comes from a nationally competitive perspective,
extensive experience on regional and local circuits have also tested these methods, and demonstrate
utility. Together, we will walk through the basic components of a Prime Minister Constructive
(PMC), describe basic formatting conventions, and review the strategic considerations that may
be taken during both the crafting and use phase of your argument. Included in that process will
be a brief discussion of potential competitive and preparatory scenarios, and a couple of example
documents pulled from McKendree University’s debate files that are located at the end of this
document – McKendree’s file template, and a government case that McKendree read at the 2013
National Parliamentary Tournament of Excellence, with a video URL to the debate in question that
can be used as an example and teaching tool. This chapter speaks primarily to writing PMCs as a
component of the pre-tournament preparation process, rather than providing an exhaustive look at
the methods used to construct your case wholly during prep time. This is not to say that information
contained herein will not be useful in round-by-round preparation scenarios. For example, strategic
advice about the basic arguments that ought to be included in foreign policy debates can be applied
to a foreign policy topic regardless of whether the topic in question was prepared ahead of time.
Moreover, advice provided here can be used to write generic arguments that you may file away for
use in a variety of scenarios that would not afford you the luxury of using your pre-written PMCs.
120 Chapter 14. The PM Constructive

Additionally, this chapter assumes that you are writing PMCs that include a plan text, which has
become a common presumption at most parliamentary debate tournaments.

Basic Structure

There are a number of possible methods for constructing your argument based on your specific
needs or goals. Here, we will focus on what has become generally accepted as the basic structure
of the PMC case in competitive intercollegiate parliamentary debate. At the most basic level, there
are three parts to your PMC: (1) everything that comes before your plan text, (2) the plan text, and
(3) everything after the plan text. Generally, PMCs are structured to begin with an observation
introducing the resolution for the round, as well as providing a basic vision for the objective of the
debate – which is often contested in the debate. This observation is often referred to as “resolutional
analysis.” After a brief discussion of the resolution, teams will typically include an “inherency
observation”, potentially including more background information about the topic at hand. At this
point, the government team generally presents the plan text. This is the real starting point for the
debate. We will talk a bit about plan texts and the strategies and considerations that go into writing
them. By and large, however, our focus is on what comes after the plan text.
The vast majority of the PMC consists of the case advantages. These arguments provide the
justification for the implementation of the government plan. They are composed, usually, of three
distinct parts: one describing the status quo (uniqueness), one explaining why that condition of the
status quo is damaging (impact), and one describing how the plan can alter the status quo to avoid
the impact (solvency). The manner in which you structure, write, and research your PMCs will be
influenced by squad norms, the directions of your coach, the advice of your more senior debaters,
and your own experience and skill level regarding exhaustive research and argument construction.
Those norms, however, would benefit from being informed by community standards. The broader
community, through community-derived judging, dictates common practice. It is beneficial to
structure your arguments in a way that is familiar to the broader debate community, both because
people often, correctly or incorrectly, perceive there as being a right and wrong way to do things,
and because comfort and familiarity makes it much easier for us to engage something. Keeping this
in mind, any suggestions I make from here forward should not to be considered the definitive word
on how you ought to structure your PMCs, rather, they are my own thoughts about current best
practices.
As I have mentioned, my focus will deal with what comes after the plan text. We will, however,
spend a little bit of time talking about the strategic considerations that may go into crafting your
plan text. The only thing that bears mentioning about the part of the case that comes prior to the
plan is this – I believe that teams would be well served by scrapping their resolutional analysis
observation. This section is really only a waste of precious seconds that could be better used
clarifying or deepening an argument, or answering a point of information or two. Because these
sections only consist of the Prime Minister stating that “we believe the round should be evaluated
on a criterion of net-benefits, which means?” and “all terms will be defined in the context of?”,
there is no reason that I can see to include them. This is the case for a couple of reasons. First, if
you are reading a plan text, as is the norm, then it is generally assumed that you want the debate
to be evaluated based on a comparison of the government plan and any advocacy defended by the
opposition in the Member of Opposition’s Constructive speech. Second, it is now common practice
for any definition debate to begin only after the opposition has challenged the topicality of the
plan text. Given this, we again assume that the context of the debate informs the interpretation of
various resolutional terms. Moreover, the decision to define or provide an interpretation of a term
 121

at the outset of the debate can only harm the government by boxing them in to one interpretation
that would likely not be competitive with the interpretation read by the opposition, making any
topicality debate immediately more difficult for the MGC than it might otherwise be. Given these
reasons why the resolutional analysis observation is largely vestigial, and given that it takes time to
say anything in a debate, it is likely best to remove that part of your PMC. Some suggest that this
may also be true of the inherency observation, but the reasons for this are unclear. Moreover, given
the ever-changing nature of parliamentary debate topics, it is useful for teams to provide some
background information for their judges, their opponents, and themselves from the outset.

Writing a Plan Text

A typical plan text usually takes anywhere from five to ten seconds to read. Coaches, judges and
debaters typically place a great deal of importance on the plan text. Overall, the community places
on a great deal of importance on the precise language of the plan text, which is one reason why
great care and thought should be put into the crafting of the text. Moreover, this small bit of text is,
oftentimes, the focus of the debate, and the point of origin from which all of your offense originates.
For this reason, you must know precisely what you want the plan text to say, and why each part of
the plan text is written. It is imperative that each and every part of your plan text has a reason for
existing. Beyond the fact that an overly lengthy plan text will waste your speaking time, there are a
number of practical reasons for this dictum.
First are concerns of topicality. Unless it is your intention to either not defend the topic for any
number of strategic or philosophical reasons, it behooves you to ensure that your plan exists within
the bounds set by the most basic possible reading of the resolution to defend yourself from the
topicality debate. Oftentimes, an excess of “moving parts” in your plan text can muddle the meaning
of the text, and make it much more likely that you will not receive a favorable reading of your text,
increasing the difficulty of answering theory issues raised by the LOC.
Second, and perhaps more importantly, the plan text is not only your primary source of offense
in the debate, but it is also usually the seed from which all of the opposition’s offense will also
originate. In that sense, an overly complex or large plan can create obvious counterplan ground
for the opposition or increase the number or magnitude of links to the opposition’s criticism(s),
disadvantage(s), and/or case turn(s). For these reasons, a basic plan text should generally conform
to two guidelines: “1. A plan should stay light: do one thing and do it well. . . ”, and “. . . 2. Find
the smallest subset of whatever your original plan is that still gains your advantage. . . ” (Samuel &
Tenny, 2005).
It is important, however, to remember that these guidelines are specific on the utility of your plan
– on what you want it to accomplish. There may well be a reason for your plan text to be long and
complicated. The size of your plan is not the same as the length of your plan in words or characters.
Here’s an example from an PMC I wrote for the 2013 NPTE on the cyber-security subtopic: “The
United States Department of Homeland Security should condition the dispensation of Homeland
Security Grant Program funds upon an appellant agency’s commitment to switch all supervisory
control and data acquisition systems to isolated networks which use proprietary technology”.
McKendree’s PMC was to adopt a specific method for insulating networks, and to do so by
modifying a specific program. At first glance, this plan is quite large. But an examination of the
content of the plan and an understanding of the literature upon which the plan is based would
reveal that the opposite is true – the physical length and verbal complexity of the plan are, in fact,
deceptions which usefully hide precisely how small the plan is. An informed reading would tell you
that it modifies one small part of a very specific and popular policy initiative in a way that would
122 Chapter 14. The PM Constructive

only make sense to someone who has a base understanding of the way that “SCADA systems”
work. This minimizes the link ground afforded the opposition, makes it harder for the opposition to
write a meaningful counterplan, and has the added bonus of making you look smart, as long as you
do not drop the ball when it comes time to demonstrate your knowledge of the topic.
The above example is not to say that there is always a reason for a plan text to be physically long
and verbally complicated. Often times, we read the resolution for the round as the plan text. This is
viable and, I suspect, the ideal way to write your plans in most circumstances. In any instance, the
guidelines laid out in the original blog post published by Ian Samuel and Marie Tenny still apply.
You must have a reason for everything you do.
I should point out that you might decide to insert a detailed solvency argument contention between
your plan text and advantages. The decision to use such a contention will always be situational.
Generally, this will occur when one of two things would be accomplished – either the plan mandate
bears some explanation because of obscurity or complexity, or you can use the single contention to
resolve almost all of the links that will be the focus of your advantages. My general inclination
is to forego this contention unless it is necessary for explaining what the plan means. Such an
explanation would feel out of place or incomprehensible elsewhere in the debate.
Finally, the advantages will be your primary focus when it comes to the actual, hands-on construc-
tion of argument. There are, at a minimum, three parts to an advantage – uniqueness, impact, and
solvency. What follows are guidelines for how those parts should relate to each other, and how you
can maximize their utility. In the context of a PMC advantage, your uniqueness argument should
almost always describe the world in such a way that the forthcoming impact is absolutely inevitable
if the policy proposed by the PMC were not to be enacted.
As a demonstration, we will use the example of McKendree’s SCADA System PMC, the plan text
of which has been used previously, and the complete PMC for which is included in the appendices
of this text. The first advantage of that PMC deals with cyber-threats to utilities in the United States.
The argument, as written, aims to make it very clear that the United States will inevitably be rocked
by a major cyber-attack in the immediate future, absent some change in our security infrastructure.
This is a feature that every advantage should have. The goal of the PMC is to impress upon the
judge the absolute necessity of adopting the plan. There are few better ways to do this than by
making and winning the argument that something devastating is going to happen over the short
term. In many cases, this will be the single most important argument in the PMC, particularly if it is
combined with an impact that terminalizes to extinction. This is true for a couple of reasons. First, it
puts unique pressure on the opposition to either make either a very good argument in defense of the
status quo or to write a compelling, competitive counterplan. Second, it becomes a vital component
of impact comparison later in the debate. While the specific, labeled impact scenario of the PMC
ultimately represents the reason why the inevitable event of the status quo is bad, and precisely
how bad it will be, the use of an inevitability argument becomes an important part of the impact
because it provides a description of the probability that a particular impact will occur. While impact
comparison is not a part of this chapter, you should keep in mind that a 100% probable impact with
a large magnitude is good for the government team because it allows your solvency mechanism
to be imperfect, but ultimately preferable to alternatives. It is critical that the government case is
designed to allow you to win. To do this, it must be forward thinking in terms of its strategic utility,
and it must make the MGC and PMR easier than they otherwise could be.
The impact argument is probably the simplest part of any advantage. It is a description of the
inherent harm of the event that will occur if the status quo is allowed to continue without change.
There are few guidelines for this, other than that it should be as large as evidence and logic allows.
The specificity of the impact scenario will vary. Depending on whether your PMC makes claims
 123

about structure or power relations of the status quo on a broad scale – a hegemony argument is a
good example of this – or it describes something very specific that is going to happen, you may
have more or less intricate causal chains constitute the impact. The importance of having a highly
specific, situational scenario is often a matter of dispute. Some would say that it indicates high
levels of research, and in depth knowledge of the topic.
Those benefits come at a cost, however. One of them is that long causal chains become very easy for
the opposition to disrupt by focusing on one weak point. Such a strategy can be devastating to your
entire argumentative posture. Another is that, at some point, long causal chains explaining how an
impact may occur to sound incredible to the point of absurdity. It can be hard to convince a judge
that exactly twenty things will happen in a precise order as a result of not doing the government
team’s plan. So with that in mind, the complexity of your impact will always be dictated by a
judgment call based on what you feel you can defend given the literature you are drawing from,
and your own abilities.
Similarly, the nature of the topic, the hypotheses of the literature, and the bounds of logic often
dictate impact magnitude. Usually, PMCs will be written in such a way that the result of the
inevitable event will eventuate in total planetary extinction. Given that the usual method of impact
comparison depends on a combination of probability and magnitude, it makes sense that having
absolute probability, and infinite magnitude is good for the government’s odds of winning. There
are, however, instances where you may choose not to do this for a number of strategic reasons. You
may be concerned about a potential impact turn or kritik the opposition may read predicated on
the use of large impacts or impacts that claim a nuclear conflict will occur. Similarly, you may
decide, based on the topic, to minimize your magnitude, maximize your probability, and then read
a number of framework arguments about why your judge should prefer those impacts. These calls
are all situational, and all based on team doctrine and personal preference.
The final component of a PMC advantage is solvency. There are a couple of critical components to
solvency arguments. First, you need to strive to ensure that your solvency arguments can resolve
each of the conditions of the status quo in the uniqueness section in a way that they eliminate
or minimize the risk of the impact. Second, and perhaps most importantly, you should use the
solvency arguments to insulate yourself from predictable, or particularly effective counterplans. On
international topics, for example, it is common for opposition teams to read “actor counterplans,”
which typically advocate for the same action as the government team, but through a different
agent of action. For this reason, international topics should always include at least one advantage
that cannot be solved by an alternate actor counterplan. Often, this means deploying a hegemony
argument, or, if you are advanced in your research process, finding reasons why the United States
(or topically designated actor) is the only nation capable of doing the plan – whether it be their
diplomatic standing, their technology, or their proximity to an issue. The same principle can be
applied to a PMC where you want to defend a domestic action against the actor counterplan. Think
of reasons why only Congress, or only the Supreme Court, or only an executive agency is capable
of doing something, and then include that argument.

Additional PMC Items

Beyond advantages, there are other items that you can include in the PMC. You may or may not
choose to read framework arguments preempting a kritik, for example, or you may choose to read
substantive arguments to give you a head start on defending against the predicted line of opposition
attack. This is another contentious area. For example, reading framework to preempt the kritik may
waste time that you could use to read more and better arguments related to the substance of your
124 Chapter 14. The PM Constructive

case. They allow the opposition a similar head start on the framework debate. Moreover, convincing
your judge to reject the kritik on face because of a PMC framework argument is rare.

There are risks involved with other types of pre-empts as well. For example, you may choose
to read the link turns to the predictable politics disadvantage in the PMC to try to persuade the
opposition not to read that argument and to make the time pressures of the MGC less problematic
(eg. Reading “Republicans support our plan” or “our plan is bi-partisan”). Of course, the problem
here is that if you guessed wrong about the disadvantage or are faced with a nimble opposition
team, then you are locked into a specific defense of your plan against politics. This is harmful
because you would both lose the ability to read link-turns and no-links to the disadvantage and
because it provides high levels of link probability for the opposition to use against you. These types
of arguments are often, at best, a waste of time, and at worst, they can all but guarantee that you
will lose.

A couple of exceptions to this that may be useful, if deployed judiciously, are impact framing
(arguing for you judge to evaluate either small, probable impacts or large, improbable) and generic
defense against a host of popular argument types and impacts. As an example, we can look to
McKendree’s Synthetic Biology PMC as it was deployed in the semi-final debate of the 2013 NPTE.
The original file version of the PMC is included with this text, as is a link to the video of this
particular debate. Looking at the PMC, a couple of things should stick out. Generally, because of
the risk of impact turns, link turns, advantage counterplans, or any number of opposition arguments,
it is almost always advisable that the PMC include at least two advantages. PMCs that include only
one advantage are at risk of having all of the offense it might have provided completely stripped.
This PMC, written by Brent Nicholson, is a classic example of PMC’s straying from usual modes
of PMC construction because of their purpose-built nature. Informed by the smallness of the topic,
and by an understanding of arguments frequently read by opposing teams, the decision was made
early to make this PMC quite small due to a desire to limit the ground offered the opposition,
because of the highly specific suggestions posited by the research, and by the small number of
potential scenarios that may arise from a compromise of synthetic biology lab security. Instead of
reading a second advantage, you should note that, in the video, McKendree instead read a fourth
contention designed to limit Whitman’s ability to read and go for disadvantages.

Only one small part of this contention is included in the file provided. This is because while it
was always the plan for McKendree to read a small PMC and dissuade the opposition from doing
something, the specific mode of preemption was to be a prep-time decision. Based on McKendree’s
understanding of Whitman DM’s abilities and preferences, McKendree spent time in prep writing
reasons why politics disadvantages are irrelevant, why the links are minimal, and why most impacts
are intellectual nonsense. This is a productive way to utilize prep time at topic area tournaments,
particularly if you are prepared with smart, flexible PMCs. Making small changes based on the
nature of the competition is critical to adjusting to the competitive environment.

I would suggest you watch the debate and look at the advantages and limitations of this type of
strategy, and how you can use similar PMCs for specific reasons. While Whitman, the opposition,
won the debate, the PMC in question admirably did everything it was designed to do short of
winning. The smallness of the plan’s action, and the wealth of arguments about politics and
numerous impacts limited Whitman to going for a kritik that they may have not wanted to go for,
particularly given the stated judging philosophies of some members of the judging panel.
 125

Conclusion

In fact, you should watch more rounds than just this one. While here you are provided with an
excellent textual resource to help you improve your debate ability and skills, I am a firm believer
that there are really two ways to get better at debate: to learn by doing, and to learn by watching.
Ultimately, watching high-level debaters, understanding what they do and why they do it, and then
emulating that – with or without your own modifications – is the most effective way to achieve
high levels of competitive success. Watching debates, as with writing your PMCs, and as with
everything else in the debate, must have a reason behind it. With a little thought, and a lot of work,
success in parliamentary debate can be quite easy to achieve.
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SCADA—AFF
CONTENTION ONE—BACKGROUND

A. SUPERVISORY CONTROL AND DATA ACQUISITION (SCADA)

SYSTEMS ARE TYPES OF COMPUTER CONTROL SYSTEMS WHICH
MONITOR AND CONTROL INDUSTRIAL PROCESSES WHICH EXIST IN
THE PHYSICAL WORLD.
B. OVER ROUGHLY THE PAST DECADE, SCADA SYSTEMS HAVE
MOVED FROM BEING ISOLATED NETWORKS WHICH OPERATE
BASED ON PROPRIETARY TECHNOLOGY, TO BEING WIDELY
INTEGRATED NETWORKS WHICH FUNCTION USING OFF THE SHELF
COMPUTING SYSTEMS.
C. THE HOMELAND SECURITY GRANT PROGRAM LISTS
CYBERSECURITY, INCLUDING THE SECURITY OF SCADA SYSTEMS
AS PROJECTS FOR WHICH GRANTS MAY BE DISPENSED, BUT
DOES NOT MAINTAIN AN EXPLICIT REQUIREMENT FOR THE USE OF
PROPRIETARY SCADA SYSTEMS. NO SIGNAL THAT THIS WILL
CHANGE IN THE SQ.

THUS THE PLAN

THE UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY SHOULD
CONDITION THE DISPENSATION OF HOMELAND SECURITY GRANT
PROGRAM FUNDS UPON AN APPELLANT AGENCY'S COMMITMENT TO
SWITCH ALL SUPERVISORY CONTROL AND DATA ACQUISITION
SYSTEMS TO ISOLATED NETWORKS WHICH USE PROPRIETARY
TECHNOLOGY.

ADVANTAGE ONE—DOMESTIC SECURITY

A. CYBER ATTACK INEVITABLE IN THE SQ.

1. 79% OF 105 SECURITY PROFESSIONALS SURVEYED AT THIS
YEAR'S INFORMATION SYSTEMS SECURITY ASSOCIATION
CONFERENCE BELIEVE THAT THERE WILL BE A LARGE SCALE
ATTACK ON THE IT POWERING US INFRASTRUCTURE IN THE
NEXT YEAR. UTILITIES WERE AMONG THE SERVICES
CONSIDERED MOST LIKELY TO BE ATTACKED.
2. THE SURVEY ISOLATED THAT 35% BELIEVED THE MOST LIKELY
TARGET WAS THE NATION'S POWER GRID, WHILE 13% PREDICT
AN ATTACK ON THE OIL AND GAS INDUSTRY, AND 12% THINK
WATER TREATMENT AND SEWAGE FACILITIES ARE MOST
LIKELY TARGET.

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3. DATA SUPPORTED BY THE DEPT. OF HOMELAND SECURITY'S
INDUSTRIAL CONTROL SYSTEMS CYBER EMERGENCY
RESPONSE TEAM (ICS-CERT), WHICH RESPONDED TO 198
CYBER INCIDENTS IN FY 2012.
4. 41% OF 2012 INCIDENTS OCURRED IN THE ENERGY SECTOR,
INCLUDING A “SPEAR-PHISHING” CAMPAIGN AGAINST 23
COMPANIES IN THE GAS PIPELINE INDUSTRY, WHICH RESULTED
IN THE COMPROMISING OF TWO SYSTEMS, AND THE
COLLECTION OF DATA THAT WOULD GIVE ATTACKERS THE
ABILITY TO GAIN REMOTE CONTROL OVER SCADA SYSTEMS.
5. MORE EVIDENCE—A FORENSIC SUMMARY OF A DOD
INVESTIGATION RELEASED IN 2002 FOUND EVIDENCE OF
MUTLTIPLE SITE CASINGS NATIONWIDE—VISITORS OBSERVED
ELECTRICAL GENERATION AND TRANSMISSION, WATER
STORAGE AND DISTRIBUTION, AND GAS FACILITIES, BEFORE
ROUTING COMMUNICATIONS THROUGH TELECOM SWITCHES IN
SAUDI ARABIA, INDONESIA, AND PAKISTAN. THE FOLLOWING
YEAR, INFORMATION RELATED TO THE REMOTE CONTROL OF
THESE SYSTEMS WAS FOUND ON SEIZED AL QAEDA LAPTOPS
6. SCADA SYSTEMS ARE PARTICULARLY VULNERABLE—MARKET
EFFICIENCIES HAVE DRIVEN MOST UTILITY AGENCIES AND
ENERGY CORPORATIONS TO UTILIZING EASILY ACCESSIBLE
SYSTEMS, WHICH ARE CONNECTED TO THE INTERNET, AND USE
COMMON OPEN-SOURCE SOFTWARE TO MAINTAIN SYSTEMS,
MEANING THEY CAN BE ACCESSED ANYTIME, ANYWHERE.
B. THE IMPACTS
1. THE 1982 US SABOTAGE OF USSR PIPELINE SOFTWARE WHICH
HIGHJACKED CONTROL OF PIPELINE PRESSURE SYSTEMS AND
ALARMS RESULTED IN A THREE KILOTON BLAST IN SIBERA.
WHILE THE REMOTE LOCATION OF THE EXPLOSION RESULTED
IN ZERO DEATHS, PREDISPOSITIONS TO ASSYMMETRY BY
ENEMIES OF THE UNITED STATES MEANS THERE'S AN
INCREDIBLY HIGH RISK OF SUCH AN EXPLOSION OCURRING IN
A DENSELY POPULATED REGION OF THE UNITED STATES,
WHICH WOULD BE GUARANTEED TO KILL THOUSANDS.
2. THE 2000 SABOTAGE OF THE QUEENSLAND SEWAGE SYSTEM
BY THE HACKING OF A SCADA SYSTEM RESULTED IN MILLIONS
LITERS OF TOXIC SEWAGE FLOODING A PUBLIC PARK,
CONTAMINATING AN OPEN SURFACE-WATER DRAINAGE DITCH,
AND FLOWING 500 METERS TO A TIDAL CANAL. COMBINE THIS
ABILITY WITH THE KNOWN DESIRE OF INTERNATIONAL TERROR
NETWORKS TO PERPETRATE A BIOLOGICAL OR CHEMICAL

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ATTACK ON THE UNITED STATES, AND WE ARE FACED WITH
THE POTENTIAL OF A DEVASTATING BIOCHEMICAL ATTACK
WHICH COULD KILL MILLIONS OVER A VERY SHORT PERIOD OF
TIME.
3. AN ATTACK ON THE POWER GRID WOULD CAUSE ROLLING
BLACKOUTS ACROSS THE UNITED STATES, CUTTING
COMMUNICATION AND EMERGENCY RESPONSE ABILITIES.
SUCH A STRIKE WOULD BE ACCOMPANIED BY A TRADITIONAL
TERRORIST ATTACK. IMAGINE 9/11 WITH NO EMTS, COPS, OR
FIREFIGHTERS, AND YOU GET THE IDEA.
4. ANY ATTACK ON US INFRASTRUCTURE, EVEN ONE WHICH
RESULTS IN MINIMAL CASUALTIES, WOULD RESULT IN MASSIVE
OVERREACTION ON THE PART OF THE UNITED STATES,
RESULTING IN A PROTRACTED MILITARY CAMPAIGN IN
POLITICALLY UNSTABLE REGIONS—IRAQ AND AFGHANISTAN
PROVE. AS MANY AS 600K CIVILIANS MAY HAVE DIED IN THOSE
CAMPAIGNS. SUCH A CAMPAIGN INCREASES ANTI-AMERICAN
HOSTILITY, AND RESULTS IN A HIGHER PREVALENCE OF
TERROR ATTACKS, CAUSING CONSTANT WAR, EVENTUATING IN
MILLIONS OF DEATHS.
C. SOLVENCY
1. LACK OF GUIDANCE IS THE PROBLEM—THE COST
EFFECTIVENESS OF USING OPEN-SOURCE, NETWORKED
CONTROL SYSTEMS GUARANTEES CONTINUED USE OF THESE
SYSTEMS.
2. GIVEN THE NECESSITY OF ACCESS TO HSGP FUNDS,
CONDITIONING DISPENSATION GUARANTEES WIDESPREAD
ADOPTION OF HARDENED, ISOLATED NETWORKS.
3. THE REMOVAL OF SCADA CONTROLS FROM THE INTERNET,
AND THE USE OF PROPRIETARY SOFTWARE ELIMINATES THE
RISK OF OFF-SITE SECURITY COMPROMISES, CLOSING THE
DOOR ON SUCH AN ATTACK.

ADVANTAGE TWO—MIDDLE EASTERN STABILITY

A. MIDDLE EASTERN NATIONS INTEGRATING SCADA SYSTEMS IN THE

SQ, THREATENS ENERGY AND WATER SECURITY ACROSS
MULTIPLE GULF STATES
1. CYBERSECURITY INTERNATIONAL ENERGY AND UTILITIES
FORUM ISOLATES A PRECIPITOUS RISE IN SCADA INTEGRATION
THROUGHOUT THE MIDDLE EAST. THE DRIVE TO INCREASE

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EFFICIENCY IN THE PRODUCTION OF OIL AND GAS HAS LEAD TO
THE RISE OF THE “DIGITAL OILFIELD”
2. UTILITY DEMAND IN THE GULF COOPERATION COUNCIL IS
PROJECTED TO INCREASE BY 7.5% YEAR ON YEAR, WHICH HAS
SPARKED INTEREST IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF A SMART GRID
PARADIGM DEPENDENT UPON INTEGATED SCADA SYSTEMS TO
INCREASE EFFICIENCY.
3. IN 2010, THE NUMBER OF SCADA ATTACKS IN THE MIDDLE EAST
INCREASED BY 40%, AND HAS SEEN SUSTAINED GROWTH.
STUXNET WAS JUST THE BEGINNING—THE PAST YEAR HAS
SEEN THE RISE OF THE DUQU VIRUS, WHICH GATHERS INTEL
LIKED DESIGN DOCUMENTS AND ASSETS, SETTING THE STAGE
FOR FUTURE CYBER ATTACKS ON ICS SYSTEMS IN THE REGION.
4. TREND OF CYBER ATTACKS IN THE REGION GROWING—IN
ADDITION TO STUXNET AND DUQU, FLAME AND SHAMOON HAVE
BEEN USED TO TARGET REGIONAL SCADA SYSTEMS, WITH
SHAMOON SPECIFICALLY FOCUSED ON DAMAGING INDUSTRIAL
CONTROL SYSTEMS CRITICAL TO THE ENERGY INDUSTRY, AS
WELL AS DISRUPTING THE SOFTWARE RESPONSIBLE FOR THE
OPERATION OF WATER TREATMENT AND DESALINATION
TECHNOLOGY.
5. ATTACKS ARE INCREASINGLY MORE SOPHISTICATED—THEY
EXPAND IN SCOPE AND SOPHISTICATION WITH EACH
SUBSEQUENT INCIDENT—COLLAPSE IS IMMINENT.
B. IMPACTS
—FIRST IS OIL SPIKES
1. A MAJOR ATTACK ON SCADA SYSTEMS BELONGING TO THE
ENERGY INDUSTRY, WHICH REPRESENTS 70-90% OF REGIONAL
GDP WOULD BE DEVASTATING TO THE GLOBAL ECONOMY. THE
REGION IS THE SOURCE OF 40% OF THE OIL ON EARTH,
INCLUDING THE MOST IMPORTANT SWING PRODUCERS.
2. THE2011 WAR IN LYBIA, HOME TO A COMPARATIVELY SMALL
AMOUNT OF OIL, CAUSED MAJOR SPIKES IN ENERGY PRICES,
WHICH WERE PARTICULARLY DEVASTATING IN EUROPE.
REGIONWIDE FAILURE OF SCADA SYSTEMS WOULD CAUSE OIL
SHOCKS SO MASSIVE THEY WOULD DESTABILIZE THE ENTIRE
GLOBAL ECONOMY.
3. TIMED WITH INCREASING CRISIS IN EUROPE AND THE WORLD
AT LARGE, TOTAL DEPRESSION IS IMMINENT. THE COLLAPSE
OF THE ECONOMY ERODES TRADE TIES, CAUSES AN UPTURN IN
SCAPEGOATING AND NATIONALISM IN NATION-STATES, AND
FORCES STATES TO TURN TO WAR ECONOMIES TO REGAIN

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WEALTH. CONFLICT OVER THE LAST REMAINING ENERGY
SOURCES WOULD INEVITABLY GO NUCLEAR AND KILL
BILLIONS, BECAUSE STATES WOULD HAVE NOTHING LEFT TO
LOSE.
—SECOND IS WATER WARS
1. ATTACK ON WATER TREATMENT AND DESALINATION
TECHNOLOGY, CRITICAL TO THE MAINTENANCE OF
FRESWHATER SUPPLIES IN THE REGION, DISPLACE MILLIONS,
CAUSE STARVATION, DEHYDRATION, REFUGEE CRISES, AND
WAR.
2. WATER WARS GO INTERNATIONAL—WATER COMPETITION
ALREADY FORMING BETWEEN RUSSIA AND CHINA, INDIA AND
PAKISTAN, AND NUMEROUS OTHERS. THE ERUPTION OF ONE
CONFLICT WOULD CAUSE THE BREAKOUT OF OTHERS, AS
NATIONS SEEK TO SECURE DWINDLING WATER SUPPLY.
3. THESE WARS GO NUCLEAR—WATER IS AN ESSENTIAL
RESOURCE FOR HUMAN EXISTENCE. STATES WHICH FEEL
THEIR SOVEREIGNTY THREATENED BY SUCH A LACK WILL DO
ANYTHING NECESSARY TO SECURE ACCESS.
B. PLAN SOLVES
1. SCADA SYSTEMS CONTROL EVERY ASPECT OF THIS CRITICAL
INFRASTRUCTURE, SO REFORMS ARE KEY.
2. US POLICY IS MODELED INTERNATIONALLY—THE GCC HAS MET
MULTIPLE TIMES IN RECENT MONTHS, AND SET SCADA
SECURITY AS A PRIORITY. THE ONLY MISSING INGREDIENT IS
WIDESPREAD AVAILABILITY OF PROPRIETARY SYSTEMS
NECESSARY TO HARDENED NETWORKS. GIVEN THE PRIORITY
OF SCADA SECURITY, NATIONS WILL SHELL OUT THE CASH.
3. MOST SCADA SYSTEMS ARE IMPORTED—THE SYSTEMS
RUNNING THE IRANIAN FACILITIES ATTACKED BY STUXNET,
FOR EXAMPLE, WERE CREATED BY SIEMENS. PLAN CREATES
INSTANT DEMAND IN THE UNITED STATES FOR NEW SYSTEMS,
WHICH INEVTIABLY LEADS TO IMPROVED SECURITY
TECHNOLOGY ON THE MARKET.

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SYNTH BIO AFF

1. BACKGROUND

A. LAB SAFETY IN BIOSAFETY LEVELS 3 AND 4 (THE LABS THAT

CONTAIN THE DEADLIEST DISEASES AND HIGHEST THREAT
PATHOGENS IN THE WORLD) IS INCREDIBLY LAX IN THE SQUO.
B. THE ANTHRAX ATTACKS AFTER 9/11 WERE PERPETRATED USING
ANTHRAX MADE IN A GOVERNMENT RUN BIOSAFETY LEVEL 4
LAB. PRETTY GOOD INDICATION THAT LAB SAFETY IS ACTUALLY
AN ISSUE.
C. THE WORST PART IS… WE HAVEN’T CHANGED LAB PROCEDURE
FOR BSL3 AND BSL4 LABS. THE USFG HAS PASSED OFF THE
ANTHRAX ATTACKS AS A FLUKE THAT DOESN’T NEED TO BE
ADDRESSED.

THE PLAN.

THE UNITED STATES FEDERAL GOVERNMENT SHOULD MANDATE

THE PRESENCE OF VISIBLE, ARMED GUARDS AT EACH EXTERIOR
LAB ENTRANCE; VIDEO RECORDING OF EACH EXTERIOR LAB
ENTRANCE; A CLOSED CIRCUIT TELEVISION SYSTEM UNDER
OBSERVATION IN A COMMAND AND CONTROL CENTER; AND
ACTIVE INTRUSION DETECTION SYSTEMS INTEGRATED WITH THE
CLOSED CIRCUIT TELEVISION SYSTEM AT ALL BIOSAFETY LEVEL 3
OR HIGHER LABORATORIES WHERE SYNTHETIC BIOLOGY
RESEARCH IS PERFORMED.

2. SOLVENCY

A. THESE ARE THE IMPLEMENTATIONS SUGGESTED BY A NUMBER

OF INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL STUDIES OF LABS IN THE US.
B. ONE OR MORE OF THESE MEASURES IS IN PLACE ALREADY IN
OVER 70% OF BSL3 OR 4 LABS IN THE SQUO. VERY FEW LABS
HAVE ALL 4.
C. THE PLAN WOULD BE MODELED INTERNATIONALLY. US IS THE
LEADING DEVELOPER OF SYNTHETIC BIOLOGY, ALL OF THE
MAJOR INSTITUTES ARE IN THE US, AND DEVELOPMENT
FOLLOWS OUR PATTERNS.
D. DEFINITELY AN INTERNATIONAL SPOTLIGHT WHICH CREATES
DOMESTIC PRESSURE TO CREATE LAB SAFETY INTERNALLY.

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ADVANTAGE ONE - LAB SAFETY

A. LAB SAFETY IS TERRIBLE IN THE SQUO

1. LAB SAFETY IS LEFT TO SELF-GOVERNANCE UNDER CURRENT

GUIDELINES. FUNCTIONALLY, THE GOVERNMENT HAS DECIDED
THAT IF THESE PEOPLE GOT PHDS IN THEIR FIELDS, THEN IT
MUST MEAN THEY NEED NO OVERSIGHT IN LABS.
2. UNFORTUNATELY, THAT SENTIMENT IS FAR OFF THE MARK. THE
SYNTHETIC BIOLOGY ENGINEERING RESEARCH CENTER AT UC-
BERKELEY, FOR INSTANCE, HAS HAD A NUMBER OF REPORTED
PROBLEMS GO UNADDRESSED. DR PAUL RABINOW, THE
BIOSAFETY EXPERT FORMERLY IN CHARGE OF THE LAB, CALLED
THE LAB WORKERS “PROFOUNDLY IRRESPONSIBLE.”
3. BSL4 OBVIOUSLY MEANS NOTHING. BRUCE IVENS, THE GUY WHO
SENT ANTHRAX THROUGH THE MAIL, WORKED AT A BSL4 LAB.
THAT SHOULD MEAN IT HAD THE HIGHEST SECURITY IN THE
COUNTRY, BUT INSTEAD ANTHRAX WAS REMOVED FROM THE
LAB WITHOUT BEING DETECTED.
4. ACCORDING TO A 2010 REPORT, LABS AROUND THE COUNTRY
HAVE FAILED TO PROPERLY SECURE BIOLOGICAL AGENTS
WHICH HAS COMPROMISED THE CDC’S ABILITY TO RESPOND
EFFECTIVELY IF ONE OF THOSE PATHOGENS WAS RELEASED
INTO THE PUBLIC.
5. THE CLOSEST THING TO OVERSIGHT THAT THE FEDERAL
GOVERNMENT HAS IS INTERNAL USDA POLICY DESIGNED “IN
LIGHT OF LEGISLATION” AS A TEMPORARY SOLUTION TO THE
PROBLEM. IT BASICALLY AMOUNTS TO ALLOWING THE LAB
DIRECTORS TO DECIDE WHAT IS SAFE ENOUGH.

B. IMPACTS

1. BIOTERROR. WITHOUT MEANINGFUL LAB SECURITY, THE

RELEASE OF BIOLOGICAL AGENTS IS INEVITABLE. IT’S ALREADY
HAPPENED AND WE HAVEN’T CHANGED POLICY SINCE THEN.
PROBABLY THE MOST LIKELY IMPACT IN THE DEBATE. EVEN
WORSE, THE CDC HAS ADMITTED TO BEING UNABLE TO
RESPOND TO THE RELEASE, WHICH MEANS THAT THESE LABS
ARE LIKELY A TARGET IN THE SQUO.
2. RELEASE OF A LEVEL FOUR PATHOGEN COULD CAUSE MILLIONS
OF DEATHS BEFORE IT WAS CONTAINED BY THE CDC. AND BSL4

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DISEASES ARE BY DEFINITION UNCURABLE. WITHOUT CDC
CONTAINMENT, THE DISEASE SPREAD CERTAINLY WOULD GO
GLOBAL, KILLING BILLIONS, IF NOT CAUSING EXTINCTION.
3. ANIMAL DISEASE. THE ACCIDENTAL RELEASE OF A PATHOGEN
THAT LIVES IN ANIMAL POPULATIONS RISKS THE DESTRUCTION
OF LOCAL ECOSYSTEMS AND A RIPPLE EFFECT THAT RISKS
EXTINCTION. BSL3 AND 4 LABS ARE THE TESTING CENTERS FOR
ALL DISEASE AND THE RELEASE OF ONE OF THESE DISEASES
COULD CAUSE A PLAGUE IN ANIMAL POPULATIONS, WIPING OUT
ENTIRE LINKS OF THE FOOD CHAIN. EVALUATE THIS IMPACT
USING PRECAUTIONARY PRINCIPLE, WE DON’T KNOW WHICH
SPECIES COULD BE KEYSTONE.

C. PLAN SOLVES.

1. THE PLAN CREATES A FRAMEWORK FOR LAB SAFETY THAT WILL

DRASTICALLY INCREASE RESPONSIVENESS TO POTENTIAL
THREATS. NOT ONLY DOES THE USE OF GUARDS MAKE
UNAUTHORIZED ENTRANCE MORE DIFFICULT, IT DETERS
ATTEMPTS ENTIRELY.
2. CCTV AND CONSTANT RECORDING MEANS THAT SECURITY
BREACHES CAN BE ADDRESSED RETROACTIVELY AND THAT
SECURITY CAN EVOLVE TO ACCOMMODATE FOR THOSE
FAILINGS.
3. SENDS A SIGNAL THAT BSL 3 AND 4 LABS ARE NO LONGER
VIABLE TARGETS FOR TERRORIST ATTACKS.
4. CREATES A PERCEPTION AMONG LAB EMPLOYEES THAT THEY
ARE BEING WATCHED AND THAT THEIR PERFORMANCES ARE
BEING MONITORED FOR SAFETY ISSUES. MEANS THE CULTURE
OF IRRESPONSIBILITY IN THESE LABS IS RESOLVED BY FURTHER
OVERSIGHT.

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3 THE ERA OF GREAT POWER WARS IS OVER, YOUR DA’S HAVE NO IMPACT

1. THERE HAS NOT BEEN A MILITARY STANDOFF BETWEEN TWO GREAT POWERS
SINCE THE END OF WWII. THE ADVENT OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS HAS RAISED THE
STAKES TO THE EXTENT THAT NO NUCLEAR ARMED STATES WILL EVER RISK
ARMED CONFLICT.

2. THE INTERCONNECTEDNESS OF THE GLOBAL ECONOMY MAKES ALL GREAT

POWERS DEPENDENT UPON ONE ANOTHER. THERE IS NO POTENTIAL FOR
CONFLICT BECAUSE OF THE IRREPARABLE HARM SUCH A CONFLICT WOULD
CAUSE TO THE ECONOMIES OF VARIOUS NATIONS.

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 15. The LO Constructive

T HE L EADER OF O PPOSITION C ONSTRUCTIVE :

S ELECTING S TRATEGIES AND D ELIVERING THE LOC
J OE H YKAN – L EWIS & C LARK C OLLEGE , W HITMAN C OLLEGE

Introduction

As the first speech given by the opposition team, the Leader of Opposition Constructive (LOC) lays
out the opposition strategy, and sets up the collapse for the Member of Opposition Constructive
(MOC). The fundamental goal of the LOC is to establish a strategy that generates as much offense
in comparison to the Prime Minister Constructive (PMC) as possible. By reading some combination
of off-case arguments (disadvantages, kritiks, procedurals etc.), and specific answers to the PMC,
the LOC ideally sets the stage for the MOC to collapse to only a few vital arguments in order to
win the debate. The LOC is often regarded as a relatively unimportant speech, perhaps because it is
seen as primarily regurgitating a set of arguments written down in prep time. While it is true that
the LOC does less to determine the outcome of a debate than the MOC and that many LOC’s are
exercises in recitation, the speech can be tremendously important and dynamic in its own right. A
good LOC dictates the terms of the debate by establishing a diverse set of tasks that the Member of
Government Constructive (MGC) must accomplish, and sets up the MOC to capitalize wherever
the MGC fails to execute. The influence the LOC exerts over the character of the debate makes
understanding how to give the speech effectively critical for any team’s opposition success.

Practice and Preparation and an LOC

The most important step in doing anything well as a debater is preparation. Luckily for LO’s, the
right type of extra practice reliably returns increases in performance. Because reading pre-prepped
138 Chapter 15. The LO Constructive

arguments is a major part of the LOC, the ability to deliver these arguments quickly and clearly is a
core skill LO’s must practice. Learning to speak quickly will allow you to make more arguments,
open up new strategic options, and make answering your speech more difficult. For most debaters,
speed is one of the easier debate skills to acquire. Several techniques exist to improve your speed
as a debater. Reading a strategy from your files in eight minutes and then trying to read it again in
seven works fine. Consistency is key; try to allocate a few minutes every day to do a speed drill.
It is important not to pick up bad habits while practicing your speed. Do your speed drills the
same way you give speeches in rounds and pay special attention to eliminating filler words and
speaking clearly. If you do have clarity issues, you will need to work on that in practice as well.
You can improve your clarity by over-enunciating in speed drills or by beginning a drill slowly and
increasing your rate of delivery only when you can speak clearly.
Successful LOC’s must also prepare by memorizing arguments they frequently use. Having a library
of memorized arguments makes preparation time more efficient, allows you to enter a debate round
with more strategic options, and makes it easier for you to adapt your LOC strategy to unexpected
PMC arguments. The actual process of memorizing arguments is simple. You will end up partially
memorizing some arguments just by debating. However, you should also be conscientious of what
arguments you need to memorize and actively work on that process by doing your speed drills with
those arguments.
All debaters should memorize as many of the major impact scenarios (economic collapse, U.S. war
with China, global warming, etc.) as possible and (at minimum) the voter level of procedurals, as it
saves prep time and cleans up your delivery. Being prepared also means knowing how you like
to answer certain advantages and memorizing those arguments. For example you might decide to
go with a “uniqueness overwhelms the link”1 approach to soft power advantages and memorize
the specific “soft power low” warrants and “link thumper”2 arguments you want to deploy. The
off-case arguments you need to memorize will vary based on what strategies you prefer, but you
should focus on ensuring you have a solution to any type of government plan that might be read
against you. For example a debater might memorize their current politics disadvantage, a pair
of generic kritiks (meant to counter critical PMC’s), the federalism disadvantage and the states
counterplan (meant to counter small, domestic PMC plans), and the China and Israel disadvantages
for international topics. The list of memorized arguments for a more kritik and procedural-oriented
debater might look quite different, which is fine. What matters most is that you are certain to have
an answer no matter what the government team does.
A well-prepared LOC should also know how long it takes to read their favored strategies. Obviously,
you cannot know exactly how long everything in your files takes to shell out, but getting a sense of
timing is important. Knowing how long it takes you to read a strategy allows you to adapt in round
more efficiently. If, after hearing the PMC, you think you will need more time on case than you
anticipated, you will need to know how long the off-case takes in order to decide what to cut down
or remove entirely.
Cold LOC drills build on a debater’s delivery and memorization skills while also improving strategy
and time allocation. In a cold LOC drill, the LOC listens to a Prime Minister Constructive (PMC)
1 “Uniqueness overwhelms the link” arguments claim that the action of plan is insufficient to resolve the problems
isolated at the uniqueness level of the advantage. E.g. if the uniqueness of a soft power advantage contends that the
US is seen as illegitimate due to its use of drones, the opposition can argue that a single package of humanitarian aid
is too small of a correction to repair America’s image.
2 “Link thumpers” are arguments that assert the link of a position has already been triggered. E.g. if an advantage
claims that the US giving humanitarian aid will improve its soft power, the opposition can read thumpers that show
how much humanitarian the US has already given. This demonstrates either that the problem is being solved, or that
plan is insufficient to resolve the problem.
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without preparing beforehand and gives the LOC immediately afterward. You can do this drill
as part of a full practice debate, by having one of your teammates or coaches read a PMC from
your files, or by watching a PMC online. The cold LOC will test how well you have memorized
arguments, challenge your ability to adjust and improvise, and give you a sense of which strategies
work and which do not. In your cold LOC’s, and all of your drills, it is also important to introduce
variety. You should have a drill against a critical PMC before you debate one at a tournament, the
same for a whiteness PMC, a blatantly untopical policy plan, etc.
As an LOC you will also need to develop a knowledge base that allows you to answer case
effectively. This means developing a base level of knowledge on commonly debated topics and
staying up to date on developments in the news. Being diligent about understanding the issues you
debate will prepare you to understand and interact with types of government cases and allow you to
focus on strategy and depth as you progress. Whether you prefer to read a newspaper, download
podcasts, or take classes on Middle East politics, it is important that you actively try to learn more
about the issues that you will debate. It is equally important that you actively work to translate
your knowledge into debate success. If you find an article quoting a congressperson on a bill
that is a common politics scenario, do not trust yourself to remember it. Put the quote in your
answers file, look up the congressperson so you can try to claim they are a particularly good source
of information, and then write some analysis of why your warrant disproves the politics story.
Being well informed is a good start, but you need to put in the effort to ensure your knowledge is
contextualized to debate arguments.

Selecting a Strategy

The LOC Strategy (i.e. the combination of arguments deployed in the speech) is the single largest
factor in determining whether an LOC is effective. At some programs strategy, selection may
be handled largely by prep coaches, but understanding the rationale behind that selection is still
important for your development as a debater. As your strategic vision grows you will become
better at adapting your LOC’s to the nuances of the government’s PMC, and more capable at
conceptualizing strategic decisions.
Selecting the correct LOC strategy requires an understanding of what makes some strategies better
than others. Many debaters have a tendency to believe that the inclusion of certain arguments makes
a strategy good or bad. This approach to strategy selection is flawed because it does not consider
context. Eight minutes of case answers can make for a devastating LOC that gives the MGC fits or
it can be completely ineffective. Debaters also tend to overvalue specific positions on the basis of
their warrants. While warrants are a key part of any argument, they are of secondary importance to
effective strategy. Your choice of strategy should instead be informed by the goal of the LOC as
outlined earlier in this chapter, to establish comparatively more offense than the PMC.
A crucial step in gaining a favorable balance of offense is to read a LOC that allows the MOC
to collapse in multiple different ways. This increases the difficulty of the MGC by raising the
number of distinct answers an MGC will have to make, which in turn increases the number of
potential mistakes the MOC can exploit. It is a common misconception that flexible strategies need
to include multiple conditional advocacies or a high number of off-case positions. A diversity of
impacts and multiple options for collapse within a position create the same effect. For example, a
politics disadvantage that contains a link about focus tradeoff, a link about moderate democrats,
and a link about republicans is very difficult to read link defense against. Conversely, an LOC that
has both an investor confidence disadvantage and a politics scenario with an economy impact limits
your diversity and allows the MGC to cross-apply impact defense to both positions.
140 Chapter 15. The LO Constructive

In addition to reading a diverse set of offensive arguments, strategic flexibility requires multiple
ways to deal with the offense of the government team. This type of diversity allows the MOC to
collapse to whatever option the MGC does the poorest job of covering, whereas less flexible LOC’s
can force the MOC’s hand by providing only a single option that can catch up to the government
team’s offense. Take the example of an LOC that contains a conditional actor counterplan, a politics
disadvantage, and a relations disadvantage. This sounds like a fairly flexible strategy, but if the
LOC does not substantively answer case, that flexibility may be neutralized. If the MGC were to
read disadvantages to the counterplan the block is in a difficult position. Either the MOC has to
answer these disadvantages on the fly, knowing that the PMR will have a monopoly on the second
line of these arguments, or kick out of the counterplan and deal with a nearly conceded case. All
this to say, that giving a strategic LOC means thinking very deliberately about what the options
may look like for the MOC, and thinking through the ways in which an MGC might be able to limit
those options.
A good LOC strategy also maximizes efficiency by avoiding arguments that are unlikely to be
extended in the block. Part of this is an issue of case writing; you should eliminate warrants that
do not contribute to the internal story of a position,3 as well as excessive warrants that do not add
a new dimension to your case (it is good to know four reasons your second link is true, but it’s
rarely wise to include all of those reasons in the shell). The most common LOC inefficiency is the
inclusion of arguments a debater has no intention of collapsing to, in order to gain a favorable time
trade off. This strategy is usually ill advised for a few reasons. First, it is often transparent when a
team is taking this approach, and your opponents may call your bluff by only reading a minimal
level of answers. More importantly, your “time-suck” position trades off with developing options
that you can collapse too. Perhaps you can read a topicality in one minute that takes 90 seconds to
answer, but that time trade off will do you very little good if it you are forced to go for a position
that the MGC answered extremely well.
Reading an LOC that is difficult to answer is another important component in selecting an LOC
strategy. Sometimes this means reading a combination of arguments that traps your opponent. For
example, against a global warming advantage, you can read a China counterplan and a series of
case arguments that say the government can never solve warming because China will continue to
pollute. This puts the pressure on the MGC to claim that it is not feasible for China to do the plan
themselves, but that if U.S. did the plan, then China would voluntarily reduce its emissions – a hard
scenario to imagine. You should also make sure your LOC is built to beat the most likely answers.
You should note how opposing teams have answered your arguments in the past, and tweak your
LOC strategy accordingly. For example if you want to run a debt ceiling politics disadvantage you
must be prepared for the argument that the GOP will always back down before we reach a collapse.
You can make this adjustment with a miscalculation argument, a claim that even a moderate delay
on passage will cause a crisis of confidence or by finding warrants that say the GOP is unwilling
to cave in this specific instance. Any of these changes will allow your MOC to explain that your
scenario accounted for the MGC answers and make extending the position much easier.
Though several factors determine the strength of an LOC strategy, the actual process of selecting
a strategy is relatively simple. When the topic is released you should begin by asking yourself
what offense you are likely to get links to. Then you should think carefully about what offense the
government team is likely to read in the PMC. A small domestic PMC, for example, gives you the
option to read a domestic actor counterplan and place less emphasis on case. If you believe that
a South China Sea war scenario is likely than you will need either a counterplan, or a robust set
3 E.g. if you are reading an advantage about inflation in the Eurozone you should be careful about reading uniqueness
arguments that highlight other macroeconomic problems in the region. These warrants don’t help win a core component
of your story, and risk lending credibility to a disadvantage or an alternate-causality claim.
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of “no war in the status quo” arguments to make your disadvantages viable. Think these issues
through, and settle on a set of off-case positions that will provide diverse offense against likely
PMC strategies, while simultaneously allowing you to handle the case.

Situational Strategy Concerns

Many different LOC strategies can be successful on a given topic; choosing correctly between these
strategies is largely a matter of adapting to the specific context of the round. Your LOC strategy
should play to your strengths and more importantly your partner’s strengths. The LOC is about
putting the MOC in a favorable position, and the easiest way to do so is by giving your partner
options that they are comfortable with. However perfectly a position fits your strategy, if you partner
does not understand it, it is probably a bad choice to include it. Even more importantly, you should
avoid reading a position that opens you up to offense that your partner is going to have trouble
answering (e.g. a conditional counterplan when your MOC does not know their “conditionality
good” arguments). Playing to your strengths does not mean you can ignore situational realities. If a
judge or opponent makes a certain strategy untenable, do not force it. Nor should you narrowly
define your strengths early in your career and never branch out from them. While playing to your
strengths is an effective philosophy, you should always be writing and practicing new arguments to
broaden those strengths.
Your judge, or judges, will also play a role in determining how you adapt your LOC strategy. It
is crucial that your LOC strategy be compatible with a rate of delivery that your judge is capable
of handling. It is far better to read fewer arguments than to lose your judge by going too fast.
Because the status of your advocacies determines (in most circumstances) your ability to run both a
kritik and a counterplan, and several other strategic issues, your judge’s stance on conditionality
will factor into your strategy selection as well. There is a fairly small set of judges that have a
major predisposition to vote for “conditionality bad” procedurals – with these folks, a conditional
advocacy is simply not worth the risk (due to the second line monopoly on MGC theory held by the
government). In these cases, you will need to find a strategy that does not rely on conditionality.4
Aside from those two major limitations, judges have varying stances on topicality, kritiks, and
several other issues that you should take under consideration; but, if you first establish how your
critic will constrain your speed and the status of your advocacies, a picture of your LOC strategy
will start to emerge.
A good LOC strategy should also be tailored to succeed against your specific opponents. There are a
number of ways to do this, but most of them involve picking on your opponent’s weaknesses. If you
have a speed advantage over the other team’s MGC, exploit it by reading enough off-case positions
to spread them out of the round. A number of teams are much better at answering the straight-up
debate than the kritik; exploit that weakness by including a kritik in your strategy. Conversely you
should be aware of your opponent’s strengths and not play into them. If your MOC is significantly
slower than the MGC you are debating, reading a generic one-off kritik is a usually bad idea. Some
more critically oriented teams like to read kritiks of topicality in the MGC when they deploy critical
PMC’s – be very careful about giving them access to their preferred offense by reading Topicality.

What to do when you are outmatched

A specific type of adaptation is necessary when you face teams that are significantly more advanced
4 Some judges will vote for “conditionality bad” but have a higher threshold for doing so, in these cases the risks
of reading a conditional advocacy are more marginal, and should be weighed against the strategic value of being
conditional
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than you. The conventional wisdom for debating a better team is that you should “do something
weird”, which is often poor advice. The best teams are usually familiar with a wider variety of
arguments than you are, and have spent time practicing against exactly this approach. Rather
than reading an argument you have no familiarity with, you should seek a debate that you can
be especially well prepared for. While simply doing something weird may not be helpful, doing
something new has a better chance of working. If you use a strategy that has generally not been
seen much in parliamentary debate, you have a good chance at catching your opponent off guard
and preventing them from blazing through the memorized answers that top teams are so good at
deploying. This could mean reading a new and highly specific disadvantage, going for eight minutes
of case, or reading a brand new kritik. A similar option is to read an abusive and unpredictable
strategy (like the delay counterplan) and have your MOC be extremely well prepared for the theory
debate. The delay counterplan captures all of case and has few disadvantages, which often force
the PMR to go for theory. Since the MGC is unlikely to have prepared “delay bad” theory, and
the strategy is uncommon enough that they might not have memorized answers, your MOC’s
three minutes of pre-prepped answers may be enough to swamp a weaker MGC shell. Perhaps
the best option available for debating against better teams is the procedural debate, especially
topicality. Topicality is, at least in my experience, the argument good MGCs are most likely to
fumble. Winning competing interpretations5 as a mechanism for evaluating topicality also means
that if an MGC makes a mistake in their counter-interpretation, they have little hope of coming
back. Topicality is also the easiest argument to get a favorable time trade-off. MGC’s will always
put T on top, allowing the opposition to decide if T is a viable option. If Topicality is viable, the
MOC is functionally allowed six or more minutes of preparation. Because Topicality is A Priori,
going for T also means not having to kick out of other positions or answer case – you get twelve
minutes of the block versus however long the MGC spends on it (usually between one and two
minutes).

What these strategies have in common is that they attempt to force the debate down a narrow set
of corridors and stack those corridors in your favor. The more you can force your opponent into
having the debate you want, the easier it is to gain favorable prep-time or speech time tradeoffs and
overcome deficits of speed and experience. To adapt in any of the ways outlined above requires
information. Adapting to judges means knowing how they see debate and to exploit your opponent’s
weaknesses. That means taking notes on the RFDs that judges give, diligently reading philosophies,
and watching debates when you are eliminated from tournaments. Information is power when
picking strategies, so collecting as much information as you can is the only way to ensure an
optimal decision.

Adapting Your LOC in the Round

Part of the reason that the LOC is overlooked is because many LOC’s are highly static, with the
LOC simply delivering the off-case positions they prepared before the round and answering case
with whatever time is left. This approach doesn’t usually lose rounds, but it is also unlikely to
deliver optimal results. LOC strategies that are picked in prep time are made with partial and
imperfect information, and often a single strategy is chosen for an entire squad. The more you
can use the information you gain during the PMC and the more you adapt to the specifics of your
round the better your LOC is likely to be. When and how you adapt should be governed by your

5 A competing interpretations framework on topicality means that the benefits of the opposition’s interpretation are
weighed against the benefits of the counter-interp. This is very favorable for the opposition as it puts the onus on the
government to explain not only why they haven’t skewed the opposition out of the round, but why their interpretation
actively makes the debate better. Winning competing interpretations allows you to exploit the tendency of most
government’s to read mostly defense against topicality.
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goal of generating as much offense in comparison to the PMC as possible. To that end you should
adapt when you have a shot at generating offense you had not anticipated or when you have a shot
a nullifying offense you had not expected.
Some adaptations of the LOC are simple and can be done in every round. You can add to the impact
level of every disadvantage a reason that the disadvantage turns the government case. This can
help make sure that, if you win a disadvantage, the case does not outweigh your disadvantage,
forcing the judge to look at your offense first. You should also tailor your links and internals to
the specifics of plan (e.g. in your China relations disadvantage you should explain why plan is
an especially sensitive issue for Beijing). Whenever possible you should tailor your counterplan
solvency arguments to the PMC. On the link and internal-link level of an advantage the government
will usually set a threshold for what action is needed to solve plan.6 If your counterplan solvency
explains which link you capture and why, it becomes difficult for the government team to argue that
you are not solving case. You may also want to tweak your counterplan solvency to pre-empt any
“perm shields the links to the disadvantage” or “counterplan links to the disadvantage ” arguments
that you think could give you trouble. An LOC can also be improved by fixing mistakes made in
preparation time or by file writers. Even during your speech you can fill missing warrants, clarify
explanations, or fix inconsistencies in your story.

Advantage Counterplans
The advantage counterplan is one of the most underused positions in parliamentary debate, and
one of your best tools for adapting the LOC in round. Advantage counterplans seek to solve the
impacts of an advantage without linking to the LOC offense and, when successful, go a long way to
shifting the balance of offense in your favor. The counterplan takes about 30 seconds to shell out,
and puts tremendous pressure on the MGC to deal with it or lose a major portion of their offense.
The best times to use advantage counterplans are circumstances where you can fiat solvency of
the internal links. This is usually an option with politics-esque advantages. For example, if an
PMC advantage argues that cutting a specific program leads to spending on another project, you
can read an advantage counterplan to just fund the other project directly which forces the MGC
to either kick an advantage or start reading a politics disadvantage in the MGC. It is possible to
use advantage counterplans against almost any advantage though, especially those with broad
impacts like global warming, economic collapse, etc. In those cases, it is best to develop a favorite
advantage counterplan that does not link to your usual off-case positions.
Adding a greater emphasis on case answers can be a helpful way to deal with surprises or capitalize
on the government team’s mistakes. Some PMCs are simply too weak to hold up to three minutes
of case in the LOC. In these instances the government team is simply hoping that the LOC spends
as much time off-case as possible and they are able to sneak through some extensions and re-
articulation in the MGC. Do not comply – spend an extra minute on case and eliminate it as
an offensive option for the government, rather than being greedy and reading a third or fourth
off-case you may not need. Your LOC should also increase your emphasis on case when the PMC
endangers the offense you meant to read. If, for example, you plan to read a securitization kritik, a
PMC advantage about war in the South China Sea requires a thorough response. You will need to
interrogate the “war coming now” warrants, ideally in a way that highlights threat construction and
U.S. counterbalancing as the root cause of the conflict.
You should also be aware of PMC’s that appear to be laying traps for you and adapt your LOC to

6 E.g. The link of a heg advantage may plan establishes US credibility in the South China Sea, and the internal may
say credibility is key to check east Asian proliferation. This combination of arguments means that any action that
establishes US credibility in the region solves the proliferation impact.
144 Chapter 15. The LO Constructive

avoid those arguments. If a PMC seems strange to you, especially against a capable opponent, ask
yourself why? For example, if a team that usually reads big impacts skips an obvious nuclear war
scenario, you should be worried about a kritik of nuclear war impacts in the MGC. In this case you
will have to weigh how well you feel your MOC could answer such a kritik, versus the strategic
advantage of having a nuclear war impact. Strategies like this are very risky for the government
team and, if you can see the trick ahead of time, you can take a commanding lead.

When possible, your LOC should include a procedural, especially topicality (provided your MOC
is good at the theory debate and you have a judge that will listen). The reason that topicality is
run so rarely is that teams are, for the most part, topical. When listening to the LOC you should
consider if there is a reasonable T interpretation that the government team violates. If there is, you
should usually make room for T and ideally have your partner shell it out while you flow the PMC.

The LOC Audible

In some cases you will encounter PMC’s force you to radically adapt or even throw out your
original LOC strategy. The act of throwing out all, or nearly all, of your pre-prepared strategy is
referred to as an “LOC audible.” The decision to audible is usually prompted by atypical PMC’s,
such as extremely small policy PMC’s, “impact turn” strategies such as de-development, or critical
PMC’s that do not defend a topical plan. These strategies are designed to deny you links to the
offense you planned on reading and therefore require more dramatic adaptation than simply adding
a disadvantage or tweaking your link arguments.

Teams often pick strategies that force an LOC audible because they believe the LOC will be unable
to answer it effectively. The strength of many of these positions is not persuasiveness or depth, but
an ability to surprise and fluster opponents. For this reason it is important to remain calm against
atypical government strategies. Even if you need to take 30 seconds or a minute of prep time to
be ready for the speech, the time trade-off is worth it to avoid a flustered LOC. If you can capably
execute an LOC strategy that gives your MOC options, you will neutralize the advantage your
opponents hoped to generate, and likely put your partner in a great position to win.

In high-pressure situations, it is best to have a system to default to, so that you can start reacting
rather than frantically wondering how to proceed. The following is a checklist that you can use
when considering an LOC audible, to determine your options in the round:

1. What can I keep from my original LOC strategy?

When faced with an unconventional PMC, many debaters will assume that they have lost access to
all of their offense. This is often not the case. You should go through the offense you prepared and
consider how you might alter it to keep it relevant. Consider how the MGC would argue that your
offense is not relevant and whether there is a good answer to that argument. For example, maybe the
government read a strange “war with china good” advantage, but you correctly predicted the plan
text. In that case you still have easy access to any disadvantage that is not “war with china bad”.
You may need to explain in the LOC why your offense remains relevant, but doing so successfully
allows you to keep structured, pre-flowed offense, and save the time of writing a new argument.7

7 Time efficiency is a major factor when executing an LOC audible. You have only the PMC to generate an entirely
LOC strategy while flowing the PMC. You cannot do this successfully without working with your partner. Ideally
you can ask them to shell an argument you both know while you either flow case, or write a different shell. If that
won’t work at least have them flow case while you come up with your strategy. Confirm with your partner that they’re
comfortable with the strategy you audible to as well, they’ll be the one extending it in the block.
 145

2. Is there procedural ground and do I want it?

Many times you were not anticipating a PMC because it is arguably untopical or operates in an
unconventional framework. In audible situations your opponents are likely aware of the procedural
ground they afforded you and are prepared to answer those arguments. Usually it is still to your
advantage to read a procedural. If someone is blatantly untopical, no amount of MGC answers
can really prevent you from going for T and the MGC is likely to over-prepare for the procedural
debate and spend too long answering it – allowing you a clean collapse on another position. There
are however, some instances in which you will be better served by skipping the procedural. If you
are facing a kritik PMC from a team that likes to read kritiks of topicality (or framework), you
probably should not give them a chance to leverage that offense. You should also usually avoid
reading procedurals against PMCs that kritik debate or address identity politics. These PMC’s are
built from the ground up to beat your procedural and the vast majority of judges are not willing to
vote for framework against these positions.

3. Why is the plan a bad idea?

Reading intuitive offense is one of the most effective ways to beat an atypical PMC. Often the
government team has caught you off-guard precisely because their arguments are counter-intuitive.
Collapsing the economy is a very bad idea, but for some reason debaters have trouble simply saying
that in a round. Take a moment to brainstorm the potential problems with the government plan
and structure a few turns. The MGC is likely less prepared for this debate than a generic K, or a
procedural, and you are probably on the side of truth. For the most common unconventional PMC
strategies (de-dev, rights-Malthus, etc.), you should have this offense memorized.

4. What is my counterplan?
Advantage counterplans are successful here because the advantages you are answering are usually
non-intrinsic. By reading an advantage counterplan you can kill the PMC’s offense, retain a topic
disadvantage you prepped, and shift the debate away from the area the PMC selected. As always be
sure your disadvantage is not compromised by the PMC. Non-advantage counterplans are fine too,
just look for ways to argue that you solve for the impacts of the PMC.

5. Can I use generics?

As detailed in the section on practice and preparation, you should have memorized several generic
positions for these circumstances. Run through the positions that you have memorized and decide
which, if any, apply. Ideally, you will know in advance which generics you like to read against
different atypical PMCs.

6. How can I deal with the government teams impact inevitability?

Government plans that force you to audible will often try to establish control over the “root cause”
portion of the impact or impact inevitability.8 You should be carefully listening for these arguments
and flag them on your flow to be sure that you respond. You can do that by reading a kritik
that contests root cause, by trying to solve the PMC impacts with a counterplan, or by directly
answering these arguments on case. In any case you need some answer to these claims to prevent
the government team from leveraging “try-or-die” framing in the PMR.

8 E.g. rights-Malthus is entirely set up to argue that both oppression and extinction are inevitable in the status quo.
Kritiks of debate are also usually going to claim that there is no education or fairness in the status quo, to kill
uniqueness for any impact your procedural might have.
146 Chapter 15. The LO Constructive

Answering Case

Answering case is a critical part of a successful LOC. Effective case arguments allow the opposition
more strategic flexibility by preserving the status quo as a viable option, create an effective time
trade off, and limit the offense of the government team. MGC’s also tend to have a difficult time
with case answers, as they spend prep time thinking about potential off-case positions and usually
know comparatively little about the PMC or its weaknesses until the round begins. Case answers are
also more likely to require line-by-line responses, whereas MGC’s can more easily dump answers
on each part of the disadvantage and let the PMR sort through the comparisons. While this section
goes into detail the ways in which you can improve your case arguments, the most important
takeaway should be simply to make case arguments a bigger part of your LOC strategy. Despite the
strategic utility of case arguments they are a frequently neglected element of LOC strategy, usually
to the detriment of the opposition team.

The first step to answering case well is to have a specific plan for your case arguments. Simply
making the first arguments that occur to you during the PMC will not maximize the damage you
can do to the government team or give you a set of answers that work well with the rest of your
strategy. In order to ensure you include the correct arguments you need to know how long you want
to spend on case and which arguments you will go for before your LOC begins. The arguments you
select should be based on the weaknesses of the PMC, compatible with your off-case positions,
and possible to execute given how long you will spend on off-case. For example, against a global
warming advantage you could decide to rely mainly on “link thumpers”, and arguments that say,
“it is too late to solve global warming.” This combination of arguments simultaneously paints
the government team as having to massively reverse the current trend of global emissions, and as
being not as dramatic a policy as the steps that have already failed. Your plan for case arguments
should be consistent with the rest of your offense (e.g., be careful of reading defense to your own
impacts).

In most circumstances, it is important that your case answers defend the status quo. Many
debaters have a tendency to make a series of defensive arguments that mitigate the solvency of the
government’s plan, but do not contest impact uniqueness. This approach is vulnerable to “try-or-die”
framing in the PMR. In order to protect yourself from this framing, you need to put forward the
case for the status quo not resulting in extinction.

A weakness of many LOC’s is a tendency to read counter-warrants to the PMC taglines, but fail
to capitalize on the specific weaknesses of the PMC. To be able to seize on flaws in the PMC you
will need to actively listen to the construction of the advantages during the PMC, instead of just
pre-flowing generic answers. You should be listening for “tough sell arguments” – the claims in
a PMC that are simply are hard to believe (e.g. The US economy is collapsing in the status quo).
Most PMCs will have at least a few of these, and putting pressure on the MGC to justify those
claims can make extending the PMC difficult. During the PMC an LOC must also pay attention to
the internal consistency of PMC arguments (i.e. how neatly the claims in each part of an advantage
fit together), and test that consistency in the LOC. As you listen to the PMC ask questions like:
Did the uniqueness arguments prove that the impacts are inevitable? Is there an indication of link
uniqueness? Does the link resolve the harms listed in the uniqueness section? Interrogating the
structure of a PMC in this way can allow you to make the government’s arguments work for you
or force the MGC to spend valuable speech time trying to fix the arguments made by the PMC
– which does a lot more damage than a simple counter-warrant for a uniqueness claim.
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Delivering the Speech

Despite the nuances of the LOC noted in this chapter, the speech still involves a large amount
of reading off of your flows, and it is important that you can do so quickly and clearly. The
most important parts of successfully delivering an LOC are practicing your speed and clarity, and
timing out your LOC as detailed earlier in this chapter. Still, there are a few other concerns worth
noting.
Giving your LOC in the correct order can help with efficient delivery. Any arguments that you will
be cross applying should be read earlier in your speech. This allows you to establish your warrants
and note that the judge should cross-apply them elsewhere, which is much cleaner than saying that
you plan to cross-apply something that has not been read yet. For the same reason, you should also
read disadvantages before a counterplan, so that the judge has the proper context when you argue
that your disadvantages do not link to the counterplan. Avoid reading any advocacies in the last
minute of your speech; it denies the government side an opportunity to ask questions and exposes
you to a procedural from the MGC. While it is fine to put case on bottom, that is not an excuse for
being light on case arguments. Decide how much time you need to make for case and stick to it,
even if that means trimming down an off-case position. As a tiebreaker you should always read
arguments that you are most familiar with first (e.g. the disadvantage that you prepped instead of
your partner) so that you to start the speech strong and slide into a rhythm. Whatever order you
choose for the LOC, just settle on one and give it quickly. Fumbling around for twenty seconds
will not make your speech better; it will just annoy the judge and hurt you perceptually.
Efficient LOC delivery requires capably handling points of information (POIs). In dealing with
POI’s it is important to answer quickly and confidently. You cannot afford to appear rattled by the
question, or to let it or take away from your speech time. When debaters make mistakes with POI’s
it is almost always by pausing too long to think of a perfect answer or by allowing an opponent to
ask multiple follow up questions. When in doubt give a cursory answer and move on. If you tend
to have trouble taking POI’s, you should limit the number of questions that you take. Decide that
you will only take one question before the round, tell the other team that they will only get one
question when they ask POI, and ignore any other questions. This approach may frustrate some of
your opponents, but it is a fairly common practice and there is no real strategic downside. Like
any skill, handling POI’s should be practiced – do at least a couple practice rounds where someone
questions you aggressively, even obnoxiously, during your speech.
As mentioned elsewhere in the chapter, keeping careful track of your time is a crucial part of LOC
delivery. Checking your timer after each section of a disadvantage is good practice and allows you
to quickly recognize when you are falling behind. Many debaters will recognize that they are falling
behind, but do nothing to catch up other than try to read faster. Obviously, most debaters are already
reading about as fast as they can and this approach rarely improves a debater’s time allocation.
Instead LO’s should have an idea of which arguments can be cut, and where explanations can be
shortened. Your partner should be active in keeping your time, and the two of you should develop
a verbal or non-verbal signal for when you are running long. Only by being disciplined about
keeping your time during the LOC can you ensure that the LOC strategy you worked so hard to
craft actually makes it into the round.
 16. The MG Constructive

T HE M EMBER OF G OVERNMENT C ONSTRUCTIVE

K YLE D ENNIS – W ILLIAM J EWELL C OLLEGE

Introduction

It is often said that the Member of Government Constructive (MGC) should focus on not losing
the debate. A well-prepared MGC has the opportunity win the debate. The MGC can limit
options for the Member of Opposition Constructive (MOC) collapse, by forcing the MOC to
expend argumentative energy in places that they would rather avoid, and by simultaneously forcing
necessity of and shielding the government team from the impact of new MOC arguments. In this
chapter, I will discuss important MGC skills that you should develop before, the debate and utilize
during the debate. Following this in-depth analysis is likely to increase the quality of your MGC
delivery and give you the competitive edge to win an increasing number of debates.

Before the MGC

While parliamentary debate includes 20-30 minutes of official preparation time, your preparation for
the MGC begins well before each tournament. Many novice debaters are tempted to conceptualize
the MGC as a speech that is merely responsive to the arguments read in the Leader of Opposition
Constructive (LOC). This conceptualization ignores an important element of the MGC – the MGC
is a constructive speech, which means that you are able to introduce as many new arguments as
you would like. The MOC and LOC will have an opportunity to answer these arguments, but your
team will get the last word in the PMR. Positioning yourself with this macro-level understanding of
the MGC allows debaters to understand that, while it may appear that your sole job is to answer
the LOC, you are in a position to introduce new material to the debate in order to do so. This new
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material may take a variety of form – theory objections to LOC positions, impact add-ons to the
PMC case, additional explanations of PMC solvency arguments, clarifications of your advocacy,
and criticisms of LOC arguments. As such, the MGC should do all that they can to position
themselves as the person in the debate with a near encyclopedic knowledge of common debate
arguments. Well in advance of the tournament, MGCs should spend time memorizing answers to
common negative arguments, much of which is achieved by reviewing policy debate back-files,
saving old flows and developing a stock set of answers to commonly encountered arguments, and
constantly consuming news and discipline-specific scholarship to develop new and innovative
methods of answering arguments. This type of practice will ensure that you have memorized and
practiced responses that kick in via a process that is very similar to the muscle memory possessed
by a conditioned athlete – after enough practice, answering common criticisms or disadvantages
will be second-nature.

The MGC should practice and develop a flowing technique that will work for them. One of the
elements of parliamentary debate that, at least initially, seems daunting to novice debaters is the
need for the MGC to both listen to the LOC and write responses for delivery during the MGC.
Operating on the basis that it is impossible to write down every argument made by your opponent
in the LOC and write all of your responses for the MGC, as a coach, I have always suggested that
MGCs take one of two flowing strategies: (1) write very few of the LOC arguments or (2) only
write LOC arguments. The second strategy is much more difficult and requires both confidence
in the ability to answer arguments in real time during the speech and in your ability to engage in
memorization/recall of prepared responses. The first strategy, however, is one that all novices may
adopt. Stop to think about this strategy for a few moments. How much of the LOC do you need
to recall precisely in your MGC? How often do you misunderstand arguments read by the LOC
because you are trying to write down their argument and process/write your response? Think back
to the speaker duties discussed earlier in this text. Are you ever responsible for demonstrating a
perfect understanding of the intricacies of the LOC or are you generally answering positions in their
totality? During my time competing, coaching and judging in this activity, I have observed that the
majority of successful MGCs could not produce an accurate flow of the LOC at the conclusion
of the debate – and that is perfectly acceptable. Remember, as the MGC, your main goal is to
prepare yourself to win the debate, not to recount, re-deliver, or otherwise perfectly recall the LOC.
Consider a scenario where the LOC delivers a Business Confidence DA. You should avoid being
bogged down in undoubtedly extraneous details of the LOC disadvantage shell. If you possess
an understanding of disadvantages, you know that the uniqueness (in this case) will typically be,
“Business confidence is high in the status quo,” “Business confidence is on the upswing in the status
quo,” or “Business confidence is on the brink in the status quo.” After this, the LOC will typically
make a series of arguments that indicate that this is true – you should not be concerned with the
specifics of their argument, because a great MGC will intuitively know how to begin formulating
answers based on the generic structure or type of argument. Of course, from time to time, you will
need to answer specific elements from the LOC.

Ironically, only flowing MGC responses rather than the LOC shell allows you to be more attentive
to the particulars of LOC shell. If the LOC shell contains the argument that “X measurement
of business confidence should be the primary indicator of overall economic strength,” you will
eventually tune your ear to know that your MGC must contain an argument indicating that some
other economic indicator should be the primary indicator of overall economic strength. For example,
if you know that a particular consumer confidence index recently produced numbers indicating
that overall consumer confidence is low, you might just write this argument for your MG (using
shorthand) to say something like, “Consumer confidence is low, consumer confidence is a better
economic indicator than business confidence because of X.” Using this strategy, you have directly
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answered the LOC argument and constructed your MGC argument, all without ever directly writing
down their LOC – only the argument intended for your MGC.

As mentioned above, the MGC must be proficient in shorthand. The discussion of shorthand is
comprised of two components, your own shorthand and the shorthand practiced by your debate
partner. Over the course of the last few seasons, I have witnessed countless examples of debaters
handed written arguments by their partner only to be unable to read their shorthand scribble. I
always instruct my teams to have shorthand conversations with their partner. For example, if you
typically shorthand “outweighs” as “O/W,” this is something of which your partner should be aware.
If you always shorthand ”global warming” and ”GW,” your partner should be aware of this. If
“impacts” are always noted as an ”I” with a circle around it, your partner should understand that. As
important as it might be to share some common shorthand with your partner, it is more important
that your own shorthand written quickly during the LOC is comprehensible to you during the MGC.
This is one element of the MGC that you can practice, on your own, without a coach. You can
always transcribe files and practice short-handing full sentences. This drill will familiarize you
with your files, will support your memorization of arguments, and will necessarily force you to
practice speaking from a short-handed flow.

As your team constructs files, both on-campus between tournaments and during preparation time, it
is important that the MGC keep an open line of communication with their PMC. With what types
of arguments do you feel most comfortable? Do you find yourself commonly extending certain
arguments from cases to answer LOC offense? Are there certain impact arguments you would like
your PMC to avoid so that you might critique that genre of impact when read by the LOC?

I often observe that debaters in the MGC speaker position want to divorce themselves from PMC
preparation, instead selecting to prepare MGC front lines to predictable LOC arguments. While this
strategy has some benefit, that benefit is typically not realized unless the MGC fully understands
the macro-level government case construction strategy. For example, if your first advantage in the
PMC is a critical advantage about status quo conceptualizations of poverty, economic calculations
and capitalism, the “consumer confidence is a better indicator than business confidence” arguments
from above might be of little use because your grand PMC strategy is to critique the logic of and
call into question the standard calculations of a standard Business Confidence DA. In addition,
when the MGC is not involved in the preparation of the PMC, I often observe that debaters are on
two different pages when it comes to which arguments are most important. As the MGC, remember,
you are trying to win the debate, but the MOC is rarely going to just concede that you have done so.
Your PMC/PMR will deliver arguably the most important level of government arguments during
the PMC and will be responsible for defending them in their finality in the PMR. As such, there
should be some mutual understanding between the PM and MG regarding which arguments you
should emphasize from the PMC case.

The MGC is an on-going project that requires constant memorization. I mentioned above that the
MGC should possess a near encyclopedic knowledge of common debate arguments. Preparation
for this understanding begins on-campus in your free time. If there is one mantra that you should
practice as the MGC, it is this – memorize uncommon answers to common arguments. LOCs will
always read a politics disadvantage and a SCOTUS counterplan. You will not hear it in every
debate, but this argument will not go away. LOCs will always read some form of a Capitalism
K. Again, you will not hear it in every debate, but this argument is here to stay. As the MGC,
you should know that debaters who commonly read common arguments are already familiar with
common answers. You should not be shocked when an MOC that has decided to collapse to a
Capitalism K has sufficiently practiced answers to “Capitalism is inevitable.” Since debate is a
creative activity, I always encourage debaters to be as creative as possible – while the Capitalism
152 Chapter 16. The MG Constructive

K is typically going to make many of the same stock arguments, the MGC is not limited by the
generic nature of LOC arguments. You are free to develop, memorize and practice your own blocks,
not just blocks that you have lifted from policy debate back files. It is often helpful to start by
memorizing a set of stock responses generated by a debater with more experience, but you should
do everything that you can to tailor these answers to your individual debating style – put them in
your own words, add arguments when possible, and memorize them in a way that makes sense to
you. The brilliance of parliamentary debate is that we are not attached to the language of specific
carded evidence; you can be as individually creative as you would like. MGCs should always keep
a list of LOC arguments to which you have lost debates – make a commitment not to lose to those
arguments again. If you lose to a Consultation CP and a Relations DA, that should be the last time
that you given an MGC that leave the MOC in a position to collapse to that position. While the
particulars of the Relations DA might change, your answers to the process of the Consultation
CP will not in any meaningful way. If you are a true novice, it is helpful to ask debaters that are
more experienced or coaches to help you generate a list of arguments that you should memorize
for the MGC. All top-tier, nationally competitive teams have these lists. If your team does not,
seek out the help of another school. While Southern Illinois is unlikely to provide you with their
memorized, stock answers to Consultation CPs, these folks will likely help you begin a list of stock
arguments for which the MGC should have nearly-memorized answers – you might develop such a
list by simply watching top teams debate. It is apparent that SIU has memorized kritik block and
memorized answers to consultation counterplans. When you watch a video of a high level debate,
take the time to write blocks based on what you have observed.
As you begin your debate career, the memorization of these answers might seem basic, but, as your
skill-level progresses, so will complexity. For example, a novice should know that the first answer
to all CPs is some form of “the CP does not solve the case.” As you gain experience, your first
response to a Consultation CP might be, “Consultation is not immediate, which means that the
CP cannot solve the case in the short-term.” A very experienced debater may instinctually react
by saying, “Consultation is not immediate, in fact it often takes X amount of time as evidenced
by U.S. consultation with X country in Y year.” Similarly, whereas a novice debater may say, “X
country says no to the plan,” a more experienced debater may say, “X country says no to the plan,
an example of this is when the U.S. engaged in consultation with X over Y and X rejected the
U.S. proposal.” As you begin the memorization process, you should focus on genres of argument.
As your skill-level advances, you will begin to memorize very specific arguments that you can
effortlessly deploy in varying circumstances.
Finally, during the LOC, it is your responsibility (and to a certain extent the responsibility of your
partner) to watch if the judge gives away non-verbal cues in reaction to PMC or LOC arguments. If
a judge seems to react favorably to a particular portion of the PMC case, you know that you should
be able to extend and advance that portion of the PMC case with little resistance. Similarly, if a
judge reacts positively to a certain portion of the LOC, you know that you must substantially attack
that part of the LOC because you might be behind in the mind of the judge. The opposite is also
true – if your judge reacts negatively to a particular part of the LOC, you might want to pay special
attention to that set of arguments because, even though the LOC has made an argument, the judge
may believe that an extension of your PMC or an intuitive MGC argument is well-positioned to
answer that position.

During the MGC

Great MGC’s include a substantial amount of “offense.” Emphasizing quality offense is the single
most important piece of advice for a debater slated to deliver the Member of Government speech.
 153

How you craft your offense is up to you, but the reason why you do it is very simple. At best, it
sticks your opposition to their positions as read in the LOC. At worst, it creates circumstances
where it may be difficult for the MOC to “kick” an argument. We previously discussed that a
strategic MOC would never advance all of their LOC positions in the debate. The underlying
idea, of course, is to receive a “time tradeoff” between the MGC and MOC. That is, if the MGC
spends two-minutes on a single disadvantage, the MOC would be able to spend eight-minutes
on that argument, creating a 1-to-4 time tradeoff between the MGC and MOC. Initially, debaters
are tempted to counter this built-in opposition advantage by accelerating to the dominant strategy
of attempting to deliver the MGC faster than the LOC in an effort to reduce the possible time
advantage of the MOC. While this strategy is initially viable, it is rarely viable in the long term.
The only way to ensure that the MOC does not receive a beneficial time tradeoff is to include as
much offense in the MGC as possible.

We should make sure that everyone understands the difference between “offensive” and “defen-
sive” debate arguments – often referred to as the “offense/defense paradigm.” For many, the
offense/defense paradigm is best explained through a sports analogy. In baseball, when you play
defense, you attempt to prevent the other team from scoring. When you play offense, you attempt
to hit home runs. Similarly, in football, you attempt to score touchdowns when you are on offense.
You attempt to prevent the other team from scoring when you are on defense. The adage in the
sports world is that “defense wins championships.” You will rarely hear debaters advance this
phrase. If we are honest, this adage is also somewhat misplaced in professional sports – if you are
unable to score on offense, the usefulness of a great defense is greatly mitigated. Just as the NFL
includes a salary cap, limiting the aggregate salary allocations, debaters too must make choices on
argument allocation. Just as a team’s choice to develop an all-star NFL defense might trade off with
their ability to develop an all-star offense, time constraints mean that an MGC’s choice to focus
on defensive arguments trades off with valuable speech time that has the potential for offensive
argumentation. So, in the context of competitive debate, I will attempt to put it plainly – an
“offensive” argument directly draws a consequence to your own plan/advocacy or the plan/advocacy
of the other team (i.e. “If you vote for them, X bad thing will happen.”), whereas a defensive
argument is a denial of consequence or a denial of a claim (i.e. “The impact to their disadvantage
or advantage is not likely to occur.”).

For example, if the MGC challenges the probability of the impact of the LOC’s disadvantage, this
argument is considered defensive. Additionally, LOC arguments indicating that the impact to the
“PMC may be solved by the status quo” is also a defensive argument. The MGC might challenge
the probability of the impact of the LOC’s disadvantage in the context of the PMC, and also argue
that the PMC actually resolves the disadvantage impact – this is an offensive argument because the
MGC has “link turned” the impact to the disadvantage (indicating that the disadvantage is really an
advantage to the case). Similarly, the LOC might argue that the “PMC may be solved by the status
quo,” and that, “the PMC prohibits the status quo from solving the impact to the PMC.” Again, this
would be an example of an offensive argument because the LOC indicates that the PMC creates
circumstances that are unable to solve it’s own impacts, rather than able to solve it’s own impacts
– thus, in this case, these arguments are “offense” for the opposition.

While there are many different ways to establish offense against the LOC in your MGC, I will
discuss a few common strategies for MGC offense:

Link Turns and Internal Link Turns

You might argue that your plan/advocacy does something to solve the internal link to their argument.
For example, the LOC might read a U.S./Israel Relations Disadvantage indicating that Israel would
154 Chapter 16. The MG Constructive

be upset with the plan presented in the PMC. The MGC could make an argument indicating,
inversely, that the plan helps the U.S. Relationship with Israel because Israel has asked for the plan,
thus, the plan solves back the impact from the disadvantage. You might find yourself confused
about the difference between a “link turn” and a “no link” argument – the difference is measured by
some level of nuance – “Israel would not be upset by the plan” vs. “Israel actually likes the plan.”
Presume that the disadvantage uniqueness indicates that the U.S./Israel relationship is tenuous in
the status quo. “Israel actually likes the plan” has the potential to generate offense when considering
the uniqueness level of the disadvantage while, “Israel would not be upset by the plan” does not.
This category of MGC offense might occur against either the link of the negative argument or the
internal link of the negative argument.

Parallel Impact Turns

You might argue that your plan/advocacy links to a disadvantage, but that the impact to the disad-
vantage would actually be different from the impact presented by the LOC. For example, the LOC
might read an Israel Airstrikes DA indicating that your plan/advocacy would result in a collapse
of U.S. relations with Israel, causing them to airstrike Iran nuclear facilities. The MGC could
make an argument indicating that (a) relations will collapse but (b) the result of that collapse will
actually result in increased United States concessions to Israel on X other issue that the United
States is unwilling to make concessions on in the status quo, restoring relations. Thus, the MGC
has indicated that the status quo (and possibly a counterplan) does not have the capacity to resolve
this issue – only by triggering the internal link of the disadvantage through the plan will these
circumstances ever become resolved.

Impact Turns
You might concede that your plan links to the disadvantage, but argue that the impact to the
disadvantage is good rather than bad. For example, a very common strategy is to argue that the
impact to their DA is actually good. Presume that the impact to the Israel Relations DA (mentioned
above) is that Israel will airstrike Iran. In this case, the MGC might argue that Israeli strikes on
Iran facilities are good, not bad. The impact turn strategy forces the opposing team to substantially
defend their impact. Rather than simply assuming that an Israel/Iran war would be bad, the MGC
challenges the assumptions embedded in the impact and advances an alternative version of events
that actually cast the impacts in a positive light.
Find the weakest places of their positions to attack. Wherever their weakness is, you should
place your offensive arguments in that location. For example, if your opponent neglects to provide a
substantial reason why their impact would be bad, and you can out-warrant them 3-to-1 for reasons
that the impact would actually be good, do that. Succinctly put, if your opponent did not do the
work, do not do the work for them.
Typically, the more that your opponent seems uncommitted to a particular position, the more
offense you should put on it. If the LOC seems hesitant, brief, or otherwise unknowledgeable on
a given position, a successful MGC immediately senses such a weakness. The ability to isolate
and attack the least defensible LOC positions allows you to stick the MOC with positions that they
would have otherwise kicked, positions that your opponent might have difficulty defending.
Remember that uniqueness changes the direction of the link. When you answer disadvantages
in the MGC, making a series of “non-unique” claims is typically valuable – but they are most
valuable when paired with link-turns. For example, the story of the LOC disadvantage might be,
“Republicans are losing the midterms now, plan makes the Republicans win, and a Republican win
is bad.” Intuitively, you might find it advantageous to make arguments indicating that, “Republicans
 155

are winning now,” right? Since uniqueness controls the direction of the link, establishing that
Republicans will win midterm elections now perfectly situates you to read arguments that, “our
plan makes Republicans lose.” If you only attack by arguing that, “Republicans will win now,”
even if you overwhelm your opponent on this line of attack, the MOC can easily “kick” this
disadvantage by conceding your uniqueness claims. If you only attack by arguing that, “our plan
makes Republicans lose,” even if you overwhelm your opponent on this line of attack, the MOC
can easily “kick” this disadvantage by conceding your link arguments – keeping in mind that, in
this situation, your opponent would control the uniqueness level of the impact that “Republicans
are losing now” and, intuitively, there would not be an impact to Republicans losing more. Striking
a balance between these two levels of argument in the MGC by avoiding an over-emphasis on either
allows you to stress the balance and begin framing the debate most effectively in the MGC.

When possible, the MGC should find ways to eliminate the entire category of LOC argu-
ments. From time to time, the MGC will feel rushed, frantic or even panicked – in some cases, the
LOC will bury you in a pretty deep hole. Knowing that the MOC only needs to collapse to one
argument is a major source of psychological stress for all the MGC. Because of these built-in time
constraints, many MGCs are afraid of losing the debate. One tactic that your MGC can employ
to check LOC strategies is to read one or two new positions that functionally answer the entirety
of certain LOC positions. Briefly, consider a situation where the LOC presents two topicality
arguments, one disadvantage, one counterplan and a short kritik. In this situation, it might be
valuable for the MGC to focus a substantial portion of their speech on the fact that the LOC read
topicality in the first place and/or, as another example, the type or status of the LOC counterplan.
In my opinion, modern collegiate parliamentary debate suffers from a crisis of commitment. A
MGC might thoroughly object to a delay or a consultation counterplan, yet, in most cases, they
still feel compelled to answer the substance of the argument – doing so often means that they
stretch themselves too thin, resulting in less flexibility for their PMR. In a large number of cases, a
well-structured theoretical objection to the form or status of a counterplan is enough to bluff the
MOC off collapsing to the position. In the circumstance where it is not enough, the PMR is still
left in an enviable position because the MGC response is well developed. I have judged countless
debates where the MGC reads theory against a counterplan, for example, and the PMR, due to a lack
of substantive responses to the counterplan, is forced to collapse to an argument like, “PICs Bad”
or “Consult Bad.” Many of these debates result in critics expressing that the MGC’s “PICs Bad” or
“Consult Bad” theory shell was not developed enough and that many PMR arguments border on the
edge of being “new” in the last speech. You can resolve this issue by deeply committing to one
area of attack on each LOC position rather than taking a “shot-gun” approach.

The MGC should have a laser-like focus on uniqueness (position or macro-level uniqueness,
link uniqueness, internal-link uniqueness and impact-uniqueness). One common MGC mis-
take is to only address “uniqueness” arguments on the uniqueness level of a disadvantage, for
example. Remember, every argument in the debate has uniqueness. A team might read a hegemony
disadvantage that says that, “U.S. hegemony is good because the United States is responsible for a
vast majority of the food aid provided to the developing world,” right? How many times have we
heard that argument? If congress is cutting funding for food aid, the executive is decreasing food aid
commitments, or the food aid is not making into the mouths of starving people, this fundamentally
alters impact uniqueness, right? What if you read arguments that indicated that, regardless of the
plan, United States hegemony is faltering in the status quo? If you make any of these arguments,
you have challenged the “impact uniqueness” for the hegemony disadvantage. Similarly, a team
might read a link argument that says that “the plan causes the perception of US military overstretch.”
If you challenge link uniqueness, you might argue that there is a perception that the US military is
overstretched now. This argument does not indicate that your plan does not create the perception
156 Chapter 16. The MG Constructive

that the US military is overstretched; you are challenging the uniqueness of that perception. After
all, if the perception is that the US military is overstretched now, what is the unique impact to
slightly increasing that perception? When you deliver an MGC, as you listen to the LOC delivery
and flow your MGC arguments and (most importantly) while you are speaking (because some of
the best ideas just pop into your head while you speak), constantly point out places where there are
uniqueness issues with the LOC shell. For a useful drill, try to give entire MGC’s that question
the uniqueness of LOC offense. As debaters mention with some level of consistency – uniqueness
controls the direction of the link. The MOC will have a very difficult time winning offense against
your PMC if they are unable to secure unique offense.

MGC time is well spent explaining the limitations of LOC arguments/language. Positioning
yourself against your opposition begins in the MGC. All too often, MGCs will leave “weighing”
the debate to the PMR. The worst-case scenario is that the PMR is “point of ordered” for making
a new argument – an argument that they need to win the debate. Novice debaters often believe
that it is solely the responsibility of the PMR to avoid making new arguments (and “losing” the
inevitable point of order to follow). I insist that the MGC can go a long way to effectively position
the PMR to draw out the nuance between language that was contained in the LOC and language
that becomes newly clarified in the MOC. While it is not an offensive argument – and may not
even be an “argument” per say – the MGC should utilize all rhetorical strategies to hold the MOC
to specific LOC language. Perhaps the impact level of a disadvantage is poorly explained. Briefly,
consider a scenario where the LOC says (literally, exactly this), “Collapse in US hegemony results
in resource wars and economic collapse. Next off is the Economy Disadvantage.” This exact
scenario happens with more frequency than coaches would like to admit, does it not? Astute MGCs
will take necessary measures to commit to the LOC to this language – nothing more. If the MOC
elaborates on a more detailed scenario for economic collapse or resource wars, the PMR should be
positioned to have golden answers on this area of argument. The PMR simply needs to direct the
judge to recall the moments of the MGC where their partner commented on the lack of warrants or
specificity of the LOC. In this scenario, the MOC has made a new argument for which the PMR is
entitled to new answers. If you are debating on the government in this position, it is exceptionally
difficult to lose. In sum, the MGC should work to develop acumen for persuasively pointing out
areas where the LOC is brief and that the MOC will need to elaborate further in order to win the
position. If the MGC is able to execute this strategy properly, they will save valuable time because
they will avoid a major MGC pitfall – answering “arguments” that were not there.

The MGC should possess nuance in their attempt to understand argumentative interactions.
The MGC needs to see both the trees and the forest. There is rarely a time where one disadvantage
does not interact with another disadvantage or case argument or an opposition kritik does not
interact with a counterplan or disadvantage. In my opinion, one of the biggest pitfalls to increasing
speed (delivery) and complexity (argument depth) is that many LOC strategies often contain
damning strategic interaction issues. I do not mean that LOC kritiks often link to counterplans,
although that example is certainly true. On a much less transparent level, there are often commonly
overlooked walls of arguments that, if true, absolutely devastate or drastically alter link or impact
uniqueness for other entire arguments. One common MGC drill that can be used to practice this
skill is to practice answering two disadvantages at once. This drill will help you if you find yourself
in a pinch for time, but it will also refine your skills for argument interaction. Consider for a moment
all of the ways that you might use your answers on an Economy Disadvantage to answer a Politics
Disadvantage. Could you also use your answers on a Politics Disadvantage to answer the Economy
Disadvantage? There are, of course, countless ways to deploy such a strategy. Try to think of a
situation where you might concede (at least, on face) full disadvantages if you make a substantial
argument about how your link turn on Disadvantage #1 solves the impact to Disadvantage #2 before
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that impact could happen. The important lesson is this – recognizing deep argument interactions in
the MGC flips the debate, makes the MOC/LOR v. PMR time tradeoff less effective, and gives your
PMR strategic flexibility to collapse to one or two arguments in order to win the debate.

The MGC should also not forget that their partner has read the PMC. Too often, quality MGC
speeches focus on answering the LOC and neglect to substantially extend the case. Certainly, a
difference exists between simply saying, “extend Advantage One” and “extend X Y or Z specific
argument on Advantage One” in the process of answering a disadvantage. Your MGC will be
excellent once you realize that, should you choose, you ought be able to spend the entirety of your
speech just extending and re-explaining your case against LOC arguments. A common MGC drill
to develop this skill is to allocate a certain amount of time for each LOC position in which you
will only extend the case – up to and including using your entire MGC to extend your case as an
answer to the LOC shell. Since the PMR may not make new arguments, it is incumbent on the
MGC to continue to extend the language that the PMR will want to use, reminding your judge that
the argument made by the PMR is consistent and not new. Too often, I see PMC speakers possess
one understanding of the government case and how it might intuitively answer the LOC while the
MGC has another. One useful strategy is to talk with your partner just before the debate, perhaps
while walking to your competition room. Which arguments from the case are you certain that you
both want to have extended in the MGC? Which arguments from the case, will you want to extend
to answer certain predictable LOC strategies? Maintaining a laser-focus on previously generated
PMC offense to answer LOC strategies ensures that you do not waste speech time re-inventing
new ways to answer LOC offense. Simply put, you cannot afford to forget that your debate partner
has spent seven minutes answering the LOC before the LOC was even read – use that to your
advantage.

That said, on balance, the MGC should not feel constrained by the PMC. Operating on the
premise that your PMC will often be less than ideal, especially at tournaments without previously
announced topic areas. There will be times that your PMC is constructed in the last few minutes of
the preparation period or where you decide in the last few minutes of preparation time to drastically
alter the arguments made by the PMC. Deliver your MGC with this maxim in mind – you should
be able to win even if your PMC was 30 seconds long and otherwise terrible. If your PMC has read
a plan or advocacy text, you should be able to win. As much as you want to stay committed to your
PMC offense, it is often helpful to think of the PMC as “just extra offense,” – it is nice, but it is also
not necessary. You have an opportunity in the MGC to create offense. In fact, your MGC might
end up only including new offense against LOC arguments. Always remember that the government
has a unique strategic advantage in the parliamentary format because they are the only side that has
two opportunities to introduce new offensive argumentation, since any new offensive arguments
read in the MOC could be turned (without an opportunity for rebuttal) by the PMR speaker.

The MGC should avoid setting up easy opportunities for the MOC to disregard entire por-
tions of their speech. Sometimes, an LOC disadvantage is non-unique. Sometimes, the LOC
counterplan clearly cannot solve the case. However, as correct as you might be, it is not beneficial
to overload or over-commit to certain genres of arguments. If the LOC says, “Fast Track Trade
Promotion Authority will pass now,” but I know that it will not, as the MGC, I am still benefitted
by making other arguments beyond “non-unique” arguments, right? If I over-commit to the “non-
unique” strategy, the MOC is able to easily kick the disadvantage by conceding that Fast Track TPA
will not pass now, right? If I over-commit, I have given the MOC an easy opportunity to gain a
time trade-off in the MOC. If I evenly distribute my arguments, acknowledging a nuanced story and
argument interaction, I have given my PMR the tools to consolidate while increasing the difficulty
of the MOC collapse.
158 Chapter 16. The MG Constructive

The MGC should be the first to re-order the debate. The best MGC’s will alter the flow of the
debate by re-ordering positions or sheets of paper within positions – for example, on a given kritik
argument, the MGC might re-order framework, links, impacts, and the alternative. When changing
the order of arguments presented in the LOC, there are several general rules to follow in order
to achieve optimal results. First, you should always answer theory at the top of your MGC. This
includes topicality arguments or other theory arguments. These arguments are typically presented
near the top of the LOC, so this ordering should seem somewhat intuitive. What might not be
intuitive, however, is re-ordering and adding new sheets of paper (new MGC theory) at the top of
the MGC. When you read, “Consult CP’s Bad,” it is sometimes helpful to read this argument at
or near the top of the MGC. For example, you might need to answer two Topicality arguments,
a Relations Disadvantage, and a Consultation Counterplan. In doing so, your MGC order might
be: Topicality (in order), new sheet, Relations Disadvantage, and the Consultation Counterplan.
Strategically, such an order benefits you because you are speaking about your new MGC theory
in the context of LOC theory and you are able to subtly reference your MGC “consult bad” shell
throughout the substantive debate on the disadvantage and counterplan. Another general rule for
the MGC is that you typically do not want to leave your case at the bottom of the MGC order.
Countless debates have been won and lost because of an LOC speaker that positions the case on
bottom of the LOC order, but still manages make 10-15 seconds of blippy, unclear case arguments
followed by an MGC who maintains the same order, placing the PMC case on the bottom of the
MGC order, who drops a couple of the blippy, unclear case arguments. Single arguments made
against your case, if dropped, can and will put your PMR in a compromising position.

There is almost no circumstance in which you should answer LOC positions that comprise a
substantial portion of the LOC (such as a Kritik) in the order that it was presented in the LOC.
Simply put, never answer multi-sheet positions, typically kritiks, in order. Kritiks are often top-
heavy positions – positions where substantial time and consideration are dedicated to the top of the
position and where less time and emphasis is spent on the bottom of the position. If the bottom of
the shell is the weakest (the alternative, for example), you should start there. Many LOCs fall into
this trap with other types of positions as well. Remember, just because a “uniqueness argument”
is the first level of argument made by a debater reading a disadvantage in the LOC, you are not
constrained to the same order. Contesting the uniqueness of the disadvantage is not, necessarily, the
first argument that you should make against a disadvantage. In fact, it is to your benefit to buck the
LOC order and refuse to allow the debate to be neatly sorted into a wall of disadvantage uniqueness
arguments vs. a wall of uniqueness contestations and a wall of disadvantage link arguments vs.
a wall of link contestations. The first argument that you make against a disadvantage might be
to contest impact uniqueness. What is wrong with that strategy? The MGC is about making the
debate happen on your turf, not theirs. Answering standard positions (disadvantages, theory and
counterplans) out of order and re-ordering kritiks shifts balance of the opposition block back to
the government team by ensuring that the MOC is not able to neatly extend exact LOC language
to answer MGC arguments. Certainly, the best MOC’s will be able to use their LOC effectively
– however, if you have re-ordered the debate, you have still added an additional challenge to the
MOC.

Group pieces of paper and re-start numbering. In my opinion, parliamentary debates are often
won and lost based on the ability of the PMR to get judges to effectively locate MGC arguments.
Think about this for a moment – how many PMR strategies are reliant on convincing your judge
that the MOC has not effectively answered an MGC argument? How many of those debates are
decided based on the ability of the judge to locate and understand the MGC argument? When
organizing your MGC, the best practice is to identify “sheets of paper” that need to be answered. For
example, consider a circumstance where the LOC is two topicality arguments, two disadvantages,
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one counterplan and a handful of case arguments (distributed among Advantage 1 and Advantage
2). In this scenario, you have seven sheets of paper to cover – one for each “off case” position
and one for each advantage. Given this scenario, MGC numbering should re-start. In the same
way that the MOC must be able to identify and share numbering with their LOC to extend and
effectively execute on LOC arguments, the PMR must be able to identify and share numbering with
their MGC to extend and effectively execute on MGC arguments. So, in the scenario mentioned
above, the MGC would have separate numbering on each sheet of paper – that is, the answers to
the first Topicality shell would be number 1-N. Utilizing this strategy, the PMR can say, “extend
MGC #7 on the Significantly T shell.” If the MGC has executed the numbering strategy correctly
(controlling for their judges speed preference, debater clarity and other issues), there should be
no doubt that the judge and the debaters share an understanding of the argument that comprised
“MGC #7.” Recent trends have caused parliamentary debaters to accelerate their delivery to a speed
where it is (a) difficult for debaters to keep consistent numbering and (b) difficult for judges to keep
consistent numbering if the debater employs the tactic of saying “next” in place of numbering their
arguments. I would argue, however, based on significant observation, that the race to clarity is more
important than the race to quantity.
Take your time to allow your judge to get the correct order, refer to specific arguments. As
soon as the LOC ends, immediately announce your MGC order – as quickly as possible. In doing
so, it is important to acknowledge that you might want to use that time to re-group and make
sure that you are on the same page (literally) as your judge. For example, if you are answering a
“solvency dump” against your case, it makes sense to say, “I have everything from ‘Case can’t solve
DOHS overstretch’ to ‘Politics Disad turns the case’ on Advantage One – Advantage Two starts
with ‘terrorism is inevitable’ is that what you have?” Absolutely no one will fault you for this. If
you plan to answer a disadvantage, generally, from the bottom up or re-order any other sheets of
paper, take the time to announce and discuss your intention to do so. Ensuring that your PMR will
be able to effectively collapse to MGC arguments hinges on the ability for the judge to locate those
arguments – anything that you can do to increase the clarity of that communication is tremendously
beneficial.
Consider the time spent on each sheet of paper by clocking the LOC. One strategy that I
commonly share with MGCs that I coach is to develop a method for calculating the amount of
time spent on each sheet of paper or argument in the LOC. When you deliver the MGC, you can
use this time-allocation to ensure that you receive (at minimum) a 1-1 tradeoff. Perhaps you leave
this responsibility to the PMC/PMR speaker. The key element of this strategy is that you should
do something to keep track of how much time the LOC spent reading an argument so that you
can ensure that you do not spend too much time answering that argument. Time spent reading an
argument in the LOC is not always an indicator of the quality of the argument, but you can often
draw a correlation between the two. When considering theory arguments, making sure that you are
on top of your game so that you are able to discuss, specifically, the importance of how much time
each speaker might have spent on certain arguments (substantive vs. procedural) is often invaluable
and cannot be overstated.
The MGC should recognize their weaknesses and ask for help in writing answers. Keep in
mind, the PMC is not necessarily responsible for maintaining a perfect flow of the LOC and they
will have an opportunity to listen to the MGC as the speech is delivered. Given this understanding
of the role of the PMC speaker, you might be able to ask your partner for help if the LOC moves
from one position to the next before you are able to contextualize or develop a substantial MGC
line of argumentation against a given position. As a debater, I would handle these situations by
simply sliding over my flow of a given position to my partner and asking them to write a couple of
extra answers while I maintained focus on the next position – a strategy that feels uncomfortable
160 Chapter 16. The MG Constructive

for both debaters at first, but quickly feels comfortable with a little bit of practice. Another way
that the MGC can utilize their partner is by working with them to write MGC theory shells. For
example, if a government team knows that they will read “PICS Bad” or “Condo Bad” against
an LOC Counterplan, it might make sense for the PMC to write out these shells. This strategy
ensures that the MGC is not spending a significant amount of time sketching out the skeleton for an
argument that should be memorized and ensures that the PMR has all of the arguments included
that they feel comfortable collapsing to in the last speech. No matter the skill level of the MGC, I
often observe a disconnect between the MGC and the PMR regarding what a particular theory shell
should say. This strategy ensures that, at least when it comes to single-collapse options, the PMR is
left with appropriate, familiar arguments.
Pay attention to your partner. Too often, the MGC speaker will deliver the speech without
consideration of one simple fact – they will not be responsible for concluding the debate in the
PMR. MGC speakers should do everything that they can to ensure that their PMR is comfortable.
This includes pre-determining when you will find it acceptable for your PMR to interrupt you during
your speech to make suggestions, insert arguments, or comment on strategy. This also includes
consulting them before you make somewhat unconventional strategic decisions. For example, if
you plan to only impact turn a disadvantage, perhaps your PMR should know this before the MGC
is delivered, no? The adage holds – an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Ensuring
that your PMR is not surprised and that they agree with your team-strategy in the MGC can deflect
issues with partner dynamics. I have coached PMRs that regularly debate with unapologetically
stubborn MGC debaters. Always remember that you are part of a two-person team and that any
appearance of dysfunction in partner communication allows critics an easy justification to vote for
the opposition team in circumstances in which the two debaters on the government team do not
agree on the MGC strategy.
Think like the PMR. As you construct MGC arguments, visualize yourself going for these
arguments in the PMR. As I coach, I often ask the following question of the MGC – on each
argument, how can the PMR win the debate on this argument alone? If the answer is, “they cannot,”
you may want to re-think the argument. The best MGC debaters conceptualize their MGC strategy
as a string of arguments that, if push comes to shove, the PMR could collapse to any one argument
to close the door on the debate. This is not to say that the MGC cannot contain any arguments
that must be paired with one or two other arguments to win, but the strategy should always have
purpose. It is fine if you need two or three arguments paired together for the PMR to win the debate,
just do it with purpose.
There are a couple of useful drills to practice skills in this category. For a basic drill, when
watching a practice debate, a coach might tell the PMR that they need to collapse to only one
or two arguments. As a spin-off of this drill, the coach might even select the argument for the
PMR collapse. As a more advanced variation of this drill, to ensure that the MGC constructs their
arguments as one-off collapsible strategies, a coach might decide to end a the MGC four or five
minutes into the speech. The MOC and LOR could proceed as planned, intentionally digging a
whole for the PMR. Although I never delivered the PMR and this is not intended to be a piece
on PMR strategy, I will say this – as a coach, the PMR is the most difficult speech to coach and
practice. The drill mentioned above intentionally makes the PMR difficult and, if you can give
a PMR when you are losing you can give a PMR when you are winning – “ if you can dodge a
wrench, you can dodge a ball.” Finally, consider drills where the MGC also delivers the PMR and
where the PMR also delivers the MGC. Anecdotal observations indicate that debaters are typically
a better PMR after they have dedicated a significant amount of time to the MGC and visa versa.
As this text stresses throughout, when it comes to drills, you often do not need four debaters to
engage in a practice debate – one vs. one or two vs. one drills can often build valuable round-vision
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skills.
The MGC should be innovative. Like a child, you will initially learn to deliver a high-level MGC
by replicating what you see – but you have to become your own debater eventually. As a person who
has been involved in parliamentary debate for over a decade, I see trends in arguments that emerge
when top-level, experienced debaters demonstrate success using them. These arguments include
everything from different permutation formulations, common theory arguments, and common
impact development/framing/explanation language. While simply parroting successful debaters is
an easy way to demonstrate initial success, that success is often artificial and short lived. Remember,
PMCs and LOCs have twenty minutes or more to prepare. MOCs do not have the same luxury.
You are doing yourself a disservice if you serve up an argument with which the MOC might be
familiar – and since you are repeating it (almost artificially), you might be less familiar with the
argument than your opponent. Simply put, the more that you can surprise the MOC, the better. This
lesson, for me, has become a bit of a point of emphasis with the debaters that I coach and with
the debates that I judge. I encourage all MGCs, when possible, to create new language, to seek
out uncommon arguments, to try unconventional strategies, to invent new theory, and to present
innovative arguments that, to the best of your knowledge, have not been commonly presented in
parliamentary debates.
Finally, the MGC should avoid the temptation to check out of the debate once they have
delivered their speech. Giving a high-level MGC is exhilarating – if this chapter title is any
indication, you will feel like the debate is over. Once the MGC is over, you are responsible for
protecting your PMR against new arguments in the LOR – any time that you can “point of order”
the LOR is free prep-time for your PMR. You are also responsible for monitoring the MOC for
tricks and determining whether or not the MOC is responsive to the critical components of your
MGC. The balance, however, is a gentle one. As much as you need to remain invested in the MOC
and LOR, you also need to be careful not to talk too much. Talking too much to the PMR during the
MOC and LOR can often distract from their prep time, causing both government debaters to miss
important elements of opposition strategy, and frustrate the PMR. Just as you likely hope that the
PMC/PMR debater will not interfere too much with your MGC, you owe them the respect and trust
to let them win the debate. There are often times that MGCs will over-commit to certain arguments
and insist that they are round-winners. Keep in mind that your PMR watched the MGC along with
the judge – if you need to re-explain your argument to your partner during the MOC/LOR, you
likely did not maintain the level of clarity that you had intended. In short, understand that once you
have delivered the MGC, your role in the debate is not over, but that you should be mindful to stay
out of your own way.
 17. The MO Constructive

T HE C OLLAPSE :
A G UIDE TO THE M EMBER OF O PPOSITION S PEECH S TRATEGY
AND A RGUMENT S ELECTION
A DAM T ESTERMAN – T EXAS T ECH U NIVERSITY

Introduction

The unique aspects of parliamentary debate make the Member of Opposition Constructive (MOC)
speech one of the more interesting and challenging tasks in the event. As with every speech, the
unique characteristics of each speaker will alter the stylistic and strategic decisions available in
the MOC. Understanding how the MOC can simultaneously develop and collapse arguments will
hopefully allow each debater the ability to make the speech her/his own. It is my goal to share
how you can systematically approach the MOC to maximize your opportunities to make winning
decisions. The MOC incentivizes strategic thinking and therefore benefits debaters who have a
working knowledge of a wide variety of available argumentative strategies. I will attempt to provide
insight on presentation/style and argument development for the MOC. I will then analyze how those
tools can be utilized on particular argumentative strategies: procedurals, disadvantages/counterplans,
and critical arguments. Ultimately, this writing is only one template that worked for me – the only
way to fully maximize the potential of the MOC is to find your own voice and make the speech
work for you.

Presentation / Style

Parliamentary debate has rapidly developed many of the technical aspects of policy debate, however
presentation and style remain integral to competitive success. Self-confidence, or at least the
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perception of it, gives the MOC needed momentum. The MOC decides which LOC positions
that the opposition team will ultimately defend at the conclusion of the debate. The MOC makes
decisions to emphasize certain arguments over others and exposes ineptitude in the MGC; thus, the
MOC should be delivered with a sense of intentionality. Avoid the deployment of self-doubting
language. It is extremely tempting to say things like “Even if we aren’t winning X argument?”
or “this argument is stupid, but it is conceded”. Those phrases are a waste of energy and rarely
accomplish the intended goal of deflecting government momentum. It is always more strategic to
emphasize the positive reasons particular arguments have been selected.
Confidence also relates to how particular arguments are presented in the MOC. Debate is ultimately
a game of storytelling, particularly for this speech. The MOC should be telling the story of the
debate round – from start to finish. This means being overtly honest about why particular strategic
decisions are being made and how those decisions mean the round should be evaluated in favor of
the opposition team. To be more specific, I recommend that MOC’s intentionally decrease their
rate of delivery periodically throughout to deploy overviews that crystallize the thought-process of
the MOC. It makes a great amount of persuasive sense to choose particular moments where you
actually look up at your audience/judges and tell them slowly and persuasively why the debate
round is beyond recovery for the Prime Minister Rebuttal (PMR). In my experience, judges tend
to preference debaters who command their arguments by being able to explain them effectively.
Understanding debate arguments as “stories to be told” should help one understand the way to
present the MOC. Good storytellers present deep wisdom about their subjects, are interesting to
listen to and are interested in the things they are saying. Great debaters are great storytellers.
When and how to deploy round overviews is often a contentious subject among judges, coaches
and competitors – ultimately depending on individual preference. In my opinion, round overviews
tend to lack strategic use of time. Positions overviews, however, can be effective at demonstrating
strategic thinking. An overview of the round will typically identify the three reasons why the
opposition has won the round and should include exact language that the judge would write on the
“general RFD” section of their ballot. An overview of a position is a one or two sentence statement
explaining the circumstances that make that particular piece of paper problematic for the other
team. The forthcoming LOR has to be considered by the MOC, and I have found that much of
the analysis found in round overviews can be more effectively developed in the LOR. Position
overviews tie the MOC to the specifics of the flow at hand, which conceivably allows the LOR
room for more universal coverage. The dynamics of this situation will depend on the team, but it is
useful to understand how overviews can aid in presentation and also aid in separating duties for the
MOC and LOR.

The Collapse

The most important strategic choice to be made in the MOC is how to develop “the collapse”.
A collapse occurs when the MOC selects certain arguments from the LOC for full-development
and chooses to de-emphasize or completely eliminate consideration of others. It is strategic for
the MOC to have multiple combinations of offensive choices to select from the LOC. This can
mean reading procedural arguments along with disadvantages, case arguments, a counterplan,
and/or a critical position. In some instances, the opposition team will encounter opponents who
are better prepared to answer an argument than the opposition is at deploying it. There will be
times when a government team is able to speak much more quickly than the opposition, making a
one-to-one argument tradeoff a no-win option for the opposition – just one of the strategic reasons
that demonstrates, in a vast majority of instances, you should have the ability to shift the debate
into more focused territory in the MOC. The collapse is most effective when the MOC’s decision
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making is based on the choices of the MGC. It is tempting for debaters who closely identify with a
particular style of argument to force the issue and frequently make the debate about one or two
specific topics. The problem with this strategy is that other teams will catch-on to habits and start
front-loading additional answers to them in their cases and give increased attention to these items
in the MGC. Collapsing strategies not only prevents the MGC from sandbagging, it also creates
time-tradeoffs. When executed properly, the collapse allows the MOC to nullify several minutes
of MGC speech time in a few seconds. Time saved on one position allows more arguments to
be generated elsewhere in the debate, increasing the difficulty of delivering the PMR. Collapsing
strategies should be dictated by choices made in the MGC, meaning that there is rarely a defined,
universal method of execution.
Collapsing strategies can be accomplished by moving vertically and horizontally across the flow.
Moving vertically across a flow means that particular LOC strategies are eliminated from the debate.
After a vertical collapse, there are typically less “pieces of paper” left “in the debate” and one
path to the ballot has been completely developed. A horizontal collapse occurs on one piece of
paper/ argumentative strategy. A MOC may attempt to execute a procedural strategy where one
standard (i.e. education) from the LOC is given supreme emphasis while a different LOC standard
(i.e. ground,) is de-emphasized; such an example would represent a horizontal collapse on that
piece of paper. The MOC does not always have to be a fast speech, but it should certainly aim to
answer each MGC argument on a piece of relevant paper with one or more responses. Vertical
and horizontal collapses allow the MOC to completely commit to one path to winning the debate.
Understanding how and when to execute collapses is a vital component of an effective MOC.

Procedural Arguments

Procedural arguments offer the MOC unique strategic flexibility and should be a well-practiced
strategy of every MOC. Procedural arguments object to the process of the other team’s strategy
as opposed to its supposed implementation or ethical positioning. In spite of the large number
of procedural arguments (specification arguments, topicality arguments, etc.), there are many
similarities between the positions. The thought-process the MOC goes through to decide whether a
procedural is a viable strategy holds constant for almost all procedurals. To go for a procedural,
debaters must first make sure they have a judge who will allow it. Procedurals tend to be an area
where judges have wide-ranging and clashing viewpoints about when they are appropriate and what
purpose they can serve. Though it is true of all arguments, with procedurals in particular, reading a
judge’s philosophy and watching her/his facial reactions when a position is read, are very important
elements to choosing your collapse strategy.
Procedurals are ultimately games of interpretations. The MOC knows that a procedural is a
viable strategy when the MGC fails to make a viable “we meet” and/or does not have a “counter
interpretation” that is preferable to the original interpretation. The MGC is under incredible time
pressure and that pressure can make it difficult to generate an effective counter-interpretation and
counter-standard strategy. MGC’s will often deploy quality counter-standard arguments without
connecting those arguments to a counter-interpretation. The MOC should always question the
interpretation vs. the counter-interpretation. This thought-process will often reveal that the original
LOC interpretation can solve much of the counter-standards made by the MGC or that the MGC’s
counter-interpretation does not solve for the counter-standards. Access to the interpretation that
solves the most, or most important, offense tells the MOC if the procedural strategy is viable.
It is also important for the MOC to understand the nuances of the LOC procedural shell in order to
properly execute a horizontal collapse on the position. Often times an interpretation will be tied
166 Chapter 17. The MO Constructive

to one central argument supported in the standards. If the topicality violation argues the need for
Supreme Court action in the topic, arguments concerning “Supreme Court education good” are
likely an important part of the standards debate. A competent MGC might provide a substantial
defense of a counter-interpretation, but still fail to address the crux of the original shell about
Supreme Court education being good. A smart MOC knows which arguments in the original shell
were important and can leverage those against the MGC’s omission.
The “a priori” nature of procedural debate can be exploited to create strategic advantages in the
MOC. Procedural debates are said to be “a priori” because they question the plan on a prior level
to other positions. If procedurals were not evaluated before the fiated implementation of the plan,
then they would never be evaluated at all in a net-benefits framework. The plan will solve some
huge impact or help a group of people who really need it; that cannot be weighed directly against
an objection to plan wording because those issues are more important. Allowing a procedural
to operate “a priori” allows judges to evaluate issues of conduct as a gateway to determining if
the rest of the debate was fair. Collapsing to a procedural argument can be a strategic method
of short-circuiting government offense, particularly if the MGC is attempting to leverage a lot
of offense against a criticism by extending their PMC. Debaters should not attempt to go for
another strategy in addition to a procedural. Doing so undermines the credibility of the procedural
position and the “a priori” nature of procedurals as a strategic tool. Utilizing the unique structure
and strategic positioning of procedural arguments will help develop the MOC into a complete
speech.

Disadvantage and Counterplan Arguments

Strategies engaging the government team on a policy level allow the MOC opportunities for
unique strategic positioning. Debates concerning implementation and framework can become
easily convoluted. For this reason, many judges prefer that the opposition team engage the
government team on the terms established by the PMC/resolution. Disadvantages are at the heart of
a policymaking framework since they question the consequences of a particular course of action.
Counterplans and disadvantages allow the opposition to make strategic concessions while still
leveraging a significant amount of offense. Objecting to the entirety of the government action lies
at the heart of many critical arguments. Disadvantages and counterplans limit the government
offense to their case and direct responses to off-case arguments. Arguments on the disadvantage and
counterplan will already be on the terms dictated by the LOC shell and those should, theoretically,
already answer selected portions of the case. The amount of available PMC/MGC strategies that
answer disadvantages and counterplans are much more limited than with other opposition arguments
and is also limited by the specific scope of the LOC strategy.
Identifying when a disadvantage has become a viable argument for the MOC is accomplished by
understanding the obligations of the MGC. There are a wide variety of disadvantages that will
dictate MGC answers, all in unique ways. The first step to mastering the disadvantage debate is to
understand how to argue a position on its own terms. A good example is the proper deployment
of a Business Confidence Disadvantage. A Business Confidence Disadvantage argues that the
government plan will cause businesses, in some form, to withdraw their support from the US
economy, which will trigger negative economic impacts. It is tempting for MGCs to answer this
position in the same way they might approach a “Spending Bad” disadvantage – which is to say that
“the plan actually helps the economy for X reasons and therefore turns the position.” A skilled MOC
will understand that arguments about how “the government plan helps the economy” are not directly
responsive to the position. It is possible to spend money on highway construction, for example, and
see positive economic benefits because traffic times are decreased but also cause businesses to lose
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confidence in the economy because of the perception of reckless spending. The unique nature of
the Business Confidence Disadvantage can be used to undermine a large number of MGC responses
and that holds true for almost any disadvantage. MOCs should attempt to understand how the LOC
is constructing positions to undermine MGC offense. As outlined in the above scenario, MGC
responses to LOC shells often fail to answer the specificity of LOC arguments.
Disadvantages are always potentially viable when MGC’s fail to meet minimum argument thresholds
to properly constructed LOC positions – that is, the MGC must typically make a certain number
or a certain type of arguments for it to become untenable for the MOC to defend that particular
position. This idea is obviously tied to an understanding of how to properly construct LOC positions.
There are several arguments that every MOC ought demand that they find a way into the LOC: a
disadvantage should always attempt to both (1) turn and (2) outweigh the government case and
these arguments should be made explicit in the LOC. A MOC that is able to generate even a tenuous
link to a disadvantage can win the round if the disadvantage clearly turns and outweighs the case.
The MGC will only be able to generate offense stemming from the action in the plan text. If the
opposition can win that access to the disadvantage will alter the solvency of the government case,
the opposition has also implicated the entirety of the MGC strategy on the disadvantage, since the
MGC strategy assumes proper implementation of the PMC plan text.
Diversity in uniqueness and link sections of disadvantages provide the MOC flexibility. Uniqueness
arguments can be predictive, assumptive, and descriptive; MOCs should be able to identify and
explain the differences. A descriptive uniqueness argument provides a snapshot of how “things look
now”. Citing an economic report of current GDP is a descriptive argument because it identifies
a current “truth”. A predictive uniqueness argument identifies future variables and factors their
potential outcome in its conclusion. Arguing that even if the economy is doing poorly now and the
unemployment rate is high, one could make a predictive uniqueness that says new hiring is picking
up now which will swing the other factors in the near future. Assumptive uniqueness arguments are
ones that directly identify and clash with potential government link strategies. One could argue that
the plan is good because it decreases unemployment but make a uniqueness argument that argues
the economy is doing well in spite of a poor unemployment rate; the uniqueness can make potential
offense generated by the government irrelevant. Each kind of uniqueness argument has the potential
for usefulness beyond its original deployment. The same basic structure of uniqueness arguments
can be executed in the link section of a disadvantage as well. MOC’s demonstrate command of
these strategies by unraveling LOC positions in ways that undermine MGC offense.
Counterplans are cornerstones of opposition strategy, but also create unique obligations for the
MOC. To effectively execute a collapse with a counterplan, the MOC should look to nullify
offense from the government case. Nullifying case offense is accomplished by solving the same
internal links that the government team advances in the PMC advantages. Arguments about how
“the counterplan solves the case” should be explicit in the LOC counterplan shell and should be
extended as clearly as possible. The MOC should identify exactly how the counterplan operates
and capitalize on any reason why it potentially solves better than the PMC’s plan. Highlighting
counterplan solvency in the MOC can potentially nullify government offense on another position.
Many MGCs will make the mistake of answering disadvantages without consideration of how the
counterplan will interact with their arguments. The MOC can often argue that the counterplan
has access to the same link turns as the plan, because it solves for the same internal links. For
example, if the government plan gives money to alternative energy companies and claims an
economy advantage, the LOC may read a Business Confidence Disadvantage and a counterplan that
gives tax breaks to alternative energy companies. The MGC might answer Business Confidence
by saying “there will be growth in alternative energy sector.” The MOC can then extend that the
“counterplan solves case” arguments that argue tax breaks allow alternative energy sector expansion,
168 Chapter 17. The MO Constructive

and then extend link argument on the Business Confidence Disadvantage that argue the perception
of new spending is bad and separate from giving out tax breaks. This example shows that it is
possible for the MOC to both solve the case and avoid a link to a disadvantage. Horizontal collapse
opportunities can be generated in similar fashion with many different kinds of counterplans. The
lesson is simple – be strategic in constructing the LOC and selectively choose which arguments to
highlight in the MOC.
MOC’s should use the counterplan to gain access to the net benefits framework. In a net benefits
framework the judge votes for the policy option that creates the most amount of good. This
understanding allows the MOC to make strategic concessions and still capture the ballot. It is
possible that the MGC will have several strong reasons why a counterplan is ineffective at solving
for a particular advantage. The MOC has the opportunity to concede those types of arguments and
privilege a different impact scenario. For example, the counterplan might not clearly solve one of
the two PMC advantages. In this scenario, the MOC could spend time making defensive arguments
on one advantage and argue that the disadvantage has bigger impacts. The counterplan could still
solve the other advantage contained in the PMC and avoid the link to the disadvantage, resulting in
a ballot for the opposition in a net benefits framework. The MOC should constantly look for these
types of opportunities to collapse, especially with a counterplan that changes how the PMC can
be leveraged as offense. Be thoughtful of how the counterplan interacts with all other arguments
and remember to execute a collapse that allow a clear story concerning all the other arguments
remaining in the round.

Critical Arguments

Critical arguments offer the opposition chances to shift the focus of offense into strategically
beneficial ground. Most of what the MOC does with a criticism is contingent on the nature of
the particular argument being read. Critiques can approach questions of framework and argument
interaction in different ways, which can change the types of arguments MOC’s need to make. The
key to developing a successful MOC critical strategy is to understand the LOC shell as much as
possible and use it strategically. LOC critique shells tend to pack a lot of strategy into a very
small “space”, requiring the MOC to execute horizontal collapses throughout the position. MOC’s
equipped with strategic vision can develop critical strategies into their own unique approach, which
increase chances for competitive success.
MOC’s should utilize a critical framework to both prioritize weighing mechanisms and clarify
thesis-level understandings of the position. Framework arguments should highlight the position’s
interaction with other offense in the round. Framework should explain why a particular way of
understanding impacts is problematic and thus establishes the critique impacts as the focal point
for offense. Frameworks should not exclude arguments; instead, they should seek to explain why
certain offense is more important or relevant than other parts of the debate. If the MOC is successful
in this effort, the entire position should be easy to understand. The framework introduces the critique
at a thesis-level, which means the central argument in the position should be easily understood. It
is often tempting for MOC’s to use framework as a panacea – as if winning framework alone is
enough to justify a ballot. This temptation should be avoided because it misidentifies the purpose
of framework debate and ultimately takes a lazy approach to argument interaction. MOC’s should
use framework to highlight how their offense should be evaluated in the context of the topic that
the position is attempting to critique before shifting to the offense contained in the rest of the
position.
The links and impacts of a critique should develop a central and focused argument in the MOC.
 169

Centering the links and impacts means eliminating arguments that are superfluous to the main
argument in the LOC shell. It is the time to unwrap the arguments that are most important for
the opposition to control to win the round. The process usually involves focusing on one or two
arguments from the LOC and explaining how those arguments control the internal link to other
things happening in the round. The ability to horizontally collapse in these sections of the criticism
should allow the MOC to discount many MGC arguments as irrelevant. The internal collapse allows
the opposition to frame particular arguments as being of primary importance to the round. The
collapse will obviously look a lot different from position-to-position – for example, some critiques
will want to leverage arguments that function as case turns while other critiques may prioritize
systemic impacts. The MOC should attempt to make this collapse seem obvious and inevitable,
because it should interact with the “thesis-level” of the critique. If the judge understands the central
argument of the critique, the function of the offense should also be apparent.
MOC’s should approach critique alternatives in similar ways to counterplan debate. A critique
alternative should solve the links/impacts that are being leveraged against the government team.
The links and impacts of a criticism are usually descriptive of a larger status quo rather than
narrowly focusing on the government plan. Critiques often discuss systemic problems with systems
of power and use those explanations to argue that the PMC project is problematic. Successful
government debaters will attempt to position the links/impacts as inevitable and not unique to the
PMC itself. These arguments allow the government to position their case as offense against the
criticism, because the PMC action does not uniquely trigger the impacts of the criticism, but can
uniquely solve the impacts of the advantages. Similarly, the alternative should serve to provide
uniqueness for the links/impacts of the criticism by attempting to solve the mindset that produces
them. After that, the alternative should work the same as a counterplan. It should seek to identify
the most important issues in the round and provide a way to solve for those issues. MOC’s need
to consider the ways the alternative is mutually exclusive with the PMC action in order to guard
against permutations. Permutations almost always claim the case as a net benefit. MOC’s need to
show how the PMC action derails the solvency of the alternative or re-entrench problems described
in the links/impacts. The MOC needs to have a central story that intuitively connects all parts of
the criticism in a way that makes the plan unconscionable.

Conclusion

The MOC speech provides individuals with strategic flexibility and decision-making. MOC’s
ultimately decide which story to tell about why the government team should not win the debate
round. Telling that story allows you to showcase your unique skill set and approach to the debate.
There is no single, proper way to give an MOC as long as decisions made in the round are intentional
and grounded in an understanding of strategy. Remember, the MOC is a constructive speech
– which means new arguments are allowed. MOC’s need to be careful because new arguments have
the potential to be turned in the PMR, without the opportunity for further clarification from the
opposition. This usually means that new defense in the MOC can be very strategic, because the
government team cannot impact turn those types of arguments. The government team can spend
time justifying arguments they already were making, but they typically cannot use “you don’t solve”
arguments against the opposition in any significant way. The LOC sometimes forgets to answer a
key argument contained in the PMC or does not spend enough time answering the substance of
the PMC. The arguments the MGC “blows up” need to be dealt with head-on in the MOC. The
opposition does not win by tricking a bull with the cape, but by meeting it at the horns.
The MOC needs to support the LOC by unwrapping nuance and focusing on strategically important
aspects of the LOC. The MOC should not depart far from the LOC shell. It should focus the LOC
170 Chapter 17. The MO Constructive

shell and highlight the ways the MGC erred in answering the LOC. The shell establishes the terms
on which the opposition will be engaging the government. Using the shell in the MOC prevents the
MGC from dictating the offense and establishes consistency and fluidity between both opposition
speakers. The potential for the MOC is only limited to the strategic scope of the debater giving the
speech. It is a speech of opportunity, which can overwhelm or empower. Great stories are intuitive
(at some level) and show command of their subject. The path to opposition victory is open when
the MOC tells a great story.
 18. The LO Rebuttal

T HE LOR: WASTE OR W EAPON ?

L AUREN K NOTH – WASHBURN U NIVERSITY

Introduction

The Leader of the Opposition Rebuttal (LOR) is too often considered a wasted speech – an
unnecessary 4 minutes in the debate round, a repeat of the Member of the Opposition Constructive
(MOC) arguments, or prep time for the Prime Minister Rebuttal (PMR). The goal of this chapter
is to introduce approaches and techniques that will help rid the community of these stereotypes
and allow debaters to make use of a strategic opposition advantage. Better understanding of the
arguments that can and should be made in the opposition rebuttal clarifies that this speech is not
a waste, but is an often-underutilized weapon for the opposition team. This chapter is divided
into four sections. First, I provide a brief overview of what the LOR is and what the current
parliamentary rules and norms are for the speech. Next, I cover the structure of the LOR with a
breakdown of the key components of the speech. Third, I will covers specific arguments that should
be included in each LOR and different strategies of argumentation. Finally, I will give specific
focus to LOR’s that heavily involve theory debates.

The LOR – Rules and Norms

The leader of the opposition rebuttal lasts 4 minutes and makes up the latter portion of the
“opposition block.” When done correctly, the PMR faces a 7-minute deficit in which they must frame
the debate and respond to new MOC offense. These two responsibilities (offense and framing)
are split among the opposition team between two speeches totaling twelve minutes. Immediately
following the MOC, the LOR is the final opposition speech, and must abide by limitations set
172 Chapter 18. The LO Rebuttal

forth for all rebuttal speeches. According the National Parliamentary Tournament of Excellence
tournament rules, “Rebuttal speeches shall be used for the crystallization and weighing of previously
established lines of argument. New arguments may not be presented in rebuttal speeches except
in the case of a Prime Minister responding to an argument originally made by the Member of
Opposition.” Addressing the issue more specifically, the National Parliamentary Debate Association
“Rules of Debate” states, “Introduction of new arguments is appropriate during all constructive
speeches. However, debaters may not introduce new arguments in rebuttal speeches except that the
proposition rebuttalist may introduce new arguments in his or her rebuttal to refute arguments that
were first raised in the Second Opposition Constructive [MOC]. New examples, analysis, analogies,
etc. that support previously introduced arguments are permitted in rebuttal speeches.”

These rules are taken literally far too often, making debaters feel as though they are unable to say
anything that was not said in the LOC or MOC. This limitation has undermined the utility of the
LOR and often serves as a psychological block for debaters giving the speech. In addition, this
limitation has led to widespread criticism that this speech has limited utility and is little more than
4-minutes of preparation time for the PMR. While different judges have differing opinions on this
subject, it is widely accepted that new connections can be made between arguments; additional
examples and new specificity in impact calculus are permitted. The introduction of brand new
impact framing goes too far, but making connections between impacts and their order (timeframe),
magnitude, and probability are generally acceptable. For example, explaining how a solvency
argument interacts with the probability of being able to solve for an impact is not new, but rather
an explanation of interactions of previously made arguments and what they mean for the judge’s
evaluation of the debate.

For debaters familiar with policy debate, the transition from the first negative or second negative
rebuttals to the LOR may be difficult. The opposition team does not “split the block” in the same
sense. The job of the LOR is to explain what arguments mean in the greater context of the debate,
connecting together the implications of different positions and explaining not only the sequence of
events, but also any alternative and why your positions are preferable. Comparison, prioritization,
and preemption are the most important roles of this speech. Each of these roles will be addressed in
later sections of this chapter. Finally, it is important to note that neither association’s rules indicate
that judges may only consider arguments explicitly extended in the LOR. I have often heard LOR’s
express their feeling that they must extend every argument that the MOC makes, else it will not
be considered by the judge. This is certainly not the case, and has contributed to the belief that
the LOR is simply a waste of time. The rest of this chapter seeks to explain a better use of this
speech and how it can do significantly more than parrot the words of the MOC. While extensions
are obviously an important part of this speech, it is more critical to make strategic extensions and
explanations than spend four minutes trying to functionally re-give an eight-minute speech.

One cannot stress enough the importance of establishing a trusting, cooperative relationship with
your MOC. Prior to the beginning of the MOC speech, you should know what arguments you (as a
team) will collapse to in the block. Without dedicated preparation time in parliamentary debate,
the LOR has an advantage in the debate because it is provided with, functionally, 8 minutes of
imbedded preparation time. While you should not ignore the arguments made by your partner, you
will learn to develop a balance between listening to the arguments and extensions being made in
the MOC and preparing for your own speech.

It was not uncommon for me to fold a blank sheet of paper in half with the letters ‘T,’ ‘P,’ and ‘M’
(standing for timeframe, probability, and magnitude) on the left hand side before the MOC even
began. While I had the correct flow to follow my partners’ speech, I was constantly writing my
overview, specific arguments for each level of timeframe, and organizing my speech on this separate
 173

sheet of paper. Having these papers juxtaposed made it easy to follow along while preparing for
my speech. Often times, I would not flow new MOC impact arguments on the position themselves,
but rather would write down the most important ones on the overview sheet where they belonged
(timeframe, probability, or magnitude, respectively). How you handle this bifurcation is something
that you will have to develop individually depending on your comfort level. The bottom line is that
you must not ignore your partner’s speech, (it is still your job to make sure they answer all critical
arguments) but you must also take advantage of this time and allow yourself to prepare for the
rebuttal and view how the various positions of the debate all fit together. Unlike every other speech
in parliamentary debate, the LOR has the ability to take a few moments to truly conceptualize how
the different arguments come together in the debate. This provides another unique advantage for
this particular speech. In addition, since the LOR provides the shells of the positions in the debate
as the LOC, you are most prepared to understand how the opposition arguments fit together and are
most familiar with what arguments are critical in the debate, specifically for the opposition strategy.
As such, you should arguably have the best round vision of any debater in the round.
Developing synergy within the block is not solely the responsibility of the LOC. MOC’s should
know that their partner will sufficiently frame the debate and provide impact comparison. Abdicating
this role to the LOR will not only help change perceptions about the usefulness of the rebuttal (by
minimizing “repetition” between the block speeches), but can also free up time for the MOC to make
additional warrants and responses to the MGC arguments. Thus, MOC’s should be confident in the
ability of the LOR to sufficiently cover impact calculus and weighing of issues and should focus
more on developing additional responses to further hedge against the PMR’s issue selection.

Structure

Individual round circumstances often dictate the content of the LOR. However, there are some
general stylistic approaches that should remain consistent from each round to the next. The general
structure of the speech is one of these consistencies. How you structure the LOR is largely based
on your personal preferences. Empirically, successful LOR’s have followed differing structures.
Some prefer to have the entire 4-minute speech flowed on a separate sheet of paper and provide
impact calculus and voting issues without going to the line by line, functionally giving a 4-minute
overview of the debate. Others locate each argument in the debate separately making extensions and
impact calculus for each respective position. My preference and the focus of this chapter attempts
to strike a balance between a separate overview isolating critical portions of the debate and specific
extensions made within each argument itself.

The Overview
The overview of the LOR should summarize the reason for decision (RFD) articulated by the judge
at the end of the round. Decisions are not often made on a single position, let alone a single warrant.
It is more likely that an RFD is a combination of arguments and how they function together that
allows a judge to conclude one way or another. The LOR has the advantage of being able to focus
on ‘connecting the dots’ of the debate, minimizing the work of the judge and subsequently resulting
in a preferable decision.
Even though the LOR is only a 4-minute speech, debaters should not be afraid to commit half
of the speech (roughly 2-minutes) to impact calculus and framing in an overview. It is not the
responsibility of the LOR to directly respond to each individual argument in a line-by-line fashion;
rather, this speech should be dedicated to tying together the individual arguments made by the
LOC and MOC, considering the responses of the MGC. Impact calculus provides a way for the
174 Chapter 18. The LO Rebuttal

LOR to extend critical arguments in the debate as well as frame the debate in order to preempt and
overcome the expected PMR arguments.
Impact prioritization is critical. Each offensive position should be included in each level of impact
calculus. There are various ways in which this can be accomplished and there are too many different
circumstances to address them all in this chapter. For a better explanation, I will provide an example
overview. In this example, the government has read a case with 2 advantages, one leading to a
U.S. nuclear war with China and extinction and the other with a Chinese trade war collapsing the
United States economy. The opposition team collapses to a United States Economy Disadvantage
indicating that the plan undermines US competitiveness, a Human Rights Disadvantage, and case
arguments. This example attempts to highlight the strategic advantages of comparison, prioritiza-
tion, and preemption and how they can be specifically applied to impact calculus in the LOR. Keep
in mind that specific extensions of key arguments are helpful in impact calculus, but for the sake
of this example, these have been truncated. The LOR overview in this situation may include the
following:

Magnitude: “Both teams have access to internal links on collapsing the United States economy.
Magnitude calculation comes down to the risk of a nuclear war with China and the dehumanization
accessed through the human rights disadvantage. Extend the arguments on Advantage 1 (you may
want more specific extensions of your arguments here) that indicate China would never launch
a nuclear weapon against the United States. At best, they may access a small conventional war.
Our second disadvantage indicates that dehumanization is a prior question to war because it is
the methodology that informs war, meaning that their impacts are inevitable in a world of the
disadvantage. We win this disadvantage meaning that even if they win a risk of their advantage, we
still win the round.”

Time frame: “Their advantages propose a possible war with China over territory that has been
fought over for decades. Our defense on case (arguments x, y, and z) makes it unlikely that the case
would be able to solve in a quick enough timeframe to avoid the impacts. If their arguments on the
advantages are true that a trade war and/or territorial war with China will happen tomorrow, there is
no risk the implementation of the plan would happen quick enough to avoid these impacts. Addi-
tionally, our economic disadvantage would occur following an immediate perceptual shock to the
markets following the passage of plan, meaning that the internal link of our economic disadvantage
happens substantially faster than the trade war internal link. Additionally, dehumanization occurs
immediately and thus you should prioritize the ability to solve for this quick impact over a potential
war that may or may not happen months or even years from now.”

Probability: “Both teams access economic collapse, although ours is much more probable given
that the plan would immediately send new fear into the markets. Extend the arguments on solvency
and advantage one (say specific arguments), which indicate that the probability of China and the
United States going to war is .01%. The opposition team has external offense that is systemic and
100% probable with the human rights disadvantage. As noted previously, this disadvantage also
makes their impacts inevitable, meaning the only way to solve any impacts in this round is with the
opposition team and solving for the disadvantage.”
As shown in this example, each position is tied together rather than explained separately. This is
significantly more effective than giving multiple levels of impact calculus on each separate position.
Being able to incorporate the positions into two coherent and comparative scenarios helps clean up
the debate and makes the connections that a judge will inevitably have to make when deciding how
 175

to vote at the end of the round. This also provides greater depth in the calculus. Rather than just
stating the timeframe of a single impact, these comparisons allow you to explicitly discuss why the
timeframe does or does not matter.
The LOR should always address all three levels of impact calculus. Even if your impacts admittedly
occur on a longer timeframe than the government team’s impacts, you should preemptively hedge
against arguments included in the PMR. It is often helpful to think about which area of impact
calculus the opposition strategy is weakest and propose reasons why that is irrelevant in the face of
other circumstances of the round. This framing alone may help outweigh the PMC even in the face
of unanswered offense.
Another consistent structure that should be integrated into your LOR repertoire involves the coun-
terplan debate. Your overview in these types of debates should still involve all three levels of impact
calculus as articulated above, but there are additional key arguments that typically apply. The
overview should include (and often begin with) an explicit comparison of the world of the counter-
plan as opposed to the case. For example, “The counterplan solves 100% of the case, but does not
do X which allows us to also solve for the net benefit Y.” This comparison clearly articulates to the
judge the overall differences between the government and opposition plans. This should always
include an articulation of what the counterplan does that is different from the government plan, how
it solves all or some of the PMC, and the implications of the net benefits.

Specific Extensions
Critical extensions should be referenced in the overview. However, isolating each position in
the debate establishes more localized focus for the judge. A good rule of thumb is to isolate the
two or three most important arguments on each position and choose to focus on quick extensions
highlighting their importance in the debate. Calling attention to the arguments where they appear in
the debate, particularly where they were located in the LOC, will help the judge during their final
evaluation of the round. These specific extensions should be significant offense that overwhelms
the rest of the government’s arguments, or significant defense that minimizes possible government
offense. If extensions are made in the overview and thoroughly discussed, it may be helpful to
simply reference the overview on the respective position. A simple, “cross apply the overview here,”
is often sufficient. Many justifications can be given for a plethora of different orders in the LOR.
Putting the PMC first and the opposition offensive positions (i.e. counterplan and disadvantage)
on bottom allow you to end the opposition block with focus on opposition positions. Putting the
opposition offense on top and the PMC on bottom ensures that you spend enough time on the
offense and that you spend less time on the case if you start to run out of time. This strategy also
allows you to close by discussing why the government has no case offense to leverage in the debate.
You could also do an LOR order that is the reverse of the MOC order. This helps to balance time
allocation if it was not well distributed in the MOC. There is no “right” answer to the order of the
LOR and it is often dictated by the circumstances of a particular round.
It is important that the LOR not get sucked down the rabbit hole of re-explaining every argument
in the debate. For example, the LOR does not need to extend every uniqueness argument on a
disadvantage, but rather should focus on the one or two that preempt the key government uniqueness
arguments. Additionally, the LOR should only focus on those uniqueness arguments needed for
the link that the MOC chose to collapse to. Even if the government wins some of their uniqueness
arguments, that fact should be irrelevant in the context of our specific link story.
Specific extensions are also a prime opportunity to isolate where the PMR is most likely to collapse
and preempt their concluding arguments. The MOC collapse helps eliminate some potential areas
of discussion in the PMR, but with the development of more mature round vision, a good LOR
176 Chapter 18. The LO Rebuttal

can often isolate what arguments the PMR must go for in order to win the debate. Locating these
areas and spending disproportionately more time hedging against their collapse is also a useful
allocation of LOR speech time. You will eventually develop a certain balance in which you know
how much time needs to be spent making proper extensions of arguments on each position. Time
allocation should not be equitable, but rather strategically divided according to the needs of each
round. Spending more time on potentially valuable PMR selections is one example of this strategic
allocation.

Key Arguments

Debate is often conceived of as a round filled with different puzzles (e.g. a disadvantage, counter-
plan, criticism, and case) without realizing that debate is truly one puzzle with several different
pieces. The most critical job of the LOR is to recognize how these puzzle pieces fit together in
order to frame the debate in a favorable way for the opposition. Three components make up this
goal: comparison, prioritization, and preemption. Combined, these tactics can improve not only the
‘offensive’ nature of the LOR, but together provide for a round vision that paints clearly the picture
constructed with the various pieces.
In general there are two application aspects for any given argument: (1) the warrant of the argument
and (2) what that argument means for the debate. The LOR should not focus on making new
warrants, rather explaining what the arguments previously presented by the opposition mean for the
outcome of the debate. For example, rather than making new solvency arguments, the LOR should
explain how the plethora of solvency arguments already made undermine the probability that the
government’s impacts would be solved for following passage of the government plan. Three ways
to express the implications of a particular argument or group of arguments is by comparing them to
the PMC and MGC warrants, explaining why yours is a prior question, and by explaining how your
arguments preempt any offense of the government team.

Warrant Comparisons
Explicit comparisons of warrants in the LOR are critical. Naturally, this is an inherent part of
impact calculus, but should also be included as you make specific extensions of LOC or MOC
arguments. Rather than simply extending an argument, you should discuss how the opposition
positions interact with the PMC and MGC arguments. For example, it may be the case that your
politics disadvantage uniqueness arguments presuppose the non-unique arguments presented by
the government. Explaining these interactions and clearly isolating these differences is a critical
step for isolating they key winning arguments for your judge. In the example previously provided
in this chapter, significant focus was given to the differences in the internal links of the economy
advantage and disadvantage. Explaining these unique differences (even though they do not occur
on the same position) helps provide overall clarity for the judge.

Prioritization
Prioritization of arguments goes beyond winning the timeframe portion of the debate. The rebuttal
should be focused on reasons why the judge should look to opposition arguments first when deciding
their RFD and seek to minimize the significance or importance of government offense. Establishing
an impact framework is a necessary tool for the government and opposition teams and should begin
in the initial constructive speeches. ‘Prior question’ and/or ‘root cause’ arguments are also useful
tools for this portion of the speech. In the example previously given in this chapter, the LOR stated
that dehumanization impacts were a prior question because they inform the methodologies used to
 177

justify larger war impacts in the first place. Thus, even though the body count of dehumanization,
on face, may appear smaller than the US-China war scenario, the war impacts are inevitable without
solving for dehumanization with the disadvantage. This prioritization guides the judge as they
attempt to make their decision at the end of the round. You direct the judge’s focus, first and
foremost, to your offensive positions, and thus should prioritize them so in the final opposition
speech. “Even-If” arguments may also be considered to be a sort of prioritization in the rebuttal,
but I will cover those separately below.
Each round individually dictates what types of arguments are necessary or available in the LOR.
Some rounds may lend themselves to prioritization based on magnitude, while in others you will
want the focus to be on probability. Isolating which level of impact calculus best supports your
opposition strategy (as a whole) will help you in constructing your overview to prioritize those levels.
While timeframe is not always the most amenable to your strategy, you should take advantage of it
when you can. If both teams access nuclear war impacts, but the impacts of the disadvantage happen
months before the potential war of the PMC the LOR has a prime opportunity for prioritization.
One might say, “It is best to prevent the immediate nuclear war from the disadvantage, allowing X
to solve the concerns isolated in the government case in the mean time.” That is to say, the impacts
of the PMC are irrelevant if nuclear war happens immediately, but it is possible that alternative
solutions will develop in the few months between now and the impacts of the government case and
thus you should prevent the immediate war and take the chance that we can also prevent the future
war.
One final area that individuals tend to overlook is the solvency of the PMC. Provided that you
have developed sufficient defense against the case solvency, this can be leveraged as reasons why
it is unlikely the government team could truly solve for their impacts. You may even be able to
use the government’s case arguments against themselves. For example, the government team may
have a plan that is a major regulative overhaul of a sector within the United States (i.e. Health
Care, Airlines, etc.). The government may have an advantage that claims to solve for an economic
collapse that will otherwise happen in the next week (teams too frequently default to saying their
impacts may even happen tomorrow!). The LOR should point out that it is illogical to believe that
the plan, a massive regulative overhaul, could be completed and efficiently implemented in one
day, or even a week. Thus, if their advantage is true that the economic conditions of the US are so
fragile that they will collapse tomorrow, it is extremely unlikely the plan would actually solve and
thus the judge should prefer the risk of the disadvantages occurring. Along these same lines, any
“status quo solves” arguments undermine the imminent need for the passage of the plan and allow
you to shift the focus back to the opposition offense. These arguments should be explained in a
way that functionally renders the need for the plan irrelevant in the LOR.

Preemption
You will often hear that the job of the LOR is to predict what the PMR will collapse to and preempt
their potential arguments. LOR’s may explicitly isolate these portions by stating, “the PMR will
go for?” or, “the PMR must win?” however preemptions may be more implicitly isolated as well.
As discussed before, isolating all offensive positions in each level of impact calculus is critical for
preemption. This isolation ensures that, no matter what the government team collapses to, you
have included their offense in your calculus thus presenting barriers to any option they choose
in the final speech. If you are able to predict what offensive position the government is likely to
collapse to, you may want this bit of information to guide your decisions regarding time allocation.
When making specific extensions, it may be strategic to dedicate more time to the likely areas
of collapse in order to more sufficiently hedge against the PMR. Identification of where a PMR
collapse will occur may sometimes be difficult. If you are the PMR, you can think about where you
178 Chapter 18. The LO Rebuttal

would likely collapse if the roles were reversed. Alternatively, if you are not the PMR, you should
develop a system of communication with your partner so that they can tell you where they would
likely collapse and where you may want to spend some extra time. A particularly effective system
includes having your partner write notes for you that you can glance over following the overview.
Since you should always include all positions in the debate in the impact calculus/overview, this
gives some time for your partner to get settled after the MOC and allows you to start a rhythm to
your speech uninterrupted.
It may be the case that the MOC dropped an important argument or was unable to dedicate sufficient
time to a certain area of the debate. Rather than ignoring these sections of the debate, it is important
to frame these arguments as “strategic concessions” and address them as such in the LOR. You
should try to leverage against this drop using impact calculus and discussing how the government
team can win the argument and still lose the round. This is a critical deployment of preemption
that, in my opinion, would not be considered a new argument – rather preemption and comparison
allowed within the LOR. This is another instance in which “even-if statements” may save you the
round.

Even-If
One of the best tools for an LOR is the “even-if statement.” This statement alone accomplishes
the goals of comparison, prioritization, and preemption. These statements directly compares
government and opposition offense, defends against any possible PMR collapse, undermines the
significance of government offense, and prioritizes opposition arguments. Put simply, this statement
says that “even if” the government wins one of their arguments, winning that argument is not
enough to overcome the opposition’s positions. Using the scenario previously posited in this chapter,
one might say, “even if the government wins a risk to solve for the US-China war, it will inevitably
reoccur without solving for the dehumanization impacts of the disadvantage.” Alternatively these
statements can be deployed for arguments on a more micro-level. For example, the LOR may say,
“even if they win solvency argument X they still can’t overcome our no solvency argument Y,” or
“even if they win their non-unique argument, it doesn’t overcome our uniqueness arguments Y and
Z.” These arguments should always be followed by additional explicit explanation as to why this
hedging is true in the context of the arguments being compared.
It is important to note that even-if statements are not necessarily a concession of the government
arguments. Even-if arguments can be used when you have substantial offense against their position.
In particular, if the government only has one offensive position (e.g., one advantage or one link
turn), you can use an even-if statement to grandstand about your offense. In these instances it
indicates that there is no way the opposition could lose the debate, that is, even if the government
wins all their offense, the opposition still wins the debate.

The LOR on Theory

Arguably the most difficult rebuttal speech to give is when theory positions are involved. There are
two distinct types of theory rebuttals: those in which the opposition collapses all in on a theory
argument (i.e. topicality) and those in which the opposition must respond to a theory position
that the government may collapse to in the PMR (i.e. counterplan or kritik theory). Each of these
instances requires a unique approach. Even though there are differences between these speeches and
substantive based LOR’s, they should still follow the previously identified framework: comparison,
prioritization, and preemption.
An LOR that involves a theory argument that is not the focus of the opposition collapse should not
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give substantial time or attention to extensions of the theory arguments from the MOC. This most
often occurs when the opposition team reads a counterplan or kritik and the government team reads
counterplan or kritik theory arguments. Since the MOC is often the first chance the opposition has to
respond, there is little comparison or extensions that can or should be done outside of those already
made in the MOC. Your MOC should significantly cover these positions to eliminate them as a
potential area of collapse for the PMR while you should return focus back to the substantive debate.
At most, you should quickly make a comment about extending the opposition arguments from the
MOC and perhaps spend 10-20 seconds isolating a few of the most important arguments.
In my opinion, an LOR on a theory position that substantiates the opposition collapse is the most
difficult rebuttal. Theory debates are inherently different that substantive debates and can take some
time to get used to. Most importantly you should develop a general format for the LOR that you
can follow in these instances. A good example is: framework, impacts, and standards.
In this instance the LOR first establishes the framework for evaluating the theory position - most
likely competing interpretations. The framework determines how the judge should evaluate the
rest of the arguments in the debate. Next, the LOR should isolate the impact that the opposition
team has chosen to collapse to and how that preempts or circumvents the government’s impacts.
For example, if you have collapsed to fairness as the impact and the government’s arguments are
focused on education, you should explain how “fairness is the internal link to education” or that
“some education is inevitable, but topic-specific education can only come with fairness.” This
covers both the comparison and prioritization steps of the LOR. This is also a good place to use
“even-if” clauses – “even if they win all their standards, none of them impact to fairness and thus
we outweigh on the impact level.” Theory debates can often get muddled and providing this type
of prioritization and clarification can help clean up the debate for a judge by showing how the
arguments function together.
Finally, the LOR must address the standards level of the debate. Standards function as the links
(and internal links) to the impacts you are trying to win. You should approach this portion of the
speech by asking yourself why the standards matter, what they get you in the debate, or, more
specifically, how they get you to your impacts. Similarly, you should ask why their standards do
not give them access to your impacts. For example, if the government team has a counter-standard
of ground and isolates specific arguments you could have run, you should discuss why that is not
fair ground. Simply saying “we had no ground” is not nearly as persuasive as discussing that “we
did not have fair ground.” Thus, even if they win that you had some ground, they cannot access
an internal link to a fair division of ground, which is necessary to subsume the fairness impacts.
This level of the LOR acts as preemption to the standards that you anticipate will be included in the
PMR.
This proposed format is certainly not the only option and may not be the best way for you to give
an LOR on theory. As with any other option presented in this chapter, you will have to develop
your own strategy over time. No matter how you choose to organize your speech, it should be
divided in easy to follow segments for the judge, and incorporate the three key aspects of the LOR:
comparison, prioritization, and preemption.

Conclusion

Using the tools isolated above you will be able to strategically deploy an effective LOR that
gives you an advantage over the government team. Practicing these methods and developing your
own techniques will greatly enhance your confidence and abilities as the LOR. It is important to
remember that this chapter serves as a guide for your individual development as a debater. You
180 Chapter 18. The LO Rebuttal

should always read the philosophy of your specific judge and take into consideration any special or
different thoughts they have on the LOR. You will eventually be able to successfully give a stand-up
LOR exuding confidence as the final opposition speaker and significantly increase pressure on
PMR’s. Ultimately, your goal as the LOR should be to hear lines from your speech read back to
you from the judge during the reason for decision. It is now your turn to change perspectives in the
community and convince others that this speech is certainly not a waste, but rather one of the best
opposition weapons.
 19. The PM Rebuttal

T HE P RIME M INISTER R EBUTTAL :

S EEING THE F OREST THROUGH THE T REES
J OSH R AMSEY – WASHBURN U NIVERSITY, U NIVERSITY OF THE PACIFIC

Introduction

The Prime Minister Rebuttal (PMR) is the final government speech. The task of the PMR is to
successfully refute twelve minutes of arguments and impact framing by the opposition block. The
PMR cannot make new arguments except to respond to new Member of Opposition Constructive
(MOC) arguments. The speech involves isolating, extending, and developing key arguments from
the debate. Since the speech is only five minutes in length, it requires the speaker to be very selective
on which arguments to advance – this selection process is also known as “the collapse.”
Unfortunately, debate is not a game with an objective or visible scoreboard. Wins and losses are
decided by the risk of different outcomes based on the perceived likelihood and importance of those
outcomes. The PMR balances offensive and defensive arguments, frames the debate, and engages
in impact calculus. The purpose of this essay is to illuminate a perspective on strategies for the
PMR that promote a hyper-awareness of every element of the debate and how to tie these concepts
together for a round winning speech. This essay contains three sections: Preparation for the PMR
as the round unfolds, delivering the PMR, and final notes and conclusions.
The first section breaks down what to do in each speech of the debate leading up to the PMR
– discussing the establishment of credibility, the Member of Government (MGC), the opposition
block and issue selection, finally discussing strategies for collapsing in the final speech. The second
section analyzes the components of the PMR, including the theme, the overview, framing, argument
comparison, the under-view, and credibility and perception as they link to persuasion. The final
section includes advice for executing these strategies.
182 Chapter 19. The PM Rebuttal

Preparation for the PMR as the Round Unfolds

While the best PMR builds on a solid PMC and MGC, this chapter is concerned with the execution,
argument selection, and overall experience that constitute a PMR. To provide for a more holistic
and clear understanding of the preparation for the PMR, this section will discuss what actions to
take during each speech of the debate and how to best position yourself to win.

The PMC: Establishing Credibility

In competitive parliamentary debate the round begins when you walk into the room. Everything
you do from the moment you walk in will be monitored and judged – whether or not it is intentional
or conscious. These initial judgments cannot cause you to lose a round per se, however, given
that parliamentary debate does not allow individuals to bring printed evidence to the round, your
credibility as debater can implicate the credibility of your arguments and vice versa. You want
to show up to each round and be on-point, ready for the metaphorical battle that is about to
unfold.

There are two levels of credibility within the PMC: (1) perceptual credibility and (2) warrant
credibility. Perceptual credibility is how you deliver the PMC. Are you able to speak fluently,
look up from your paper and explain your warrants, and insert passion in to your arguments? The
second level of credibility, warrant credibility, involves the quality and accuracy of the arguments
in your case. If you read a case that lacks sufficient warrants – makes a lot of big claims without
any support – you will negatively position yourself in the debate from the standpoint of warrant
credibility. Warrant credibility involves a series of strategies. First, you should cite reputable
sources (think tanks, scholarly institutes, news sources, politicians, or experts in the field of the
subject). Another aspect involves the logic behind your arguments. Does your argument on face
seem logical? If there is a risk that it does not, utilizing a source can only help you, however, the
best arguments are ones that, on face, seem logical. The credibility that you establish in the PMC
through your delivery and quality of arguments will assist you in your PMR when doing warrant
comparison and edging out your opponent through impact calculus.

Why is credibility so important? The answer is simple. When you are a top tier team facing
another top tier team, the flow will most likely be flawless, but will the warrants and perception
be comparable in credibility? This could potentially be the game changer. These elements of
credibility should not be associated with a sense of laziness and a promotion of “sounding and
looking good.” The best way to accomplish perceptual and warrant credibility is a combination
of warrants and appearance. You must know more of the context to the warrants being debated
than your opponents. You must know the history that led up to the particular context of a given
warrant. Finally, you must know how all of these pieces to a larger puzzle are connected. Having
this knowledge will best position you to have credibility and confidence in your argument selection
– ultimately helping you win debates.

The LOC and MGC: Awareness and Strategy

As the PM, since you wrote the government case in preparation time and delivered it in the PMC
speech, you will most likely have more knowledge of the specific utility of arguments within the
back ground, solvency, advantages, etc. It is your job to make sure the MGC is aware of the
preemptive arguments that can be utilized against the LOC. During the LOC you should make
note of arguments in your case that serve to answer the opposition strategy. Arguments from the
PMC are uniquely compelling in the PMR when extended by the MGC and unanswered by the
MOC/LOR block. The Prime Minister should not have a negative impact on the MGC speech. If
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you have arguments that you feel need to be in the MGC, you must come up with an agreeable
framework for communicating with your partner in round. For example, wait until your partner
has made all of the arguments they plan on making when answering each different argument from
the opposition (disadvantage, counterplan, kritik, etc.). This should avoid a negative time trade
off based on your communication. Constantly interrupting your partner and telling them to make
obvious arguments risks irritating them and knocking them off of their rhythm or diminishing their
credibility in the eyes of the judge – only interrupt if absolutely necessary.

Since debate is a rhetorical activity that involves a person, or group of persons, making a decision
about who won a round based on words, you should be aware of judge’s predispositions and
opinions of arguments in debate rounds. As the PMR you are at a unique advantage – you speak at
the beginning and end of the debate. You have the opportunity to witness the round from the same
perspective as the judge. This is not to say that you should disengage from the debate, but rather
you should take advantage of the ability to observe the judge and your opponents simultaneously.
Be observant of the judge/s and opponents as much as possible. Attempt to read their reactions
and gauge their opinions of the arguments in the debate. If there is an argument that is blatantly
not liked by the judge/s it is wise to use that argument against your opponent to undermine their
credibility – often regardless of the strategic deployment of that argument in the broader context
of the debate. If the judge visibly agrees with an argument your opponent is making, you should
increase your awareness of which arguments will require more time. While judges will often give
you a clue, in many cases you might be unaware of exactly what they think. In these instances, you
must trust your instincts. The more you get into the habit of watching the judge and taking note of
the outcome of a debate, based on your judgment of a perceived attitude, the more effective this
process will become.

If you are unclear about a particular MGC argument or you want additional contextual explanation,
take advantage of the small amount of time between the MGC and MOC. Understanding the context
and larger picture of an argument will assist you in your PMR collapse decisions. This additional
context is also useful because it allows you to better understand how the MOC arguments interact
with the MGC. If there is not sufficient time to have this conversation with your partner, you can
always ask them questions about warrants during the LOR. However, you want to try and hear as
much of the LOR as possible, so only spend time communicating on issues that are substantially
discussed in the LOR.

The Opposition Block: What Do During the MOC and LOR

One of the most important aspects of PMR preparation during the MOC is decisiveness. The earlier
you find the round winning arguments the better. When you are flowing the MOC you need to
look at each argument on two levels: (1) the flow and (2) the ballot. Winning “the flow” is just
what it sounds like – you have more and better arguments than your opponent on a sheet of paper.
Winning the ballot is more difficult. This process involves connecting arguments on the flow to
the bigger picture of the round as a whole and why they mean that you should win. Thinking of
the PMR in this framework assists your ability to determine the importance of arguments based on
their perceived return on investment of PMR time.

As the PMR, the MOC is the most exciting part of the debate (outside of giving your speech).
You need to have a hyper-awareness of how arguments interact so that you can make decisions in
real time. If the MOC skips over an argument that is critical in the debate, you should circle this
argument to indicate the intended expenditure of valuable PMR time. Often, in top tier debates,
arguments will not be “dropped” and an issue selection decision for the PMR is more difficult. You
have to focus on the arguments that you are most familiar with in regards to their larger context.
184 Chapter 19. The PM Rebuttal

When an MOC makes an argument and your initial reaction is, “that is malarkey,” it is a good
indication that you could potentially collapse to that argument. This initial reaction most likely
implies that you know more about this particular issue than your opponent or that they just did not
frame it in a way that is compelling for their position. In either event, you have the final word and
opportunity to frame this argument against them using additional context. However, many times in
a debate you may know more than your opponent on a specific argument, but you must be aware of
how important that argument is in regards to the bigger picture of the debate. This process of issue
selection is further elaborated on in “the collapse” section below.

The main strategy of the PMR should be decided by the time the LOR begins. The best way to
devote time in the LOR is to first create your overview. Get it done fast – and be specific as possible.
Next, you must go through your flows to guarantee a comprehensive understanding of how your
collapse matches the overview. The last step is to write an outline of your under-view. Once skilled
at observing the round from a global perspective, you will not need to write the under-view. A
smart strategy for your overview/under-view is to write the overview on the top half of a new
sheet of paper and the under-view on the bottom half. This allows you to read your overview at
the beginning of your speech and then put that sheet of paper on the bottom to refer to when you
conclude.

Once you have completed these steps, you should reflect on the strategy you have selected. How
does your strategy interact with the LOR? Sometimes in really close rounds you will have to
focus more on the preparation for specific line-by-line. In these instances, you should utilize a
cooperative framework for communicating with your partner. The MGC should make sure that
no new arguments are slipped into the LOR. If you are unable to hear a lot of LOR framing it is
imperative that you find out from the MGC. Too often, the LOR will often frame a debate one-way,
with the PMR ignoring this framing – creating a scenario of two ships passing in the night. In many
circumstances, the PMR should capitalize on the framing provided by the opposition and reframe
the debate in a way that positions the government as the clear winner.

The Collapse: Advantages, Disadvantages, Counterplans, and Kritiks

Collapsing is a major part of strategic execution in debate. Time trade-offs, depth of arguments, and
opposition block make collapsing a requirement. The collapse should be discussed before delivering
the PMR because it must be determined and agreed upon before you stand up to speak – preferably
in the MOC as previously mentioned. Many debaters struggle in their decision of which arguments
are most relevant at the end of the debate. This section discusses different strategies of collapsing:
government advantages, disadvantage debates, counterplan debates, and kritik debates.

What is appropriate to “kick,” (concede or not extend) in the final speech? The answer is solely
based on the round. However, you should start by asking yourself, even if I kick this argument, can
I still capture the offense with other arguments, or can I still win this position/debate? A good place
to start is with your advantages. If you read two advantages it is often beneficial to kick one of them.
If a team reads a counterplan that solves one of your advantages it would be wise to only spend time
on the advantage they do not solve. There is no strategic utility to weighing an advantage against
a counterplan if the counterplan solves the links to your offense. In the event that the opposition
team has read ten or fifteen defensive arguments against one of your advantages, while relatively
under-covering the other, it is also a good idea to try to kick the advantage. This strategy allows you
to spend more time winning the advantage that has fewer arguments and answering the opposition’s
disadvantage. In a kritik debate, the PMR should never go for both advantages. It is guaranteed
that one advantage will interact better with the kritik and this allows you more time to go for an
impact turn, link turn, or permutation. It is an appropriate circumstance to keep both advantages,
 185

for example, if the opposition is reading a disadvantage that interacts with one of your advantages
– it can be strategic to use your other advantage as offense, as well as the arguments made by the
MGC, and use the second advantage as a “tie-breaker” to tip the scale in your favor.
Case versus disadvantage debates require that you to select several arguments from the MGC and
one of your advantages to beat the disadvantage. When answering disadvantages there are multiple
offensive strategies: link turn, internal link turn, and impact turn. In a link turn debate, which
happens most often, it is important to be aware of how your non-unique arguments interact with
your link turns. A good rule of thumb for collapsing on a disadvantage is to isolate your best
non-unique and go for it – especially if it was very warranted in the MGC. After you isolate your
best non-unique claim, you can extend two or three more non-uniques that have been under covered
or mishandled, preferably, that interact with the LOC’s specific uniqueness. Next, you should find
your best link turn. Ways of deciding what is “best” include asking the following questions – Does
it interact with the original link? Does it interact with your non-unique arguments? How good were
the MOC answers? How probable is your link turn versus the original link? After figuring out your
offensive strategy, select some internal link defense, impact defense, or a combination of both. In
debates that involve internal link or impact turns, it is difficult to collapse. The PMR is normally
required to win a majority of the arguments in addition to winning substantial defense to the risk of
the opposition’s original impact. Thus, the PMR must select the arguments closest to “terminal”
defense to answer the impact or internal link, demonstrate efficiency in extending and executing the
original impact or internal link turn, and compare the probability, time frame, and magnitude of
both scenarios.
Counterplan debates often require the same procedure discussed above since they usually have a net
benefit in the form of a disadvantage. Against a standard disadvantage-only MOC/LOR collapse,
the PMR could potentially win the debate with only a defensive strategy to the disadvantage. If the
MOC/LOR includes a counterplan, it is nearly impossible. A good counterplan will solve all or
most of the government case, making it difficult to weigh the PMC against the disadvantage. When
answering a counterplan in the PMR, find a locus of offense and stick to it. A PMR can go for
a combination of defense and offense, but offense should be the number one priority. The PMR
should always try to turn the net benefit. The PMR should also attempt to collapse to solvency
deficit arguments (i.e. “the counterplan cannot solve the PMC”). A balance of “counterplan can’t
solve the case” and offense to the net-benefit ensures the government is ahead at the end of the
debate. If the MGC reads a disadvantage to the counterplan, the PMR has a potential option for the
collapse. In this instance one must prove how this disadvantage outweighs the net-benefit of the
counterplan and it also positions the government to, once again, weigh their impacts.
Kritik debates require a very small collapse. My personal favorite collapse involves the permutation.
However, impact turns, link turns, and framework are also a viable option. Kritik debates are often
hard for new PMRs because of the vast amount of arguments spread out over four or more pages.
Often, a PMR will go for an argument on every sheet of paper and never fully develop them. The
opposition has the advantage of a very specific shell that grants them flexibility to pick and choose
extensions in the MOC. Winning a kritik debate also requires thinking about your “locus of offense.”
You need to find an argument and latch onto it. In a permutation debate the PMR needs to find the
best net benefit to their permutation – whether it is the PMC, an external impact, or both. Once you
have found the net benefit you then need to isolate all of the MOC/LOR block answers. Normally,
kritik teams will have pre-prepped permutation answers as well as preempts in their shell. This
is why, in my eyes, it is impossible to go for framework, an impact turn, and a permutation. It
is inevitable that the PMR will concede several MOC arguments. When the PMR collapses to
one advantage and the perm, there is an allowance of time to quickly extend case and discuss its
interaction before spending at least three minutes answering every argument on the alternative or
186 Chapter 19. The PM Rebuttal

permutation section. If you can win a permutation, you prove that the argument is not competitive
with your plan – it is a “one-shot kill.” You could spend close to four minutes on this one sheet
of paper, whereas the MOC had to divide time equally among the framework, links, impacts, and
alternative (assuming the MGC answered every sheet). You might even win the time-trade off with
the block, which is a very difficult feat to accomplish. In an impact turn debate the same concepts
apply – the most important part of the kritik collapse is to keep it small! Keeping the collapse small
allows for more development of your arguments, ultimately making it easier to win what is often a
very unclear debate.

Delivering the PMR

The purpose of this section is to arm you with the tools and knowledge to establish more doubt in
your opponent’s arguments and a sense of comfort on behalf of the judge in voting for you. This
will be accomplished by breaking down the strategy of a PMR, which includes: the theme, an
overview, framing, argument comparison, the impact calculus/under-view, and the combination of
perception, credibility, and persuasion.

PMR Theme
The PMR should always have a theme – which should be thought of as a grand narrative. In
each PMR, there should be one narrative, not conflicting ones. Many PMR’s create conflicting
narratives by collapsing to a counterplan theory position and the case turns. When a PMR decides
they will have two themes, they are disadvantaged from the start. The PMR only has five minutes
to successfully answer thirteen minutes of opposition argumentation. If this time is bifurcated, it
becomes increasingly difficult, if not impossible, to effectively execute one of the strategies.
The concept of a theme is more complex than simply picking the strategy. A good rule of thumb
for your theme is to select three crucial arguments that win you the debate and make these three
arguments your overview. Given the vast amount of contexts that exist in different debates, it
is difficult to explain a “one-size fits all” solution. What is the utility of having a theme? Too
many debates are lost because a PMR spends too much time looking at the trees as opposed to
the forest – the PMR is fixated on each individual argument and does not explain them in a way
that corresponds globally. Establishing a theme and continuously integrating it into the speech
will make the debate clearer for the judges because it draws connections to how each individual
argument is important in the scope of all arguments that have been presented. Another utility of the
theme is a constant reminder to the judges why the opposition’s best arguments in the debate are
irrelevant or have been resolved, which is done by illustrating how your arguments intersect with
the MOC/LOR’s collapse.

PMR Overview
A good overview is necessary for the PMR. The overview is the location of important framing
in the debate. The first consideration when constructing the overview is the theme. The second
consideration is how you can make it clear you have won the debate in the first ten seconds of
the speech; two to three sentences. You will know that your overview was successful when the
judge’s RFD is synonymous with the arguments you selected. In an ideal world the RFD will be a
combination of arguments from the overview and under-view because the under-view will contain
the impact calculus. It is acceptable to hint at impact calculus in your overview, but wait to get into
specifics until later in the speech. The overview establishes why you are winning and creates a table
of contents for the rest of the speech. It is wise to create your road map in conjunction with the
 187

overview, (i.e. answer the arguments in the speech in the same order as established in the overview).
If you say that you are winning “x impact on the case and that outweighs the disadvantage” or
“functions as an internal link turn” etc. – go to that advantage first.

Below is an example overview from a debate in the fall of 2011. The plan was to withdraw all
United States troops from Japan, which closed all US bases. There were several critically framed
net benefits – imperialism, sexual violence, and one advantage specific to biodiversity in the United
States. There were several solvency arguments in the PMC. The sub-point A indicated the people
of Japan overwhelmingly support the plan, the sub-point B indicated the plan would boost Noda’s
(Japanese Prime Minister) credibility because the people are angry over noise pollution, sexual
violence, and overall bad behavior from the US government, the sub-point C is the solvency for the
critically framed impacts in the background. In the Advantage, the second link argument indicates
plan would be a huge perceptual win for Noda and Japan because he has been badgered by the
United States for new base construction despite not actually wanting to comply. These credibility
arguments are very important because Noda had just taken control of Japan, and research indicated
his credibility would be key to passing economic policies, particularly natural disaster relief. The
opposition read a plan inclusive counterplan, which left certain Special Forces in the region. The
net benefit was based on US troops being productive for the economy and the terminal impact was
disaster relief

Example Overview:

“Three reasons why you should vote for Washburn KR:

1. We are winning the natural disaster debate.

a. They make the argument that the Japanese economy will collapse when we pull out all of our
troops with a terminalized impact of tsunami relief. However, they have conceded offense from
the PMC. Our solvency evidence indicates that Noda’s credibility is key to solve for disaster relief
because, without credibility, he can’t get more flexibility to increase funding for natural disasters.
b. Our case solvency sub-point B and advantage solvency indicate the only way Noda Credibility
increases is with a full withdrawal of US troops, he is key to increase help for natural disasters,
which means the counterplan can’t solve its own net benefit.

2. We are winning the only extinction level impact in the debate, which is a disadvantage to the
counterplan. They lost this debate when they said the base is in Okinawa (where they leave troops
with the counterplan). If the base is in Okinawa that means they have to take a boat, plane, or
some vehicle to transport troops, which means counterplan pollutes the island more, this is a round
winner because they concede the precautionary principle. Our uniqueness evidence indicates we
are at a critical point for biodiversity collapse resulting in extinction

3. Ethical Obligation: They can’t solve our ethical obligation arguments that were prioritized in
a probability framework from the PMC and have yet to be answered. One soldier being left in
Okinawa means individuals are forced to face their oppressors and the imperial legacy is continued.
They say Department of Defense contractors are there, we pull out all forces because they are not
necessary, even if they are right, the government is the only way to solve because of our number 4
argument on the counterplan that indicates the counterplan creates a loop hole and won’t be any
incentive to leave and the CP creates a foothold to justify future troop increases.”
188 Chapter 19. The PM Rebuttal

This example overview is rather long, but it was in a case vs. counterplan debate where the collapse
was small. The PMR went for: “case is the only way to solve the counterplan net-benefit due to
Noda credibility,” “natural disasters are inevitable,” and “no matter how good military technology
is it simply cannot prevent them.” PMR also went for “advantage one is a disadvantage to the
counterplan,” isolating specific warrants from the uniqueness and links that the counterplan did not
capture; and finally the PMR emphasized the ethical obligation. There are two different types of
overviews for different circumstances. Global overviews and issue specific overviews, often called
“micro-overviews.” Micro-overviews on specific positions can be helpful, especially if the opposi-
tion’s collapse is small. If the opposition collapses to a politics disadvantage, a micro-overview
can be effective to isolate critical points and warrant comparison. While micro-overviews can
sometimes be a useful tool, they can also make time allocation difficult, especially if you lack
experience in the deployment of such a strategy.

Framing Extensions and Arguments in the PMR

Member speeches are mainly focused on line-by-line and coverage, whereas the LOR and PMR
are about how arguments are framed – since all arguments can be interpreted in a number of ways.
If you want the judge to see the debate a certain way it is your responsibility to frame the debate
in a manner that advances your perspective. At local, regional, national invitational tournaments,
and the national tournament, many debates are decided by how one or two arguments were framed.
This is why many debates are 2-1, 3-2, and 4-3 decisions – each judge has to look at a piece of
paper that may have twenty arguments made throughout the debate on one flow and has to make an
interpretation based on the facts presented. Becoming effective at framing can make a 2-1 against
you become a 2-1 or 3-0 in your favor.

Imagine a debate where you are giving the PMR and the MOC has conceded an advantage that leads
to extinction. You could say, “They dropped our entire advantage, the uniqueness, link, internal
link, and impact. This means we outweigh the disadvantage.” In this scenario, you have chosen to
focus on debate technicalities of a dropped argument (extending an abstract idea of an advantage).
A more effective way to extend this argument would be as follows: “The opposition has conceded
that relations between the United States and North Korea are at an all-time low. We have multiple
arguments indicating relations will continue deteriorating (insert specific from the uniqueness),
we are also winning an argument that absent plan war is inevitable (insert specific warrant). Our
plan and only our plan is able to solve (warrants from the links). Voting opposition ensures a
continual deterioration of relations and an outbreak of global war, extend our x, y, and z arguments
from the internal link. (The next two sentences illustrate connecting this extension to the ballot).
This has several implications for the debate. It means we are more probable – the judge should
prefer the specificity of our warrants and lack of any counter argument. If there is a question of
the direction of the disadvantage we have enough defense to guarantee a minimal likelihood of its
impacts meaning you vote on the advantage.”

Debaters often are stuck in a frame of mind that, if an argument has been dropped, that the judge
should know exactly what to do with it. While it may seem obvious, you should it open to inter-
pretation. Typically, judges are judging your words and not their thoughts, as much as possible.
When debaters leave arguments open for interpretation it creates a scenario in which a judge could
misinterpret the PMR strategy. Any argument that is important in the debate should have analysis
as to why it is relevant in the debate – not just that you won one argument on a sheet of paper that
has thirty. Always remember the two mechanisms of winning a debate – (1) the flow and (2) the
ballot. Get yourself into the habit of winning an argument on the flow and connecting that argument
 189

to winning the ballot. Connection to the ballot is the most important part of framing. If you get into
the practice of explaining why issues are important to the ballot, you will automatically become
better at framing arguments in the debate.

Argument Comparison
Comparing the quality of arguments is one way to compare the quality of warrants. A team may
make a great claim, but lack sufficient empirical proof. Simply isolating how their argument is a
claim and lacks a warrant compared to your argument is one strategy. Citing a study, a reputable
scholar or person, or discussing the historical context of the event achieves this type of isolation.
Another good strategy is to make arguments that are very dense (i.e. arguments that may have
multiple parts). Arguments with multiple parts give the PMR a lot of room for explanation and
comparison in the PMR. It is wise to utilize this strategy especially on “link turn” arguments since
the LOC’s original link argument is often very specific.

Throughout, I have referenced “knowing more context than your opponents” several times. An
example of this can be seen in a hypothetical politics debate. A team may read a politics dis-
advantage saying that the Federal Aviation Authorization Act is going to pass in the status quo.
One of their warrants may be that negotiations are being finalized. However, you know that John
Boehner (current Speaker of the House) has said he will not budge on the unionization of airline
employees, a key sticking point of negotiations. You may also know that previous negotiations
had been “finalized,” but that the distribution of funds to certain airports for tarmac restoration
would inevitably continue because of an upset party in the negotiation. You may also know that
the only reason those negotiations were “finalized” is because of a certain provision that has been
tabled for discussion in a later negotiation, like the funding for next generation satellites. The
MGC argument against politics may say, “non-unique, negotiations aren’t finalized and aren’t
going to be because Boehner won’t budge on unionization and there are still multiple financial
negotiations to come, which stall passage of the bill entirely.” The opposition might say, “x source
says that negotiations are finalized and Harry Reid said that negotiations are almost complete
and will be next week.” If you know the chronological sequence of the release of these news
stories and quotations it enables the PMR to say: “The opposition is operating on assumptions,
we know that Boehner won’t budge on unionization, he said it after Reid’s announcement, even
if the Democrats make a concession on this issue there are future negotiations about funding that
fiscal conservatives like Paul absolutely won’t compromise on. When you pair this non-unique with
our link turn that indicates plan saves the government millions of dollars annually it creates the
most probable scenario of the bill passing. Given the enormous federal savings of plan, fiscally
conservative republicans won’t block passage and creates the most likely scenario for Boehner and
the Republicans to compromise on unionization, which is the only way the bill will pass.”

A very common type of distinction between warrants is descriptive versus predictive. A descriptive
warrant explains the status quo, whereas a predictive warrant provides insight onto what might
happen in the future. Using a combination of descriptive and predictive warrants against a team
who is only making descriptive claims can help you decrease your opponent’s likelihood of a
particular impact. Within this distinction, there is one more detail that applies to both – specificity.
The specificity of a warrant can be used as a means to establish more credibility in your argument.
In debate rounds, the more specific you can be, the more likely you are to win the debate.

Another tool for comparing warrants is utilizing “even-if” statements. You can make the argument
that “even-if the opposition wins certain solvency defense it does not mitigate the probability of
our second advantage because the link is based on the perceptual act of passing plan.” Even-if
statements can also be used in a disadvantage vs. case debate. “Even-if the opposition wins the
190 Chapter 19. The PM Rebuttal

disadvantage, without passing the plan, war is inevitable based on the concessions of our uniqueness
and internal link,” – allowing you to debate the probability, time-frame, and magnitude of the
impacts and edge out the opposition. Using these even-if statements allow you to frame scenarios so
that, even if the judge thinks the opposition may have won a certain argument, it does not constitute
a ballot for the opposition team.

Impact Calculus and Under-View The PMR must practice skillful time management. Many
debaters do not leave enough time for an under-view. Forty-five seconds to a minute and a half
is a large enough window. The purpose of the under-view is to summarize the major impacts
– through a lens of probability, time frame, and magnitude – and remind the judges of the theme,
which short-circuits the opposition’s ability to win. You should conduct global impact calculus,
incorporating the entire debate into one section of comparative analysis. This comparative analysis
creates a framework in which the entire debate is visible on one flow and critically considered as a
whole, not separate pieces to a larger puzzle (the forest vs. the trees). Global impact framing will
make it clearer that you have won the debate.
When possible, you should characterize your impacts as “more probable” than the impacts advanced
by the opposition. You can do this in a variety of ways: citing defensive arguments you have made
against their position and why those arguments historically make more sense than anything they
have said against your case, citing arguments they have dropped, and isolating key warrants from
your position about (for example) “now being a unique likelihood of x impact” triggering whereas
they have no brink argument in their shell.
You should also discuss the timeframe of your impacts. You will typically argue that your impact
will happen first. Arguing that your impact happens first allows you to claim that the impact would
change the landscape of the world (alters all other uniqueness in the debate), ultimately reversing
the risk of the opposition’s impacts. Another option is for you to claim that the impact of the
opposition is only a short-term harm/outcome, whereas your impact will last for years, maybe even
generations. You have the option of either or both of these strategies when discussing timeframe.
Having good warrants in your original case about how now is “the key time” can bolster your ability
to win timeframe arguments, especially if they are in the PMC and the opposition concedes them
– always look to include these items in your PMC during prep time.
The final level of impact calculus is magnitude. Which impact causes more harm? Magnitude can
(and should) be discussed through a lens of timeframe and probability. When comparing a nuclear
war impact versus a dehumanization impact, the team with nuclear war will most likely go for
magnitude. This is because they can say that, “a nuclear war would cause extinction, which means
there wouldn’t be any humans to suffer,” (subsuming the dehumanization impact). Magnitude
can be argued in nuanced ways based on the size of conflict. For example, if two teams claim to
prevent different wars, knowing more about how populated a region is, as well as the biodiversity,
can help you edge out an opponent by saying that you effect more people or pristine nature. In
your under-view it is best to discuss all three forms of impact framing – but if you only have time
or feel you only need to go for one or two, that is fine – any impact framing is better than none.
Often, teams may have the same magnitude of an impact, thus timeframe and probability become
significantly more important.

Perception and Credibility Linked to Persuasion

A big mistake many individuals make in the PMR is reading at a rapid speed and never lifting their
head from the flow. Everything that has previously been discussed in this essay – from credibility,
 191

to perceived attitudes, to argument selection – comes together in the PMR. The purpose of this
section is to tie these concepts together at their culmination.

When the LOR is finished, you should be excited and ready to give your speech. You had four
minutes to prepare and you do not need a second longer! This gesture signals that you have the
utmost confidence. There are three words a PMR should live by: clean, confident, and committed.
Efficiency, organization, and absolutism are key for the PMR. If you do not believe you can win the
debate, if you cannot dismantle your opponent’s arguments in an organized fashion, and cannot
commit to a strategy, you do not stand a chance. If you are not clean on the flow, it makes it very
difficult for a judge to “pull the trigger” for one of your arguments and vote for you. A judge may
feel like they are “doing work” for you if you do not properly connect the dots that they would
like to be connected. If you are not confident in yourself it might make it difficult for a judge
and audience to find your arguments accurate or your strategy believable. The final word in this
trio – committed – involves your commitment to your collapse and time management. When you
deliver your overview, you are isolating the reasons you are winning the debate. If you decide to
change midway through the PMR, the change breaks the narrative of your strategy which signals
confusion, lack of confidence, and desperation.

Perceptual credibility in the PMR is mostly a focus on pathos. When delivering a PMR, or any
debate speech for that matter, a speaker should not talk in a soft monotone voice, even if delivering
at rapid speed. The amount of emotion within a speech signals how much you believe in your
argument and how much you care about the issue. When delivering the PMR the speaker should
take time to look up from one’s paper to “connect the dots” in the debate round. These moments
signal that you have control of the speech and of the debate. If the opposition is going for an absurd
or ridiculous claim, pause and make that known. The lack of logic in their argument may not be as
apparent until you grandstand and pinpoint exactly what is lacking. These are the moments that
can shift the momentum in a debate round. A term that is becoming prolific in popular culture is
“swag.” In debate, “swag” is synonymous with visible control of the round, and is crucial. This term
largely refers to your confidence, but in the PMR it can be seen from your ability to delegitimize
arguments with ease, slow down and draw connections, and your ability to use humor to you’re
your opponent’s arguments against them.

I previously discussed the two types of credibility established in the PMC, (1) warrant and (2)
perceptual. I would like to introduce the final type of credibility – argumentative credibility.
Argumentative credibility sounds similar to warrant credibility, but is more complex. This form
of credibility and skill is missing from many PMR’s. It can be defined as “the time spent on and
ability to develop an argument,” in other words, how good you are at balancing time on the most
important issues and “closing the door.” An argument in a debate may be very good, but if it is not
expanded, developed, and compared then it does not have the same credibility. Even if an argument
has been dropped in its entirety by the MOC, the PMR should still spend time explaining why this
extension is important. Always remember that there are two levels to winning a debate round, the
flow and the ballot. Extending a dropped argument without explaining why it means you win the
round and how it interacts with other arguments is almost as bad as not extending the argument at
all.

All three of these forms of credibility are essential to delivering a successful PMR. In regards
to perceptual credibility, a PMR is faced with points of order. You must be able to provide an
immediate, on-point response to these objections. You must be able to make clear which argument
you are extending, how you are further developing and comparing this argument, or how it is a
response to a new MOC argument. You must also have the ability to discuss how you are framing
issues. It would be unreasonable to expect the MGC to accomplish all government-side framing.
192 Chapter 19. The PM Rebuttal

The MOC will make new arguments to answer the MGC while also extending LOC arguments.
You should expand on MGC arguments and prove how the MOC’s warrants are not responsive
and/or insufficient.
Persuasion is a term that can sometimes be seen as “evil” within national circuit parliamentary
debate. This is because persuasion is seen as convincing a judge who may not be “qualified,” in
the eyes of the debaters, to vote for an argument that should not have won the round. After being
involved in hundreds of debates in front of judges who had never previously seen a debate to those
who have been involved in the activity for decades, it is clear that persuasion is in play in every
debate. However, as previously stated, the persuasion discussed in this essay is accomplished with
facts and warrants – the more specific you are and the better warrants you have, the better you
will be able to persuade. Persuasion goes back to knowing more than your opponents. When you
absolutely know you are right this comes across in the debate. Judges cannot distance themselves
from being influenced by what they hear, the frames in which that information is presented, and the
interpersonal signs of the sender. Thus, resisting a strategy or perspective of debate as persuasion
can only hinder your ability to win. However, there is an ethical burden within this framework
– pretending that you are absolutely right is different than knowing you are right. In any form of
debate you may encounter someone who will act as though they are 100% correct, which is why
knowing more than your opponent will always hold an advantage.

Tips for Developing Better Round Vision

True mastery of the PMR includes quality “round vision.” Round vision is the ability to predict
and accurately see the possible outcomes of a debate as the debate happens. To help develop round
vision, watch as many debates as possible, whether they are online or at a tournament. I can credit
my round vision to the amount of debates I watched. From the time I was a first-year to my senior
year, I was watching debates. Even if I were eliminated from a tournament in the later years of
my career, I would go and watch other rounds. You should never feel like you cannot learn from
watching any debate – that is simply not the case. Every debate is full of opportunity for you to
learn something new, whether it is about a judge, a team you will inevitably face, argument delivery,
or overall argument execution in debates. Not only should you watch these debates, you should
also stay and listen to the judge’s decision. If you do not know the decision and how they saw the
round, you have disadvantaged yourself if you debate in front of that judge in the future. Also,
force yourself to examine what you would have done in the debate. What arguments would you
have gone for? How could you have avoided what the judge didn’t like? If a team lost, how could
you have made that loss a win?

Rebuttal Re-Do’s and Reflection

When doing practice rounds, do not give the PMR in round and assume that your practice is over.
Whether you won or lost a debate, take time to reflect on what you said and how it could have been
improved. A good strategy for this is to examine your flows and think critically about the debate
after hearing the reason for decision. Find a pen that is a different color from the color that you
used on your flow and write to the side, word for word, how you could have better framed and
executed arguments. You will find that you often come invent more nuanced ways of comparing
warrants from the debate. Learning these nuances and reflecting on rounds will make you better at
execution in the future. Later, try giving this new and improved PMR to the person who judged you
in the debate or to a fellow teammate who was in the practice round. Doing this allows you to get
feedback from someone that witnessed the debate and is familiar with the arguments. If you are
unable to give the speech to an individual that was present it still would be beneficial to deliver it to
 193

a fellow debater because they can give you feedback. Even absent context, most debaters will have
something useful to input on your speech.
The Prime Minister Rebuttal is an adrenaline filled speech that involves a major shift in the debate.
In any high-level debate, the government team will be significantly behind after the opposition
block. A smart PMR will never let this bother them because they know that they have control of the
round. No matter how good the MOC was, no matter how persuasively the LOR portrayed their
dominance, and no matter what anyone in the room thinks – there are still five minutes left in the
debate. Embody the three C’s of the PMR (clean, confident, and committed), effectively collapse
the debate, shift the momentum with your overview and passion, and rhetorically paint a picture of
the world of voting for the government in your under-view. Critically reflecting on the suggestions
in this chapter can help you become better at giving the PMR. Putting in the work is necessary and
you have my assurance that it will pay off.

Conclusion

I would like to leave you with one final note. When you sit down for a debate, whether it is a
regional invitational or the final round of the National Parliamentary Tournament of Excellence, it
will be you and your partner, no one else. Your coaches, teammates, and friends cannot sit with you
at the table – the responsibility of winning is on your shoulders. Knowledge is power in debate.
Know more than your opponents, cleanly execute with style, trust and commit to the strategy, and
always be aware of the forest when examining the trees.
 20. Topicality and Accuracy

T OPICALITY AND ACCURACY

B RANDON M ERRELL – U NIVERSITY OF C ALIFORNIA , S AN D IEGO
T ODD G RAHAM – S OUTHERN I LLINOIS U NIVERSITY

Introduction

Topicality is both a rule and an argument. One of the foundational assumptions in debate is that
the government team’s plan must comply with the resolution.1 This is known as the “burden of
topicality.” More precisely, topicality mandates that the plan must be an action that exemplifies or
illustrates the resolution.
For example, if the resolution was “The United States should increase restrictions on gun own-
ership”, then the government team could advocate a range of legitimate plans. The government
side might propose that Congress should adopt more stringent laws governing handgun sales to
individuals with a history of crime or mental illness, or that American ownership of assault-style
weapons should be outlawed, or that citizens should be required to complete weapon-safety classes
before becoming gun owners, etc. In each case, the government plan is an action that exemplifies
that change called for the in resolution.2

1 For an extended discussion of how this assumption evolved and how topicality should be debated, see the authors’
working paper, available here: http://www.brandonmerrell.com/papers/Merrell%20-%20Topicality.pdf
2 Sometimes a plan is considered illegitimate if it is not large enough in scope or mandate. For example, a plan that
bars one particular person from owning handguns may not be a “sufficient” example of the resolution above. When
opposition teams levy this argument against the government side, they often claim that the plan constitutes a “minor
repair”, that the plan is a “hasty generalization”, or that the plan has “failed to demonstrate significance.” Although
mildly distinct from one another, such arguments are similar in that they claim the plan was not a sufficiently large
change relative to the status quo to demonstrate the truth of the resolution. Importantly, these are not “Topicality”
arguments unless they show that the plan’s insignificance prevents it from complying with one of the terms in the
196 Chapter 20. Topicality and Accuracy

In addition to serving as an example of the resolution, a legitimate plan should not exceed the bounds
of the topic. For instance, a plan that calls upon Congress to criminalize the sale of armor-piercing
bullets would be illegitimate. The resolution only allows the government team to advocate for
restrictions on gun ownership; it does not call for limits on ammunition sales. Although ammunition
is intuitively related to the topic of gun control, a plan that addresses ammunition directly would be
considered “non-topical” because it goes beyond the explicit scope of the resolution itself.

In many cases it is immediate and intuitively apparent whether the government plan is topical.
However, other resolutions include words that are vague or difficult to define. For example, imagine
that the resolution is, “The United States should increase development assistance to the Greater
Horn of Africa,” and that the plan provides food aid to Yemen. Some definitions of the “Greater
Horn of Africa” exclude Yemen, but others include the country. How should the debaters select the
appropriate definition? How can they determine whether or not the plan complies with the mandate
of the resolution? To answer these questions, debaters turn to topicality the argument. When the
opposition side suspects that the government plan does not comply with the topic, the LOC should
indict that plan by reading topicality.

How are topicality arguments structured?

There are four parts to a complete topicality argument: the definition, the violation, the standards,
and the reasons to vote.

First, the opposition side should provide a definition of the word or term from the resolution that
they believe the government plan violates. It is essential that this is a genuine definition as opposed
to merely an interpretation. In other words, the opposition should have identified a valid definition
of the term during prep time; they should not simply fabricate an “interpretation” that they believe
would be desirable.3 In our example scenario, the opposition team might argue that the United
States Agency for International Development (USAID) defines the Greater Horn of Africa as a
region comprised of ten African countries: Burundi, Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda,
Somalia, Sudan, Tanzania, and Uganda.

Next, the opposition side must offer “standards” in support of their definition. Standards explain
why this particular definition is the most accurate means of defining the term in question. In the
example, the opposition team might argue that their definition is “field contextual”, because it
is used by the government agency responsible for providing American development assistance.
We provide a list of example standards and a rationale for identifying appropriate standards in
the sections to follow. Standards are important because at the end of the round the judge will
compare the accuracy of the opposition side’s definition relative to any counter-definition that the
government side presents. The more accurate of the two definitions is the one with which the plan
is required to comply.

Third, the opposition side should explain the violation. This is the reason (or reasons) why the
plan does not comply with or “meet” the preceding definition. In our example, the violation is
obvious: the opposition team should argue that the plan violates the definition because Yemen is
not one of the ten countries that comprise the Greater Horn. In cases where the violation is subtle,
the opposition team should attempt to explain it as clearly as possible. If they fail to convince the

resolution.
3 In particularly egregious cases where the government plan is intuitively non-topical in an unpredictable way, the
opposition team may attempt to define the term as accurately as possible according to their recollection, but genuine
definitions will almost always prove superior.
 197

judge that a violation exists, they cannot win the debate on topicality.4
Topicality concludes with a list of voting issues. These are the reasons why a judge should reject the
government plan and vote for the opposition if the plan is not topical. In general, teams argue that
topicality is the preeminent voting issue in the debate in order to protect topic-specific education,
predictable ground, and the rules of the game. We discuss these voting issues and the broader
importance of topicality later in this chapter.

How can either side “win” a topicality debate?

The government team’s best defense against topicality is to carefully define the resolution during
prep time and present a plan that is genuinely topical according to the most accurate definitions
of relevant terms. When teams follow this procedure, they rarely need to worry about the issue of
topicality.
However, if the LOC does choose to challenge the government side on the basis of topicality, the
member of government will typically respond in several ways. If possible, the MGC will attempt to
argue that the plan does comply with the opposition team’s definition. Additionally, the MGC will
generally offer a counter-definition and will argue – using counter-standards – that this definition
is more accurate than the one offered by the opposition. Importantly, the government team should
demonstrate that their plan complies with the counter-definition that they present. Finally, the
MGC will sometimes respond to the voting issues by arguing that the judge need not reject the
government team even if the plan is proven non-topical. This claim, however, is particularly weak,
as we discuss below.
To evaluate the round and select a winner, the judge will first use each team’s standards or counter-
standards to identify which of the definitions is the most accurate. The judge will then determine
whether the government plan complies with that definition. Finally, the judge will assess whether
the opposition side has justified topicality as a voting issue. The opposition team wins the debate if
they have demonstrated that the government plan does not comply with the best definition of the
term in question and if they have successfully argued that topicality is a voting issue.

Is topicality a procedural?
Coaches and competitors often refer to topicality as though it is “just another procedural” or as if
it is akin to any other “theory” debate. Unfortunately, these sentiments are incorrect. Topicality
is fundamentally different than other procedural and theory arguments. To accurately understand
topicality, it helps to acknowledge why this is the case.
The purpose of any procedural or theory position, from framework to specification to “PICs
bad” is to set the parameters of the debate and to determine how the judge should evaluate the
round. For example, when the government side reads framework to answer a kritik, they are often
arguing that the plan’s fiated impacts should take precedence over the rhetorical, methodological,
or presentational choices of the opposition side. Similarly, in a specification debate, the opposition
team might argue that the government plan should be required to include an explicit statement
describing the particular mechanism that its policy utilizes. Finally, in a debate about PICs (plan-
inclusive counterplans), the two teams argue about whether the opposition side should be allowed
to advocate an action that aligns with the government plan in all but one minor respect. In each
case, the arguments attempt to determine for the judge what types of behaviors are acceptable from
each team, what should be required of each team, and what arguments the judge should consider
when evaluating the debate.
4 Teams often switch the order of the standards and the violation, so that the violation follows the definition.
198 Chapter 20. Topicality and Accuracy

The same pattern does not apply to topicality. When competitors argue topicality, they don’t often
discuss what is required of the government side. Rather, participants normally take for granted
that the plan should comply with the resolution.5 Instead, the topicality debate answers two sets of
questions: (1) “How can we most accurately define the words in the resolution and then understand
the resolution as a whole?” and (2) “Does the government plan comply with that resolution?” If the
answer to the latter question is “no”, then the government plan isn’t topical and the government
side should lose the debate. Thus, a topicality debate is an attempt to determine whether or not the
government side has fulfilled a burden that is already commonly agreed upon, rather than a forum
for discussing what the government’s obligation should be in the first place.

What are Topicality Standards?

Standards attest to the accuracy of a particular definition. There are a variety of such arguments,6
including the following:

(1) Limits:
A definition may be accurate if it is limiting and precise. For example, one possible definition of
“terrorism” is “the threat or use of violence against noncombatants.” That definition, however, is
quite broad. Should hostage-takings be considered acts of terrorism? What about mass murders or
school shootings? All such acts would fall within the umbrella of this definition. An alternative
definition might specify that terrorism involves “the threat or use of violence against noncombatants
that is designed to advance the perpetrator’s political goals.” By introducing the requirement that
the act of violence must be politically motivated, this definition is more precise and limiting than
the former. When definitions are limited, they facilitate a nuanced understanding of the terms under
discussion. Rather than debate about any acts of violence that are conducted against civilians, the
debaters now understand that they should focus on acts of violence that are carried out for political
reasons.

(2) Intent to Define:

Many authors define words carelessly. A reporter may casually describe “development assistance”
as “aid given by one government to support the growth of another country.” Unfortunately, in
most cases, offhand claims like this one are made without careful consideration. They express
the general meaning of the term, but no more. Rather than settle for such ‘casual-use’ definitions,
debaters should seek definitions that are carefully crafted to accurately express a particular concept.
Dictionary definitions fulfill this goal, as do research papers or scientific studies that define technical
terms in nuanced ways. Finally, treaties and articles of legislation often include definitions that are
intentionally defined in specific ways.

(3) Field Context & Term of Art:

The field context standard proposes that the word should be defined in a specific manner when it is
used in a particular context. The term, “bill”, for instance, may refer to a proposed law in a legisla-
tive context or to an amount owed in a financial context. The particular definition that is appropriate
depends on the broader context within which the word is used. Field context is somewhat similar to
the “term of art” standard, which argues that a particular phrase that would otherwise apply to a
5 For a discussion of kritiks of topicality and how topicality relates to framework, see the authors’ working paper.
6 For a detailed discussion of appropriate and inappropriate standards, see the authors’ working paper.
 199

generic set of objects is currently being used to refer to a specific item. For example, if the resolution
was “The United States should enact the comprehensive immigration reform bill,” the term of art
standard would argue that the resolution intended to reference the particular piece of legislation that
was currently debated in Congress rather than a generic comprehensive immigration reform package.

(4) Resolutional Context or Grammar:

Grammatical rules and interactions between the words in the resolution also inform the accuracy of
each definition. For example, if the resolution said, “The United States should increase its financial
support for nuclear energy development,” a team might argue that the term “increase” should be
defined as “raise from a preexisting amount.” Because the word “increase” interacts with the term
“financial support” in the resolution, this definition would restrict the range of potential definitions
of “financial support” to those types of support that currently exist. Otherwise, the resolution would
ask that the United States “provide new forms of support for nuclear energy development.” In other
words, if the United States currently provides research grants for nuclear development but does not
provide loans for the construction of power plants, a plan could topically increase the amount of
funding available for such grants but could not create a new set of lending packages.

Why is accuracy important?

In order for a productive debate round to occur, the teams must share a common understanding of
the resolution. Returning to our earlier example about the “Greater Horn of Africa”, it is easy to
imagine how confusing and frustrating the debate round would be if one team came prepared to
debate “Yemen” while the other believed that “Yemen” was not even part of the topic.
To prevent such disagreement and confusion, the two teams must not only agree on the language
of the topic, they must also define that topic in an identical fashion. If the teams’ definitions are
inconsistent with one another, a productive debate is impossible. Common definitions are most
likely to emerge if teams adhere to the same accuracy-seeking procedure when they analyze the
topic during prep time. As soon as the topic is announced, each side should consider the words and
phrases that are contained within the resolution. They should then define each term as accurately as
possible, keeping in mind how the words interplay with one another. Finally, they should view the
resolution as the sentence that is formed when all of the constitutive terms are accurately defined.
If the teams follow the same procedure, they should arrive at a common understanding of the topic.
This “interpretation” of the resolution, in which all of the terms are accurately defined, is the only
one for which both teams are obliged to prepare.

What about “ground” and “education”? Why do people refer to those as standards?
You may hear your opponents refer to arguments such as “ground” and “education” as topicality
standards. Unfortunately, this is an incorrect – albeit incredibly common – manner of debating
topicality. Why? Because neither argument attests to the accuracy of the definition in question. In
fact, “ground” and “education” are ways of justifying inappropriate definitions in lieu of accurate
ones.
Consider the issue of “ground.” Is a definition more accurate because it provides better ground
in the debate? The answer is “no.” Consider a scenario in which the resolution asks the United
States to deploy a team of military doctors to address a public health crisis in Africa, but where the
government plan instead deploys hundreds of thousands of grapefruits to the region. We intuitively
recognize that “grapefruits” is neither an accurate nor an acceptable definition for “military doctors.”
However, the government team could easily justify defining “military doctors” as “grapefruits” on
the basis of ground. After all, the qualities of grapefruits are deeply contested. Even the authors of
200 Chapter 20. Topicality and Accuracy

this chapter are divided: one is a staunch supporter of grapefruit, the other a dire critic. Indeed,
the government side might argue that by defining “military doctors” as “grapefruits”, they actually
expand ground for their opponents. The opposition can now read invasive species disadvantages,
food dependency disadvantages, locally-grown food aid counterplans, kritiks of aid dependency
and industrial agriculture, and solvency arguments about the short shelf life of produce in topical
climates or the inadequacy of grapefruit as a panacea. Clearly, defining “military doctors” as
“grapefruits” would serve a useful function in the round and would provide desirable ground. But
does the ground standard help us understand what “military doctors” actually means? Is “grapefruit”
an accurate or valid definition for “military doctors”? Of course not.
The same logic applies to the “education” argument when it is claimed as a standard. For example,
assume that the resolution was, “The United States should increase funding for higher education,”
but that the plan increased funding for NASA. In this case, the government side might argue that
defining “higher education” as “NASA” was desirable from an educational perspective. After
all, it would facilitate a discussion of space exploration, the hazards posed by comets or meteors,
the potential discovery of alien life, and even the efficiency of major government administrations.
However, the fact that some education benefit may result does not prove that “NASA” is an accurate
definition for the term “higher education.”
Whenever opponents present a new “standard” that you have not heard before, you should ask
yourself whether the arguments genuinely demonstrates the accuracy of the definition they present.
In many cases, it does not. Instead, the opponent is often attempting to justify a definition that
provides a creative advantage for their side despite the fact that the definition is inaccurate. In
summary, when an argument does not attest to the accuracy of a definition, then by definition it is
not a genuine standard.

Topicality as a Voting Issue

Topicality is voting issue for several reasons. First, when the government team fails to defend a
topical plan, predictable ground is skewed. By presenting a non-topical plan, the government side
gains access to ground that the opposition could not have predicted. Likewise, the opposition team
loses access to ground that they did predict. Thus, violating topicality inherently skews the terms of
the debate against the opposition team.
Second, when the government plan fails to comply with the resolution, topic-specific education
is automatically lost. Because the plan takes an action that falls outside the purview of the topic,
a component of the discussion and education that occurs in the round is non-topical. Similarly, a
non-topical plan inherently forgoes a discussion of issues that might have been discussed if the plan
was topical but which are no longer pertinent.
Third, the NPDA Rules of Debating stipulate that, “the proposition team must affirm the resolution
by presenting and defending a sufficient case for that resolution”. This language strongly implies
that the government plan is required to be topical and that the government side cannot win the
debate if they fail to meet the topicality burden.
Finally, it is essential not only that topicality is a voting issue, but also that it is preeminent in the
round. If other arguments are able to supersede topicality or take priority over it, then teams could
use such arguments to justify their use of non-topical plans.7

7 For a detailed discussion of topicality’s importance as a voting issue, see the authors’ working paper.
 201

Abuse, Competing Interpretations, and Reasonability

Two final issues that affect the evaluation of topicality merit discussion. The first is the issue
of “abuse”; the second is the distinction between “competing interpretations” and “reasonabil-
ity.”

First, many judges are hesitant to vote on topicality unless the opposition side demonstrates that
it has suffered “in-round abuse”. Such judges insist that the government side has not harmed the
opposition team unless they blatantly “no-link” or otherwise avoid a position that they would have
been forced to directly engage if the plan was topical. This perspective, however, is misguided. It
overlooks the fact that predictable ground and topic-specific education are automatically impinged
as soon as the government presents a non-topical plan. These forms of “abuse” are every bit as real
as a no-linked disadvantage or link-turn made possibly by a non-topical plan.

The issue of in-round abuse is also very difficult to fairly evaluate. In order to demonstrate abuse,
judges often ask the opposition side to present a disadvantage that would have linked to a topical
plan but which does not intuitively link to a non-topical one. If the government team “no-links” the
position, the abuse is proven. However, a strategic government team can simply concede the link
on the disadvantage, thereby denying their opponent an abuse claim. As such, the government team
no longer needs to worry about topicality when debating in front a judge who demands “abuse”.
They can therefore spend the remainder of their speech time reading impact turns or uniqueness
arguments against the disadvantage. Because they do not have to answer topicality, they may even
gain a time-tradeoff in the process. Thus, forcing the opposition side to prove an “abuse” claim
actually poses a significant and unreliable burden.

Second, it is important to understand what the terms “competing interpretations” and “reasonability”
imply. To begin, “competing interpretations” should be used to connote the fact that topicality
is a process of selecting between potential definitions. In other words, the two definitions are
compared against one another and the plan is evaluated against the more accurate of the two.
However, competitors and judges often use “competing interpretations” in a different sense. To
some participants, the term “competing interpretations” implies that judges should weigh the
impacts associated with different definitions against one another. In other words, the teams will
argue that a particular definition provides desirable ground or education and the judge will take
these arguments into account when selecting definitions.

Unfortunately, this method of evaluating topicality is inherently misguided for three main reasons.
First, as we argued above, ground and education are not mechanisms for evaluating the accuracy of
a word and can in fact detract from accuracy. Second, individual words do not divide ground or
provide education. The term “economic sanctions” does not provide any ground for either team
until we know whether the resolution tasks the government with increasing or decreasing sanctions
and against which country those sanctions are targeted. The ground for the debate would be very
different if the resolution asked the U.S. to “increase economic sanctions against Iran” rather than
“decrease economic sanctions against North Korea.” Ground and education are determined by the
resolution as a whole, not by individual words. But because the resolution can only be interpreted
once the most accurate definitions are identified, asking a judge to endorse a definition on the basis
of ground or education puts the cart before the horse. Third, it is almost impossible for a judge to
evaluate how much argumentative ground and education are available even once the resolution is
defined.8 The reduction of predictable ground and topic-specific education that occur whenever the
government plan does not comply with the most accurate definition of the topic should therefore
always take priority over speculated increases in other ground or education.

8 See Murphy (1994) for an extended discussion of why this is the case.
202 Chapter 20. Topicality and Accuracy

“Reasonability” is another argument that competitors use to justify inaccurate definitions. In this
case, teams argue that words can be defined in many different ways and that definitions should
be accepted as long as they attain some minimum level of quality. By definition, however, this
argument disregards the importance of accuracy. When the government plan is not required to
comply with the most accurate definition of a word, predictable ground and topic-specific education
are inherently reduced.9

Conclusion

Topicality is one of the most common arguments in parliamentary debate. Nevertheless, the position
is widely misunderstood. Learning to debate topicality correctly will be of significant long-term
benefit to your career. This chapter provided an explanation of the logical structure of topicality,
demonstrated why standards should attest to the accuracy of a definition, and argued that topicality
is a preeminent voting issue for reasons of predictable ground, topic-specific education, and the rules
of the game. Hopefully it will help you learn to think more clearly about topicality, to recognize
your opponents’ logical mistakes, and to explain these problems coherently and convincingly to
your judges.

References:
Merrell, B. and Graham, T. “Back to its Roots: Accuracy as the Litmus Test for Topicality.” Work-
ing Paper. http://www.brandonmerrell.com/papers/Merrell%20-%20Topicality.pdf

Murphy, T. L. (1994). The legitimacy of non-truth-based standards in competitive academic debate.

CEDA Yearbook, 15, 1-9.

9 The authors’ working paper provides a detailed description of why reasonability is an inappropriate method for
evaluating topicality.
 21. Reading Critical PMCs

R EADING C RITICAL PMC S

K ATIE B ERGUS AND M EGAN G AFFNEY – U NIVERSITY OF O REGON

Introduction

The purpose of this chapter is to provide an overview of critical PMCs and how debaters can
effectively prepare, deliver and debate a critical PMC. Though the chapter focuses on how to read
critical PMCs successfully, it also aims to de-mystify critical arguments thus eliminating confusion
and making them easier to respond to. A critical PMC is distinct from a traditional policy oriented
PMC because the solvency and advantages derive from the speech act, methodology, or discourse of
the PMC in addition to/or opposed to the fiated policy action of the plan text. There are four main
categories of critical PMCs discussed in this chapter: (1) project PMCs, (2) kritiks of the resolution,
(3) topical/critical PMCs, and “middle of the road” critical PMCs. It is important to remember
that these definitions and categories are based on the views of the authors. Other definitions and
classifications for critical PMCs certainly exist. In fact, most PMCs that vary from a traditional,
policy-based PMC are often lumped into the category of “critical PMC.”

Types of Critical PMCs

Project PMCs
“Project” PMCs generally focus on philosophical or social problems within the debate format or
community and are often not based on a particular resolution. It is easier to define these arguments
based on what they hope to accomplish – not necessarily the structure of the PMC, since the
structure and performance will change based on the thesis of the particular argument. In many
cases, “projects” allow debaters to incorporate their own experiences into the debate space, thus
204 Chapter 21. Reading Critical PMCs

creating social awareness and eventually changing the norms within the debate community.

Example:
At the 2013 NPTE Alyssa and Brandon of Northern Arizona University read a white privilege
project that critiqued how whiteness is viewed as a neutral force in debate, including a performance
element in their argument. Alyssa, a white woman, wrote examples of her white privilege on her
body in order to deneutralize how whiteness is perceived in debate rounds. Brandon, a Chicano
debater, dressed in a bowtie and sweater-vest to perform the aesthetic of whiteness on his body,
taking off his outer layer of clothing throughout the debate to reveal a bandana and a Chicano
power shirt worn underneath to demonstrate the disparity between the aesthetic he was pressured to
perform and his lived experiences as a person of color.
The main strength and benefit to reading a “project” PMC is that the debaters are presented with
the opportunity to speak from their social location and about their experiences. Often, the strategic
strength of this argument is the long-term shift in how debaters view identities. However, in the
short term, a strategic advantage to reading a project is the ability for a team or squad to become
very familiar with a particular argument and out research their opponents based on the depth of
their argument, not the breath of the arguments in their toolbox. The main strategic weaknesses
of project arguments is demonstrating why the project itself should be included within the debate
space, more specifically answering arguments such as framework and topicality. For example,
many judges feel that projects are unfair because it appears as though the debaters are asking for
the ballot simply because they spoke first in the debate. In addition, teams reading project PMCs
often run into conflicts over what constitutes “pre-prepared materials” in a parliamentary debate
(such as writing on the body, clothing, art, or music).

Critiques of the Resolution

Critiques of the resolution begin with the basic idea that resolutions are more than statements of
policy action with evenly divided government and opposition ground. Instead, these PMCs aim
to understand resolutions as crossroads of ideas, specifically as products of political and cultural
histories. Under this interpretation of a “resolution”, the government team can define affirming
the resolution as a process of uncovering the historical narratives that are the foundation of the
resolution, not necessarily through an advocacy statement or plan text. The method that the gov-
ernment team uses to analyze the resolution becomes the advocacy. In the PMC the government
advocates for a specific method of inquiry and develops arguments as to why that type of method is
educational and productive within the debate space.

Example:
Given the resolution, “The USFG should increase pressure on Russia for its support of Syria” – a
PMC that critiqued the resolution might explain how the United States has come to view Russia
as a political enemy and geopolitical threat. The government team may, for example, advocate a
historical analysis of the resolution. The government would also include a very specific framework
within the PMC as to why historical inquiry is the best method of education within the debate
space.
This type of argument allows debaters to analyze and affirm the resolution in a purely critical
manner. The government gains offense from their method of inquiry, which allows for a broader
range of methods than reading a plan text based in particular political action, brining a new type
of education into debate rounds. A second strength of this argument is that it does not force
debaters to alienate their personal beliefs from their debate arguments – if one ethically disagrees
 205

with a resolution; this type of PMC allows them to affirm the resolution in a nuanced way. The
main strategic weakness to critiquing the resolution is answering topicality or framework – in
other words, it is hard for the government to defend why their interpretation of the resolution is
predictable and provides a fair division of ground to the opposition team. The government can gain
offense on a theory or framework position by controlling access to the best type of education in
debate, however this type of education is also possible on the opposition. This makes arguments
about switch side debate (arguments that advocate that critical inquiry should primarily be provided
by the opposition) persuasive to many judges.

Topical/Critical PMCs
A topical/critical PMC will typically read a topical plan text and a framework that defines the role
of the ballot as evaluating the methodology of the PMC instead of the fiated implementation of
the government plan. This type of PMC may defend the hypothetical enactment of the plan in an
abstract sense, while, in most cases, asking the judge to evaluate the ideology behind the PMC
before considering fiated actions and consequences. The framework will provide justifications
(standards) as to why questions of ideology or methodology come first.

Example:
Resolution: The United States Federal Government should increase the tax on capital gains.
A topical/critical PMC on this resolution could simply read the resolution as the plan text and
then have one contention on how the plan text deconstructed neoliberalism. The solvency would
discuss how the plan deconstructs neoliberalism and would be based on what ideas and values in
society change as a result of the plan text; the solvency would not be focused primarily on economic
data. A good illustration of this distinction would be how the government responds to a Business
Confidence Disadvantage. The answer to the disadvantage would be a framework argument that
claimed that, “the specific economic consequences of the plan text cannot be adequately determined,
because the research about the economy comes from a slanted neoliberal perspective.” Therefore,
we need to use the PMC to reconstruct how our society produces and values knowledge about
the economy before we can understand the fiscal consequences of the plan in a traditional policy
manner.
As discussed above, the main benefit of a topical/critical PMC is that research can be focused on
the framework aspect of the debate. Framework can be utilized to focus the debate on a particular
concept that is well researched, providing the government with a strategic advantage. Another
strength of topical/critical PMCs is that they allow debaters to explore critical theory and incor-
porate that education into debate. A main weakness of topical/critical PMCs is ensuring that the
plan text itself is ideologically aligned with your kritik. For instance, in the case of capital gains
taxes the PMC has to be able to prove that changing tax policies is an effective way to combat
neoliberalism. This weakness is fairly easy to resolve by ensuring that the PMC includes a defense
of the action of the resolution through the use of a solvency contention. Often, defending the action
of the resolution means advocating for incremental reform instead of a radical overhaul. If the
PMC does include a defense of the incremental reform in the solvency, that argument can also be
cross-applied to develop offense against a kritik run by the opposition team. Incremental reform
becomes a net-benefit to the permutation on the kritik and a solvency deficit to any alternative that
is a negative action (i.e. rejection).

Middle of the Road PMCs

A “middle of the road” PMC is a hybrid between a topical/critical PMC and a traditional policy
206 Chapter 21. Reading Critical PMCs

PMC. “Middle of the road” PMCs will typically read a topical plan text and then read two separate
advantages. One advantage will be based off of the fiated policy action of the government team
– the impacts of the advantage are solved by hypothetical consequences of government action. The
second advantage is usually dedicated to the methodology of the PMC – the impacts are solved by
a change in mindset that occurs within the debate round.

Example:
A plan text could say, “The Environmental Protection Agency of the United States executive
branch should establish a policy outlawing the production or purchase of products from controlled
animal feeding operations (CAFOS).” One advantage could claim that banning CAFOS would
prevent extinction from environmental degradation. The second advantage could claim that banning
CAFOS represents a shift in how we view animals as “raw material” – the shift in mindset of how
debaters conceptualize animals and politics allows for a revaluation and prioritization of value to life.

Argument Strengths:
The main benefit of the Middle of the Road PMC is flexibility. Depending on the LOC strategy the
MGC can collapse to either the critical advantage or the policy advantage. The middle of the road
PMC is strategic because the critical advantage can be used as both defense and offense against a
kritik read by the opposition. In addition, if the opposition reads only disadvantages, the critical
advantage can be used as an external impact and tiebreaker in the event that the impact calculus
debate with advantage one versus the disadvantage becomes complicated. The main strategic
weakness to this type of PMC is also its flexibility – the opposition team can choose to go either
farther left or further right than the PMC and the government team is left having to defend the
both a policy action and some type of critical element to their PMC. This can put an extraordinary
amount of pressure on the MGC and PMR because they have to either cover more arguments or
spend time kicking out of arguments from the PMC. For example, the opposition could read a
kritik that claims to solve for the devaluation of life through non-policy means. In this scenario, the
opposition team accesses critical impacts of the PMC and can claim the government is incapable of
solving because of their focus on incremental policy action. On the other hand, the opposition can
read all policy focused arguments in the LOC and framework arguments as to why the judge should
evaluate the consequences of the plan action. In this scenario the government has to divide time in
the MGC, both answering the framework-based arguments and completing impact calculus on their
first advantage versus the disadvantage in a consequentialist framework.

Writing Critical PMCs – Key Components

This section will provide an explanation of some key components of critical PMCs and develop one
example of a step-by-step method of writing and preparing the PMC. The first step in writing a
critical PMC is generating a concept for the PMC and researching that concept or literature base
until it is possible to generate a more specific thesis for your argument. The second step is deciding
on the structure of your PMC. Sometimes, the structure of the PMC is determined primarily by the
thesis statement – i.e. a PMC about white privilege in debate will generally fit best into a “project”
(or performance) PMC category. Other times the structure or type of PMC will be determined by
the strategic utility of various arguments within the round. A PMC that criticizes neoliberalism
could become a topical, critical PMC or a middle of the road PMC based on what type of strategic
flexibility the debaters desired.
The next important step is deciding on the type of “text” advanced in your PMC. The traditional
 207

role of the PMC is to “affirm” the resolution. As previously explained, there are various definitions
of what “affirming” the resolution can mean. However, regardless of what type of critical PMC you
have chosen to read, you generally will have a thesis of what you are arguing and how. It is advan-
tageous to include some sort of text or written version of your thesis during the first minute of your
speech because it clarifies the debate, increases the quality of the argumentative clash, and provides
defense against fairness abuse claims from the opposition. Here are a few examples of types of texts.

Standard Plan Text

“The United States Federal Government should remove the severity, prosecution cooperation, and
single employer requirements of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act and amend the act to rely
on a self-application process.
This plan text is a statement of the policy action taken by the government team – the government
will usually defend the fiated implementation of their plan text by the actor specified.

Demand Texts
“My partner and I demand that the United States federal government should remove the severity,
prosecution cooperation, and single employer requirements of the Trafficking Victims Protection
Act and amend the Act to rely on a self-application process.”
“Demand Texts” usually include most of the same components as a plan text, however they are
distinct in two ways. First, in a typical plan text the United States is the primary subject of the
sentence that does the primary verb. By adding the demand clause, the debaters are the primary
subject/actor and the act of demanding is the primary verb. Second, the government team will
typically not defend fiat when reading a demand text. The government-side debaters defend their
demand upon the government (which occurs during the speech act of the PMC) and their advantages
are based upon the act of advocating for the plan, not the effects of the plan implementation.

Advocacy Texts
“My partner and I advocate that the United States Federal Government should remove the severity,
prosecution cooperation, and single employer requirements of the Trafficking Victims Protection
Act and amend the Act to rely on a self-application process.”
An advocacy text can function similarly to a demand text, where the government team does not use
fiat and advocate for a topical plan text that simply shift the actor from the USFG to the debaters.
However, advocacy texts do not have to include the USFG/other actor or a topical plan text based
in the resolution. One can advocate for anything and then defend why that advocacy is good for the
debate.

Role of the Ballot

“Vote (government) to endorse our performative interrogation of white privilege within debate and
support a vision of parliamentary debate that encourages the deconstruction of community inequity”
(NAU RS, 2013).
Some PMCs do not have a specific advocacy/demand text but instead a role of the ballot claim,
which explains why the judge should vote for the government team and what the ballot “does.” The
example above specifies that the ballot is an endorsement of the performance of the PMC and it
also gives a brief explanation or thesis statement of the PMC (performance of white privilege as a
method of deconstructing community inequality).
208 Chapter 21. Reading Critical PMCs

Framework

Framework” is a procedural argument that explains how the debate round should be evaluated, what
arguments should be prioritized, and what constitutes the role of the ballot. A traditional policy
framework argues that the role of the ballot is to endorse the best policy option – the government
team can read a topical plan text and the opposition can read a counterplan or advocate the status
quo. A critical framework could argue that, “the role of the ballot is to evaluate the discursive
justifications for each team’s arguments” – this is one generic example of a critical framework.
There are many different critical frameworks and it is advantageous to read a framework tailored
to the specific kritik being read in the round. In a critical PMC, “framework” is generally its
own contention at the beginning of the PMC. It can also be placed at the end of the PMC or
incorporated into solvency. It follows a similar structure to other theory positions and includes an
interpretation, standards, and voting issues. In a framework position, the interpretation outlines the
role of the ballot in the debate. There are many different interpretations/roles of the ballot such as
epistemology, ontology, discourse, rhetoric, or endorsement of performance as the primary factor
deciding which team wins the debate. It is usually best to read a framework that is specific to a
particular critical PMC because then your standards can argue why your specific kritik is good for
debate, not just critical debate in general. In addition, reading a specific framework limits response
options to your framework because some arguments about why critical debate is bad may not apply
to your specific framework. Frameworks for critical PMCs will often include standards – reasons
why your interpretation and role of the ballot are good for debate. You should include offensive
standards that show why your “role of the ballot” is good for fairness and education in addition to
defensive standards that preempt common opposition arguments.

Reading a Critical PMC

This section describes the speech-by-speech process of reading a critical PMC at a tournament.
There is, of course, more than one way to conceptualize a critical debate. This section aims to pro-
vide one example of how strategic decisions are made and critical performance is deployed.
The first discussions of prep time would begin when we learned whom we would debate and who
was judging the debate. First, a few basic questions to determine if a critical PMC is a good idea
for this debate – How does my judge feel about kritiks? What about critical PMCs? What does this
judge think that I need to defend in order to win as the government team? How similarly do this
judge and I think about kritiks? What type of critical literature is this judge most familiar with?
These types of questions will help you decide if you will be able to get the judge on board with the
story of your critical PMC. Second, we would consider our opponents and how they might respond
to a critical PMC, giving us a sense of what preparation time would look like once the topic was
released. When the resolution came out and preparation time officially began, we would revisit the
discussion of whether a critical PMC was a good idea – this time with the discussion centered on
one or two specific PMC options. If we found a specific PMC viable, we would pull it up on our
computers and get to work copying it down.
Before the tournament, we would prepare a few kritiks and/or modify links based on topic areas
– there was almost always a file to prep from. It can be very helpful to have generic PMCs
written prior to inputting specific harms based on the resolution, then write a few specific solvency
arguments and detail your internal links and impact scenarios to the topic. I liked to write from
the file and leave space where I wanted to look up specific details. When the whole PMC shell
was written, I would return to the marked spaces and research the details that I wanted. Be sure to
tailor your arguments with respect to the topic as well as the team you are debating and the judge,
 209

inserting spikes, arguments that the judge finds clever, etc. as you write. In our partnership, the
PM would prep the whole PMC most of the time. If the kritik was new or if the MGC ran out of
things to prep, the MGC would also help with PMC prep. If you are going to read critical PMCs
with any regularity, it is to the benefit of the PM to have frequently used framework arguments and
impacts memorized since these are very transferable between different kritiks and being able to
write one word instead of flowing an explanation of the argument saves you a lot of pen time during
preparation.
One of the main reasons that I enjoyed reading kritikal PMCs was that I was passionate about the
arguments that I was making and I tried to reflect this ethos throughout the debate. In getting a
judge and audience on board with a kritikal PMC, one of your main goals is to make their heart
bleed for what is making your heart bleed. Paint a vivid image of the importance of your PMC,
use deliberate detail, and insert stories appropriately through the PMC. The delivery of the PMC is
very relevant. It should not be too fast and it should have meaningful inflection and eye contact.
A confident, matter-of-fact tone of voice that says, “I care about this. This is wrong. We can do
better” is the tone that I frequently used in my PMCs and I found it very effective. Because critical
PMCs tend to flow more like stories than policy oriented PMCs, it is especially important to be
thoughtful about when you will take questions during the PMC. Wait until you reach a logical
break – for instance, following the text, the harms, the solvency, or between advantages if you have
more than one advantage. It is good sportsmanship to read the text at a conversational pace twice,
pass a copy to your opponents, and then ask if they have a question. This goes for any text read,
but it is especially important if you are reading a critical PMC because it is often the case that the
opposition’s preparation time did not include preparing for your PMC. Do not feel obligated to take
every question the other team has if they are raising their hands every 15 seconds, but do make sure
that your opponents know what is going on. Good clash is premised on an understanding of the
other team’s arguments as well as your own. Be sure to give a short, complete explanation of your
PMC to your opponents so that they can know what they are debating.
During preparation time, the MGC will typically focus on writing blocks to common positions
that are read against critical PMCs – framework, topicality and case turns. One of the most useful
tasks during prep time is to write short overviews for the advantages that can be extended at the top
of the case flow. These overviews will help ensure that the explanation of the critical PMC stays
consistent between the PMC and the MGC. Overviews also help with clarity for your opponents and
judge. In the round, the order of the MGC will typically begin with answering theory (topicality or
framework), case debate, followed buy other off case positions. If you are answering disadvantages
primarily with framework, it may be strategic to put the disadvantages at the bottom of the MGC or-
der, since you will already have explained framework and can cross apply it very quickly if you run
out of time. Many critical MGC’s fall into the trap of extending the case failing to apply their spe-
cific kritik to the opposition’s positions. It is true that one of the benefits of reading a critical PMC
is being able to narrow the debate down to something you are prepared to defend. However, you
can use your method to specifically indict the opposition positions and this often makes your kritik
more coherent in the mind of the judge. Generating additional offense against the off case positions
gives the PMR more strategies to go for in the last speech and is still advantageous in a critical PMC.

The PMR
The overview for the PMR should explain clearly and plainly the story of the government side,
the insufficiency of the block strategy, and the approach that you will take to perform impact
comparison. I preferred to do specific impact comparison down the flow and general impact
explanation and comparison in the overview so that the judge knew what to listen for as my
speech progressed. The overview should dictate the rest of the PMR and be the initial, superficial
210 Chapter 21. Reading Critical PMCs

explanation for why the government has won the debate. Framing the debate in the PMR depends
significantly on the block strategy. If the block went for a kritik, you need to win the impact debate,
which is often done by controlling root cause claims. You may also need to win a framing question
– winning priority of your framework. If the block went for framework, depending on the PMC,
you could use the PMC as an explanation for why the exception of the government is more valuable
than policy-only debate. If the opposition block went for topicality or a generic theory position, you
can also use the PMC as a reason why the priority structure emphasized in the PMC is an answer to
their argument.
It is very important to maintain consistency with the MGC throughout the PMR, especially when
reading a critical PMC, because it is told like a story through the duration of debate. Use the exact
language of the MGC as much as possible when extending arguments to remind the judge of the
argument so that it is very clear that the argument that you are making is not new. Phrase your
arguments as a “development of a part of the MGC” in the context of an argument that the block
went for – shielding you from most points of order. Some points of order are inevitable and they
can be tricky. I would number each argument that my MGC made so that, during points of order, I
could refer to the argument number on the flow then explain why the argument that I was making
was a reasonable extrapolation of the MGC argument.

Answering a Critical PMC

There are many different strategies and off case positions that can be used to answer a critical
PMC. The most important component of any strategy is effectively answering the PMC itself. If
the opposition is unfamiliar with critical arguments and they hear a critical PMC, the common
response is to make the debate about an off case position that they are more familiar with. This
is often strategic. Still, in order for this to be an effective strategy the opposition has to answer
the government case first. Answering the government case is almost always a good idea in debate,
but it is especially key when debating critical PMCs. Most critical PMCs have built-in preempts
to off case positions and theory – the opposition needs to answer those preempts in order to get
access to their desired positions. If you neglect to answer the case, the government team gains full
access to solvency and can claim to solve for root causes making it very hard to outweigh with an
off case position. The first step in answering a critical PMC is to understand the PMC. No matter
how unconventional a PMC is, it usually falls into one of two categories: (1) a PMC that advocates
for something or a PMC that kritiks the notion of advocating for a particular thing. If the PMC
kritiks the notion of advocating for a particular thing, then the opposition needs to explain to the
judge why advocating for that particular thing is good. If the PMC advocates for a particular thing,
your first step is to figure out what the PMC advocates for exactly and their method of solvency.
Understanding these two components of the critical PMC will allow you to undermine the thesis of
the PMC’s arguments and generate offense against the case. You can generate offense by reading
case turns or miniature disadvantages that isolate why what the PMC advocates for is bad. For
example if the PMC kritiks securitization and advocates for eliminating securitizing discourse,
you could read case turns as to why securitization is good. You can also read defensive solvency
arguments as to why the method of advocacy that the PMC uses is ineffective.

Conclusion

Critical PMCs are a useful and beneficial argument for debate because they allow debaters to speak
from their specific social location and practice advocacy skills that will benefit them throughout
 211

their personal lives and professional careers. In addition, critical debate can be utilized to raise
social awareness about issues within the debate community itself, thus empowering debaters and
making debate into a more accessible activity.
 22. Conditionality and Advocacy Status

C ONDITIONALITY AND A DVOCACY S TATUS

B RANDON M ERRELL – U NIVERSITY OF C ALIFORNIA , S AN D IEGO
T ODD G RAHAM – S OUTHERN I LLINOIS U NIVERSITY

Understanding Status

In debate, the term “advocacy” has a specific meaning.1 A team’s advocacy does not refer to the
argument that the debaters most strongly emphasize in the round (in other words, the argument
that they “advocate”). Rather, an advocacy is a proposal for action that can be adopted by an actor.
During a debate round, the government team’s advocacy is their plan, whereas the opposition team’s
advocacy is a counterplan or a kritik ‘alternative.’2
Opposition advocacies function differently than most other arguments. They do not demonstrate
the direct costs of the plan but instead signify its opportunity costs. In other words, opposition
advocacies attempt to demonstrate that an alternative and desirable path of action exists, but that
this opportunity would be either foreclosed or made less valuable if the plan was adopted.
For instance, if the government plan raised the national minimum wage by 100%, the opposition
side might introduce a counterplan in which individual states raised their own minimum wages to
reflect the cost of living in each area. Rather than argue that the government’s plan is undesirable
when evaluated against the status quo, the opposition attempts to show that the plan is less desirable
than the counterplan (or any feasible combination of the two advocacies).

1 For a more comprehensive discussion of conditionality and status, see the authors’ working paper, available here:
http://www.brandonmerrell.com/papers/Merrell%20-%20Conditionality.pdf
2 If the opposition side chooses not to propose a counterplan or kritik alternative, then by default they opt to defend the
status quo.
214 Chapter 22. Conditionality and Advocacy Status

What is the ‘status’ of an advocacy?

The ’status’ of an advocacy refers to the degree to which the opposition side may unilaterally remove
that advocacy from the debate round. There are three types of status: unconditional, conditional,
and dispositional.
If the status of an advocacy is “unconditional,” the opposition team must continue to advocate
the position for the entire round. For example, if the opposition side introduces an unconditional
counterplan, then for the remainder of the round the judge may only compare the government plan
relative to the opposition counterplan.
Alternatively, if an advocacy is read “conditionally”, then the opposition team can remove the
position from the debate at their discretion. In other words, the opposition may introduce a
counterplan or kritik in their opening speech, but unilaterally remove that position later in the
debate if they believe it is no longer strategically viable. In this case, the opposition team has
the ability to shift the judge’s point of comparison multiple times: they initially ask the judge to
compare the plan relative to the counterplan or kritik, but then ask the judge to compare between
the plan and status quo. In even more extreme cases, the opposition team will introduce multiple
conditional advocacies and ask the judge to compare the plan against any or all of them at the end
of the round.
Finally, a “dispositional” advocacy is one that the opposition team may jettison if certain conditions
are met during the debate. However, the list of such conditions may vary. As such, whenever
a government team confronts an opponent whose advocacy is “dispositional”, the government
debaters should ask their opponent to describe the set of circumstances under which the advocacy
may be kicked.3

How does kicking an advocacy differ from kicking another argument?

When debaters kick a position, they do so by explaining to the judge that the argument no longer
has any significance in the round and why the judge need not consider it when making a decision.
The most common way for debaters to accomplish this task is to strategically concede points that
are made by their opponents.
For instance, the opposition team will often “kick” a disadvantage by extending a “no link” or “no
impact” argument made by the member of government. By doing so, they demonstrate that the
position is no longer relevant in the round because it either does not interact with the plan or it
does not result in an impact. However, the opposition debaters must be careful: although they have
attempted to explain why the disadvantage is unimportant, the government side may revisit the
position and argue the opposite. The opposition may, for example, have mishandled or overlooked
one of the MGC’s “turns”. If so, the government may be able to return to the disadvantage and
explain why the judge should still consider the position before rendering a decision.
Because the negative must extend “defensive” arguments in order to “kick” out of a typical a
position, and because the affirmative team has the ability to “revive” arguments that the negative
side has mishandled, the government debaters can significantly influence their opponents’ behavior
during the round. They may, for example, choose to make a large number of offensive arguments
against a disadvantage without making any defensive claims. In this case, the opposition will
face great difficulty kicking out of the disadvantage without addressing each of the arguments in
turn. In short, the government can use its own arguments strategically in order to influence its
3 Although for the remainder of this article, we refer exclusively to “conditionality”, our arguments apply equally well to
the use of dispositionality. In parli, dispositional and conditional arguments create the same set of strategic imbalances
between the government and opposition.
 215

opponents.
However, this type of strategic is not available to the government team when they confront a condi-
tional advocacy. Conditionality allows the opposition side to unilaterally and absolutely remove an
argument from the round. When the opposition team “kicks” a counterplan or kritik alternative,
the government side cannot resurrect that position. Furthermore, the opposition does not need to
answer the government’s arguments against the position. When the opposition debaters announce
that they are kicking a conditional advocacy, all associated arguments instantly disappear.
Thus, conditionality allows the opposition team to seizes an immediate advantage. First, they gain
a time-tradeoff relative to the government. The MGC no doubt made many arguments against the
opposition’s advocacy, but the member of opposition can dismiss these instantly. In so doing, the
opposition also nullifies a key component of the government’s strategy: because the opposition is
not required to refute arguments made against the advocacy that they “kick”, the government side
is not able to influence the negative’s decision by reading offense rather than defense. Additional
ways in which conditionality provides a relative advantage to the opposition team are addressed in
the following sections.

Why Parity is Paramount

The preeminent assumption in debate theory is that all rounds are zero-sum. Any strategic benefits
that are gained by one side necessarily come at the expense of reciprocal penalties against the other.
Rules and norms of acceptable behavior are therefore enforced in order to establish a level playing
field for the government and opposition. Placing either team at a significant disadvantage before
the debate round begins would be unfair.
Because maintaining parity between sides is the overriding goal of debate theory, teams cannot
commonly justify their employment of theoretically questionable arguments merely by explaining
that such arguments are “useful” to their side. Instead, they must explain why allowing a particular
tactic is necessary if their side is to successfully compete in the round or, alternatively, why
they would be placed as a significant disadvantage if they were precluded from using a certain
strategy.
This framework for analysis is particularly pertinent in the case of conditionality. When teams
argue in favor of conditionality, they often argue that the tactic is “helpful” to the negative or “fun”
for opposition debaters. Rather than settle upon a single strategy, the opposition side can throw
a variety of advocacies against the wall and see what sticks. However, this type of rationale is
both insufficient and logically flawed. It glosses over the fact that any strategic benefits that are
given to the opposition result in equivalent harms against the government side. Put simply, if
conditionality makes it easier for the opposition to win, then it makes the debate more difficult for
the affirmative.
As such, in order to justify their use of conditionality, the opposition team must demonstrate that
two arguments are true. First, conditionality is necessary to establish parity between the two sides in
the debate: absent conditionality, the opposition would be at a significant competitive disadvantage
relative to the government. Second, conditionality does not lead to an overcorrection in which the
opposition now gains a competitive advantage relative to the government.
The first of these arguments is easily dismissed. Unlike policy debate, parliamentary debate does
not suffer from a systematic government bias. If anything, the opposition side is awarded ballots at
a disproportionately high rate. Furthermore, many squads have enjoyed significant success without
resorting to conditionality. In short, there is very little reason to believe that the opposition side
216 Chapter 22. Conditionality and Advocacy Status

is unable to compete on equal footing without conditionality.4 This argument alone should be
sufficient reason for judges to reject teams who use conditional or dispositional advocacies: because
the argument is unjustified from the perspective of necessity, any risk that it is creates a bias against
the government should be a sufficient reason to reject the strategy.
However, for those who remain unconvinced, the majority of this article focuses on the latter
of the two claims that are made to support conditionality: that the strategy does not over-bias
the debate in favor of the opposition. In the following sections, we argue that such claims are
incorrect, and that conditionality – when used strategically – creates an unacceptable bias against
the government team. Furthermore, we address a third argument that opposition teams often make:
that conditionality improves the overall quality of debate. In contrast to supporters of conditionality,
we find that conditional advocacies actually impede strategic thinking and reduce the quality of
education to which debaters have access within rounds.

The Effects of Conditionality on Side Bias

Although the issue remains contentious, conditionality is generally accepted in policy debate,
where the affirmative side enjoys a significant competitive advantage relative to the negative. In
that activity, conditional arguments are viewed as a useful mechanism that allows the negative to
compete successfully against an otherwise dominant affirmative. The same imbalance, however,
does not exist in parliamentary debate. If anything, the opposite is true. In parli, the opposition
side enjoys a favorable strategic position relative to the government. Rather than remedying
an imbalance, conditionality actually serves to further an existing bias, creating an even larger
imbalance in favor of the opposition.
There are three primary ways in which conditionality skews the strategic balance of the round
toward the opposition. First, conditionality allows the opposition to propose multiple advocacies
and to selectively choose between those advocacies based on what the affirmative team answers
poorly. Second, conditionality allows the opposition to jettison advocacies and associated arguments
without answering the government’s responses to those positions, thereby nullifying the government
team’s offense and decreasing clash. Finally, conditionality allows the opposition side to read
inconsistent and contradictory arguments, thereby placing the government in a double-bind: in
order to answer one advocacy, the affirmative must link themselves harder to the alternative
advocacy.
The harms that are associated with each of those distortions are exacerbated in parliamentary
debate relative to policy. In parliamentary debate there are narrower resolutions, harsher limits on
pre-round preparation, stricter limits on the use of in-round evidence or prepared materials, and
reduced opportunities to ask clarifying questions. Collectively, these differences between the two
events make conditionality a much more potent tactic in parli than in policy and create unacceptable
biases in favor of the opposition side.
First, parli’s narrow resolutions and strict limits on pre-round prep time make conditionality
particularly powerful in parliamentary debate. Resolutions often require the government team to
enact a particular policy; as such, the government is unable to tailor its plan to avoid or hedge
against potential opposition advocacies.
Similarly, the debaters on the government side lack an opportunity to familiarize with their own
plan. In policy the affirmative team consistently knows more about their advocacy and the issues
4 For more on the issue of conditionality and how it affects side bias in policy vs. parli, see the authors’ working paper,
pp. 10-13.
 217

that relate to it than do their opponents. As such, the affirmative is able to leverage its plan and
advantages against negative arguments. In parliamentary debate, however, limited prep time and
narrow resolutions flip the informational asymmetry in favor of the opposition. If the resolution is
sufficiently narrow, both sides are able to predict the likely affirmative plan. The opposition need
only select a single strategy or counter-advocacy to leverage against that plan; thereafter, they can
focus on that argument for the remainder of prep time. The government team, in contrast, must
develop the affirmative case and also prepare against every potential negative strategy. Government
frontlines against opposition positions are often shallow, and members of government are poorly
informed about opposition arguments. These factors heavily constrain the government side’s
ability to competently rebut opposition advocacies. The problem is further exacerbated when the
opposition is able to read advocacies conditionally because such advocacies need no longer be
consistent with one another.

Pressure on the MGC is further complicated by the lack of blocks, in-round prep time, or opportu-
nities to raise clarifying questions. Without blocks or prep time, it is much, it is much easier for a
member of government to make a mistake or to accidentally present arguments that contradict with
either one another or the affirmative plan. In short, it is much more difficult to deliver a strategic
and coherent MG against a variety of conditional advocacies in parli than in policy. To make
matters worse, parli teams are often only allowed to ask one – and at most a few – questions of their
opponents. They therefore lack a guaranteed opportunity to clarify the status of each advocacy, ask
how different arguments function as net-benefits for each advocacy, understand the details of how
each advocacy would function, etc. Nor can parliamentary debaters read an opponent’s evidence
during in-round prep time if they need clarification; the rules prohibit such behaviors. Overall,
the rules against the use of prepared materials during rounds as well as the structural barriers that
impede clarification make it much harder for the MGC to correctly understand and coherently
answer conditional advocacies in parli than in policy.

Supporters of conditionality offer two counterarguments. First, they assert that conditionality is “key
to negative ground.” This claim, however, is without merit. Opposition teams can and do succeed
without resorting to conditionality. In addition, ground for each side is determined by the resolution,
not by the set of tactics that are available. The capacity to read advocacies conditionally does
not shift the range of argumentative ground to which either side has access: every argument that
can be made conditionally could also be made unconditionally. Conditionality merely allows the
opposition to advance multiple advocacies simultaneously. Requiring that advocacies be presented
unconditionally only reinforces an inherent expectation of debate: the opposition side should
carefully select its LOC strategy. Asking the opposition team to choose between advocacies before
the LOC is no more heinous a request than setting time limits on speeches. In both cases, the
opposition side may envision more arguments during prep time than they have an opportunity to
present during the debate itself. Forcing them to choose selecting among those options merely sets
a premium on strategic thinking and improves education.

Second, opposition teams often claim that forcing them to defend an advocacy even after it has
been proven undesirable would somehow constitute abuse. However, this complaint would be
nonsensical in all other debate contexts. The opposition could hardly ask a judge to disregard
an impact scenario or a disadvantage simply because their opponents had turned it against them.
Instead, they should learn from the experience and select their strategy more carefully in future
rounds. Strategically presenting and defending arguments is central to debate.
218 Chapter 22. Conditionality and Advocacy Status

Conditionality and the Quality of Debate

The fact that conditionality heavily biases the debate in favor of the opposition should be sufficient
reason for judges to disregard and for responsible teams to eschew the strategy. However, we make
an additional set of arguments: conditional advocacies decrease the overall quality of debate by
distracting from substantive education, decreasing the overall depth of analysis in debate rounds,
and minimizing the opposition side’s strategic thinking.

First, conditionality decreases substantive education in debate rounds by encouraging government

teams to read theory arguments against opposing advocacies. Status-related theory is the only
offense to which government teams are guaranteed stable access throughout the debate. Furthermore,
because the opposition has an incentive to collapse to the argument that the government side under-
covered relative to other positions, the opposition is more likely to be ahead on substantive issues
than if they presented an advocacy unconditionally. In sum, the PMR has a greater incentive to
focus the rebuttal on theory rather than substance.

Second, conditionality reduces the depth of analysis that occurs in debate rounds. In parliamentary
debate, where topics rotate every round, breadth of education is guaranteed. However, depth of
analysis on a specific issue is only possible when teams select a single LOC advocacy, present it
in detail, and allow the remaining speeches to evaluate the relative benefits of that advocacy and
the plan. Conditionality, however, provides the opposition side with an incentive to read multiple
inconsistent arguments in order to split the government side’s responses. Because speeches are
divided across multiple sets of advocacies, depth of analysis is reduced. Even Roger Solt (2003), an
advocate of limited forms of conditionality in policy debate, concedes that “two policy alternatives
can’t be exhaustively evaluated [within the context of a debate round]? it is therefore best to force
each team to do its own ‘scan’ of available policy options, select one and debate it to the maximum
depth possible.” The best way to facilitate depth of analysis in parliamentary debate is for the LOC
to focus on a single advocacy and for the MO and LOR to defend that advocacy against a series of
government counterattacks.

Third, conditionality allows the opposition team to sidestep strategic adaptation and delay strategic
thinking. Parliamentary debaters should adapt their strategies while listening to the government
case. A successful opposition team will listen to the opening government speech, decide whether
introducing a particular advocacy would make strategic sense, and will ultimately select among the
various options at their disposal. This type of strategic planning and argumentative adaptation is only
encouraged when the opposition is held to a single strategy. Conditionality, by contrast, encourages
the opposition to run a large number of advocacies that are not well tailored to the affirmative case
and then kick whichever positions are least successful. This reduces strategic decision-making
to a simple matter of “going for what the government dropped,” thereby encouraging cheap-shot
debating where speaking as quickly as possible in order to prevent coverage by one’s opponents is
the best inroad to the judge’s ballot.

Advocates of conditionality attempt to refute these arguments regarding the quality of debate
on several grounds. First, they claim that conditionality facilitates strategic thinking by both
the government and opposition. However, as we argue above, conditionality actually decreases
the strategic tools that are at the government’s disposal by preventing teams from using straight-
turns and offense to compensate for opposition time tradeoffs or to influence the opposition’s
strategic collapse. Likewise, allowing the opposition side to jettison their advocacies attenuates
the importance of pre-round prep time. In a crunch, opposition teams will simply select two
contradictory advocacies and then pursue in the block whichever advocacy was answered most
poorly by the MGC.
 219

Second, proponents of conditionality argue that conditionality is the most real world approach
to policymaking. Such claims, however, are inapplicable to debate, where the preservation of
fairness between sides should take precedence over a search for the best policy. Limits of pre-
round preparation, the lack of printed materials in round, and even fundamental requirements such
as topicality and time limits prevent debaters from identifying ideal policies but are considered
important aspects of the activity for other reasons. Real-world policymakers do not operate in
an oppositional format where the preservation of competitive equity is paramount. Furthermore,
debaters do not seek to pursue optimal policies during rounds; instead, they advocate and select the
arguments that their opponents mishandle.
Finally, some argue that conditional increases argumentative creativity and reduces the degree to
which opposition teams propose generic advocacies. However, this argument is backward: generic
counterplans and kritiks are currently useful in parliamentary debate because government teams
persist in answering them poorly. However, as teams become more adept at answering generic
counterplans and kritiks, opposition teams will be less apt to read such arguments unconditionally
lest their opponents respond successfully. In his assessment of conditionality in policy debate, Aaron
Hardy (2010) argued that giving the debaters “carte blanche to introduce as many [advocacies] as
time permits in each debate creates a number of drawbacks. It fosters a debate curriculum which
discourages on-point research in favor of generically applicable argumentation? it also discourages
the development of in-round strategic thinking skills which require seeing interactions and synthesis
between multiple different positions.” On balance, conditionality results in a trend in favor of
generic argumentation and impedes the development of strategic skills, thereby reducing the value
of debate as an educational tool.

Conclusion

Structural distinctions between parliamentary and policy exacerbate the harms of conditionality in
the latter event, both in terms of the strategic imbalance that the strategy creates and its potential to
erode the overall quality of debate.
Given these concerns, judges should consider setting aside prevailing attitudes against intervention
and should instead stipulate that they will not tolerate conditional arguments in much the same way
that they reject harassment. Similarly, coaches and teams should forgo their pursuit of competitive
advantages by confining themselves and their teams to unconditional advocacies in the interests of
the activity as a whole. At the very least, all teams should recognize the importance of teaching
teams to competently argue that conditionality is bad.

References:
Hardy, Aaron T. “Conditionality, Cheating, Counterplans, and Critiques: Topic Construction and
the Rise of the “Negative Case.” Contemporary Argumentation & Debate, 2010: 39-46.

Merrell, Brandon and Graham, T. “Keeping a Level Playing Field: Unconditional Advocacies in
Parliamentary Debate.” Working Paper.
http://brandonmerrell.com/papers/Merrell%20-%20Conditionality.pdf

Solt, Roger. “The Disposition of Counterplans and Permutations: The Case for Logical, Limited
Conditionality.” The University of Missouri-Kansas City - High School College Partnerships.
http://www.umkc.edu/hscp/Faculty/Counterplans.asp, 2003. (retrieved 06/11/2013).
 23. A Treatise on Opposition Strategy

L ET THE S QUO W ORK F OR YOU :

A T REATISE ON O PPOSITION S TRATEGY
J EFF J ONES – M C K ENDREE U NIVERSITY

Introduction

At the 2010 Midwest Debate Co-Op, I delivered a lecture on opposition strategy. Andrew Potter, a
former debater for William Jewell College, posted a picture of me with the superimposed words
“let the squo work for you” onto my Facebook timeline. At the time, I took it to be a largely well-
intentioned joke. As I considered it more seriously, I realized that the comedy was in the simple
reality that many debaters no longer believe that defense of the status quo is a viable opposition
strategy. In this chapter, I will do my best to disprove that myth.
The finals of the NPTE in 2011, 2012, and 2013 all featured an opposition strategy with either a
counterplan or a critical alternative at its center. The government won all three of these debates
with a combined 17-4 ballot count. This, in and of itself, is obviously largely meaningless because
of its myriad mitigating factors, but it stands in contrast to cursory research by Lewis and Clark
College Director of Forensics Joe Gantt, which suggests that the government side bias is a myth
– Gantt’s numbers from the spring of 2013 showed a government win percentage of somewhere
south of 48%.
If it is true that the opposition wins most debates and that the opposition rarely defends the status
quo, why then is there a need to make a change? The answer is fairly simple - because there are so
few ways to affirm the topic (at least with widespread judging acceptance) and so many ways to
negate it, that the element of surprise available to the opposition in a flow-centric debate will pose
problems for even the most adaptable Members of Government Constructive (MGC). The central
benefit to defense of the status quo is that it does, indeed, offer multiple creative collapse strategies
222 Chapter 23. A Treatise on Opposition Strategy

for the Member of Opposition Constructive (MOC) speaker.

This chapter discusses the necessary components of defense of the status quo, the proper way
to collapse in the opposition block, a comparison to counterplan and critical debate strategies,
ways to use a disadvantage to turn the government case (leveraging the status quo as a form of
counterplan), and a few interesting tricks to defending the status quo while also maintaining a
counterplan strategy. The goal of this chapter is not to convince you that defense of the status quo
is the only viable opposition strategy, rather that it is at least one viable strategy that is well worth
exploring and practicing.

Timing

When should you choose a strategy that defends the status quo? The most critical point in any
parliamentary debate is in the first three to five minutes of preparation time (excluding tournaments
with pre-determined, researched topic areas). The first few minutes of preparation time largely
determine the strategic positioning of the opposition. There certainly is not any defined formula
that will outline when it is best to defend the status quo, but there are two general situations that I
will cover here.

The first is what I refer to as an “embarrassment of riches” scenario. This occurs most frequently
in the instance of being prepared with several well-developed disadvantages with links that may
interact with each other delicately, but are all viable collapse strategies independent of each other.
This may also include the presence of one or several case turns of varying length – the practice of
“hiding” disadvantages on the case debate by labeling them turns is drastically underutilized. Even
the best MGCs are frequently seeking places to make up for time allocation errors and frequently
undercover case debate. Rather than robbing an MOC of one or more of these options, defending
the status quo allows for a large number of viable hypotheses to be tested. This also allows for
a significant benefit to preparation time – rather than wasting valuable minutes attempting to
delicately tailor and fine tune a opposition strategy, there is more flexibility to undertake what can
be called a “spray and pray” approach (being able to advance multiple arguments decreases the
advantage of the government team since you have increased the likelihood of their concession or
mishandling of one or more of those arguments).

The second, perhaps more common situation, to defend the status quo is in the case of a judge who
is predisposed to have an opposition to “conditional” opposition argumentation – i.e. the judge
would not favorably view a team who read a counterplan and a criticism. It is my belief that it
is essential, in any debate format, to preserve strategic flexibility. It follows logically that every
team should be in support of conditionality in their opposition debates and opposed to it when
they are on the government side. Many judges, however, would disagree with this assessment and
for any number of reasons are opposed to opposition conditionality. In these instances, the way
to best preserve your flexibility is indeed to defend the status quo, since the government will be
largely unable to read straight turns to every single disadvantage without also providing you with
the ability to kick the argument via their defensive claims on the same argument. Pairing a number
of viable disadvantages with your defense of the status quo provides you with two or three hidden,
conditional counterplans that have the ability to functionally solve the government case while still
avoiding the ire of a judge who shuns a conditional strategy.
 223

Collapse

Contemporary convention in parliamentary debate holds that the back half of any given debate
should feature a collapse of the opposition (the choice to focus on one or two arguments and
dismiss all others in the hopes that the depth of the MOC will offset the ability of the PMR to
cover them, while simultaneously adding credibility to the LOC by reasserting or perhaps even
asserting for the first time warrants to the arguments that were originally presented). This has, of
course, the additional benefit of making it difficult for the MGC to predict the back half of the
debate and forces tradeoffs in MGC response selection that make the MGC difficult. Why, then, is
there such fetishizing of the counterplan-heavy opposition strategy, when it makes collapse nearly
impossible?
It is true that a counterplan could theoretically be read with multiple net benefits and that an
MOC collapse would choose one of those net benefits in their collapse. In practice, however,
this is extremely rare. The average LOC that is focused on a counterplan strategy will typically
feature a procedural, the counterplan, the counterplan’s net benefit, and a great deal of case
defense to leverage against the possible solvency deficit to the counterplan. Indeed, the increased
requirement for depth of warrants in LOC shells (in the minds of many judges) means that by the
time counterplan solvency and a net benefit are fully warranted, the time crunch leaves the LOC
without the option to read multiple disadvantages. At the highest levels of parliamentary debate this
becomes less true. While those who may decry national circuit parliamentary debate may list speed
among their complaints, it is flatly not true that the event even approaches speed thresholds seen in
other forms of debate (collegiate policy debate). This is necessary, of course, as the mystical need
for “pen time” leaves many debaters attempting to throttle their own speed, leaving less time for
a depth of argument selection. In that case, two disadvantages, opposed to a disadvantage and a
counterplan, provide (at minimum) double the options for collapse – assuming proper variety in
disadvantages is selected.
Critical debate, of course, faces a similar obstacle. It is somewhat common to assume that criticisms
must be “one off” arguments (a shell in the LOC that is 8 minutes long with very little reference
to the PMC). Setting aside the basic disadvantage of conceding 7 minutes of speech time to the
government, the “one off” criticism creates a situation where the government is always able to
perfectly predict the back half of the debate and MGCs frequently realize that simply loading up the
impact turns and permutations in their speech make the MOC very difficult. Indeed, this leaves the
government team with the choice of collapse rather than the opposition, since the PMR can focus
on the impact debate or the link/alternative debate. In this scenario, the MOC remains committed
to an LOC strategy without any ability to bail out once the water is over the bow.
The MOC collapse, in a situation where you choose a basic defense of the status quo, remains
extremely simple. Issue selection is an extremely important part of any LOC formulation. Assuming
that you have selected your LOC arguments well, the presence of two distinct disadvantages along
with a variety of case arguments force the MGC to make his or her own choice and prediction of
MOC issue selection and can create both a time and substance tradeoff that will allow the MOC
to choose his or her own path forward. The process of collapse is fairly simple. I have seen a
staggering number of debates (even some featuring debaters I have coached) that feature the MOC
going for both disadvantages and nearly every case argument – they have featured an MOC who
is afraid to choose. Collapsing in the MOC is a matter of choice – when selecting to “kick” an
argument, disadvantages, typically, can be quickly resolved and dismissed. MGCs rarely answer a
disadvantage with a strategy of “only offense,” frequently MGCs leave terminal impact defense or
link defense that can be extended in the MOC to eliminate an unwanted position. It has also become
fashionable for MGCs to dump huge walls of generic uniqueness take outs - sometimes called
224 Chapter 23. A Treatise on Opposition Strategy

“thumpers” - and to follow that with a similarly large amount of asserted link turns. The problem
with this particular MGC strategy is that the link turns very rarely manage to resolve all or any of
the thumpers, resulting in a pile of parallel assertions that should achieve very little if the MOC
manages to clarify this fact. “None of your thumpers are resolved by your link turns” is a phrase
every MOC should commit to memory and should quickly deploy against many MGCs.
The last, perhaps most vital, part of the MOC collapse is the selection of case arguments. Having
a versatile and quick LOC who is able to make a variety of answers to the PMC in the LOC is
extremely valuable. Without an MOC making intelligent choices (or perhaps any choices at all)
about which of those arguments has the most utility, the LOC answers to the PMC can become a
trap for their MOC. I have seen countless debates where the MOC refuses to choose case answers,
instead selecting to advance nearly every argument presented by the LOC. In this circumstance, an
MOC may suddenly find themselves with 60-80 seconds to cover the disadvantage that they intended
to select. Obviously, this is a disastrous time tradeoff – making selections of the “correct” defensive
arguments will save untold amounts of time. The key to MOC case argument issue-selection is to
balance technique with truth. Obviously arguments that are wholly conceded are worth extending.
From the perspective of a judge, extending some case arguments with depth and intelligent warrants
will provide a significant ethos boost that can make mitigating the government case far more likely,
even if that requires spending more time on those particular case arguments.

Comparison to Counterplan and K Debate

The word “inevitable” is perhaps the largest buzzword that exists in the current form of national
circuit parliamentary debate. There is a large and growing belief that the PMC must assert that
as many things as possible are inevitable - war, economic collapse, the loss of US leadership, the
collapse of the gulf shrimp market - and that without properly addressing these issues the opposition
side is hopeless. I have both given and coached PMRs that consist of some form of “sure, the
disadvantage happens faster and it is larger, but if the world blows up the next week, who cares?”
The counterplan is a convenient tool to dismiss this strategy. If the counterplan can solve for the
same collection of inevitable impacts as the government, it is less relevant that the world is ending
next Tuesday. Thus, a collection of angry Republicans (on a politics disadvantage) appear a much
more looming threat. Perhaps the most defined difference between defending the status quo and
defending a counterplan is that these inevitability claims must be addressed.
I have been frequently teased for one simple observation that sums up a great deal of my philosophy
in defending the status quo, “I don’t see extinction happening, do you?” This is a simplification, of
course, that perhaps does not adequately address some existential threats that may be comparatively
slow burning, but it does speak to a very simple tool that can work in your favor in attempts to
defend the status quo: inertia. Inertia is a basic scientific concept that claims situations tend to stay
in their current state unless acted upon by an outside force. In the case of inevitability claims of
the PMC, those claims have to overcome a type of inertia. “We know there’s no great power war
between the US and China now, but just wait, it’s coming.” Modern geopolitics seems to be lousy
with examples of posturing and diplomatic strategies designed to avoid just that sort of incident.
To suggest that the naturally existing path of events would eventually lead the world to distraction
is simply interrogated. Disadvantages, of course, avoid this inertial problem because they make
the exact opposite assertion; “the world now is fantastic (at the very least, there is no way that our
impact is going to happen), but the plan will introduce a serious problem that changes everything in
a very serious way.” These arguments become round winners, not because they are particularly
nuanced or creative, but because the opposition often concedes these arguments. Parliamentary
debate is organic and can take many forms. From a coaching perspective, it is nearly impossible to
 225

train your debaters in a “they say x, you say y” format. Inevitability claims, though, are a red flag
to any opposition debater who wants to defend the status quo and harness the benefits discussed in
this chapter. Interrogation is vital, but is not particularly difficult.
Achieving the central goals of critical debate while embracing the status quo is difficult. A criticism
problematizes the government side, their plan action, and/or the status quo. It would be very hard if
not impossible to claim that maintenance of the status quo is the best way to address racism, gender
bias, government control and the like – largely due to the same inertia problem discussed earlier. It
cannot be denied that choosing to defend the status quo is also a choice to abandon a great deal
of “critical” high ground. In my experience, a large number of debaters who prefer the criticism
are drawn to it because they feel a higher moral calling than simply using debate as a competitive
activity and they believe that the use of the discursive forum in a particular way is important for
reasons that may have little to do with winning debate rounds. Defense of the status quo will
surely never satiate that belief, but it is my firm opinion that that belief is inherently misguided.
The use of the adversarial forum to advocate genuinely may be positive, but when that forum is
merely a simulation with a strict win/loss dichotomy, being an adversary will always trump being
an advocate. Hurt feelings and personal offense abound as a result of the refusal of many “critical
debaters” to accept that their forum is poorly chosen. Defense of the status quo is absolutely a
viable method for circling the wagons and deploying strategic options, but is not recommended for
advocacy.

The Disad Turns the Case

I have spent a large portion of this chapter writing about the lack of necessity to use a counterplan to
resolve the central harms of the PMC. It may come as a surprise that I believe of the largest benefits
to defending the status quo is that it can, in fact, address the central harms of the PMC. While it
is absolutely true that the counterplan is not necessary, it is also true that there are some strategic
benefits. Often times, the status quo is indeed untenable, and its defense can prove difficult. Some
situations truly are unraveling, and some actions truly are needed. How can defending the status
quo address these situations? The answer is quite simple - not all those who wander are lost and
not all those who read counterplans are actually reading counterplans.
One of the biggest mistakes I frequently see MOCs make, even in high-level debates, is that they
do not think about how the opposition strategy interacts with the government strategy. I have seen
countless debates that feature an economy advantage to the PMC and an economy disadvantage in
the LOC – mind bogglingly, never the twain shall meet. Parallel and simultaneous debates about
any number of issues can take place without proper resolution because the opposition does not
force the issue. It is in the best interest of the government to frame similar issues in as disparate a
manner as possible. This is because of the inevitability issue that was discussed earlier; the PMR is
frequently framed as a “try or die” proposition because it makes for a succinct reason for decision.
Far less common is a PMR strategy that frames two competing issues as a wash and urges the judge
to view a separate advantage as a tiebreaker, perhaps because the “wash” strategy seems to be an
inherent concession of many of the central claims of the opposition block and is very likely to
undercut the ethos of the PMR. It is the burden of the opposition to force the issue and to force the
judge to call a spade a spade.
Many debates feature an overview from the opposition that uses the term “the disadvantage turns
the case.” This can be a valuable tool for argument evaluation, but is far too often merely asserted
without any sort of justification. In actuality, this explanation can be very simple and it hearkens
back to the conversation about inertia that repeats throughout this chapter. The LOC should always
226 Chapter 23. A Treatise on Opposition Strategy

provide an explanation of the steps the status quo is taking to address the problem area outlined by
the government team. Unfortunately, for at least as long as the twelve years I have been involved in
competitive debate, it has been decidedly not sexy to engage in an inherency debate. Given the
intense push for “offense, offense, offense”, that seems unlikely to change any time soon. When
defending the status quo, however, engaging in this debate is vital. Frequently, the MGC will
attempt to dismiss these claims without direct interrogation and merely assert that the inevitability
of harm as outlined by the PMC is sufficient to answer them. Nuanced and clever assertions of
the status quo solving the problem area will allow a clever MOC to functionally introduce a new
counterplan into the debate in the block, as the defense of the status quo suddenly becomes a
defense of a superior solvency mechanism to the PMC. A counterplan is merely an opportunity
cost disadvantage; that is, if we solve this harm in the way suggested by the government team, we
lose the opportunity to solve it in this other, superior way. Asserting that the status quo solves the
harms isolated in the PMC, then, makes the status quo an opportunity cost to the plan: “If we do
the plan, we can’t keep doing the status quo and the status quo is doing pretty well so far.”
Arguing that the disadvantage turns the case is the final step in executing this plan. The focus on
inevitability can truly work against the government side because the opposition should be prepared
to assert that the plan disrupts the totally tenable and solvent status quo and that the disadvantage
will make the problem area outlined by the government far more severe in addition to accessing
an external impact. A PMC that claims to solve for US leadership, for example, is likely to deal
an equal blow to leadership if it happens to spark a specific conflict on the Arab peninsula. This
leaves the MOC with the ability to make the comparison between the increase and decrease in
leadership potential while also pointing out a large and specific harm that will exist external to that
conversation. In their crunch for time, MGCs often find themselves conceding large parts of the
specificity of various impact scenarios, making the PMR extremely vulnerable to the opposition
block’s choice to exploit larger portions of that concession.

Dirty Little Secrets

The so-far-unspoken drawback to counterplan debate is that the counterplan frequently needs
theoretical justification – a government strategy to which an opposition defense of the status quo is
not susceptible. For reasons surpassing my understanding, many MGCs frequently read theory to
answer a counterplan, regardless of its strategic viability. These objections run the gamut from the
perhaps understandable (“Opposition cannot read a PIC if there is one topical PMC”, “Conditions
CPs are illegitimate”) to the utterly absurd (“No opposition fiat” or “Textual competition good”).
Opposition teams who want to engage in counterplan debate must be prepared to address the full
breadth of these theory objections. This can frequently suck the debate down into a myopic disaster
that becomes far more “meta” than could ever be productive, while simultaneously affecting no real
change. I can recall exactly only a few debates over the last three years where the round actually
resulted in the judges deliberating counterplan theory. Even still, counterplan theory persists, like
a bad cavity, seeping into a huge percentage of debates around the MGC and being summarily
dismissed by the time the block has concluded. From a judging perspective, very few things are
as tedious and bothersome as treading that same tired ground repeatedly and those choices can
frequently factor in to speaker points. Counterplan theory often becomes the ultimate time suck,
detracting from discussion on more pressing issues and causing the entire debate to become much
thinner than it otherwise may have been. These theory debates often become a competition of two
different, equally non-responsive shells and front lines. Defense of the status quo circumvents this
problem, allowing the MOC to increase its depth on important substance and preserving clarity for
all involved.
 227

The least used “trick” to defend the status quo is doing so in the course of actually reading a
counterplan. Consultation counterplans have quickly gone out of favor in modern parliamentary
debate for a number of very good reasons, not the least of which being that it is difficult to win
both a link to a relations disadvantage and a “say yes” portion of a counterplan. This logistical
inconsistency can benefit the MOC in some unexpected ways. An MGC worth his or her salt is
sure to load up in the MGC on reasons why the entity being consulted would be sure to say no to
the plan, meaning the counterplan solves none of the PMC. The MOC, if there is sufficient defense
to the case to fall back on, is able to concede these arguments as additional warrants to the link
to their disadvantage. While the counterplan no longer has any hope of solving the PMC, the link
to the disadvantage can become decidedly unidirectional and place the PMR in the unenviable
position of being functionally “all in on impact defense” to answer the disadvantage. This method
of “backdooring” defense of the status quo into the block is unlikely to be successful often, but in
the right circumstances, it can certainly catch a very good opponent unaware and unprepared.

Conclusion

Debate is ever evolving and ever changing. As parliamentary debate continues to take shape and
rise to its full potential, trends in argument and strategy will change with it. It cannot be said that
defense of the status quo is mandatory or always the superior option. However, it cannot be denied
that it remains a viable option that is far more nuanced than it is frequently given credit for. The
parliamentary debate community has taken to counterplan and criticism debates like a duck to water
and without hesitation. A return to fundamentals is not always a return to simplicity. At its core,
debate remains a competitive activity, and the goal is to win. Most times, the best way to achieve
that goal is through embracing the path of least resistance. “Letting the squo work for you” can
place you on that path with many more roads to victory available. Like any other strategy it must
be undertaken with nuance and care, but the options that become suddenly available will make it a
much more rewarding path than might otherwise have seemed possible.
 24. Debating the Government Case

D EBATING THE G OVERNMENT C ASE :

U SING C ASE A RGUMENTS
M ATT R EISENER – U NIVERSITY OF T EXAS -T YLER

Introduction

A successful Leader of Opposition Constructive (LOC) strategy revolves heavily around debating
the case. If left un-indicted by the opposition, a strategic Member of Government Constructive
(MGC) will utilize critical arguments from the Prime Minister Constructive (PMC) to answer nearly
all of the positions read in the LOC. No matter how well substantiated the LOC’s off-case position
are, failing to answer the PMC will almost certainly result in a victory by the Government team.
Thus, it is important for the Opposition team to develop a strategy to answer the offense read by the
PMC by deploying arguments against the case.

Types of Case Arguments

“Status Quo Solves” arguments contend that the harms isolated by the PMC can be resolved without
the passage of the plan. These arguments can be especially strategic for a variety of reasons. First,
if a variety of status quo solves arguments are read, they can function as de facto counter plans for
the opposition team. For example, if the plan text calls for the United States Federal Government
to reform the healthcare system, the LOC could read multiple arguments indicating that previous
federal policies, Supreme Court decisions, and private sector reforms have already solved, or will
shortly solve, the impacts isolated by the PMC.
This strategy can be extremely beneficial because it allows the MOC to collapse to one or two
of these arguments and present them as viable alternatives to the plan text. If the opposition can
230 Chapter 24. Debating the Government Case

effectively prove that any of the policies that exist in the status quo will resolve the impacts of
the PMC without risking a link to the LOC offense, there are no advantages to voting for the
plan. Thus, much like a counter plan, “status quo solves” arguments allow the opposition to
claim solvency for the government’s impacts while avoiding the risk of a link to the disadvantage.
Since the MOC can choose which of these arguments to focus on during the opposition block,
status quo solves arguments can arguably provide the opposition with a higher degree of strategic
flexibility than a counterplan can, especially if the opposition is committed to running a counterplan
conditionally.
In the context of the case debate, a “straight turn” is an argument that indicts both the uniqueness
and the link level of the government team’s advantage and claims that the passage of the plan will
actually make it more likely that the harms of the PMC will come to fruition. Each straight turn
is composed of two essential arguments – (1) a “non-unique” (which holds that the government’s
uniqueness arguments are incorrect, and that the harms of the PMC will not occur the status quo)
and (2) a “link turn” (which argues that the passage of plan will cause the impacts isolated by the
PMC to occur as opposed to preventing them from happening). As an example, imagine that the
government’s plan text calls for the ending of all American military aid to Israel. The PMC claims
that American arms shipments to Israel have emboldened them to act aggressively towards their
Middle Eastern neighbors, making regional war inevitable. The PMC further contends that ending
arms sales to Israel would solve this problem by limiting their military prowess and making them
less likely to threaten a war that they are not confident in their ability to win. The following is an
example of how the LOC could attempt to straight turn this argument:

1. “Non-Unique: Israel is actually becoming less militarily aggressive towards their neighbors,
largely because America’s substantial military aid has allowed us to exert leverage over Israel and
compel them to negotiate with other countries.”

2. “Turn: Ending American military aid to Israel would not only remove our leverage over the
Israeli government and decrease their incentive to rely on peaceful negotiations, but would also
make them less confident in their own security, which would cause them to act more aggressively
towards their neighbors in order to neutralize potential security threats.”

These arguments can be very beneficial to the opposition team because they function as mini
disadvantages against the government case. As is the case with the example above, the opposition
team can use a straight turn as offense against the PMC and leverage it as a reason to reject the
plan text. Since the PMC has already spent a considerable amount of their speech detailing the
variety of reasons why their impacts should be avoided, straight turns can be read without having to
explain an entirely new impact scenario – which is why they generally require less time to read
than impact turns.
Finally, straight turns have the added benefit of functioning not only as offense for the LOC, but as
potential defensive arguments as well. In order for a straight turn to function as offense against
the case, the opposition must win both the non-unique and the link turn in order to prove that
solving the PMC’s impact is an opportunity cost to the plan. However, even if the government
is able to effectively answer one half of this argument, failing to resolve the other half can still
provide a potentially beneficial scenario for the opposition. Think back to the example of a straight
turn against the plan text involving the termination of American aid to Israel. The government’s
failure to answer the non-unique argument indicates that Israel is not acting aggressively towards
its neighbors, which means that there is no tangible problem with the status quo that necessitates
 231

the passage of the plan. On the other hand, if the government team is unable to answer the link turn,
they have conceded that the plan would cause Israel to act aggressively towards their neighbors
as opposed to discouraging such behavior. While it would be difficult for the opposition to win
the debate on a turn without uniqueness (if Israel is already acting aggressively, the fact that the
plan results in the continuation of this action is not a unique reason to reject it), linear offense such
as this functions as a solvency takeout to the government side (these arguments will be discussed
later).

“Impact Defense” arguments are designed to prevent the government team from gaining access to
their PMC impacts. These arguments indict the logic behind the government’s impacts and prove
that they will not occur or will not produce the catastrophic effects that the government claims they
will. For example, if the government team claims that American economic collapse and, eventually,
a global financial meltdown, are inevitable absent the passage of the plan, the LOC can use impact
defense to answer this argument in a variety of ways.

1. “No Impact- China or the IMF would bail out the United States before they allowed our economy
to collapse.”

This argument is relatively simple; it holds that some exterior force will prevent the PMC’s impact
from coming to fruition.

2. “The Impacts are Empirically Denied- The ongoing recovery of the American economy that has
occurred after the most recent recession empirically proves that the modern American economy is
resilient and will not collapse.”

This argument is still fairly easy to grasp, but is slightly more complex because it relies on empirical
examples to help predict what would happen if America fell into another recession. Impact defense
that are rooted in compelling historical examples can be particularly difficult for MGCs to answer,
especially if their terminal impacts are things such as a completely global economic collapse or
world-wide thermonuclear war that have never actually occurred. An LOC that can effectively
identify previous times in history when the PMC impacts have been avoided and give compelling
warrants as to why they can again be avoided absent the plan will expose the absurdity of some
of the more outlandish impact stories and will likely make the PMC’s warrants look weak by
comparison.

3.“No Impact- Even if the American economy does collapse, that would not be sufficient to collapse
the global economy. Other burgeoning markets like China and India would simply fill the void left
by the United States.”

This argument is distinct from the previous two examples because it assumes that at least a portion
of the PMC’s impact will come to fruition and is content to challenge the actual effects of the
impact story coming true. While not a complete impact takeout, this argument does heavily mitigate
the strength of the impact, which likely makes the impact of the LOC offense seem greater in
comparison. While it would obviously be preferable to make arguments that completely deny the
Government team access to their impact stories, impact mitigation arguments can greatly minimize
the amount of damage that these impacts can do in the PMR.
232 Chapter 24. Debating the Government Case

The general strategy for reading impact defense is simple – if a PMC reads a bad impact argument,
make smart, intuitive responses that isolate why the argument is bad. Impact defense alone will
not win a debate round, but eliminating the government team’s impacts ensures that the only
implications the judge can vote for are on the side of the opposition. Offense wins championships
in debate, but strong defense that prevents the other team from accessing offensive arguments at the
end of the debate round strengthens the opposition’s offense by weakening the opponents’.

Both “impact turns” and “internal link turns” are arguments claiming that the supposed harms
that the plan aims to eliminate are actually benefits that exist in the status quo. In other words,
instead of eliminating a bad thing from the world, these arguments contend that the plan actually
eliminates a good thing. Much like straight turns, impact turns can be highly beneficial for the
opposition team because they function as disadvantages to the PMC that can be leveraged as reasons
to prefer the status quo. In one sense, impact turns are one of the easiest offensive arguments
to understand, since they generally boil down to “they say that ‘X’ is bad, but we say that ‘X’
is good.” However, there are two rules to keep in mind when attempting to impact turn an advantage.

1. Never read impact turns and link turns to the same advantage! This is a particularly easy
trap for novice LOCs to fall into, as it seems logical that, if offense wins debate rounds, that the
more offense read against the PMC, the greater the opposition’s chances of victory might become.
However, a link turn and an impact turn read against the same position constitute what is known
as a “double turn”. For example, imagine that the PMC claims that global warming is bad for the
environment and that passing the plan will improve the environment by limiting the amount of
CO2 that is produced. The link turn to this argument would contend that the plan actually increases
global warming as opposed to stopping it, while the impact turn would argue that global warming is
actually a good thing. Thus, if both of these arguments are run in conjunction with one another, the
LOC has effectively argued that global warming is good and that the plan increases global warming.
Instead of creating a reason to reject the plan, the presence of a double turn has inadvertently
created an advantage that that the government team can solve.

2. A good impact turn is nothing without good impact defense. While impact turns can certainly
be deadly weapons when answering a PMC, it is important to remember that they are only one part
of the opposition strategy. Unlike straight turns, which can win the debate round for the opposition
absent the presence of impact defense, impact turns become significantly less effective if they are not
read in conjunction with these arguments. Think back to the example of the advantage that claims to
solve the opposition impacts of global warming. Now envision that the warrant given by the PMC
for why global warming is bad is that dangerous increases in CO2 can cause ocean acidification
eventually leading to a collapse of oceanic biodiversity. An impact turn contending that global
warming is good because it lengthens the growing season and allows more crops to be produced
would still function as offense against the plan text, but does not answer the PMC’s claim about
global warming being harmful to oceanic biodiversity. While it is still possible for the opposition to
win the debate with this impact turn if the LOR can convince the judge to prioritize crop yields
over oceanic biodiversity, it would likely be much easier for the judge to vote for the opposition if
the LOC is able to give compelling reasons why ocean acidification will not occur, is not caused by
global warming, or will not affect oceanic biodiversity. Thus, it is important to remember to in-
dict the logic of the PMC’s impact scenarios in addition to reading distinct scenarios as impact turns.

Just as impact defense arguments focus on challenging the impact claims made by the PMC,
“solvency defense” arguments indict the ability of the plan text to solve for the harms isolated in
 233

the case. Solvency defense arguments can be exceptionally useful to an LOC because they call
into question the utility in enacting the plan in the first place. It does not matter how many terrible
impacts will occur as a result of events such as economic collapse, starvation, or a great power war
if the plan is not capable of preventing these catastrophes from occurring. Thus, if the impacts of
the PMC are inevitable with or without the passage of plan, the opposition will likely be able to win
the debate on the risk that the plan will link to at least one of the opposition’s disadvantages. As
was the case with impact defense, teams will not usually be able to win debates simply by winning
solvency deficit arguments. However, when combined with exterior offense, solvency take-outs can
prove an effective way to mitigate the relevance of the PMC’s impact claims.
The final category of case arguments are “impact framing” arguments that seek to compare the
impacts of the LOC to the impacts of the PMC in a manner which portrays the LOC impacts as
being the most important in the debate round. While these types of arguments are exceptionally
common in later opposition speeches such as the MOC and LOR, they are often underutilized
during the LOC in spite of their strategic importance. Impact framing arguments typically focus
on three factors to determine the preferentiality of impact arguments: timeframe, probability, and
magnitude. Timeframe arguments contend that the judge should preference impacts that are either
occurring in the status quo or will occur in the near future as opposed to those that will happen
down the road. Probability arguments hold that the impact that is the most likely to occur should be
preferred over larger or faster impacts that happen to be less probable. Magnitude arguments state
that the impact that produces the greatest effect on the greatest number of individuals is the one that
should be prioritized.
While many teams are content to save these arguments for the opposition block, any impact framing
that can occur during the LOC puts the opposition a step ahead of their opponents. LOC impact
framing can help to create a consistent narrative in the judge’s mind that will allow for the block
to be substantially more coherent. Impact framing that is presented in the LOC and unanswered
by the MGC are susceptible to a point of order ruling during the PMR that would be favorable
to the opposition. Many LOCs have the tendency to appear random and chaotic in terms of their
organization largely because the structure of parliamentary debate lends itself towards the LOC
shot-gunning many tangentially related arguments only to allow the MOC and LOR to make sense
of this mess by crafting a coherent story during the block. However, impact framing in the LOC can
draw a clearer connection between the varying pieces of LOC offense and the plan text by allowing
for the comparison of impacts. Being able to say in the LOC that “the politics disadvantage will
outweigh the advantage on the basis of magnitude,” “the impact turns will occur in the fastest
timeframe,” or “the impacts of the criticism are the most probable and systemic impacts,” will
ensure that, regardless of how confusing the government team’s speeches may be, at no point in the
debate round will the judge have any doubt regarding how the opposition’s positions interact with
one another and the PMC. The earlier that the opposition is able to create this narrative, the less
likely the judge will be to give the PMR free reign to respond to the overall thesis of the opposition
if the MGC fails to adequately do so (which is likely, considering how focused MGCs tend to be on
the line-by-line as opposed to the big picture).

Reading Case Arguments with a Counterplan

Many debaters incorrectly assume that it is not necessary to read case arguments when the LOC
includes a counterplan that will intuitively solve for the majority of the case. This belief could not
be further from the truth; case arguments can actually increase the effectiveness of a counterplan in
a variety of ways if they are deployed strategically. When an LOC reads a counterplan that solves
for the case and case defense that does not link to the counterplan, that defense actually functions
234 Chapter 24. Debating the Government Case

as de facto offense against the PMC. This is because the plan is now faced with a massive solvency
deficit that does not affect the counterplan, which would justify voting for the opposition in order
to solve the harms of the PMC as opposed to voting government. With this in mind, LOCs who opt
to read counterplans should also make a wide variety of case arguments against the actor or process
utilized by the plan that do not link to the counterplan. For example, if the LOC decides to read a
counterplan calling for the UN to pass the plan as opposed to the United States, they should also
read arguments indicating that the US is uniquely incapable of solving for the case impacts while
also providing offensive reasons why the US acting would be a bad idea.
Additionally, effectively answering the case during the LOC can strengthen a counterplan by
mitigating any potential solvency deficit that the counterplan might have in comparison to the plan.
Imagine that the opposition is considering reading a counterplan that clearly solves the entirety of
the government’s first advantage, but likely only solves a small portion of advantage two. While the
LOC might be somewhat deterred from reading a counterplan that does not solve the entirety of
the case, a strong list of case arguments against the second advantage would eliminate the ability
for the government to leverage a solvency deficit as offense against the counterplan. Consider the
following examples:

1. Reading a list of impact defense arguments against an advantage that the counterplan does not
solve prevents the MGC from claiming that the counterplan should be rejected on the basis of
a solvency deficit. If neither the plan nor the counterplan is capable of solving for a particular
advantage, the advantage in question will likely become irrelevant to the debate. This same logic
can be applied to status quo solves arguments. If the opposition can prove that the status quo will
inevitably resolve the impact of a particular advantage, then solving that impact in question cannot
be considered to be an advantage for the government against the counterplan.

2. Impact turning an advantage that the counterplan does not solve actually creates an advantage to
the counterplan by ensuring that the benefits of the status quo remain unaltered. Therefore, if the
PMC reads an advantage that the counterplan clearly cannot solve for, it is strategic for the LOC to
impact turn that advantage and claim that the counterplan’s inability to solve for it is actually an
advantage to the counterplan. For example, if the plan claims to solve for US hegemony while the
counterplan does not, impact turning this advantage and claiming that US hegemony is actually bad
would make the counterplan’s insurance of hegemony’s collapse a net benefit to the counterplan as
opposed to a solvency deficit.

Reading Case Arguments with a Kritik

The types of case arguments that an LOC should read with the kritik are largely dependent on what
kritik is being run. For example, if the kritik indicts the military industrial complex, it would be a
very poor strategy for the LOC to read case arguments indicting that US hegemony would solve
the internal link to the PMC’s impacts. While the following strategies may not work with every
kritik, they are all viable options that can help to strengthen kritkal arguments when deployed in
the correct context.

1. Case arguments can function as hidden links to the kritik. While many kritikal teams prefer to
make all of their link arguments in the shell of the argument itself, other teams prefer to litter the
advantage flows with additional link arguments that isolate specific representations from the PMC
that they find problematic. In some instances, this can actually be a more effective way to make
 235

link arguments, as it allows the LOC to point to specific arguments from the PMC and explain why
they function as links to the kritik, while also allowing the judge to actually look at and reference
the arguments being referred to. Thus, this strategy can help to ensure that the kritik establishes a
clear link story from its inception, making the argument seem substantially more compelling to the
judge.

2. LOCs can read smaller, more condensed kritikal arguments as turns to the case that can function
as additional net benefits to the alternative. This can be an especially strategic way to read additional
offense if the kritik is being run unconditionally, as many debaters find it difficult to read case turns
that do not also link to the kritik in some way. However, in order for this strategy to be effective, it
is important that the turns read are not only philosophically compatible with the kritik itself but can
also be solved by the alternative. For example, if the LOC reads a kritik of colonialism, it could
also be strategic to read smaller kritiks on case that indict similarly problematic endorsements such
as capitalism and militarism that the LOC could likely claim to originate from the same root cause
as colonialism.

3. Case defense provides an opportunity to question the genesis of the PMC’s impact claims. While
the shell of the kritik is hopefully engaging in this strategy to a certain degree, the LOC can also
use case arguments to argue against the probability that the PMC’s impacts will ever come to pass,
while also indicting the flawed mindset that caused the government team to read this argument
in the first place. For example, if an LOC has read a kritik of capitalism and is responding to
advantage about American hegemony, the LOC could make arguments that our notions regarding
the importance of military dominance are false ideals that were created by the military industrial
complex to prop up the very systems of power being criticized and that the PMC’s impact claims are
based on illusory threats constructed by these systems of power to justify their continued existence.
Such arguments not only serve as potentially devastating impact defense, but could also function
as hidden links to the kritik since they illustrate how the PMC is heavily influenced by the very
mindset that is being indicted.

Reading Case Arguments with Theory Positions

While many judges are willing to vote for theory arguments absent proven abuse on the part of the
opposition team, it is almost universally agreed upon that these arguments become more compelling
if the government has clearly abused the opposition in some way. Case arguments present a unique
opportunity for the opposition to bait the government into proving abuse on theory, as the LOC can
read case arguments that assume that their interpretation on theory is the correct one. Examine the
following scenario:

Resolution: The United States Federal Government should militarily intervene in Syria.

Topicality Interpretation: “Militarily Intervene in Syria” means that the plan text must mandate the
presence of American troops on the ground in the nation of Syria.

Topicality Violation: The plan does not call for any American troops to actually be on the ground
in Syria, but instead calls for the US to create a no-fly zone over the country.
236 Chapter 24. Debating the Government Case

In order to bait the Government team into proving abuse on Topicality, rather than reading a full
disadvantage discussing US troops, the LOC could read smaller case offense against American
troops being on the ground in Syria. While this argument absolutely does not link to the plan text,
it begs for the MGC to make this very argument, which would function as a “no link” to these
offensive LOC arguments and prove the abuse on topicality. Making arguments that obviously do
not link to the plan text may seem like an odd strategy for an LOC to adopt, but it allows the LOC to
control the direction of the debate. If the LOC spent 20 minutes of prep time under the assumption
that the plan text would involve a ground invasion of Syria only to be caught completely off guard
when the plan takes a different action, reading a topicality argument arguing for the interpretation
of the resolution that the LOC predicted in conjunction with offense against the predictable plan
action forces the MGC to do one of two things:

1. The MGC no-links this offense, providing the MOC with proven abuse and a clean opportunity
to collapse to topicality.

Or

2. The MGC does not no-link the offense and instead accepts that the offense (which does not link
to the plan) does in fact link and chooses to answer it using other arguments. If the MGC takes this
option, it eliminates any strategic advantage the Government team may have gained by catching the
LOC off guard and forces them to make the debate about what the Opposition team prepared to
answer.

Naturally, this strategy works with other theory arguments as well. If the LOC is reading E-Spec,
read offense against a specific enforcement agency and dare them to either no-link the offense and
prove abuse or debate the position that you specifically prepared for. While it is inadvisable to use
this as a primary opposition strategy, it does allow the LOC with a fallback option if they are caught
off-guard or anticipate having to go for theory alone in the opposition block.

Conclusion

Case arguments are an extremely valuable tool for the LOC to utilize, but it is important to remember
that there is no exact formula to follow to determine which case arguments to read. Instead, debaters
should focus on reacting to the arguments presented in the PMC and crafting the strategy that best
answers that specific case. Whether they are read to bolster other positions such as counterplans
or kritiks or are read simply as a defense of the status quo, the ability to make effective LOC case
arguments can frequently be the difference between winning and losing a debate round.
 25. Politics Disadvantages

T HE C ASE FOR P OLITICS :

R ESEARCHING , W RITING , AND A NSWERING P OLITICS D ISADVANTAGES
K EVIN G ARNER – W ILLIAM J EWELL C OLLEGE

Introduction

Since the politics disadvantage falls into a category that a handful of arguments occupy, “love them,
or hate them,” there is a need to discuss the relevance and importance of the politics disadvantage
to parliamentary debate. If you come to this text with a predisposition against this argument, I ask
that you keep an open mind to the argument being ran in front of you as a critic, taught to you by a
coach, or ran against you as a debater. While the argument does not have to be your favorite, nor do
you need to read a politics disadvantage, encouraging argumentative diversity is important to the
goals of our activity. All debate is good debate and that includes politics disadvantages.
The largest objection I hear with politics disadvantages is that they are not realistic; that a policy
action cannot change the course of an election, congresspersons do not horse trade on legislation,
and there is no connection between plan and the increasing/decreasing of magical political capital.
First, the underlying belief that these scenarios do not or cannot happen is untrue. To say that policy
actions happen in a vacuum and do not have political ramifications for the individuals tied to the
particular action would ignore all political calculus made by the president and members of Congress.
Democrats who stuck to party and personal beliefs lost re-election in 2012 after supporting the
Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) – a backlash against a large policy action. Horse-trading is
most notable concerning earmarks or on concessions concerning like-minded action. Committee
members frequently trade votes to get their pet projects on to bills; however, in an era without
earmarks, congresspersons are finding other ways to get legislation through Congress. The debate
over the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is also proof of the role of horse-trading. At the
time of writing this chapter, NPR and others report that members of Congress are preventing a
238 Chapter 25. Politics Disadvantages

vote on the Director position, however, have agreed to allow the vote if they have more control
over the agency’s regulations, since they currently have none. While one can contend each of these
examples and the many more I could provide have other operating factors, a significant role does
exist for how other policy actions influence the passage or inaction on other legislation.
Second, whether or not a politics disadvantage is realistic should be a question of probability framed
in debate rounds. Most of the arguments we make in rounds are not realistic; we developed the
concept of “fiat” due to that very fact. However, for many, the politics debate is taken out of our
“game playing” mindset and placed openly for criticism. Are there politics disadvantages that are
bad, unrealistic, and even flat out lies? Absolutely – which is why you should read the rest of this
chapter. The same is true for kritiks, counterplans, cases, and procedurals. As a lover of the politics
disadvantage, nothing frustrates me more than hearing teams run an argument where the bill is not
even out of committee or states a slew of polls to prove their argument. Like all other arguments,
we should not exclude them out right. We should teach and write good politics arguments and
responses to them – all of which allow for further inspection of the effects of plan and add another
layer of depth to our activity.

Types of Politics Disadvantages

While there can be a variety of different ways to frame a politics disadvantage, I am going to outline
the three most common: elections, horse trading, and political capital. Briefly, I want to describe
a “focus link” element that is a common component to politics disadvantage – the notion that the
president will get distracted by the plan and so the president cannot focus on another piece of
legislation does not seem well articulated in the literature base and hints at a larger question of how
much capital the president needs in order to deal with multiple major policy initiatives.

Focus Link
In the event of a “focus link,” the opposition team contends that, in the status quo, the president
and/or media focuses on one issue, which is on the brink of passage. The issue requires 100%
of the president and media’s attention in order to pass. The uniqueness also includes a “now is
the key time” argument, contending the issue is at a “make or break” moment. The government
plan disrupts the focus on the major issue. The link arguments generally include the plan being
controversial and/or partisan or the plan changes the how the media covers the major issue. As a
result of plan, the attention is no longer focused on the major issue, which causes the issue not to
pass and the implications ensue.

Election Story
The election politics disadvantage is popular in months leading up to a major election, whether a
presidential cycle or mid-term elections. Tournaments in even number years (particularly from
September through October) will see a flood of these arguments. Debaters should also be aware of
any key special elections occurring, since they often have dramatic implications on policymaking.
The uniqueness argument contends that one ore more elections are close now, whether for president
or for key congressional races, that can determine the balance of power in Congress. To prove
uniqueness, debaters will cite recent polling data and quotes from articles about the intensity of the
race. The uniqueness will also include key issues that can swing the election along with reasons why
the races are important. The link level contends that the government plan upsets key constituencies;
the plan is unpopular with voters or the plan changes the message on important issues. As a result,
the favorable candidate/party (per the opposition) will lose, causing the alternative person/party to
 239

pass bad legislation or prevent good legislation from becoming law.

Horse Trading
Horse-trading, or vote trading, is a political practice with a long history of use. Vote trading
occurs when elected officials vote on legislation in exchange for support or opposition to other
legislation. The process is hard to quantify and often lacks transparency. Trading is common
for earmarks, as members will agree to vote for one another’s pet projects. In theory, earmarks
are now banned; however, they still exist in a different form – committee chairpersons decide if
the “earmark” is an appropriate congressional appropriation. Horse-trading also describes elected
officials who make politically driven votes in order to help their re-election or pass their own agenda.
For instance, in order to avoid appearing too liberal, a moderate Democrat who is on the fence
regarding gun control may vote against important legislation to appease their district, especially
in light of other controversial votes. In a debate round, the opposition’s uniqueness states that
passage of a bill is likely, but is on the brink and any change by a congressperson will doom the
bill. The uniqueness will describe how the current congressperson has cover to vote for or against
a particular bill, but cannot have other legislation that would remove their cover. The link argues
that the government plan will cause a congressperson to shift votes on other legislation in order to
appease their constituency. The shift in the vote will cause a bill to pass or not to pass and that is bad.

Political Capital
Political capital has a long history in literature discussing the presidency and congressional action.
There is no doubt that a popular president has the ability to drive an agenda and unpopular presidents
see difficulty navigating gridlock in Congress, even among the president’s own party. The degree to
which political capital exists and its power is a source of debate among presidential scholars, yet it
is hard to dispute the presence of political capital. The opposition team contends in the uniqueness
that the president’s political capital is high, but finite, and the president is using the capital to push
through a major piece of legislation. The link shows how that the government plan forces the
president to expend political capital, since the president is signing a controversial bill. The plan’s
expenditure of political capital removes focus, changes the docket, or for some other reason detracts
from the legislation. The internal links and impacts will highlight the importance of the bill that
does not pass and the terminal harms that result.

Selecting a Disadvantage Topic

Debaters and coaches often find the research and selection of a topic for a politics disadvantage
very difficult. There are always the obvious choices if a presidential election is happening or a
piece of hot button, controversial legislation is actively being debated in Congress and receiving
media attention. Even common disadvantages, take effective research and framing in order to make
them successful, especially since government teams often predict these disadvantage topics.
The first step in researching a politics disadvantage is finding out which elections are important and
what bills are currently in Congress. For an elections disadvantage, you should focus on races that
are close and can determine the balance of power in Congress. Too often, I hear debates that involve
races that are pre-determined outcomes that are unlikely to shift. Bad politics debates involve a
team reading off every race and trying to sound good by name-dropping incumbents, challengers,
and states; that is meaningless and only wastes time that you could use to focus on critical races
that shape future, specific legislation (well informed judges get a good laugh when people get
the state or party of the candidates wrong). Simple searches for “battleground states and races”
240 Chapter 25. Politics Disadvantages

or “toss-ups” can point a debater in the right direction. Using running polling data provided on
realclearpolitics.com or analysis by Nate Silver of FiveThirtySeven through the New York Times
can give a debater insight on important races.

When starting to research a bill, the first place to look is on a website that monitors the status of
bills in Congress. Two good sites to track bills are govtrack.us and opencongress.org. A quick
note on Govtrack, the website provides a percentage as to the likelihood of a bill passing; I do not
suggest relying on this number to determine what bills to use as a scenarios or how critics should
evaluate the legitimacy of a position. The methodology does not take into account non-quantifiable
factors, such as political capital, the political climate at the time, circumstances facing members of
the committee or larger congressional body, and so forth.

Debaters should also go directly to the House and Senate committee websites. The sites provide
the full list of committee members that will help with uniqueness stories and provides a full listing
of bills the committee considers. Before writing an argument, make sure the bill actually exists in
the current session of Congress. Too often, when researching responses to a disadvantage, I find the
bill does not exist in the current session, but was an old bill. Instead of taking the time to do extra
research, debaters often read of an interesting bill that could cause nuclear war impacts and run
with it without knowing the full facts. Make sure you know (and are honest) about the status of the
bill – it is advisable to make the status of a bill clear in your LOC. Is the bill in committee? Is it
scheduled for debate on the floor? Does the bill exist in both chambers of Congress? All of these
are important factors to outlining (and answering) a good politics disadvantage. Just because a bill
is in committee does not mean you cannot run the argument. For example, a bill’s passage may
be inevitable if it just gets through a committee vote. A team can argue that the government plan
prevents bill from getting through committee. It is all about creativity, but also honesty and being
informed.

The next step is to read the text of the bill – not just the summary, news report or the sponsor’s
press release – read the actual text of the bill. While a third party’s description of a bill may get
you the impact story you want, the actual text of the bill provides context and complete provisions.
Debaters will also find gems contained in bills that are useful for the link story and alternative
impact framing. Knowing the bill inside and out will also give you a perceptual advantage, showing
the critic that you understand the complexities of your argument, gaining credibility, even from
skeptical politics critics.

After reading the bill, you should then see if there is public commentary and media coverage of the
bill. Direct quotes from elected officials, leaders of interest groups, and other policy stakeholders
give credibility to a disadvantage, showing that you are not making an assumption about the
positions of the parties mentioned in the argument. As you read the bill and any news coverage
available, take thorough notes about anything that pertains to the bill. Relevant items include
sponsors, co-sponsors, interest groups who support and oppose the bill, where the bill exists in the
legislative process, what happened to the bill in previous sessions, public perception of the bill, and
any other materials. At this point in the research process, do not get caught up in trying to find
out how everything fits into the “uniqueness, link, internal link, and impact” categories. Focusing
your research on the final product prevents debaters from discovering additional information that
can make the disadvantage stronger. Once you outlay out all of the possible research (go beyond
the first couple of articles on Google; actually get into detail in your research) and determine a
legitimate scenario exists, you can construct the disadvantage.
 241

Uniqueness

The uniqueness portion of the debate is the most difficult part of a politics disadvantage. The
uniqueness section of the disadvantage is where the bulk of the debate on the argument takes place.
Even the best politics debaters seem to miss key uniqueness elements of a politics disadvantage.
The uniqueness debate is also the reason many debates on the politics disadvantage become unclear,
creating frustration for critics and opponents alike. I will outline the important elements to include
in the uniqueness of a politics disadvantage while also discussing examples of how the uniqueness
debate might become confusing and/or messy.
For elections politics disadvantages, uniqueness debates often center on the latest polling data.
The best uniqueness for election arguments does not rely on citing 30 different polls showing
a close election and moving on – rather, the opposition should outline the key indicators in the
poll and factors influencing voters’ decisions. A good place to find the latest polling data is
realclearpolitics.com. However, instead of advancing generic numbers before you move onto
the link portion of the debate, read each poll and look at the data; here you will find even more
information about what voters are thinking that will benefit your disadvantage. Look for data
concerning issues the voters find most important and likelihood of voters switching in that particular
location. Use the data that you collect as warrants for your uniqueness claims. You also want to
develop reasons that your polls are the best, beyond just the date of the poll, as second line analysis
for competing poll debates. Poll preferencing analysis in the LOC shell makes the critic’s job easier,
resulting in a debate that is more likely to be decided in your favor. When running a presidential
scenario, focus on key state polls; remember the popular vote does not matter, just the states that
will get the winning candidate 270 Electoral College votes.
When writing a horse-trading or political capital disadvantage, the first point should always be a
description of the legislation that your scenario discusses. Debates go awry when the critic and
government team are not clear as to the name or intent of the legislation. While some opposition
teams do this strategically, critics generally (and should) err government if the necessary background
information does not exist or is unclear. The LOC should include the bill number and full name
of the bill – do not start out by referring to the bill by an acronym. Outline the relevant points of
the bill and where the bill stands in Congress. After describing the bill, you should construct an
argument demonstrating the status of the bill – how the bill will likely pass now (or fail, depending
on your story). You shold give specific reasons while also listing the relevant officials to your
position and why they are crucial to the bill’s passage/defeat. If you are running a political capital
scenario, you will want to detail how the president’s political capital is high enough to pass the bill
now, but political capital is finite and cannot be split on multiple bills. You will need to research the
president’s victories to see why the president has enough political capital now as warrants for your
argument. Be careful to avoid portraying capital as so resilient/high that the president would have
enough capital to advocate for multiple positions (uniqueness overwhelms the link).
Having spikes/pre-empts (arguments that predict and take into account government responses)
should always exist in the uniqueness level of a politics disadvantage. One of the most effective
ways to create and defend an argument is by brainstorming all the ways in which you would answer
the same argument if another team ran the position against you. Constructing your arguments in a
way that already assumes the government’s responses will give the MOC the advantage of extending
conceded arguments that put the government team behind in the debate. Good ways to frame the
argument include, “Despite (government response), (insert opposition claim/warrant),” or “Even
though?” Using the previous examples helps the critic flow the argument and makes the connection
clearer later on when the LOR extends and analyzes the position. A uniqueness point needs to also
include “now is the key time” arguments. The opposition can get an early timeframe advantage
242 Chapter 25. Politics Disadvantages

with a correctly framed uniqueness argument that discusses the immediate need to address the
election or the legislation, etc. A solid timeframe argument, coupled with attacks on case, allows
the opposition to prioritize the disadvantage from the LOC.
Finally, the last point in a uniqueness story is one that is often overlooked by opposition teams
– you should always generate uniqueness for your impact story. While the bill or election exists
to generate uniqueness to an extent (“x” bill prevents the impacts), for many scenarios, that is not
enough. Be clear about the status quo situation regarding your impact story. For example, if you
intend to win that Republican control of the house means that they will pass legislation that is bad
for the economy, you will need to win that the economy is not collapsing in the status quo. In
addition, add a “zero sum” element to your argument. By framing your story as all or nothing, you
have an advantage over the government in terms of impact framing since there can be alternative
causes for harms and solvency of the PMC scenarios but not so for the disadvantage.

Links

The link section of a politics disadvantage seems intuitive; aside from a few minor changes that
I will suggest, most teams usually correctly engage the link level. I advocate for a change in the
depth of the link analysis. For example, a typical link should include the claims, “plan upsets key
group” or “plan forces the president to use a lot of political capital.” The key is for the opposition
to go beyond making a generalization of the group who is upset. Instead, the opposition should
give specific reasons as to why the group is upset and why the group is critical to the rest of the
disadvantage’s story. Do not say, “Plan is good for the environment and Republicans hate the
environment, therefore would all be very upset with the plan.”
Politics disadvantages should also have a perception link. Elected officials, the media, interests
groups, and the general public respond to actions based upon the created perception, regardless
of the actual effects of a piece of legislation. If a politician, for example, believes the public will
perceive an action as harmful to its interests (even if the action is helpful), a politician will often
oppose the action out of self-preservation. The perception link gives the opposition an advantage
because the opposition no longer has to win that a group actually gets upset or the president actually
loses political capital, but the mere fear of these actions will lead to the impact scenario.
Finally, opposition teams can benefit from nuanced wording of link stories. While the wording of
the link needs to be constructed in a way that will not confuse the critic and opposing debaters,
framing a link story so that a link turn or no link argument that might seem obvious becomes
non-responsive, gives more weight to the disadvantage. For example, instead of saying, “the plan
upsets moderates because of more government control,” frame it as, “plan upsets moderates because
of the perception that it is a tax increase.” The second bit of language is more specific and effective.
The link should then give warrants as to why the moderate perception is key.

Internal Links

The internal link section of a disadvantage generally has little weight in most rounds. Often, the
internal link does not exist or the link includes the internal link story. The internal link provides
detailed warrants about how the plan leads to the terminal impacts. Inexperienced debaters often
confused the internal link for the impact, such as saying, “plan causes the economy to weaken,”
or “plan hurts United States hegemony,” – these are not terminal, weighable impacts. For an
election scenario, the internal link should discuss how the upsetting of key constituents results
 243

in loss of an election for the candidate and/or political party (the link gives reasons why the plan
upsets the uniqueness; the internal link creates the connection). The internal link should set up
the impact scenario by stating what policies will/will not pass as a result – again, be specific and
name legislation – go beyond saying “Republican control will hurt women, the LGBT community,
etc.”
An effective and under-utilized strategy for election scenarios is to set up an impact story that can
happen immediately because of the plan shifting the eventual election winner. The downside to
election stories is the timeframe is often distant and other unforeseen events can prevent the impact
story. For example, if government plan causes the Democrats to win, the opposition can argue that
Israel is fearful that the particular party or presidential candidate is perceived as pro-Palestine, so
Israel will choose to strike Iran immediately while still having a supportive government. Now, the
opposition has an immediate terminal impact, which will likely turn case, while also have long
term, terminal impacts.

Impacts

The first important impact argument, commonly absent in politics disadvantages, should be that the
disadvantage turns the government case. Knowing the resolution ahead of time and having a rough
sense of the government plan allows you to construct the impact story so that the election story
or legislation rolls back or prevents the government plan from happening. Creativity is important
here since the story may not directly deal with the government harms claims. Remember, since
perception is critical, the perception of the disadvantage implicates the solvency of the case.
The most effective disadvantages do not jump immediately to a nuclear war and extinction scenario.
Debaters often focus on the magnitude level of the debate – especially since many PMCs will
begin the debate by claiming to solve for a large impact. However, in combination with good case
defense, more probable disadvantage scenarios often win the debate. The benefit of reading the bill
at the beginning of the research process is that you can identify provisions that develop an impact
story that does not necessarily lead to nuclear war. The bill that you select will certainly affect
many people. These impacts are beneficial since the timeframe is immediate.
Of course, the disadvantage can end with a larger magnitude, lower probability impact. The impact
should include specific elements of the bill that will create both perceptions and tangible conditions
to cause a large-scale impact. The bill does not even have to deal directly with the larger impact,
whether nuclear war or the environment, but can establish conditions that will lead to a worst-case
scenario. MGCs will often read a bulk of their arguments on the last impact claim made by the LOC.
Multiple, smaller-magnitude impact scenarios offer the MOC the opportunity to dismiss many MGC
arguments simply by extending defense and advancing smaller, more probable impacts.

Answering the Politics Disadvantage

When responding to a politics disadvantage, you are making many similar answers that you often
make to other disadvantages; as such, I will not re-hash all the ways to respond generically to the
argument. Instead, I want to outline a few specific recommendations about framing your answers
specific to the politics disadvantage.
Just as the opposition does not need to list off twenty different polls to win the uniqueness debate,
neither does the government. Instead, you should also engage in an evaluation of the polls and
argue why yours subsumes and/or takes priority. In addition, the “uniqueness overwhelms the
244 Chapter 25. Politics Disadvantages

link” argument rarely finds its place in the debate. During the 2012 election cycle, I listened to
opposition teams read off ten polls saying Obama was winning; while the polls showed the election
somewhat tight, most of the numbers indicated an unlikely victory for the Romney campaign. The
government, when the scenario is a presidential election, needs to force the opposition to outline
specific states that can swing the Electoral College and to detail how the plan can create a common
response in each of the states. The popular vote does not matter, thus, state polls should be evaluated
first. Similarly, many non-elections based politics disadvantages hinge on the opposition’s ability
to characterize a common response – i.e. all Republicans will not backlash in the same way to a
particular piece of legislation. The common, inept willingness by opposition debaters to cast a net
of large groups (interest groups, political parties, etc.) and characterize their response as united is a
prime location for the government to answer politics disadvantages.

After learning about a new politics scenario, government teams should look at the congressional
docket and what major legislation is under discussion and receiving media attention. If the bill is
not on the docket or slated for a later vote, the government team can argue that both the scenario
cannot exist and potentially make a straight turn by arguing that the plan causes a positive shift in
the docket or committee. In addition, if other controversial pieces of legislation are on the top of
the docket, the government should outline those bills and contend that other pieces of legislation
are more likely to trigger the scenario – the “more likely” part does not exist in many rounds. The
ability to characterize other legislation as “more likely to trigger the scenario” is an effective an
effective means of creating a hierarchy of competing reasons that the opposition impact scenario is
inevitable. Finally, media focus matters. If the plan is not big enough to gain any focus, then there
is no reason that a vote on the government plan would cause backlash by voters and/or members of
Congress.

There is also a variety of effective ways to specifically attack the link level of the argument. When
debating a horse-trading scenario, the government needs to develop an argument contending that
horse-trading does not exist on major pieces of legislation. While horse-trading exists within
committee work, usually to allow different congresspersons’ pet projects into a bill, members of
Congress do not trade their votes on major legislation, issues that members campaign on and/or,
issues that gain the focus of national commentary. The opposition should force the government
to give specific, proven examples of horse-trading on major bills and regarding the bill in the
disadvantage scenario. In addition, the government can challenge the notion of “political cover.”
Opposition teams claim that the status quo gives officials cover to vote for/against a controversial
bill and the plan removes that cover, causing the official to switch votes. Much like the horse-trading
argument, government teams need to put the burden on the opposition to give examples of instances
in which the same type of scenario took place.

“Winners’ Win” is the standard offensive argument against the link level of a politics disadvantage.
The government team contends that the plan is a win for the president and/or Congress and as such
causes the bill in the disadvantage’s scenario, which will not pass now, to pass – or causes a bill
that will pass now to pass inevitably. The theory behind this link turn is that popular leaders get to
pass an agenda – similar to a political capital argument advanced by the opposition. Make sure the
link turn provides specific reasons why the plan is popular (too often these link turns fizzle because
of the lack of depth) and give a clear, warranted connection to the passage of the disadvantage’s bill
as a result.

There are two major, under utilized arguments made on the internal link and impact level. The first
is that the president will veto the bill. Since the vote was close per the disadvantage, the veto cannot
be overridden. Rarely does the president come up for discussion in legislative politics debates.
Remember that the president may veto the bill, provided the government team provides warrants
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for the veto claim. In addition, when debating an election scenario (and even bills scheduled for
a later vote), the government needs to make arguments along the lines of the familiar “October
Surprise” claim. Major events often happen that can change the course of an election and passage
of legislation. While the government team obviously cannot predict the future, they might be able
to predict any logical chain of arguments that may result in substantially changing the disadvantage
impact uniqueness.
Finally, answering the impacts and framing impact calculus can help government debaters. The
government needs to find a way that the plan can solve the impacts to the disadvantage. At times,
this argument requires more creativity (be honest, still). Government teams need to think beyond
just the direct implications claimed in case, but what larger perceptions and/or direct effects of
the plan prevent the impacts. Since the opposition runs a politics disadvantage with the goal of
having a large-scale impact to outweigh the government case going into the MOC, the MGC needs
to frame impacts in a way that allows the PMR, in the worst-case scenario, to lose the disadvantage,
but still win the debate. The MGC can prioritize timeframe and probability. Elections scenarios
take a long time to become reality (remember, even after the election it is not until the following
year that the new president and Congress assume power – a commonly missed argument). The
effects of legislation, though the opposition will claim perception, do not matter until the bill and
all its mandates go into law. For any large, sweeping bill, mandates are gradually rolled out (the
Affordable Care Act, for example). The MGC should contend that the plan impacts happen first
and thus change the direction of the uniqueness and entire story of the disadvantage. If argued
correctly in the MGC, the government team is generally ahead on the probability debate. The
connection between plan mandates and case impacts should be clearer and more direct than the
links and internal links of any politics disadvantage, requiring the opposition team to win many
more connections for their impact claims to be true. If the MGC spends time arguing for the
impact framework level of the debate, this may render mute even the most specific and difficult to
understand/answer politics disadvantage.

Conclusion

While the politics disadvantage has many critics, the argument is not going away. By taking the
time to properly research and construct a politics argument, the debate as a whole becomes better
and more critics will be open to listening to the position.
 26. We Were Not a ‘Project’ Team

W E W ERE N OT A ‘P ROJECT ’ T EAM :

N ORTHERN A RIZONA U NIVERSITY (2010-2014)
B RANDON R IVERA – S AN D IEGO S TATE U NIVERSITY

Introduction

Parliamentary debate is a game that trains competitors to blend research and critical thinking in
order to imagine solutions to real world problems. Much like the variation of academic research
available, to many debaters, the types of arguments they choose to deploy vary based on the
literature those debaters draw from. Some debaters choose to break conventional norms of the
activity by advocating for methodologies outside of state-structured responses and conform to
ideologies that are outside of the mainstream, in both debate and society. I devoted the majority of
my collegiate debate career to these types of arguments and the type of research that goes with these
arguments. Throughout the process, some of the nations brightest minds, from a multitude of social
locations, challenged my perceptions of “realistic” solutions to social problems. It is my belief
that debaters take their lived experiences into the activity of parliamentary debate and often do not
have a proper outlet to express those experiences using a state structured model. Using “critical” or
“project” arguments becomes a way for many people to play the game of debate without sacrificing
the very experiences that have shaped their involvement in the activity.
This chapter is devoted to describing a style of critical debate that incorporates elements of the
debaters’ social location into their arguments. This is not to suggest that every critical debater
should be forced to “out” their personal experiences in order to utilize this type of argumentation,
rather that we as a community should become aware that arguments are not just meaningless
cards that we read to win. These types of arguments affect people on a personal level and, at the
very least, we should treat them with the same respect as any other argument. Some people may
argue that critical/performance-based arguments destroy the very fabric of debate and eliminate
248 Chapter 26. We Were Not a ‘Project’ Team

all competitive access for the opposing team. While I understand those concerns, I believe that
parliamentary debate is an activity that trains people to make change in the world later in life. If
parliamentary debate cannot handle arguments that call current dominant structures into question
and seek to change them, then we only ask debaters who feel uncomfortable with our current
societal structure to also feel uncomfortable in our activity.

Framing the Debate

The first step in the critical argument writing process is to interrogate central questions in the
activity and take an explicit stance on many of those questions. Like any competitive community,
parliamentary debate goes through phases and changes every year. These changes apply not only
on a stylistic level, but also on a structural level that includes the phrasing of resolutions, MPJ
policies, and tournament schedules. It is important that any person attempting to participate in
more advanced forms of critical debate have a good “pulse” on the community and identify what
structural and cultural norms are considered acceptable. Three of the foremost questions in our
community today revolve around the following: What is “performance”, when does it apply, and
why does it matter? What is “policy”, how is it used, and is it accessible? What is the context
of the round and how does that change what type of argument is needed? The answers to these
questions are not static and change based on the perspectives of the debaters and judges in a given
debate. For the sake of explaining my experience at Northern Arizona University (2010-2014),
the following accounts for the manner in which we would categorize the majority of our “critical”
arguments.

Performance Arguments

Many critical arguments are often categorized as “performance” arguments, which skew how the
arguments are perceived and how the debate space is interpreted. Critical arguments tend to come
from the school of thought that believes every action is a performance in itself. This means that
the spoken debate argument is just as important and the way in which the team chooses to present
those terms. Applying this concept to parliamentary debate renders the conclusion that every
action a debater chooses to make in a given round is a specific “deed” or a performance. Taking
this approach to debate has a few implications and might change how one defends their position.
First, the critical argument should be evaluated as operating on the same “ground” or framework
of a “traditional” argument. A “traditional” argument becomes a performance used to justify a
particular advocacy and the critical argument is a performance used to justify a competing advocacy.
Strategically, it allows both teams to leverage their arguments against one another and avoids many
common, “you exclude our speech act” arguments.. More importantly, it centers the debate over
what performance produces the most beneficial outcome as opposed to the implication of imagined
events.
Debate as a performance is often the central question in discussions about fiat in debate rounds.
Generally speaking, debaters know that fiat is “illusory” in that the implications brought up in a
debate do not materialize immediately after a round. However, there is debate over whether the
judge should evaluate the imagined implications as a performance that legitimizes a governmental
policy over a critical performance that legitimizes a competing methodology. Participants who
like the use of fiat often claim that there is a benefit to using consequentialist logic and applying it
to larger structural change. Critical debaters often take opposition to the use of consequentialist
logic as a means of calculating acceptable change and the accessibility of these methods. If a
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critical debater can prove that the process of fiat is not preferable then they can center the debate on
discussions of accessibility and provide a methodology that is more inclusive then the PMC/LOC
or current power structure. Additionally, any “fiated” implications may become a secondary
question to implications produced by the performances, or rhetorical choices, made by the debate
participants.
Most commonly, debaters use performative arguments in order to incorporate aesthetic or theatrical
elements into their arguments. During my time on the NAU team, these arguments included
the use of narratives, inclusion of visual imagery like graffiti, rapping as a form of advocacy,
“news casing” as a way of presenting data, cross dressing, rhythmic speaking, and many other
methods. Critical debaters who chose to use these methods created a distinction between their
opponent’s performance and theirs, or the performance that is “normally” accepted and the one
they chose to use. It is important to note that an arguments “legitimacy” or “authenticity” should
not derive from the debaters choice to incorporate these elements and is sometimes embodied in
the subtle stylistic choices a debater makes. There are different justifications for why debaters
choose to incorporate these methods and each round changes what the definition of performance
means. Overall, “performance debate” opens up discussions about how we as individuals identify
and interact with larger societal structures and what constitutes appropriate responses to those
structures.

Policy Debate Arguments

The term “policy” in debate changes based on the debate format. In parliamentary debate, the
overwhelming majority of people believe “policy” to be a type of debate in which the Prime
Minister Constructive (PMC) pretends to pass a government policy, proposed in the resolution,
using fiat. This would include the use of the state actor in the resolution, usually the “United States
Federal Government,” and imagining the consequences of a state-based action. Skilled krtik teams
take a position against this community norm in order to carve out a space for their alternative
methodologies and ask questions about the type of epistemological practices debate uses when it
promotes this type of norm. Some of the questions that these kritik teams will ask involve whether
using a state structured methodology is inclusive of minority groups or whether they produce stable
change for certain populations. On a macro level, kritik teams question what happens when an
individual places their hope of change in a larger structured response. These teams look to garner
a larger implication by discussing how these actions make violence more probable because the
envision becoming the system that creates the problem in the first place.
Many kritiks try to compete using a differing methodology, presented in the alternative. This is
often where critical arguments become confusing because they rely on a fundamentally different un-
derstanding of what constitutes change and “solvency.” One of basic and popular kritik alternatives
is using “reject” or advocating that we as individuals reject a larger problematic notion (such as
capitalism). The best kritik teams attempt to first define what their methodology is – for example,
defining what “reject” would mean in this situation. They then go on to write solvency arguments
or arguments that describe the benefits of using micro level reorientation as opposed to larger
governmental structures. Whether the advocacy of a kritik is “reject” or a poem, the kritik usually
tries to present an alternative method of solving the problem presented by the resolution. Most
kritik teams believe that these micro level actions constitute a policy because although they are not
a governmental change, they signal an ideological shift present as an available option, competitive
with the PMC arguments or traditional conceptualizations of debate.
Instead of thinking of kritiks as problematizing a structure, they should both problematize and offer
250 Chapter 26. We Were Not a ‘Project’ Team

a solution. One of the easiest ways to determine what policy a kritik team is using is by asking,
“What are we doing?” Are we affirming a new way of thinking? Are we asking people to sign a
petition? Are we affirming the need to break down a form of oppression using poetry to explore
the harms that of a particular form of oppression? Understanding a kritik debate on this level
brings stability to the kritik, forcing debaters to clarify exactly the position that they are taking.
Being vague usually does not make for good debate and makes for terrible kritik debate. This is
often the hardest part of understanding and writing a kritik. Kritiks force debaters to explain very
nuanced and complicated theories within a short time. The best kritik debaters will not only explain
how their method or policy functions in the particular round, but will also find nuanced ways of
demonstrating it within the round.

Context

Part of being a kritik team is knowing how the tournament, resolutions, judging pool, tournament
location, and other factors play into the type of argument you will be reading at that time. During my
time in parliamentary debate, we would have different strategies for kritiks at different tournaments,
typically only reading one kritik at the National Parliamentary Tournament of Excellence (NPTE).
We believed that it was strategic to read upwards of seven different kritiks during the regularly
competitive year, followed by one new kritik at nationals. We were able to reach a larger number of
judges during the year by conforming our generic alternatives to the resolution and developed topic
specific research skills of “traditional” debate. This choice enabled us to develop a larger skill-set
by putting ourselves in many different, varying situations during the year and gave us deeper insight
about what types of arguments the community appreciated more than others. We found this to
be especially true at regional tournaments because the geographic location of Northern Arizona
University necessitated that we travel to many different regions, each with their own style and
expectations for parliamentary debate competition. We were able to adapt to the stylistic differences
of our judges and opponents since we were willing to change the types of arguments and literature
bases that we would draw from during the year.
Developing kritik debaters often have problems translating the dense theoretical literature they
have been reading into coherent or strategic thoughts. In my experience, inexperienced critical
debaters tend to believe that everyone should understand the knowledge and perspectives that they
have developed. To avoid this pitfall, debaters should start the process of writing and delivering
kritiks with a “less is more” philosophy. For example, giving the judge a concrete example of a
historical event may prove to be more helpful than providing ten somewhat random arguments about
a particular theory. As a rule, all kritiks should have examples in order to help judges and opponents
understand your complicated theory in the quickest way possible. Some of the best examples will
be topic specific and can translate a seemingly normal piece of news into a complicated story by
weaving in theory – one of the “tricks” that kritik teams can use in order to reach a variety of
judges, many of which may have dispositions against kritiks or are unfamiliar with your individual
kritik style.
This is only one strategy to navigating the varying situations in which you will find yourself as a
kritik team. Debaters should explore the role of a particular kritik or set of kritiks may have in their
larger season goals, allowing you to determine how to efficiently attain those goals. One of the most
important parts to navigating the kritik and context has become navigating your personal interaction
with your argument. Many debaters are more or less comfortable with putting their personal
experiences, stories, and bodies within their argument. Developing a personal, bodily investment
in your argument often becomes a complicated space to navigate and has produced both positive
and negative reactions within the community of parliamentary debate. Some debaters become
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personally invested in kritik arguments in ways that are different from other type of argumentation
– the beauty of where the critical argument lies and can be most beneficial for students and judges
alike. Kritiks have given people the ability to question deeply held social assumptions, it gives them
a voice in a society that so actively shuns them and tells them they are not important. When those
two things collide, debate can become a space where life changing and mind altering discussions
happen.

Building the Kritik Toolbox

Part of being a well-versed kritik team is anticipating the different topics you are tasked with
discussing during a parliamentary debate season and preparing responses to those types of situations.
This part of the chapter will discuss how a team can construct their kritiks in a way that is modular
and will serve many different purposes. When I used the phrase “modular,” I mean that you can
combine different parts of one kritik with others in order to best accommodate the resolution,
assigned side of a given resolution, and judges. Additionally, these “modules” serve smaller teams
by helping them efficiently keep track of which arguments they have disclosed to which teams,
allowing the ability to “mix it up” in a crucial, late out round.
During the writing process, kritik teams should consider which “issue” they plan to discuss. For
example, a military intervention topic may give the kritik team ample room on the negative, but
may limit some teams who refuse to imagine a world of military invasion on the government side
of the resolution (PMC). For those teams, they may consider whether they still plan to discuss the
resolution. If so, how might they create a nuanced response to the topic? Other situations depend
on knowledge bases and skill sets of debaters. Some debaters may view the economy in ways that
are fundamentally different from the way that the economy is discussed in a standard parliamentary
debate round. In this example, these differences may influence kritik teams to prioritize the most
marginalized in society and disregard the benefits of corporate entities. For this type of situation, a
debater might think of a methodology that would explain those differences and write a file that can
give them an advantage in a round with an economic topic.
“Modular” kritik teams should identify which parts of which kritiks go with what other parts.
During my career, we would use a five-part kritik consisting of a framework, thesis, links, impacts,
and alternative. This model was used on the negative and was written as two separate files: (1)
framework/alternative file and (2) thesis/link/impacts file. Creating those two categories, allowed
us to efficiently tackle many different topic areas and responses to different sides of a resolution. It
also trained us to divide work in the instances where we had not produced a file or wanted to write
a better idea during prep time. Having this structure enabled us to borrow bits and pieces from
certain files and be most prepared for exact situations.

Framework and Alternative

The goal of pairing the framework and alternative sections was to make sure that we justified
a prioritization of our method during the round. Our framework set the tone for the round and
therefore we decided to write an interpretation text for our framework. This interpretation was
simultaneously our role of the ballot and began with “the role of the ballot (ROB) is to?”. These
framework interpretations give leverage to the method that you plan to use in the advocacy and
explain core concepts of the kritik. For example, if your method were to use poetry in order to
empower people and make strides at breaking down patriarchy, then you would want to account
for that in the framework. I believe that the most efficient way to do that is to place that concept
within your framework interpretation and clarify that concept. Moving forward with our kritik of
252 Chapter 26. We Were Not a ‘Project’ Team

patriarchy example, we would start by expanding on our ROB by adding, “the ROB is to affirm the
team that best deconstructs patriarchy”. Teams should experiment with these types of interpretations
and consider what verbs or terms like “deconstruct” access for your argument.

Once a team determines the framework or “role of the ballot” interpretation that they have chosen
for the debate, they should immediately define all of the relevant terms. Determining definitions
clarify the debate argument for the judge and often become a key argument in the debate. In our
kritiks, we would read the role of the ballot argument, immediately following by a definition of our
chosen role of the ballot-verb and relevant theory. Using the previous example of, “The ROB is to
affirm the team that best deconstructs patriarchy,” you need to define “deconstruct” and “patriarchy”.
Different people have different understandings of these terms – clarifying makes the overall debate
much less confusing. Different examples of verbs to use in your role of the ballot text might be
interrogate, abolish, reorient, etc. Your chosen verb should maintain a “narrative fidelity” with the
presented methodology. For example, if you know that the poetry scholarship that underpins your
argument also discusses how poetry is an act of resistance, you may want to incorporate “resistance”
into the role of the ballot text.

After writing the role of the ballot, continually checking that your text exhibits narrative fidelity
with your methodology, and defining relevant terms, you should anticipate some responses and key
issues that you can address using the “framing” that you have proposed. Whether you are assigned
to debate on the “government” side of the resolution and intend to deploy a non-traditional strategy
to affirm the topic or you are on the opposition side of the resolution and intend to question the
validity of institutional change, you should include prepared arguments that address some of the key
assumptions that your opponent may make. Two key issues that kritik teams should be prepared to
discuss are “fairness” and “education”. Both of these terms apply to both debate events and how
debate arguments potentially transfer into macro level society. If debaters know where they stand
on these issues, they are more likely to be prepared to defend their kritiks. For example, do you
intend to argue that your argument is fair, do you plan to argume that fairness does not matter, or
that fairness is bad? You must develop a plan for each possible position. Other nuances of the
debate often depend on context. If the team delivering the PMC elects to talk about the topic, but
does not “fictionally pass” the policy in the resolution, they have to consider how the “frame” they
have constructed provides (or purposefully does not provide) “fairness” to the opponent, judge, and
still create societal change. They may also want to prioritize certain forms of education based on
their ability to help marginalized persons or help find solutions to systemic problems. In doing so,
this team would be able to explain how their “framework” not only sets the conditions for the best
type of education, but how their method is an example of that education in action.

After a team has completed their framework and worked through the different situations that
might present in the actual debate, they must construct their “method.” Most teams will have an
“alternative text”, “advocacy text”, “plan text”, or some other textual statement declaring their
method. The “alternative text” or “advocacy text” is equally important to the framework text (role
of the ballot). As such, you should construct your “alternative text” or “advocacy text” with similar
attention to detail. In this area of the debate, many teams decide to add performative elements.
Performative elements are just as important as the written statements themselves. As you write
alternative or advocacy texts, you should consider the different “levels” of attainable solvency. The
best kritik teams will describe how their method (poetry, graffiti, rejection, silence, etc.) solves
both micro and macro issues presented in the debate – you should discuss how your solutions have
more probable and durable implications than the government-based solution proposed by your
opponent.

Constructing combinations of frameworks and alternatives addressing different situations in which

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debaters are placed is artful practice as much as it is logical. Constructing and shifting modular
frameworks necessitates fine-tuning, reflection and reconstruction. Strategy glitches, argumentative
errors, logical inconsistencies, and/or a lack of clarity will occur, inevitably. However, as discussed
previously, constructing modular combinations over the course of a competitive season allows you
to experiment and re-adjust strategy in real-time, from round to round – modular arguments allow
teams to “plug and play” different arguments that are beneficial for them and create the best possible
combination for the context of the round. Once the initial file is written, debaters should take at
least a couple of days without looking at the file. Since the kritik writing process is an intense, often
personal, and extraordinarily tedious explanation of academic literature, removing yourself from
the argument allows you to separate and re-visit with a renewed view. You should construct a list of
all the possible arguments that your opponent may make. That list should become a building block
for writing Member of Opposition (MOC) and/or Member of Government (MGC) second-line
responses. If you have conceptualized the arguments properly, these second-line responses may
also become “modular.”

Thesis, Links, and Impacts

By combining the thesis, links, and impacts element of the kritik, teams are able to account for
different topic areas and create the most specific kritik possible. Many judges who are predisposed
against kritik-style arguments often express concerns with the perceived lack of topic-related
information and the perceived inclusion of generalizations within kritik-style arguments. Although
a separate “thesis” page is not common in parliamentary debate kritiks, it is something that may
ground the kritik and make it more accessible to judges and competitors alike. The following
section discusses the art of writing the “thesis, links, and impacts” portion of kritik files. This
element of the writing process allows debaters to display specific knowledge, thus the level of
development in this area may vary drastically from team to team.
A “thesis” section of a kritik clearly articulates what perspective or theory a team is using to criticize
the PMC, resolution, activity, or status quo. This section outlines the “problem” and attempts to
contextualize that concept to the specific round or the resolution. For example, if a team were to
read a capitalism kritik, the thesis page would be the section of the kritik where the team explains
what capitalism is to them and the problems it causes. They would want a stable definition of
their theory and discuss how that theory explains societal problems better than their opponent does.
Although this section may seem like an unnecessary re-explanation of other elements of the kritik
at first, it gives kritik teams the ability to control the “uniqueness” of a debate round. Uniqueness
has many different meanings, but is generally understood as the explanation of how things operate
now. In a “Politics DA,” the uniqueness component of the argument may explain how certain bills
will “barely pass in the status quo.” For a kritik argument, a team may describe how that same bill
is part of a larger systemic problem that ensures these bills will continue to appear. Having a thesis
page helps to make these types of debates easier because it gives the kritik team a point of reference
in the debate. The thesis page also allows teams a “catch all” for arguments that might be useful,
but may not institutively fit into other sections of the argument.
Many teams in parliamentary debate do not use a “thesis” position, instead opting to combine that
information in the links section of the debate round. The “links” of a kritik are most often used on
the opposition side of the debate, paired with a kritik read in the LOC. “Links” attempt to describe
how the PMC perpetuates the same problems isolated in the initial theory and, in some cases, the
implications of those actions. Traditionally, link specificity correlates with an increase in success.
When deploying a kritik, teams should focus on specific arguments made by your opponent, in
order to best articulate to the judge how those rhetorical strategies are a part of a larger problem. In
addition, you may want to point out how the PMC is a part of the problem. Teams may also want
254 Chapter 26. We Were Not a ‘Project’ Team

to include micro-level implications to the problem, clarifying why you think that your opponent’s
actions are problematic and/or why your “alternative” should function by itself.

The link section of the kritik allows you to use your research skills and anticipate opposing argu-
ments. Kritik teams should compose lists of different cases they may hear and write links to those
cases in order to save prep time during those rounds. For example, if you know that you will hear
cases that advocate for United States military intervention abroad, the links will intuitively look
similar, regardless of the specific military entanglement of the PMC. Preparing link arguments in
advance make your toolbox flexible by giving you the opportunity to add and subtract different
arguments that you find most beneficial to you in that particular moment. Many critically-oriented
teams create link “strategy sheets”, giving them the opportunity to write the links in-round while
maintaining a point of reference in order to create stability during preparation time. The task of
developing link strategy sheets is often delegated to the debater selected in the “member position”
(Member of Opposition” or “Member of Government”) in order to give the leader position (“Leader
of Opposition” or “Prime Minister”) an opportunity to prepare case arguments during preparation
time. As you prepare link arguments, you should consider what works for your argument and which
arguments are most likely to efficiently communicate your message to the judge.

Implications
The last portion of the “thesis, links, and impacts” portion of the file is the implications (or impact)
page. The implication page may differ drastically from team to team, depending on stylistic and
argumentative content choices. Some teams prefer to discuss the micro level implications of the
theory they have presented in order to demonstrate the tangible, local nature of the problem. Other
teams like to discuss the macro level implications in order to incorporate discussions about people
and places that may not be as proximal to the debaters in a given debate round. Much like every
other portion of the kritik, implications should be divided by theory. Some examples of different
implications could be: global warming, dehumanization, genocide, micro aggressions, prison
industrial complex, military industrial complex, etc. One of the most important components to
writing this element of the kritk argument is tracing a clear, logical thought process and articulating
that process to the judge. Younger debaters may want to limit the amount of arguments in their
implication section and focus on making clear connections between arguments. As the clarity of
the connections in a kritik increase, so does the likelihood of proving that you implications have a
greater magnitude than arguments made by your opponent.

There are two additional, important elements of writing the implication section of your kritik
– providing examples and impact calculus. Examples demonstrate the exact oppression that a
team may be discussing and best explain why these issues are relevant. Given that parliamentary
debate does not allow pre-written evidence, examples are one of the best ways to communicate
long hours of research. Examples become especially strategic when the judge that you are given
has limited prior knowledge of the subject/content of your criticism. In these scenarios, judges
are able to easily “follow along” because of the presentation of clear examples. Once you have
established the key examples of the theories in the implication section, you should prioritize your
implications over others in the round. Judges and opponents may see kritik implications as “smaller”
than traditional, policy-based nuclear extinction implications because they do not affect the largest
number of population. Kritik teams should think of reasons why we may want to consider systemic
issues a prior question to low probability and high magnitude implications. As you present the
argument initially, making those connections for a judge will give a team the best ability to win
rounds since they increase the ability of your argument to engage the other team and develop a
framework for “impact clash”.
 255

Using Your Tools to Build a “Project”

During my parliamentary debate career at Northern Arizona University, the “project” became a
staple for our national competition strategy and undoubtedly became some of the best positions
every produced at our school. I use the term “project” (for the sake of clarity) to describe teams
that opt to read one argument regardless of their government or opposition assignment or the
tournament-announced resolution. The term “project” often stigmatizes debaters and teams that
choose to spend their time and energy sharing closely held, personal ideas with a community of
intellectuals. Teams should treat each other with the upmost respect when confronting each other’s
ideas and appreciate the power it takes to speak your mind in the first place. As a general bit
of advice, when confronted with a team that reads “projects,” you should ask the name of their
argument or come up with and consistently refer to it with the most accurate name you can think of.
In this way, you may avoid the pitfall of thinking that all “project” arguments are synonymous or
operate in similar fashions.
Our method of writing a “project” was to turn the tools that we created throughout the season
into the position we wanted. Every year that we read a “project” there was at least one senior on
the team reading that position. We wanted to give that person their the opportunity to say what
they wanted to the parliamentary debate community, typically at nationals – presumably, the last
opportunity in their life where someone was obligated to listen to them. Although these positions
were incredibly successful, they did not begin from a place of desiring success. Instead, NAU
“projects” came from a place of wanting to express ourselves in the best way we knew how. Placing
success in the background allowed for a mentality that made writing these positions life altering,
ultimately shaping my thoughts about all aspects of society. In order to take our tools that we
developed throughout the season and transform them, we developed a flexible system, discussed
previously, throughout the year to accomplish those goals.
Our writing process began with the announcement of the National Parliamentary Tournament of
Excellence topic areas, a championship tournament in which selected teams have three to four
weeks to prepare for pre-announced resolutions. Since any NPTE elimination round can be your
last round as a competitor, we wanted to take the same time allotted to our opponents to make
sure that we had a complete grasp of what we wanted the last thing we said in debate to be. Our
process usually began with small team meetings used to brainstorm different topics that we wanted
to discuss, and most importantly, how they applied to debate itself. Once we listed those ideas,
we would begin to think of new arguments that would accommodate the desires of that particular
team. Some of our teams were more comfortable with using their body as a demonstration of their
argument while others relied on different presentation styles.
On our team, the most important aspect of the writing process was developing new research. We
wanted to be as specific as possible and treat our position similar to an academic defending their
written scholarship. By rooting our ideas in different fields of literature, we were able to find a
variety explanations and responses to counter arguments. In addition to our own research, many
of the students on our team would seek the help of NAU professors in order to receive different
opinions and feedback on our arguments. In many cases, “non-debate” intellectuals gave the best
ideas and insight into improving our argument. During this intense period of reading (text), you
should also explore other academic mediums (conferences, lectures, videos, etc.) to give yourself
a break from reading, but to remain productive. One source that we often used was attending
presentations or finding videos of academic lectures and conferences. Sometimes, the discussions
held in those spaces gave nuance and insight into how other communities might view many of
the same problems discussed in academic debate and may give you a fresh, strategic view of your
argument.
256 Chapter 26. We Were Not a ‘Project’ Team

The hardest part about writing “one off”, “project” files is the writing process itself. Translating
your thoughts into strategic and efficient arguments can be more of an art form than an exact
science. The first step in this process should be to recognize what arguments you have already
written that can be slightly modified for your new kritik and compiling a list of those arguments.
These arguments are not always the most useful at building the constructive speech, but can often
help to establish an outline for responses in member speeches. Writing the “project” also happens
in the same order and format as all the other kritiks that we wrote throughout the season. At times,
we would create slightly different versions to accommodate delivery of a PMC or LOC, but the
majority of the arguments and the function of those argument should be kept in tact. Once you
have the first draft completed it is important to practice the file (read it out loud, debate against
teammates, practice “member” speech responses) and adjust it before the tournament. Reading one
off, kritik-style “projects” comes down to your level or preparation and the work you are willing to
put in. Remember, if you plan to read one argument at a tournament, most other participants will
be able to develop a well-prepared answer to your argument. As such, it is much more difficult for
these arguments to demonstrate consistent win-rate success since you have eliminated any element
of surprise that you may otherwise have as an advantage over your opponents.
Debate is a microcosm of larger society and does not exist outside of the structures of power. When
we prepared to read “project” style argument, we would dedicate time to emotionally prepare for
what we may hear. The debate community has largely been accepting of our actions and encouraged
our voice, but placing yourself into competitive settings with sometimes personal material creates
a certain level of vulnerability. It took an entire team of encouragement to accomplish our goals,
supporting our personal and competitive well-being. At times, we felt as though the things that
we were saying represented the communities that we were coming from and were much more
important than the win and loss column of a debate round.
Debate, for me, has always been about having fun. I have met some of my best friends in debate
and have developed much of who I am as a person through competitive debate. My debate team
taught me that learning should be uncomfortable. Although it is not the most appealing model at
first, it taught me to appreciate my moments of uncomfortability and seek the greater lessons in
those moments. Our initial attempt to read and write “project” files came from our belief that the
best learning we could have in debate was the type that made us feel uncomfortable and question
concepts that went largely unquestioned. We were not “project debaters”; we were critical minds
who were given an outlet to speak competitively about the things we believed. We were a group
of people that bought into a model of debate that suited our needs as people and taught us to
better understand our position in society. Debating in this way produced what I consider the most
beautiful debate outcome – when debate teaches you more about yourself than it does about the
world.
 27. Answering Criticisms in the MGC

E FFECTIVELY A NSWERING C RITICISMS IN THE

M EMBER OF G OVERNMENT C ONSTRUCTIVE
JARED B RESSLER – T EXAS T ECH U NIVERSITY

Introduction

Criticisms have become an important element of parliamentary debate. Some debaters, coaches
and judges categorically disapprove of these arguments and actively discourage debaters from
reading these arguments. Despite disdain for critical arguments among many debaters and judges,
these arguments continue to appear in late elimination rounds of national tournaments – including
the final round of the NPTE for three of the last five years. Refusing to take these arguments
seriously makes competitive success impossible. In this chapter, I will discuss advisable strategies
for answering criticisms.
Framework arguments focus on what and how impacts should be prioritized. All criticisms, whether
presented in the Prime Minister Constructive (PMC) or Leader of Opposition Constructive (LOC),
include some form of framework debate – i.e. a decision to prioritize probability, magnitude,
systemic impacts, etc. Many criticisms also have a separate section dedicated to explaining the
thesis of the criticism – typically, a “thesis section” is included by debaters who do not include
a macro-level explanation of their argument in the framework section. Theses often make broad
claims about the nature of reality, the state, society or the nature of competitive debate that are
continually reinforced throughout the entire criticism. If you are tasked with answering a criticism,
conceding these arguments can make many of your arguments irrelevant, while properly answering
them can undermine the entire criticism.
Link arguments generate a link to the government case or to the resolution/debate round. There are
many ways criticisms link to a case including reference to specific plan action, discourse used to
258 Chapter 27. Answering Criticisms in the MGC

justify the government’s plan, or failure to address issues that the criticism considers imperative.
Often, links are the most uncontested portion of the criticism. While most criticisms have obvious
links, there are many opportunities to generate arguments that can work as part of an overall
strategy.
Impact arguments generate offense for the team reading the criticism. Typically, teams reading
criticisms that argue for broad changes to society (such as removing capitalism or the state)
are susceptible to big impact turns about why the institutions they wish to remove are actually
beneficial.
Most criticisms also include a specific alternative section that claims to solve for the problem
highlighted in the impact – arguing for their ability to “solve” these impacts in some form. Teams
often use the alternative section of the criticism debate to make claims that indicate that a vote in their
favor creates a circumstance that affects the isolated problem. These claims, when conceded, can be
especially damaging to the government team because they generate uniqueness for the criticism – i.e.
capitalism is inevitable only in a world without the alternative arguments. Alternative arguments are
typically juxtaposed against the impacts of the government plan that are typically “solved” through
the use of fiat (imagined government action). The alternative section of the criticism should also
serve as the location of numerous attacks from the opposing team – including reasons why the
alternative to the criticism is not desirable.
Since the divisions between different, commonly used strategies to answer criticisms are often
unclear, this chapter will focus on several essential arguments that you can use when answering
criticisms. Instead of presenting exact blocks of argumentation, I will explain the thesis of each
argument, the importance of each argument, and a few basic defenses of each argument. You should
specifically adapt suggested arguments, tailoring them to exact arguments contained in specific
criticisms and other positions advanced in the debate.

Defending Net-Benefits and Utilitarianism

Utilitarianism, for the purpose of providing a primer, advocates doing that which creates the greatest
good for the greatest number. Utilitarianism is the basses of the net benefits framework typically
utilized by government teams in parliamentary debate. Utilitarianism defines “good” as “happiness.”
Some criticisms (often, those deriving from the works of Nietzsche or Schopenhauer) question the
validity of this assumption. One can defend happiness by looking at happiness. Evolution argues
that happiness exists to encourage us to do things that keep us alive. Since evolution programed
seeking happiness into us, we cannot help but position it as a basis of ethics. Also since, at our core,
we all seek happiness, it becomes the only universal basis of making policies. While not everyone
is happy with the same things, we can still aim to create the condition to make the most people
happy – this is preferable to less general goals that are not “universal.” If, at times, we must suffer,
we can aim to minimize that suffering while knowing and accepting that it is inevitable.
Criticisms rely on impact framing, typically presented in the framework portion of the argument.
You will commonly hear debaters arguing that a particular impact (usually dealing with the loss
of some autonomy) is “worse than death.” Most traditional, policy-based government cases are
premised on preventing death as a primary consideration. If you are advancing a traditional case
structure, defending death as the “biggest” impact, or the impact that ought be given primary
consideration, is necessary to win the debate. Typically, debaters can win the primacy of a “death”
impact by arguing that the choice to live or die is the most essential choice an individual can have
– from that choice, all other choices come. Further, you can argue that the impact framing of the
criticism is indeterminable – we cannot determine if another’s suffering is or is not worse than
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death. Finally, you can construct an argument to prefer your impact framing – killing that person
denies them of their most basic choice, to exist or not, denying that choice is the ultimate loss of
autonomy.
Debaters will also often argue that net benefits, utilitarian decision-making calculus ignore issues
of structural violence. For example, if we only focus on our avoidance of nuclear war, we will
certainly end up ignoring problems such as poverty, bigotry and small-scale violence that occur daily.
Utilitarianism, of course, does not advocate we ignore small-scale violence, but instead weight the
suffering of all equally – that is, you can argue that your framework and the criticism framework
are not inherently contradictory. You could argue, for example, that evaluating structural violence
over “net benefits” positions the lives lost in the war seem less valuable than persons considered by
the criticism’s impact framing. Another commonly absent argument from many criticism debates is
that utilitarianism, or net benefits, utilizes “probability” claims to temper outrageous, improbable
impacts – i.e. if you can win that a war is likely per the government case, it becomes difficult for
the opposing team to win that systemic impacts are more likely. Remember, net benefits considers
not only at how many people may get hurt, but what the probability of that injury is. This means
we can still look at structural issues, but we should not necessarily preference these issues over
the experiences of death advanced by a “net benefits” scenario. Essentially, debaters opposing
criticisms should defend the ability of utilitarianism to weight all impacts. You should spend time
focusing on the probability of your specific advantage and focusing on the probability of the lives
lost in your impacts. Ultimately, you will need to win that these impact claims are not just another
contrived excuse to ignore the problems highlighted in the criticism. In doing so, you can argue
that your impacts are just as important those presented in the criticism and that we have a moral
obligation to prevent them.
You can argue that the framework of the criticism is not competitive – advancing that there are
always implied trade-offs. This can be done in two ways. First, you should try to win the premise
that “we cannot solve every problem.” If there is not a necessity to make difficult choices, ultimately
letting some “bad” things happen to prevent other “bad” things, why is the criticism competitive?
Second, you should try to win the premise that we have limited resources and choices available.
In fact, we often face choices where we must choose between harming a person to prevent more
harm from coming (i.e. killing a shooter and a stopping a shooting spree). Refusing to take the
action that results in “less harm” assumes the world is just right now, with indifference making
things worse. This type of impact-preference assumption, as deployed in many criticisms, ignores
the multiple different routes available to prevent suffering.

Defending Science and Predictions

Policy (net benefits) debate tends to look at the world though a somewhat scientific perspective.
A key element of a scientific perspective is the idea of falsifiability. Falsifiability means that your
claim can be tested. For example, you can falsify whether an object will fall when you drop it
to the ground. You cannot necessarily falsify the claim that “all reality that exists is based in our
perception of the material world.” Certainly, the “facts” debated in high-level, competitive debates
are often more difficult to test than basic laws of physics. Still, despite difficulty in testing the
claims of a criticism, you can use historical examples to draw conclusions. While these conclusions
are more debatable (obviously) than those drawn from the pure sciences, these debates can still
be based on solid facts. Many post-modern and psychoanalytical criticisms make such claims.
Psychology often acts as a science that seeks knowable facts, but psychoanalysis, specifically
claims often used in competitive debate, do not have such a scientific basis. When debating against
criticisms, many debaters neglect to answer unfalsifiable claims that allow their opponents to make
260 Chapter 27. Answering Criticisms in the MGC

incredibly broad claims about the nature of reality. If deployed properly in the criticism, these
arguments make much of the government case irrelevant. In order to answer these broad claims
about reality, compare your specific warrants to why your case is “real” to the arguments in the
criticism, attempting to frame the criticism’s arguments as unwarranted and unfalsifiable. It is
helpful to win arguments advancing that your version of “reality” should hold equal weight with
your critic, since we can never “know.” Also, it is helpful to argue that we, as individuals, should
make discussions based on falsifiable data – counting on unknowable calculations to avoid death is
morally irresponsible. Finally, you can generate offense against the framework of a criticism that
includes this type of argument – i.e. the impossibility and fairness or educational value of debating
“unknowable” or “unfalsifiable” issues.

Pragmatism

Policy (net benefits) debate looks at practical policy options to solve specific, real-world problems.
Criticisms, alternatively, consider philosophical shifts to solve an underlying problem. When you
are debating a criticism, defending pragmatic actions might help you win the debate. A key element
of defending pragmatism is defending utilitarianism – that is, winning that we must act to do the
greatest good for the most people. You can logically argue that utilitarianism implies that we should
act to solve problems instead of just changing how we think about them. In addition, there are
numerous disadvantages to holding out for a “perfect” solution or radical change instead of taking
practical action – remember, if you are able to win that both are possible at the same time, there is
no opportunity cost to the alternative which means that the criticism is not competitive. Refusing
to get involved in debates about possible policy options because of left wing, academic principles
leaves the right wing to make all the policy decisions – this argument is commonly referred to as
“cede the political.” Since most criticisms are left leaning, “ceding the political space” would make
the impacts of the criticism worse.
The Green Party, during the 2000 presidential election, is an excellent example of “ceding the
political.” Ralph Nader, presidential candidate for the far left Green Party, had an incredibly
unlikely chance of winning the election. Nader took away votes from Democrat Al Gore in Florida
resulting in Republican George W. Bush winning the presidency in the closest race in U.S. history.
While we cannot know, with certainty, the outcome of the election without the presence of Ralph
Nader, we can be almost certain that the U.S. would have more stringent environmental policies
and the U.S. would likely have decided to forego the invasion of Iraq. If Green voters in Florida
had chosen to vote pragmatically for Gore, instead of choosing impractical idealism with Nader,
hundreds of thousands of lives may have been saved in war and perhaps billions in future ecological
damage.
Another common justification for preferring criticism alternatives is that they “solve the root
cause of the problem.” When advancing a criticism on the opposition, teams often argue that the
government case ignores the real reason why the impacts of the PMC (and most other impacts)
happen. They will argue that, without addressing the “root cause” of the issue, nothing can be
solved. When answering a criticism that makes a similar claim, you must first emphasize the quality
of your solvency arguments. Typically, the PMC solvency arguments are far more specific than the
root cause claims made by criticisms. You can also argue that isolating root causes is problematic.
As discussed previously, “root cause” claims are unfalsifiable – i.e. we can never know if the
system of capitalism, our construction of international relations, our relationship with nature, or our
relationship with our subconscious is the root cause of violence. Furthermore, only focusing on one
“root cause” claim, even if it could be determined, would be a time consuming, substantial endeavor,
requiring us to take short-term actions to solve the problems identified in the PMC. You can also
 261

develop reasons why their “root cause” claim is incorrect – i.e. if they say that capitalism is the root
of all violence, contest this claim by arguing that patriarchy is the root cause of all violence. You
may also want to develop an offensive impact to this type of alternative root cause claim, resulting
in an argument that critiques the criticism’s isolation of particular impacts. This type of argument
provides another opportunity for you to generate offense against the criticism.

Defending Current Structures: The State and Capitalism

When advocating for a government plan, using “fiat” typically means that you use existing institu-
tions and structures. These institutions and structures are ripe with problems – if they were not, you
would not be able to generate impacts for your PMC. Since these institutions are so problematic,
critical arguments often call for them to be radically changed or outright abandoned. The two
elements of society that are commonly criticized, in some form, is the state and capitalism. While
these two systems are (in many ways), separate entities, they are deeply intertwined. Capitalism
likely cannot exist without a state to enforce contracts and property rights. Likewise, a state
cannot exist without an economic system to generate revenue. While there have been systems
where the state owns the means of production and generates revenue, in eight years of involvement
with parliamentary debate, I have not seen a team advocate for a Soviet-style command economy.
“Stateism” and the “Cap K” are not the only criticisms that critique large structures – so do most
criticisms of international relations, criticisms of state boarders, criticisms of military securitization,
critiques of globalization and criticisms of structural violence all call for radical changes to the
state or capitalism – likely both.
When facing these criticisms, debaters tend to focus exclusively on demonstrating that the state/capitalism
are desirable/inevitable in their current form. While these arguments are powerful and often neces-
sary to win the debate, they should not be the primary focus when answering a criticism. When
answering structural criticisms, debaters can gain a significant amount of offense by debating the
link of the criticism. Similar to any other argument, link offense alone may not solidify victory.
Link arguments should focus on your plan and your proposed action, resulting in a claim that
demonstrates that the government plan solves for some (perhaps even most) of the impacts of the
criticism. Unlike link turns (arguing that you solve for the impacts of the criticism), this strategy
does not preclude impact turns. In a typical disadvantage debate, you would not link turn and
impact turn the argument. When debating a criticism, it is possible to provide a nuanced expla-
nation that results in your plan solving some negative elements of capitalism, for example, while
preserving other useful elements that the alternative would destroy. In addition, demonstrating
that the government can solve impacts of the criticism while simultaneously jettisoning the part of
the alternative that wholly abandons the institution, should demonstrate that the alternative is not
competitive with the government case and/or that the permutation is net beneficial.
In contemporary parliamentary debate, the most common impact turn advanced when debating a
criticism argues for the virtue of U.S. military and economic hegemony. Most critical alternatives
would result in a massive decrease in U.S. power abroad. U.S. power helps maintain global
stability through clear, defined leadership. A withdraw of U.S. power would mean other countries
would fight to claim that position of leadership risking extinction (debaters will often use the term
“proxy wars”, “great power wars”, or “resource wars” – unfortunately, somewhat interchangeably).
Defending hegemony against a criticism is very different than debating hegemony in a traditional
disadvantage debate. In a traditional, net benefits framework, teams will most often claim to
better solve hegemony or claim that hegemony is less stable than a multi-polar world. Criticisms
typically claim to drastically alter systems of international relations, rendering current calculations
of hegemony irrelevant. In order to use knowledge of hegemony to your advantage, you will likely
262 Chapter 27. Answering Criticisms in the MGC

need to defend that realism is inevitable. “Realism” is a theory of international relations that says
nation states are the most important actors and will always act to increase their own power and
interests. This expansive body of literature includes the theory of “hegemonic stability.” In a
world full of competition for power, a clear leader creates stability. If we can escape the struggle
for power and drastically change the composition of international relations, hegemony would be
unnecessary and likely undesirable. If you intend to win the premise that “realism is inevitable,”
you must first argue that the state is inevitable – i.e. people will always form groups in order to
survive. These inevitable groups will need a way of group-level decision making, which results in
the ultimate creation of a government. It also follows that these groups will compete with each other
over resources. There are numerous materials that suggest competition is genetically programed
at an evolutionary level due to scarcity of mates and food. Because these groups are necessary,
and will inevitably exist, people will use these groups to compete. Since there is no power over
these “groups”, stronger groups (or hegemons) are the only method of national and international
stability.

Some criticisms will call for the end of “the state of exception” for U.S. hegemony, in particular.
When answering this type of argument, there are many other impacts you can utilize. Many of these
impacts are also strategic when debating teams critical of capitalism, since a sudden collapse of
capitalism would likely require the collapse of the state. First, the U.S. government secures nuclear
weapons and material (both at home and abroad) through the Nunn Lugar program. In addition,
the U.S. government protects dangerous biological agents at the Center for Disease Control and
Prevention and at various university laboratories throughout the U.S. The state also attempts to
impose the rule of law, deterring violent crimes like rape and murder, through the assurance that all
citizens can be held accountable for criminal activity. While no government is free of corruption,
the system that we have is likely better than it’s absence. The state also provides a lot of material
benefits to the poor. While the U.S. has an unquestionable issue with resource distribution, again,
the status quo is likely preferable to a complete absence of the state apparatus. Mixing large impacts
discussing stolen weapons and nuclear war with “smaller” impacts about discrimination allows you
to advance the claim that your arguments operate in the framework of the criticism in addition to
capturing an impact with a greater magnitude.

Capitalism also has many benefits. First, perhaps capitalism does a better job of handling informa-
tion than other systems? In a world where goods are distributed based on anything other than price,
people will attempt to possess as many products as possible since there is no price deterrence. This
means that it is impossible for any other system to efficiently distribute resources. If the criticism
advances a claim that the waste and inefficiencies of capitalism are rooted in greed, try imagining a
world where physical possessions might not have a “price” – when people must pay for things they
will only acquire things they need or will use. Also, you can often argue that capitalism creates the
best system for new, useful, and efficient technologies. Capitalism creates market conditions for
incentives to innovate and tends to produce resources more efficiently, allowing more resources
to reach the market. You can also argue that, due to the evolutionary theories discussed before,
that competition over resources is inevitable – capitalism allows such competition to be efficient,
whereas in other systems, people may gain resources by gaining favor from those who control the
means of production. Remember, you do not need to defend unrestricted capitalism – again, it
is possible to impact turn a criticism and link turn certain portions. A complete rejection of the
system might mean losing all the benefits of capitalism and the state, allowing the rich to behave
arbitrarily without a system of predictable repercussions in place.
 263

The Permutation Debate

Like a counterplan, a criticism typically contains an alternative advocacy – that alternative should be
directly competitive with other advocacies presented in the debate – in most cases, the government
plan. A competitive advocacy/text is one that either cannot be adopted at the same time as another
advocacy/text or would not be net beneficial to adopt simultaneously. Much like a counterplan, a
criticism alternative is competitive when it demonstrates an opportunity cost of the government
plan. The competition can be tested with an argument called a “permutation.” Novice debaters
are tempted to view permutations as a new “advocacy” of sorts – it is not. In contemporary
parliamentary debate, permutations are considered to have a “text.” The commonly accepted
definition of a “perm” or “permutation text” for a criticism would be a text that includes all of the
plan text and all or part of the alternative text.
There are a few common permutation texts used by the government in the MGC to dispute the
competition of a criticism. First, “do both” – or, all of the plan text and all of the alternative text.
For example, if the government plan text reads, “The United States Federal Government should end
all weapons sales to Israel” and the alternative says “View international relations through a feminist
standpoint” the perm would read, “The United States Federal Government should end all weapons
sales to Israel and View international relations through a feminist standpoint.” For obvious reasons,
the “do both” permutation is typically most effective when the alternative does not call for a direct
rejection of the plan or the government team.
In the event that a criticism alternative directly rejects your plan action, you can advance a
permutation that includes the plan and part of the alternative text. For example, if the government
plan text reads “The United States Federal Government should end all drone strikes” and the
alternative reads “Reject the government team and re-imagine the world as a space for individuals”
the perm would read, “The United States Federal Government should end all drone strikes and
re-imagine the world as a space for individuals.” This permutation can also be used when the
alternative calls for a rejection of a whole system and replacing it with another. A similar, lazier
version of this permutation is, “Do plan and all non competitive parts of the alternative.” Above,
we have demonstrated that the “Reject the government team” portion of the alternative text is not
competitive (often referred to as “artificial competition”). It follows that, “Do plan and all non
competitive parts of the alternative” functionally possesses a similar implication. However, using
the second formation of the language is vague and allows your opponents flexibility in their MOC
answer of your permutation. As such, more exact permutations are generally advisable.
Another commonly used permutation strategy carves out an exception for the government plan.
For example if the plan reads, “The United States Federal Government should regulate hydraulic
fracturing under the clean water act” and the alternative text reads, “Reject the capitalist system”
your perm can read “Reject the capitalist system except for The United States Federal Government
should regulate hydraulic fracturing under the clean water act”. However, if you recall, a legitimate
permutation is commonly considered “all of the plan text and all or part of the alternative text” – in
this permutation, you have added the words “except for” to the permutation, which is a phrase
that appears neither in the original PMC plan or the LOC criticism alternative. This is commonly
referred to as an “intrinsic permutation,” (adding an element that was not present in either text
alone). Similarly, many would take issue with a permutation that read, “Reject the capitalist system
and regulate hydraulic fracturing under the clean water act.” This permutation removes the USFG
element from the plan text – often referred to as a “severance permutation” because it severs a
portion of the government plan text. In this case, the “USFG” portion of the PMC plan text would
be a link to the LOC’s criticism of capitalism. Parliamentary debate’s lack of “backside rebuttals”
(three less speeches than a standard policy debate) creates a situation where government teams can
264 Chapter 27. Answering Criticisms in the MGC

rarely be punished for an intrinsic or severance permutation. If the MOC objects to the fairness
of a permutation advanced by the MGC, the PMR has nearly unlimited flexibility to answer this
argument and is the last speech in the debate. Some clever teams will include a definition of an
intrinsic or severance permutation in their LOC criticism shell, typically including a definition of
both types of permutations and a prescribed course of action for the judge in the event that the
MGC attempts to advance one or both types of permutation. In this event, if the MGC reads an
unfair permutation, the MOC/LOR can extend this argument, advocating for the judge to ignore
PMR responses on the issue.

Even though you are not “advocating” for a permutation, permutations should include net benefits.
In most cases, the strongest net-benefit to a permutation is your case. The PMC spends seven
minutes generating offense you should not allow your self to lose that offense because the LOC
selected to advance a criticism-style argument. In addition, many of the arguments in favor of
pragmatism will work as a net benefit to the permutation because your permutation text will include
a pragmatic solution often not included in the alternative text. This net benefit works particularly
well with link turns that demonstrate the solvency of pragmatic solutions for the impacts of the
criticism. In addition, if your permutation does not advocate destroying the state or capitalism in
their alternative, you can use impact turns as a net-benefit to your permutation. Another common
net-benefit is the “fascism” turn – i.e. the alternative creates a single worldview, justifying violence
against those who do not share the worldview of the alternative. The permutation solves this by
allowing for multiple worldviews. In fact, there are a variety of substantive reasons why you would
want to put the plan text next to, or in juxtaposition with, the alternative. As you develop your own
style of answering permutations, you will craft an argument that makes sense for your team.

Theory

Many people argue that criticisms are unfair and damaging for competitive debate. While this
strategy is becoming increasingly infrequent, there are two main interpretations used to deploy this
style of argument. First, “The opposition must advocate a fiated policy option or the status quo.”
The advantage to this interpretation is that it can be a reason to reject the team outright or at least to
reject the criticism, leaving many “one off” teams with few substantive arguments to advance in the
debate. Alternatively, this interpretation allows the opposition to leverage any generic reasons why
criticisms are generally good. Since critical teams commonly confront this type of procedural, they
will typically demonstrate experienced answers. Additionally, many judges are reticent to vote for
an argument that functionally excludes an entire genre of opposition argument unless it is wholly
conceded. Should you choose to deploy this strategy, the interpretation can be read at the top of the
PMC (with standards and an explanation of the “voter”).

Another common violation is that, “All impacts generated from a criticism must be weighted on
the same level as the plan.” This interpretation has the advantage is that it creates a race to the
middle, which generally favors the government team. Even if the opposition provides reasons why
critical impact framing is good, it does not matter if there are also reasons why traditional, net
benefits impact framing (such as deference to pragmatic solutions) is also good. Opposed to the
first example, this interpretation typically cannot win the round by itself (however, if you have a
good case that the position was under-covered you might be able to obtain a strategic advantage in
terms of impact framing). One other problem with this type of interpretation is that it is largely
non-responsive to the claims made by most criticisms – if the criticism argues that your impacts
are imaginary, if you cannot prove that your impacts are “real” and/or should not be subject to
criticism, it makes little difference. When the government team calls for large, systemic change,
 265

this interpretation is very powerful because it highlights the criticism’s attempt to exclude the
government.
There are several good standards that can be used to justify both interpretations. The first is
“government choice” – since the government speaks first they get to establish the framework for the
round. Allowing the opposition to shift the framework of the round eliminates offense gained in
the PMC – the government’s best chance for offense. This standard works well to argue that the
government should be weighed against the criticism. It can also be a reason to reject all criticisms.
If the opposition can generate offense through different rules than the ones the government sets, the
opposition might possess a huge, unfair advantage since they would functionally play the game
with different rules. Predictability is another commonly used standard when answering criticisms
with theory objections. Critical offense is somewhat unpredictable. The resolution typically calls
for a policy – i.e. debating about the costs and benefits of a policy are more predictable than
a discussion of philosophical theory. A wide variety of critical theories exist, all with different
methods of evaluation. Allowing the LOC to choose any framework would lead to an infinite
number of different ways to evaluate the round, putting the government at a permanent preparation
disadvantage. Constructing arguments about the inevitability and necessity of the state, mixed
with deference to pragmatic action, gives the government team a reason why debating policy is
preferable to debating the criticism.

General Tips for Debating the K

Your case is always the best offense that you have. Extending case against a criticism is different
than in other rounds. Focusing on the quality of your warrants and internal links help to leverage
your case against their specific criticism. Also, you should emphasize how you are saving real
people who will die without plan and how that is more important than their critical arguments.
Criticisms may use a lot of long, hard to pronounce words that may be unfamiliar to you. Critique-
focused teams often use these terms to confuse their opponents. Do not let your self be confused.
Listen closely to the impacts of the criticism. Listen to how your opponents talk about your impacts.
Do they grant you the basic facts of the world? Are they taking exception to specific language? You
might not understand their alternative, but does your case solve some of their impact? All of these
things tell you what kind of arguments you need to make. Remember your case probably makes
more sense to the judge than the criticism. Go for procedurals only as a last resort. Most judges
prefer to evaluate a substantive debate instead of a theory debate. If you are debating a team who is
reading the same criticism in all (or nearly all) of their rounds, write specific answers. Consider
major weaknesses and omissions. Consider researching their foundational authors. Try to find
academics that disagree with that author. Critical theory is full of disagreements. Understanding
opposing theorists and deploying those arguments can devastate a critical team.
Remember that most of the arguments used in a debate are not particularly meaningful. Judges
watch a lot of rounds at every tournament. They also assist their teams in writing strategies against
similar arguments. Assuming that a judge will change their mind in any meaningful way because
of a criticism is likely silly – remind judges of this. The best debaters against criticisms treat it
like any other argument – they listen closely and isolate obvious flaws. They do not panic and they
especially do not allow their distaste for a certain style of argument to influence the way that they
debate. It feels good to take what you perceive to be the “high ground”, but it is often the route
with the lowest probability of victory. Finally, read criticisms yourself. Seeing the other side of the
argument gives you a better understanding of its weakness.
 28. The Case for American Hegemony

M AKING THE C ASE FOR A MERICAN H EGEMONY:

D EFENDING G OLIATH IN ACADEMIC D EBATE
K EVIN C ALDERWOOD – U NIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON

“The abdication by the United States of some or all of the responsibilities for international security that it had come to
bear in the first decade of the twenty-first century would deprive the international system of one of its principal safety
features, which keeps countries from smashing into each other, as they are historically prone to do. In this sense, a world
without America would be the equivalent of a freeway full of cars without brakes.”

– Michael Mandelbaum, The Case for Goliath, p. 195

Introduction

Hegemony is a theory of America’s role in the world that has been largely adhered to by both
Republicans and Democrats since the start of the Cold War. Patrick Callahan (2003) defines
hegemony as the ability for a nation – or group of nations – to dominate other nations through
military, economic, and diplomatic means. America began the long road to reach the status of
“Goliath” in the international system following its victory in the Spanish-American War. The United
States began to establish overseas colonies and dominated the Western Hemisphere. Following a
late entrance, the U.S. fought on the winning side in World War I, eventually deciding after WWI
to reject the League of Nations, choosing to remain behind the walls of a geographically isolated
Fortress America (Krauthammer, 2003). Had the U.S. maintained a forwardly deployed military
after World War II, the world might look entirely different. By looking inward, the U.S. allowed
another vacuum of power to develop in Western Europe, giving rise to fascism and one of the
bloodiest conflicts in world history.
Thankfully, at least according to hegemonists, the U.S. maintained its forward deployment as a way
to deter the rise of potential adversaries following World War II. Currently, the U.S. maintains a
268 Chapter 28. The Case for American Hegemony

large standing military based throughout the world. The current force structure of the U.S., even in
an age of austerity, prevents nation-states from engaging in inter-state conflict (Mandelbaum, 2005;
Brzezinski, 2012). Thus, by possessing the strongest military and largest economy in the world, the
U.S. acts as the world hegemon, or put another way, “serves as the world government in the 21st
Century” (Mandelbaum, 2005). The structure for this chapter is fairly straightforward. First, I will
provide a short history of three major events in international relations, all of which can serve as
examples to strengthen your arguments in parliamentary debate. Second, I will demonstrate the
major utility of hegemony arguments in parliamentary debate. Finally, I will discuss how to answer
these arguments.

A Brief Course in International Relations

Global hegemony has only recently become a reality because of advances in transportation, military,
and communication technology. However, there is nothing new about the use of military, economic,
or diplomatic means between two or more nation-states to advance their own goals. Traditionally,
nation-states have had one goal – the security of the state through the maximization of power.
According to John J. Mearsheimer (2001), power is determined by a nation-state’s access to natural
resources, economic might, and the strength of their military, specifically the size and quality
of their land armies. This section will discuss three major events in the history of international
relations: the Peloponnesian Wars, the rise of the modern nation-state at the Peace of Westphalia,
and significant power transitions and diffusions of power in the 20th and 21st centuries.

The Peloponnesian War

Since international relations is widely discussed in parliamentary debate, debaters should read
the Melian Dialogue, written by Thucydides, which is an excerpt from his description of the
Peloponnesian Wars. This piece demonstrates the role of power and perception in international
relations. The Athenians demand that the Melos should submit to their power or face destruction
by military force. The Melos counter the Athenian argument by stating that they are a neutral party
and that they are of no threat to the Athenians. The Athenians contend that they are not able to
allow the Melos to remain neutral or the Athenians would look weak to the other warring parties.
Thus, the Athenians believed they were left to choose between an unconditional surrender from the
Melos or that they must destroy them in battle. This is the foundation for perception in international
relations – power is zero sum in the sense that any decrease in strength of the Athenians would be a
relative increase in strength for their enemy, the Spartans. Following the invasion, the Melos offer
the Athenians peace, which they refuse, instead executing the men that fought against them and
enslaving the women and children (Thucydides, 431 B.C.). Relating this ancient tale to academic
debate, it demonstrates that, even 2,400 years ago, the city-states of Greece sought to maximize their
own power. The history of international relations demonstrates that nation-states act in their own
self-interest. These types of arguments are foundational in any debate against critical arguments
based on the premise that violence is not inevitable or that nation-states will choose to behave in
benevolent ways towards one another. It can also be used as a great example of the importance of
perception. For example, despite the conclusion made by the Athenians, the U.S. does not need
to invade North Korea to deter them from acting aggressively. However, the U.S. must maintain
the perception that they will defend their allies against threats from their enemies. In international
relations, what matters are how other nation-states perceive the U.S. and how willing the U.S. is
perceived to defend its interests. The next historical event takes us nearly 2,000 years into the future
at the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 A.D.
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The Peace of Westphalia

The Thirty Years War, fought for religious and territorial reasons between the major European
powers at the time, concluded in a series of peace treaties. International relations theorists describe
today’s world as a Westphalian system of sovereignty. The international system of nation-states,
their boundaries, and the centrality of the nation-state in international relations are largely credited
to these agreements. Before the Peace, the centrality of Christendom reigned in Europe, and the
major focus of sovereignty was not based on historical territorial claims or collective groups of
people. Instead, the notion of sovereignty was only reinforced through the divine right status
of the royal families of Europe, and the Pope in Rome recognized this form of sovereignty as
legitimate. Westphalian sovereignty is the beginning of the modern realist system, where the
interests of each individual nation-state were the maximization of its power and preservation of
the sovereignty and security of the nation-state. Westphalian sovereignty is strongly based on the
idea of non-intervention in the affairs of other nation-states and it is easy to see how this rise of
the nation-state fueled the nationalist sentiments that grew out of populist movements in the 19th
century.
The Peace of Westphalia is extraordinarily important to understanding international relations,
hegemony, and its intersection with many arguments you will encounter in parliamentary debate.
The rise of the centrality of the nation-state and the focus on the preservation of sovereignty explains
why Mearsheimer argues, “the real world remains a realist world” (2001, p. 361). For example,
most critique alternatives will argue that nation-states are not inherently self-interested, that they
can work in a cooperative fashion, and that power does not operate in a vacuum. The story of
the Peace of Westphalia should serve as a strong example to answer back these claims. First, it
demonstrates that nation-states have behaved in a specific way for the last 360 years. Even before
the rise of the Westphalian system, the city-states of Greece also behaved in a self-interested manner.
It should be relatively easy to explain that, just because the U.S. decides to act in ways contrary
to its self-interest, it does not mean that other countries will follow. When the U.S. offered to
dismantle all of its nuclear weapons at the Reykjavik Summit in 1986, the Soviet Union would not
agree because they were still suspicious of the intentions of the U.S. As a more recent example, the
U.S. and China have been unable to agree on emissions reductions because both are worried about
the economic impact these reductions would have on their respective economies.
Second, despite the formation of the European Union and the United Nations, nation-states still
care deeply about their sovereignty and their self-interest. The rejection of the League of Nations
following World War I represented a traditional view of international relations, rejecting Wilsonian
liberalism in favor of Westphalian realism. Following the end of World War II, world leaders were
looking for a solution to prevent another outbreak of a great power war, so they returned to the ideas
of Wilsonian liberalism and attempted to establish collective economic and security regimes. Yet,
as the global economic recession deepened and more and more European countries came closer to
default, this collective economic arrangement began to falter. Threats from Germany to withdraw
from the E.U. or that the E.U. might kick countries like Greece out of the alliance, demonstrates
the limits of this type of collective economic security. The United Kingdom, one of the strongest
economies in Europe, refuses to adopt the Euro as its currency, opting instead for sovereignty. The
continued inter and intrastate violence that occurs on a daily basis also indicates that collective
security does not work, with great powers instead opting to intervene only when their national
interests are at stake, generally respecting the sovereignty of other countries. Despite the best
attempts of liberal internationalists, the Westphalian system is alive and well.

Power Transitions and Diffusion of Power

I have already discussed the two most important power transitions that are related to competitive
270 Chapter 28. The Case for American Hegemony

debate: the rise of U.S. regional hegemony following the Spanish American War and the dominance
of the U.S. in a unipolar world following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989. The U.S.
currently leads the world in economic growth, defense spending, and despite recent setbacks in
some parts of the world, a global network of security alliances that gives the U.S. unrivaled access
to airspace and bases. Thus, it is unlikely, although not impossible, that any significant power
transition will take place in the coming decades. This section will go into more detail about
some of the major threats to American power, and also how the diffusion of power, specifically
telecommunications, is reshaping international relations.
At the end of the 1970’s, international relations experts in the U.S. were worried about the threat
Japan posed to U.S. hegemony because of its rising economy. Today, many people are worried about
the rise of China’s economy and their increased defense spending as a potential threat to American
hegemony. Joseph S. Nye, Jr. (2011), however, is apt to point out that predictions about China’s
economy are too long-term to make accurate assumptions about the future of American power.
Nye does concede that relative U.S. power, that is to say its power in relation to other countries,
will certainly decline as economic power continues to shift eastward. However, it is unlikely
that China, or any group of countries, will surpass the U.S. as global hegemon. Even as China’s
economy continues to grow, its per capita income continues to lag, recent slowdowns as a result of
its overheated housing market, and inherent instability due to a politically repressed population are
all question marks that make it very unlikely that China will challenge U.S. hegemony.
Despite these inherent advantages possessed by the U.S. as the world’s hegemon, the diffusion of
telecommunications and other forms of technology creates new challenges for America’s leaders.
This diffusion of power represents both economic and security risks to the U.S. as we attempt
to maintain our position atop the international arena. Economically, with the adoption of free
trade agreements, decreases in transportation time, and changes in the American economy, it is
much easier for countries to compete. For example, in 2010, China overtook the U.S. in overall
manufacturing output (Sims, 2013). Thomas Friedman (2008) explains how advances in information
technology have allowed countries to expand their economies by several degrees. Now, it is much
easier for farmers in Africa to connect to buyers in Europe due to the decrease in the price of
telecommunications and the advent of the Internet. For our purposes in debate, this premise is
important when you are presented with topics that deal with innovation, technology, and economic
growth. I will discuss this aspect in more detail, but the strength of the U.S. economy is an important
factor in our ability to maintain our hegemony.
The security risks from the diffusion of power represent an even greater threat to American
hegemony. Nye (2011) discusses how easy it was for Europeans to colonize Africa – the weapons
possessed by those living in Africa were no match for the repeating rifles of the European colonizers.
In the 21st century, asymmetric tactics, specifically the shifting of major conflict from the battlefield
to the street, have neutralized many of the military advantages of the U.S. The guerrilla tactics
used by the Taliban and its affiliates in Afghanistan have prevented the U.S. from pacifying the
country despite over a decade of continuous military deployments. On a state to state level, the
increase in use of cyber warfare, especially by China and Russia, is allowing those two countries
to more quickly close the gap with the U.S. Nye argues that the risk of cyber warfare is quite
good for two reasons. First, both Russia and China have already shown their willingness to use
this type of warfare and Nye specifically discusses the Russian ability to undermine the Estonian
banking system in 2007. Second, even though there are massive dangers posed by this type of
warfare, Russia, China, and the U.S. have been unable to agree to a treaty against its use. Unlike
the taboo amongst the great powers against the use of chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons,
this same ethic does not exist for cyber warfare. In terms of debate, the diffusion of power can
either demonstrate the long-term instability of U.S. hegemony or can serve as an advantage scenario
 271

concerning the need to strengthen America’s defenses against cyber warfare.

This section covered only three major events in the last 2,400 years of international relations history
and thus is not meant to serve as an exhaustive list. Since parliamentary debate is often driven by
knowledge of historical examples, the examples provided here, along with more you can discover in
your own research, should serve as a strong framework for understanding international relations as a
student and its utility in parliamentary debate. When defending hegemony or answering critiques of
this traditional concept of power, it is important to remember the history of the Westphalian system
because it demonstrates how nation-states have acted for several hundred years. The maximization
of power and the perception that other countries have of one another remain the most important
concepts in international relations. In the next section, I will discuss the utility of hegemony
arguments in academic debate.

Applications for Hegemony in Debate: Internal Links

Arguments about the benefits of American hegemony are prevalent in parliamentary debate. Ac-
cordingly, whether you decide to run these arguments or not, it is important for you to learn
their many intricacies. The major utility of hegemony arguments in debate is the near universal
application to a wide variety of potential topics. Given that the topic changes each round in debate,
it is important to have a firm understanding of hegemony in your argumentative arsenal. This
section will discuss many, although not all of, the different topics where hegemony arguments apply.

Education
Whether the topic deals with K-12 or college education, it is possible to connect the strength
of America’s schools to its standing in the international arena. Many American politicians are
beginning to use the phrase “STEM”, which is an acronym for “science, technology, engineering,
and math.” STEM policies focus on strengthening America’s students in the “hard sciences”, which
are areas where the U.S. is beginning to lag behind its competitors. Advances in science and
technology have made the U.S. the world leader in both the economic and military spheres, and
given that these qualities make a nation-state powerful, there is no doubt that this type of innovation
will remain important for the hegemon of the 21st century.

Economic Competitiveness
Innovation, economic competitiveness, and an intelligent workforce are closely linked to the quality
of education in the U.S., yet these concepts can also apply to nearly any topic about the state of
the U.S. economy. Bill Gates, a major supporter of education initiatives that focus on innovation
said, “For decades, innovation has been the engine of prosperity in this country. Now, economic
progress depends more than ever on innovation? If we make the right choices, the United States
can remain the global innovation leader that it is today.” I find the example of U.K.’s rise as leader
of the international sphere useful when discussing the importance of innovation in determining the
future of American power. Zalmay Khalilzad (1995), when discussing innovation, asks his readers
to imagine a world where the U.K. did not lead the world in the transition from a wood-based fuel
economy to one based on coal. As we approach the next technological innovation in how we fuel
the planet’s energy needs, it is important for the U.S. to lead on this issue. Thus, on any topic that
deals with renewable energy, it is easy to establish that the leader in renewable energy innovation
will likely lead the international arena in the 21st century, just as the U.K. did in the 18th and 19th
centuries.
272 Chapter 28. The Case for American Hegemony

The Budget
Budget issues are another economic area that is debated often. Mostly, these debates concern how
the U.S. should best deal with reforming its entitlement programs, and thus the metaphor of “guns
vs. butter” can apply to the debate. Although not necessarily a zero sum budget game, the rising
costs of entitlement programs are likely to cause major cuts in defense spending. Despite what is
commonly understood in debate circles, the largest contributor to the federal budget deficit in the
next several years will not be defense spending, but rather entitlement spending. With sequestration
exempting Social Security and Medicare, the defense budget faced another large cut after already
seeing its budget cut by 450billionover10years.T hetotalcuttothede f ensebudgetwillbeover1 tril-
lion over the next decade, not counting the drawdown of American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Although Secretaries Leon Panetta and Chuck Hagel both indicated that sequestration cuts are
harmful to U.S. interests throughout the world, it is not likely that they will be enough to under-
mine America’s standing in the world. However, without fixes to entitlement programs in the
U.S., there will be no hope for the U.S. to keep its system of forward deployment that keeps
conflict from breaking out in numerous regions of the world. The Heritage Foundation predicts
that by 2030, entitlement programs will make up 81% of all federal spending, massively crowd-
ing out defense spending, which is already at historical lows as a percentage of GDP (Eaglen, 2009).

Immigration Reform
By passing comprehensive immigration reform, the U.S. can strengthen its hegemony. If the U.S.
adopted immigration reform, its standing in the world would increase for several reasons. First,
if the U.S. were to turn inward and reject comprehensive immigration reform, it will begin to
experience the types of demographic declines that are currently plaguing Europe and are likely
to plague China in the near future due to its one-child policy. These demographic declines make
budgeting more difficult, especially as more and more baby boomers reach retirement. However, if
the U.S. can maintain its population growth through immigration, it is possible to maintain a stable
entitlement system. Second, the correlation between H-1B visas and new technological innovations
is significant (Nye, 2011).

Soft Power
The next several paragraphs will discuss the different types of power that are commonly associated
with hegemony debates – many of these terms are misused, even in the highest-level debates, so I
will take time here to carefully define the meaning of each term. I will begin with soft power, a
term coined by Nye in the early 1990’s and refined in his 2004 book called Soft Power: The Means
to Success in World Politics. Nye (2004) defines soft power as “getting others to want the outcomes
that you want – [it] co-opts people rather than coerces them. Soft power rests on the ability to
shape the preferences of others” (p. 5). Thus, soft power has nothing to do with offering aid of any
kind to other countries, which is often how it is deployed in parliamentary debate. Instead, soft
power is about adopting policies that make the U.S. more attractive to other countries. For example,
if the U.S. were to end the death penalty, this would greatly please our European allies. Although
this type of policy probably will not reshape the international arena, it does demonstrate that soft
power deals more with influencing countries to like us, rather than coercing them to like us through
the use of foreign aid.
For example, at the Whitman Classic tournament in February 2013, one of the topic areas dealt
with increasing U.S. soft power in North Africa. Nearly every government case I judged (or heard
about) dealt with giving North African countries some form of economic or military aid to get those
countries to like the U.S. This is an example of a coercive policy, and thus has nothing to do with
soft power. Common topics where you might be able to garner a true soft power advantage include:
 273

closing our prisons at Guantanamo Bay, withdrawing our military forces from several bases in
the Middle East or Japan, ending our use of drone strikes in Pakistan, or adopting international
treaties such as the Law of the Sea. These types of policy changes might make the U.S. look less
hypocritical to our allies or might strengthen our resolve for democracy and human rights. In
rare cases, the use of military force to prevent genocide or other human rights abuses could also
strengthen American soft power by making our power look more attractive to others. One major
benefit of soft power, outlined by Nye, is that it helped the U.S. defeat the Soviet Union in the Cold
War. Even though it was our military rivalry that eventually drove the Soviet Union into economic
ruin, the attraction our form of democracy and our freedoms had on Eastern bloc countries also
helped bring down the Soviet Union.

Hard Power
Soft power is not the only strategy the U.S. can adopt to maintain its hegemony. Although more
popular with neoconservatives in the Bush administration, a strict adherence to hard power still has
some support today. Hard power is a coercive tool of statecraft, generally associated with the use
or threats of military force, the application of economic sanctions, or ending diplomatic ties (Nye,
2004). Hard power is most closely associated with the concept of deterrence theory, which aims to
prevent challenges to American power by demonstrating that it is too costly to attempt to unseat the
U.S. as global hegemon. For example, the United States’ “Asian Pivot” is an example of a hard
power strategy, where the U.S. has increased its military presence in Asia in an attempt to deter the
threatening rise of China. A strict adherence to hard power has many drawbacks. Following the
9/11 terrorist attacks, America’s popularity among its allies was quite strong. However, after its
decision to deploy military force against Iraq, the United States’ standing with the rest of the world
substantially decreased, demonstrating a drawback of hard power by ignoring the wishes of our
long-standing allies. The use of military force alone not only distances us from our allies, but it
also has the possibility to radicalize populations against U.S. power. For example, until the U.S.
employed its “hearts and minds” strategy in Iraq and Afghanistan, nation building in those two
countries was an abysmal failure. Only when it is combined with soft power can its benefits truly
be actualized. Nye (2004) defines this type of power as “smart power”, or the combination of hard
and soft power. Nye explains that attracting people to our hegemony through soft power is essential
to our hard power because countries are more likely to give us access to bases and overflight rights.

Sticky Power
“Sticky power” is a concept widely used in parliamentary debate. Sticky power, a term coined
by Walter Russel Mead (2004), states that America’s economic power and associated economic
institutions attract people to our power and then traps them inside it. Mead explains that sticky
power makes it too costly for the U.S. and China to enter into armed conflict with one another
because there is too much at stake for both countries. With trillions of dollars in goods traded
between the two countries, breaking off economic ties would be disastrous for both countries.
Essentially, “Sticky power, then, is important to U.S. hegemony for two reasons: It helps prevent
war, and, if war comes, it helps the United States win” (Mead, 2004). Ensuring that countries enter
the international economic system instead of isolating them through sanctions can help prevent
conflict in the future.

Unilateralism Vs. Multilateralism

The final internal link scenarios I will discuss are the differences between unilateralism versus
multilateralism. Unilateralism means acting on one’s own, without the approval of other countries.
This is a difficult discussion to have because, even though the Iraq War represented a large “coalition
274 Chapter 28. The Case for American Hegemony

of the willing”, many still considered it a unilateral military action by the U.S. For the purposes of
discussing the concept through its application to competitive debate, I will focus on whether the U.S.
should or should not act with multilateral institutions. Scholars like Nye (2001) typically believe
that the U.S. should have a general preference for multilateralism, while reserving the right to act
unilaterally if its national interests are at stake. On the other side of the spectrum, neoconservative
unilateralists like Charles Krauthammer (2003), believe that international institutions seek to tie
down U.S. power, preventing our freedom of action. Those that favor acting through international
institutions typically believe that it strengthens our soft power, while those that believe in avoiding
international institutions typically believe it hurts our hard power.
I hope that this section accomplished two goals. First, it should demonstrate the versatility of
hegemony in parliamentary debate. On nearly any topic, someone who knows the hegemony debate
should be capable of garnering an internal link to either side of the resolution. Second, there are
intense debates occurring in the literature over how best to maximize America’s power. There is no
right answer to this question, which makes its versatility in debate even greater.

Applications for Hegemony in Debate: Impacts

The ability for the U.S. to maintain its hegemony in the 21st century is necessary to preserve “peace,
democracy, and free markets” (Mandelbaum, 2002). Although hegemony is sometimes used as
a bad word, mainly in liberal academic circles, it is tough to imagine a world in which another
country sits atop the international arena. This section explores the many reasons why it is beneficial
for the U.S. to maintain its hegemony, and although the list is not exhaustive, it is quite extensive.
I will begin by discussing the economic, military, and social benefits of maintaining hegemony
before ending with an explanation of why there is no alternative to U.S. power.

Stable Economic System

The U.S. should maintain its hegemony, foremost, to ensure a stable functioning of the international
economy. Since the establishment of the Bretton Woods system, the U.S. dollar has served as
the world’s reserve currency, with many commodities, such as oil, traded in dollars. This type of
stability is necessary to prevent widespread inflation and price fluctuation in international markets.
The U.S. has also been instrumental in formulating and sustaining the International Monetary Fund,
World Bank, and World Trade Organization, three international organizations dedicated to economic
growth and eradicating poverty in the developing world (Mandelbaum, 2004). A stable economic
system also depends on the free flow of goods. Through the forward deployment of the Navy, the
U.S. maintains the freedom of the seas, protecting trade from “plunderers and pirates”, which could
easily disrupt global commerce at major chokepoints. Thus protecting sea lines of communication
from shutdown is another important economic aspect of American hegemony (Fergusson, 2004).

Preserving Peace
Preventing conflict and maintaining peace among the major powers is another primary goal of
American hegemony. Since the U.S. assumed its leadership role atop the international arena, there
have been no “hot wars” fought between the great powers, and the world entered a relatively peace-
ful period for the first time since the establishment of the German state in 1870. U.S. hegemony
provides reassurance to our allies that they will remain safe from attack, which prevents many
countries, like Japan and Germany, from creating offensive militaries. By forwardly deploying
our nuclear weapons arsenal and extending our nuclear umbrella, the U.S. erases any need for its
allies to maintain nuclear weapons of their own. This benefit of U.S. hegemony plays a large part in
 275

preventing nuclear proliferation (Mandelbaum, 2005). Outside of security guarantees, the strength
of the U.S. military also deters other countries from acting aggressively in their own regions. In
2012, Zbigniew Brzezinski outlined eight specific scenarios for conflict should American hegemony
decline: Georgia, Taiwan, South Korea, Belarus, Ukraine, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Israel – you
should familiarize yourself with the intricacies of each of these scenarios.

Social Benefits of American Leadership

American leadership also provides many additional benefits because of the values that the country
espouses. The U.S. provides a large amount of humanitarian assistance to the rest of the world, and
should the U.S. turn inward, this form of aid would substantially decline (Fergusson, 2004). The
U.S. has provided development aid to countries to strengthen their infrastructure, democratic, and
financial institutions in an attempt to bring Western values and lifestyles to the developing world.
The World Bank predicts that the liberalization of markets in India and China has lifted a billion
people out of poverty since the 1970’s, representing the greatest amount of poverty eradication in the
history of the world (Bhagwati, 2007). America’s commitment to protecting the global environment,
especially through international agreements is another area for consideration. Although the U.S.
has recently abandoned its long history of working with international institutions to protect the
environment, major successes in the past, such as the Montreal Protocol that solved the ozone layer
crisis in the 1980s demonstrate that the U.S. does have the ability to solve major transnational
environmental issues like climate change (Nye, 2003).

If not the U.S., then who?

The most important argument to win in any hegemony debate, however, is that there is no alternative
to U.S. power. Of course, there are other countries that will rise up in their own regional sphere
of influence, but this leaves the countries in those regions vulnerable to conquest. As noted
previously, there are at least eight areas of the world that are threatened should U.S. hegemony
decline. However, there is no country, or group of countries, that can replace the U.S. as the global
hegemon. No one has the economic strength or global military reach that the U.S. possesses to
maintain international order. In essence, a decline of U.S. hegemony would result in a “global
vacuum of power” (Fergusson, 2004). The risk of a world without American power extends beyond
the fact that no one can step in for the U.S. to maintain global peace. Robert Kagan (2012) explains
that, despite what liberal internationalists will tell you about the ascent of capitalism and democracy
throughout the world, this trend is not inevitable. The type of government and economic system
that the hegemon of the time believes in sculpts the global landscape. During the height of the
British Empire, free trade and capitalism spread rapidly throughout the world because the British
government believed in these policies. However, should the U.S. decline, it is unlikely that any
potential replacement would stand for democracy, peace, and free markets. China believes in a
state-managed economic system with virtually no democratic rights for its citizens and Russia is
an autocracy that is currently experiencing a democratic backslide. Thus, the importance of U.S.
hegemony rests in its ability to shape the world’s security, economic, and political systems.
This section briefly examined several advantages of maintaining U.S. hegemony. In any “impact
level” debates about hegemony, it is important to stress that changes in the international arena
generally are not peaceful. Although there are plenty of mistakes that the U.S. has made during
our time as global hegemon, the benefits far outweigh the costs. It is important to remind the
judges to ask themselves, “What does the world look like without U.S. hegemony?” Debates about
hegemony are never about the little things – they are always about the big picture. There are very
few areas, if any, where teams could convince the judge that a Chinese or Russian led system is
more beneficial than one dominated by the U.S. Now that I have explained the benefits of hegemony,
276 Chapter 28. The Case for American Hegemony

I will introduce a nuanced strategy for answering the argument.

Strategies for Answering Hegemony

There are many approaches to answering a debate argument premised on a defense of U.S. hege-
mony. Hopefully, now that you have an understanding of some of the important concepts, you
might develop your own method for defeating this argument. Although I will not spend time in
this section discussing link turn strategies (arguing that the government plan would actually hurt
hegemony), these are often the most formidable. Instead, I will focus my attention on my preferred,
often under utilized strategy – a defense of traditional power politics in the form of defensive
realism.

Note on Critical Strategies

I am not an expert on critical literature, and since my knowledge is not substantive on this topic, I
will leave it up to the other authors in this project to provide their insights on the matter. However,
I will provide a brief description of three different critical strategies you might deploy. The first
critical strategy, and my favorite of the critical approaches to the hegemony debate, is a feminist
critique of international relations. J. Ann Tickner (1992, 2001) is the foremost academic expert
on incorporating a gendered lens in scholarship on international relations. The basic thesis of this
argument is that realist theories of international relations are inherently masculine, focusing on
“high security” issues like nuclear weapons, instead of “social security” issues like poverty. This
traditional masculine approach to international relations makes war inevitable, and thus, the only
chance to maintain international peace is through a new, feminist way of thinking about security.
David Campbell (1998) writes about identity politics involved in U.S. foreign policy decisions.
Campbell explains reasons why realism is not an inevitable part of human thinking and also intro-
duces the concept of threat construction. This is a very easy criticism to learn and can link in any
debate where the other team defends that their plan strengthens America’s security. Campbell’s
argument says that American discourse about how the world is unsafe actually creates enemies out
of countries that pose very little risk to the U.S. or our allies. The final criticism I will discuss is
about the artificial construction of borders by nation-states. Michael J. Shapiro (1997) explains that
this artificial construction, borne out of centuries of colonization and violent expansionism, makes
conflict inevitable. Although this is only a brief explanation of critical strategies, reading the four
books referenced in this section will put you well on your way to constructing a strong critique in
any hegemony debate.

Defending “Offshore Balancing” As An Alternative To American Hegemony

More times than not in parliamentary debate, competitors will conflate the use of the terms
hegemony and realism. Even though these two concepts share some similarities, and hegemony is
an offshoot of traditional realist thinking, they are in fact criticisms of each other. If someone is
defending U.S. hegemony, you can argue that offshore balancing is a preferable strategy for the U.S.
to engage in. If the U.S. were to adopt an offshore balancing strategy, we would no longer forwardly
deploy our military assets, instead keeping them “over the horizon”, giving us the flexibility to
intervene only if our national interests are at stake (Mearsheimer, 2001). This section will begin
with a brief explanation of the differences between hegemony and realism and discuss the three
arguments you must win to prove offshore balancing is preferable to forward deployment.
Callahan (2003) explains that a nation-state’s conception of power and what constitutes the national
interest are the main differences between hegemonism and realism. Realists believe a nation-state
 277

only possesses enough power to defend its territorial integrity, thus upholding its sovereignty as
the core national interest of a nation-state. However, a hegemonist has an expanded view of both
of these concepts. Due to America’s military and economic strength, hegemonists believe that
the U.S. possesses near limitless power, and that it can exercise it freely to achieve its national
interest. Since a hegemonist believes in an expanded view of power, they also typically believe
that advancing freedom, democracy, peace, and free markets are part of the national interest of the
nation-state. Although this distinction might seem miniscule to some, it is an important one as I
continue to discuss this as a strategy to answering hegemony.
The crux of this strategy serves as an internal link turn to leadership impacts. The point is not to
say that U.S. hegemony is bad because it is militaristic or colonialist, but simply that hegemony is
an overreach of American power. There are three main arguments you must win to make this an
effective strategy. First, American hegemony creates resentment among our allies and adversaries.
Second, this resentment will collapse American hegemony. Finally, that the forward deployment of
American forces makes conflict inevitable.
I have briefly discussed the ways that hard military power makes others resentful of American
hegemony, and I will go more in-depth now. If you wish to excel at the execution of this argument, I
suggest reading Stephen M. Walt’s (2006) Taming American Power, which is cited in the reference
section of this chapter. There are several reasons why too much power creates resentment among
other countries. First, this is a natural reaction by other countries that fear either losing their
own influence or their sovereignty as a result of American dominance. Second, it is likely that
U.S. security guarantees have created conflicting interests. For example, what would happen if
Taiwan and Japan were engaged in a territorial dispute? Since we have a mutual defense treaty
with both countries, it is impossible for us to pick sides if conflict would break out. Third, the U.S.
engages in many hypocritical actions that anger other countries. The U.S. attempts to advance
non-proliferation accords while maintaining a significant number of nuclear weapons in its own
arsenal. We condemn non-state actors for their indiscriminate use of force, but continue to use
drone strikes, landmines, and other military actions that create significant civilian casualties. This
is just a brief list of America’s hypocritical actions, but they have a significant negative impact
on our international reputation. Fourth, the U.S. will fall victim to imperial overstretch like every
other country that attempted global hegemony. We simply have too many global obligations to
maintain them all. The U.S. does have an extensive global network of bases, alliances, and air
and naval forces that are forwardly deployed, but all of these are in jeopardy as a result of recent
defense budget cuts. Finally, U.S. policy creates resentment among terrorist organizations – from
our military footprint in the Middle East, our liberal values, to our support for Israel. All of these
factors diminish America’s ability to maintain its standing in the world (Walt, 2006).
The resentment created by American policy results in strategies of opposition that makes the
collapse of U.S. hegemony likely. This form of opposition begins with a concept called “balancing”,
meaning that other countries form coalitions to resist American power. For example, in the summer
of 2012, Russia and China held their first-ever joint naval war games (“China”). This type of
balancing, where countries attempt to create military alliances against the hegemon, is known
as “hard balancing”. On the other hand, “soft balancing” occurs when countries form diplomatic
coalitions to counteract the power of the hegemon. The best example of “soft balancing” occurred
during the run-up to the Iraq War when France demanded that the U.S. seek U.N. authorization
through the Security Council where they had veto power. The final type of balancing is known as
“internal balancing”. This occurs when countries utilize their own strengths to counter the hegemon.
For example, Chinese leaders have emphasized the need for cyber-warfare capabilities and have
developed anti-carrier cruise missiles to challenge U.S. dominance in Asia. The final strategy I will
discuss is the proliferation of nuclear weapons. Many argue that the only reason a country like
278 Chapter 28. The Case for American Hegemony

North Korea or Iran seeks nuclear weapons is because they fear an invasion from the U.S. This
not only undermines U.S. efforts at non-proliferation, but also limits our freedom to pursue our
objectives in the region. If U.S. forces are constantly the targets of nuclear weapons from rogue
states, it is unlikely that the U.S. will maintain the flexibility to remain the global hegemon. This
type of behavior is empirically proven during the Cold War, when Egyptian leaders threatened to
switch their allegiance to the U.S. unless they received more military aid from the Soviet Union.
An over reliance on allies, especially for access to bases, sea lines of communication, and air space,
significantly limits American power (Walt, 2006).

This amount of resentment assures an inevitable decline in U.S. standing in the international
arena. Thus, if the opposing team claims any type of leadership impact (whether cultural, military,
or economic), you can argue that the preservation of hegemony is impossible. Winning that
American hegemony is unsustainable is an important uniqueness argument because it demonstrates
that America will eventually decline. Thus, if you can win an argument that says transitioning
from American hegemony sooner is better than later, you have made a complete, round-winning
argument.

There are impacts beyond resentment that make a transition from U.S. forward deployment to
offshore balancing even more compelling. Forward deployment of U.S. military forces causes
other countries to pursue weapons that balance U.S. power, which serves as an example to answer
any of your opponent’s arguments about allied re-armament. This type of forward deployment
also increases the chances for miscalculation because it is impossible for nation-states to know the
exact intentions of one another. For example, because China views access to energy resources as a
national security threat, they might preemptively strike American forces in the Malacca Straits to
ensure that the U.S. Navy does not shut down the Straits, siphoning off China’s access to oil (Glain,
2004). Power transition theory indicates that when a rising challenger approaches power parity
with the dominant state, war is increasingly likely. This occurs at the point of power parity because
a rising power has little incentive to attack the dominant state because they will lose that battle.
Likewise, a declining dominant state, once it loses its status, has very little reason to challenge the
newly dominant state (Organski, 1958). In our example, where the U.S. inevitably declines and
China rises as the next dominant state, the U.S. much choose whether to smoothly transition to a
new Chinese dominated system or decide to fight as the two countries reach power parity. A world
of offshore balancing attempts to avoid these conflicts because the main goal of any nation-state
should not be global dominance, but rather the security of the state. Nothing within the grand
strategy of offshore balancing would mean that the U.S. could not engage in military conflict
to defend its national interests. In a world of offshore balancing, the U.S. maintains a massive
amount of economic and military power, remains one of many leaders in the international arena, but
would substantially reduce its military footprint throughout the world. This means less resentment,
less risk for great power conflict, and a more reasoned approach to the decision to use military
force.

This section explored three strategies you can deploy when encountering hegemony arguments in
parliamentary debate. A debater can decide to use a traditional link turn approach, explaining how
the team defending U.S. hegemony will actually cause the standing of the U.S. in the international
arena to decline. The next approach is to criticize the opposing team for defending American
hegemony through a critical lens, arguing that they make conflict between nation-states inevitable.
The final strategy, and my preferred one, is to defend offshore balancing as an alternative grand
strategy to forward deployment. No matter what strategy you choose to deploy, hopefully these
options demonstrate the versatility in approaches to answering this specific argument.
 279

Conclusion

Learning how to deploy a robust defense of American hegemony can pay major dividends in your
competitive debate career. It is important to remember that whether you personally agree that the
U.S. should remain as the global hegemon or not should be irrelevant when deciding whether to
deploy these arguments in debate. A major benefit of academic debate is that it should serve as a
testing ground for new ideas. Additionally, learning to defend arguments you do not personally
believe in can be incredibly helpful in becoming a better advocate for your own beliefs in the real
world. This chapter began with a brief explanation of how international relations have evolved over
the last 2,500 years. It is important to remember that history is all about perspective, and I have
composed much of this work from the perspective that maintaining American hegemony ought be
the primary goal of U.S. policymakers. Next, I discussed the versatility of deploying hegemony
arguments in your own parliamentary debate rounds. It is tough to find another argument that can
apply to as many different topics, especially ones that are so frequently debated. Whether the topic
is about the military or domestic social programs, it should not be difficult for you to tie it back
to strengthening American hegemony. Finally, I explored three different strategies for defeating
these arguments in parliamentary debate. Any of the proposed strategies, from link turns to critical
strategies, should give you a chance to win the debate. However, I believe that it would be beneficial
if debates about American hegemony became more nuanced, and debaters more persuasively
argued about America’s grand strategy. In the end, it is important to remember that there are many
uncertainties when dealing with international relations, and this level of uncertainty is a compelling
reason to maintain American hegemony. As Michael Mandelbaum writes, “Grudgingly, tacitly,
silently, other countries support the American role as the world’s government out of the well-
grounded fear that while the conduct of the United States may be clumsy, overbearing, and even
occasionally insufferable, the alternative would be even worse, perhaps much worse” (2005, p. 195).

References:

Bhagwati, J. (2004). In defense of globalization. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Brzezinski, Z. (2012). Strategic vision: America and the crisis of global power. New York, NY:
Basic Books.

Campbell, D. (1998). Writing security: United States foreign policy and the politics of identity.
Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.

Callahan, P. (2003). Logics of American foreign policy: Theories of America’s world role. Upper
Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education.

“China, Russia begin naval war games”. (2012, April 22). NBC News. Retrieved June 16, 2013
from http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/04/22/11332542-china-russia-begin-naval-war-
games?lite

Eaglen, M. (2009, December 7). “Entitlements crowd out defense spending, and it’s only getting
worse. The Heritage Foundation. Retrieved June 16, 2013 from http://blog.heritage.org/2009/12/07/entitlements-
crowd-out-defense-spending-and-it’s-only-getting-worse/
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Ferguson, N. (2004, July 1). “A world without power”. Foreign Policy. Retrieved June 16, 2013
from http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2004/07/01/a _world _without _power

Friedman, T. (2008). Hot, flat, and crowded: Why we need a green revolution – and how it can
renew America. New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Glain, S. (2004, December 22). “Yet another great game”. Newsweek International. Retrieved June
16, 2013, from http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2004/12/19/yet-another-great-game.html

Kagan, R. (2012). The world America made. New York, NY: Vintage Books.

Khalilzad, Z. (1995). “Losing the moment? The United States and the world after the Cold War”.
The Washington Quarterly, 18(2).

Krauthammer, C. (2003). “The unipolar moment revisited”. The National Interest. Retrieved June
16, 2013 from http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/files/krauthammer.pdf

Mandelbaum, M. (2002). The ideas that conquered the world: peace, democracy, and free markets
in the twenty-first century. New York, NY: Public Affairs.

Mandelbaum, M. (2005). The case for Goliath: How America acts as the world’s government in
the 21st century. New York, NY: Public Affairs.

Mead, W.R. (2004, March 1). “America’s sticky power”. Foreign Policy. Retrieved June 16, 2013
from http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2004/03/01/americas _sticky _power

Mearsheimer, J. J. (2001). The tragedy of great power politics. New York, NY: W.W. Norton &
Company.

Nye Jr., J. S. (2002). The paradox of American power: Why the world’s only superpower can’t go
it alone. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Nye Jr., J. S. (2004).Soft power: The means to success in world politics. New York, NY: Public
Affairs.

Nye Jr., J. S. (2011). The future of power. New York, NY: Public Affairs.

Organski, A.F.K. (1958). World politics. New York, NY: Knopf.

Shapiro, M. J. (1997). Violent cartographies: Mapping cultures of war. Minneapolis, MN: Univer-
sity of Minnesota Press.
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Sims, D. (2013, March 14). “China widens lead as world’ largest manufacturer”. Industry Market
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lead-as-worlds-largest-manufacturer/

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Tickner, J.A. (1992). Gender in international relations: Feminist perspectives on achieving global
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Tickner, J.A. (2001). Gendering world politics: Issues and approaches in the post-Cold War era.
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Walt, S.M. (2006). Taming American power: The global response to U.S. primacy. New York, NY:
W.W. Norton & Company.
 29. Permutation Theory

W INNING WITH P ERMUTATIONS AND P ERMUTATION T HEORY

J OE A LLEN – WASHBURN U NIVERSITY

Introduction

A permutation is an argument typically introduced by the Member of Government Constructive

(MGC) designed to challenge the competitiveness of a counterplan or criticism introduced by the
Leader of Opposition Constructive (LOC). The notion of “competitiveness” refers to whether or not
a counterplan or kritik alternative is an opportunity cost to the plan presented by the Prime Minister
Constructive (PMC) – a kritik alternative and/or counterplan text must be mutually exclusive. Put
simply, it should not be possible or desirable for the alternative or counterplan and the plan to occur
in tandem. In the event that a counterplan text or kritik alternative is not incompatible with the
plan, permutations “test” compatibility. This certainly seems like a simple concept to initiated
debaters, but there are many different types of permutations and necessary theoretical concepts
which must be understood as a foundation for understanding the appropriate application of different
permutations.

Permutation: A Test of Competition

A permutation is not an advocacy, but a test of competition. This may start to feel confusing when
you start to think about how frequently the desirability of the permutation becomes the central
question of the debate. It is also confusing because permutations often have an exact text that is
exchanged between debaters. Understand, though, that this is not suggestive of the permutation
being an “advocacy” in the debate in the same way that a plan, counterplan or alternative text is
advocated. Permutations are arguments that determine whether or not a counterplan or alternative
284 Chapter 29. Permutation Theory

competes with the plan, so it is useful to think of them as a test of the link to the net benefit that
derives from a counterplan or alternative rather than thinking of them as an advocacy. Almost
universally, the only theoretically unobjectionable permutation is constituted by all parts of the plan
text and all or part of the counterplan text or alternative text. If the plan text calls for the United
States to militarily intervene in the recent turmoil in Iraq, and the counterplan calls for Chinese
military intervention, the appropriate and legitimate permutation would call for both the United
States and China to intervene. The risk of this type of counterplan makes it desirable and necessary
to qualify and substantiate the actor that you have chosen to use in your PMC plan text.

Severance and Intrinsic Permutations

All deviations from the “do both” permutation described above are either intrinsic permutations
or severance permutations. An intrinsic permutation is a permutation that goes beyond the scope
of the plan text, counterplan text, or alternative text – i.e., there is an element contained in the
MGC permutation language that does not exist in a previously introduced text. Using the previous
example, an intrinsic permutation of the China Counterplan may be instructive. Imagine the
permutation, “The United States Federal Government should militarily intervene in Iraq in genuine
prior-binding consultation with China.” In this case, the element of consultation contained in the
permutation renders it intrinsic by virtue of the fact that consultation is not present in either the
PMC plan text or LOC counterplan text. A severance permutation is a permutation that does not
include the entire plan. It is referred to as such because it “severs” part of the PMC plan. Imagine
the permutation, “The United States Federal government should intervene in Iraq in genuine prior-
binding consultation with China.” In this case, the element of consultation has been added (intrinsic)
and the “military” element has been severed (severance). Additional situational applications of
intrinsic or severance permutations will be discussed in more detail below.

Net-Benefits to a Permutation

A permutation ought have a net benefit. In other terms, there ought to be a reason why the
permutation is net desirable to the counterplan or alternative alone. By way of example, if the
plan includes United States action and the counterplan includes Russian action, one might say that
the net benefit to the permutation is the greater totality of resources which the permutation would
offer by comparison (sometimes it will be suggested that the counterplan has “double solvency” for
precisely this reason), or perhaps some additional benefit could be offered by cooperation between
the United States and Russia, such as “improved relations.”
Conversely, the Member of Opposition Constructive (MOC) will often enumerate disadvantages to
the permutation. This is distinctive from typical disadvantages to the plan because a disadvantage
to the permutation, ideally, demonstrates why the permutation is less desirable than the plan itself.
Impact turning the net benefit to the permutation (arguing that the impact to the disadvantage is
actually good ) is one simple way – although assuredly not the only way – of accomplishing this
objective. Taking the previous example, if the net benefit to the permutation is improved relations
with Russia, an explanation of why poor relations with Russia are actually desirable could be a very
useful starting point for a disadvantage to the permutation. It should be noted, however, that the
ideal disadvantage to the plan (when avoided by the counterplan) should also protect the opposition
from the permutation by virtue of having a link argument that is premised precisely on the plan text
(all of which will be included in the permutation if it is a theoretically legitimate permutation). For
example, if the plan does something politically unpopular and the counterplan accomplishes the
 285

same objectives of the plan in an apolitical fashion, a politics disadvantage could be sufficient to
demonstrate why the permutation is less desirable of an option than the counterplan. Again, the
ideal circumstances for the opposition will convey why the permutation is even less desirable than
the plan itself, but this is not an absolute necessity.
If we think about the permutation debate as a comparison between the net benefit offered by the
permutation and the disadvantages carried by the permutation, we have a good starting point for
ascertaining whether or not the plan is a preferable option when contrasted to the counterplan or
alternative. It is difficult to win permutation debates without a good government case/plan, and
a great government strategy will situate you favorably against counterplans and kritiks. A great
case should make for a great permutation because the inclusion of your plan/case is often the most
obvious and contestable net benefit to the permutation.
Government teams often say that the permutation “shields the link” to the disadvantage. This can
be a useful way of eliminating offense against the permutation. The counterplan often avoids the
disadvantage so convincingly that this fact can work in favor of the permutation. Perhaps a world of
the plan would link to the disadvantage, but a situation in which the plan and counterplan occurred
in tandem would necessarily avoid the fallout described by the disadvantage. It could also be the
case that the permutation might reflect more political unanimity or cohesion which the plan alone
does not result in, or that the permutation would result in the focus manifesting in the form of the
policy rather than the content of the policy (that is to say, the permutation might be an unusual
course of action which would divert focus away from the plan). For example, a politics disadvantage
links to the plan by virtue of the plan being politically unpopular. The disadvantage might be
avoided by a counterplan that includes action of courts instead of congress and the president. For
example, if congress and the courts take a particular action at virtually the same time, it might cease
to be an unpopular action, or at the very least, the uncharacteristic nature of such a permutation
might shift the focus away from the unpopularity of the plan action. Advancing a previous example,
the PMC plan may compel the United States take a particular stance. The LOC may advance a
disadvantage to the plan that indicates that the plan would have a negative impact on relations
with China and a China counterplan. The permutation may not possess the same disadvantage
as the plan alone if the U.S. and China were to take such action at the same time. In this way, a
permutation may have the utility of “shielding the link” to the disadvantage to the plan, which can
minimize the utility of disadvantages presented by the opposition. This fact alone should not cause
the counterplan to lose its value. Ideally, the opposition team ought have case arguments avoided
by the counterplan. It is also useful to consider that the opposition may “kick” the counterplan (to
dispose of in the MOC through strategic concessions) and the disadvantage remains as potent as it
was before the counterplan was introduced.
In summary, a permutation should include all of the plan text and all or parts of the alternative,
or counterplan text. A permutation should have a net benefit rendering it a more desirable option
than the counterplan or alternative. Permutations that do not include all of the plan are considered
severance permutations. Permutations that include elements not originally included in the plan
text and counterplan or alternative text are commonly considered “intrinsic” permutations. The
permutation can sometimes “shield the link” to the disadvantage, and winning permutations are
heavily contingent on the quality of the government case.

Textual versus Functional Competition

One good way to understand the intricacies and varieties of counterplan options available to you
is to consider the theory arguments designed for particular types of counterplans. For example,
286 Chapter 29. Permutation Theory

understanding the common theoretical objections to consultation counterplans illuminates the

strength of the argument when presented in the LOC and the strength of many arguments available
to the MGC. Below, I will discuss the common notion that counterplans compete on “textual” and/or
“functional” levels. Proponents of textual competition would typically argue that a counterplan
or alternative text must directly compete with the words used in the PMC plan text. In the SDI
Encyclopedia, Dr. Eric Morris (Missouri State University) indicates that, in a textual view, the PMC
would only be obligated to, “defend their plan against arguments (particularly counterplans) which
link to the plan as written, and are not liable for arguments which read between the lines to ”find”
things in the plan which are not textually present, or are at best implied,” thus, “only the explicit
words selected for the plan can create the basis for a counterplan to compete.”

Proponents of “functional competition” argue that counterplans or alternatives compete throughout

he function of the counterplan versus the function of the PMC plan text – since words represent
and imply actions. Once again, in the SDI Encyclopedia, Morris elaborates:

“The functional view says that the plan is merely a series of words representing a series
of actions, and that the plan should actually be viewed as those actions which are a
function of the plan, not merely as the words themselves.

From this perspective, a counterplan that involves a difference, competitive series of

actions could be viewed as competitive - even if it did not appear so at first glance
from viewing the plan text. Two examples may help:

1. Consultation. The traditional ”consultation” counterplan is an example. Most plans

do not explicitly claim to consult with another country, but also do not explicitly refuse
to do so. Thus, it requires some reading between the lines and perhaps even cross
examination to establish that the plan occurs immediately and without regard for the
input of others. The opposition thus establishes this, by CX or argument, and now has
a reason why the actions which would be a function of the plan are competitive with
the actions that would be a function of the counterplan.

2. Agent of Action. Some plan texts indicate the United State federal government will
take an action, but not which branch(es) will do what. Based on traditional roles, and
perhaps some CX questions, the opposition is able to establish that the plan takes the
form of legislation passed by the Congress, and then counterplans to have the president
instead sign an executive order to the same effect. The opposition’s argument is that the
counterplan competes with the actions that are a function of the plan (Congressional
passage of legislation), even if those functions are not explicit in the plan text itself.

The reason that negatives often prefer functional competition is that it expands the
range of possible counterplans. Counterplans such as consultation, executive order,
etc. may be viewed as competitive (though not necessarily legitimate - that may be a
separate issue) within the functional view.”1

Arguing, “the LOC counterplan is not textually competitive” is an increasingly common reason
presented by the MGC for the critic to reject the opposition ream, reject the counterplan on face, or
to give the MGC leeway on intrinsic or severance permutations.

1 This text has since been removed from http://sdiencyclopedia.wikispaces.com)

 287

Permutation: “Do the Counterplan”

Additionally, as a basis of your understanding, one cannot debate permutations effectively if they do
not understand the instances in which the permutation text ought to be: “do the counterplan.” This is
the appropriate permutation when the counterplan includes the entire plan text, a concern that results
in the tension between textual and functional competition. As mentioned above, for proponents of
textual competition, counterplans, which contain all of the plan text, are illegitimate because the
competition for these counterplans does not derive from what is textually included in the plan text.
By way of example, this would render all consultation counterplans, conditioning counterplans,
and delay counterplans decisively illegitimate. Such counterplans, by their very nature, include all
of the plan text. An appropriately phrased states counterplan is textually competitive if the plan
text contains the words “Federal Government” – ultimately, the argument would advance the claim
that a “States “ counterplan is, at it’s core, an agent counterplan. Proponents of textual competition
often focus on topic specific education and having a link argument, which is intrinsic to the plan
text as a basis for their opposition to counterplans that do not textually compete.

Functional competition, by itself, would enable many of the counterplans which textual competition
is designed to eliminate. Consultation, delay, and conditioning counterplans are all acceptable if
functional competition alone is the paradigm for competition. For example, we cannot do the plan
and consult over the plan simultaneously, an advocate of the consult counterplan would likely say.
Though proponents of textual competition may argue that they should not be responsible to textually
include every element in the plan text – as an example, they may argue that “normal means would
include consultation” against a consultation counterplan. Using the example of a delay counterplan,
“it makes no sense to pass the plan now and after midterm elections” would be an argument made
by a proponent of delay counterplans and/or a functional approach to competition. There are major
differences in what would constitute a competitive counterplan in either world.

Ban the Plan Counterplans

In addition to examples mentioned above, a theoretical disagreement exists in the debate community
at large over the role of “ban the plan” counterplans. Ban the plan counterplans are designed to
guarantee uniqueness to case turns and topic-specific disadvantages because the opposition would
advocate a world where the plan is not an option, rather than advocating an alternative solution to
the harms isolated by the PMC. “Ban the plan” is often considered theoretically illegitimate for a
variety of reasons. For many of its strict proponents, eliminating “ban the plan” is precisely the
basis for privileging textual competition – strict adherence to textual competition would prevent
the opposition from adding the word “not” after the word “should” in the plan. Not all “ban the
plan” counterplans (in fact, very few of them) simply add the word “not” after the word “should.”
For example, a kritik alternative might say “Reject the government plan AND do X, Y, or Z” or
a counterplan text may change a law so that it would legally preclude the plan presented in the
PMC. What do we make of instances in which a textually competitive version of the counterplan
or alternative text that could reasonably be read in the LOC? Additionally, the idea of textual
competition does not necessarily eliminate advantage counterplans (a counterplan that solves the
internal link or impact to one or both advantages while potentially leaving room for the LOC to
provide straight-turns to the other advantages) – the wide scale of possible advantage counterplans
is sufficiently large enough that textual competition does not eliminate all of them.
288 Chapter 29. Permutation Theory

Single Legislative Proposals

One problem, unique to parliamentary debate, often arises in instances in which the resolution
obligates the government team to pass a particular legislative proposal. In policy debate, the year
long resolution will typically not restrict the government team to a one topical plan text, while
this is relatively common in the parliamentary format with changing, often specific resolutions.
More often than not, these topics heighten the chances that the LOC will propose a plan inclusive
counterplan (a counterplan that includes some, typically not all, of the PMC’s plan). Textual
competition advocates would likely argue that a textually competitive version of a plan inclusive
counterplan, in this example, would include all of the legislation that the plan passes except the
small portion that the counterplan excludes. Since the LOC is 8-minutes in length, the intuitive
answer in these cases is to carve out an exception to textual competition in cases where a textually
competitive version of the counterplan would exist if the PMC plan text were to include every
single word in the piece of legislation. If you have a counterplan for which there is a textually
competitive version, your counter-interpretation ought to say something closely resembling, “prefer
textual competition in all instances except in which there is a textually competitive version of the
counterplan adjusted for time constraints,” or perhaps this could be an argument why there is no
violation (a we-meet argument).

Permutation: Theory Shells

These nuanced distinctions necessitate that government debaters defending textual competition
have an interpretation suggesting that the opposition strategy should be both functionally and
textually competitive. This prevents the opposition from defending the notion that functional
competition is good, putting them in a position of defending why their interpretation might be over
limiting or too restrictive to the opposition team (something those defending textual competition
are used to hearing and should be prepared to engage). The last argument in any “theory shell”
defending textual competition is that, “Functional competition justifies the permutation: do the
counterplan,” because the counterplan is simply an additional element which has been added
to the original plan. You might impulsively think that permutation text would be a severance
permutation. More often than not the permutation “do the counterplan” is a severance permutation.
This is precisely what is notable about its use in this instance. If the counterplan includes all
of the plan, how can the permutation that does the counterplan be considered severance? If the
plan is already contained in the counterplan, then it follows that the above permutation is not a
severance permutation. Of course, functional competition would dispute this as a legitimate source
of competition. For example, an opposition team defending a consultation counterplan would
argue that because the plan passes immediately (it includes the word “should”) the permutation
“do the counterplan” is a severance of this immediacy. The same severance claim is made by those
defending a delay counterplan. Defenders of textual competition should be prepared to dispute
this claim. Identifying severance as a question of what is contained in the plan text, demonstrating
that the counterplan is artificially competitive (another way of saying that the counterplan does not
contest the desirability of the plan). Again, a more specific interpretation that obligates counterplans
to be both functionally and textually competitive can be a useful way of engaging proponents
of functional competition. Most of the exceptions to textual competition by itself (frequently
referred to by those who support functional competition) are actually resolved by this interpretation.
There are some who would argue this interpretation is too limiting and insist on the inclusion
of consult, delay, conditioning, and other counterplans that may fall into this category. Again,
vigorous debates exist over the limits imposed by each school of thought – ultimately, you will
resolve this by being able to convey a thorough understanding of this issue in the debate. It should
 289

also be noted that by-passing this discussion of different philosophies of competition and having
a theoretical objection to a counterplan which does not take a stance on textual versus functional
competition by simply indicting the particular type of counterplan that the opposition has chosen
is a perfectly acceptable option as well. There are many reasons, unique to parliamentary debate
format, that judges might want to reject consultation, delay and condition counterplans. Many
teams are willing to develop incredibly specific interpretations that may have nothing to do with
textual or functional competition. For example, you may read a theory argument that says, “When
the topic asks the government team to intervene in Africa, the opposition should not read a Consult
China Counterplan” or “When the topic asks the government team to defend a specific bill, the
opposition team should not have access to a PIC.” The Africa/China example does not necessarily
take a stance on the status all other consultation counterplans in all other debates. Similarly, the
second example does not necessarily take a stance on whether or not opposition teams should have a
PIC in all other debates. The MGC might want to isolate reasons why consultation counterplans are
abusive to the government team for reasons far beyond how the judge may evaluate a permutation
or the competitive standing of the counterplan.

Permuting an LOC Criticism

The utility of an alternative to a criticism is to present a different vision of social organization (or
disorganization, as the case may be) which would solve the impact of the criticism (and hopefully
also that of the government case). It ought to be competitive with the plan, much in the same
way that we determine that a counterplan ought to be competitive. As such, there is a certain
degree of theoretical overlap between the two; both invite potential discussions of intrinsic and/or
severance permutations, disadvantages to the permutation and the net benefits to the permutation.
There are also major theoretical debates about their limits (textual v. functional competition,
floating PIK’s, notions of utopian fiat, antipolitics, roleplaying, and so on). Learning about how to
debate counterplans effectively will intuitively also make you a better kritik debater. The degree
of theoretical overlap between these two strategies is considerable. In the same way that there are
vigorous debates about the limits imposed by different philosophies of counterplan competition, an
analogous theoretical debate exists in the world of the criticism.
We know that counterplans can sometimes include all of the plan text. Similarly, kritik alternatives
may include some version of the plan. “Floating PIK’s” are closely analogous to counterplans
that are not textually competitive by virtue of affirming the plan. For example, when critiquing
capitalism, “Alternative: Do the plan in a non-capitalist frame” or “Alternative: Do the plan through
the lens of X Y or Z.” While not all floating PIK’s actually include the entire plan, they all (by
definition) would affirm the plan, in addition to critiquing an element not specifically mentioned
in the PMC text. The theoretical reasons why these kinds of alternatives are objectionable are
rather similar to the reasons why certain types of plan inclusive counterplans are problematic.
Their strategic utility is to eliminate the PMC as a potential net benefit to the permutation, and
prevent the MGC from potentially outweighing the impact of the kritik irrespective of the question
of the permutation. Government teams should be prepared to rely on the permutation: “do the
alternative” in these extreme instances, in addition to outlining theoretical reasons why these kinds
of alternatives are unfair and/or damaging to the educational benefits derived from competitive
debate.
Crafting a net benefit to the permutation (an argument why the permutation is more desirable
than the alternative alone) can be a bit different in instances of kritiks than with counterplans. A
wide range of possible reasons why the permutation is preferable can be deployed. Perhaps the
permutation is desirable because juxtaposing divergent ideologies is the best starting point for
290 Chapter 29. Permutation Theory

understanding the dissonance that sometimes forecloses social change. Or, maybe the permutation
reflects the possibilities of coalition building and openness to difference in a way that is more
valuable than the outright rejection of a particular perspective. The particularities of your net
benefit to the permutation will be contingent on the arguments made in your PMC. For example, a
PMC plan that takes action to prevent climate change might be better positioned for a permutation
of an environmentally oriented kritik than a PMC plan that does something to enable economic
growth. Sometimes your PMC situates you to make qualified arguments that the government
plan is a necessary prerequisite to the kritik (more frequently the case with critically oriented
PMC’s). In other instances, where the link debate is more decisive in favor of the opposition team,
a permutation that is built around the need to have opposing views simultaneously examined would
be more sensible. In other words, the way that your PMC is crafted should dictate your permutation
strategy. When you start to think of your own unique and innovative net benefits to permutations of
the kritik, it is useful to consider the ways in which rejection of the PMC, or elements of the PMC
(an element present in virtually all alternatives), might be problematic.

Defending Severance and Intrinsic Permutations

You might be wondering why severance or intrinsic permutations have a place at the table if the
only theoretically legitimate permutation is neither. Some people might tell you that they are
always illegitimate. While severance and intrinsic permutations are difficult to effectively execute
and justify (they almost always produce a theoretical discussion that must be answered) they can
have value in different instances. Parliamentary debate is, once again, unique in this aspect. Since
permutations are typically read in the MGC, the MOC is unlikely to be able to win that “the MGC
permutation was severance and/or intrinsic and severance and/or intrinsic permutations are bad”
because the PMR would have unanswered second-line responses to argue, “severance/intrinsic
permutations are good/legitimate.” Increasingly, forward thinking LOCs include the opposition
team’s definition of a “legitimate permutation” and describe that the permutation should be treated
in a particular way if read by the MGC (i.e. reject the argument, reject the team, etc.). This strategy
is designed to give MOCs the flexibility to collapse to “the MGC’s inclusion of a severance/intrinsic
permutation is a reason to vote against the government team” or win a time tradeoff against MGC
permutation arguments when the MGC has advanced multiple permutations.
In order to justify such permutations, the government team should be prepared to indicate why
their application could offer a useful test of the counterplan or alternative. For example, against the
consult counterplan a popular permutation is to do the plan and consult over a different issue. While
the element of a different issue is something which is not in the plan or counterplan (rendering it
intrinsic) there can be little question of whether or not this permutation would test the necessity
of consulting over the plan in particular. A similar case can be made in favor of the severance
permutation in some instances. For example, if the opposition team has read multiple, conditional
strategies. This is fine in the abstract, but if one of those positions is a kritik, and another position is
something that links to the kritik, it is likely not unreasonable for the MGC to attempt to “sever”
the element of their PMC that forms the basis of the link to the kritik. If the opposition can link to
the kritik, why should we have any particular interest in whether or not the government team links?
If the opposition can just kick the argument that links to their kritik, why can’t the government
do the same? Putting aside how central reciprocity is to competitive equity, there can also be
critical reasons why severance or intrinsic permutations are justified. For example, it could be said
that a severance permutation is analogous to an apology or admission of guilt, and that efforts to
prevent this recognition do more harm than good. An analogy could be made that when a professor
finds something objectionable in a paper, they do not usually insist that you re-write the entire
 291

paper, but instead offer suggestions for revision of whatever element they feel falls short of what is
expected. There are, of course, very reasonable answers to these sorts of permutation arguments,
but nonetheless, simply foregoing all intrinsic and severance permutations substantially limits
options for MGC arguments. It is possible to defend these kinds of permutations and they can
sometimes represent even better tests of the counterplan or kritik than what I have defined as the
only theoretically unobjectionable permutation. It is important to acknowledge, however, that one
must be a competent theory debater in order to have the capacity to justify these permutations. It is
worth noting that most judges will reject the permutation itself, rather than the government team, if
the opposition effectively indicts such a permutation (unless argued very persuasively otherwise or,
as in the circumstance described above, if the LOC includes a reason to vote against the government
team for an abusive permutation that is conceded by the MGC using that permutation).

Conclusion

Counterplans and kritiks are very useful strategies when deployed by the opposition. Doing so
will necessarily invite permutation debates. Hopefully this foundation of understanding will help
you develop more innovative and sophisticated permutation strategies. The unique structure of
parliamentary debate necessitates that, while many of the back files available from the policy debate
format are useful, parliamentary debate’s lack of typed and printed text that are prepared long
before the start of each debate, lack of backside rebuttals, and rotating topics make the development
of permutation theory an ever evolving process. Government teams must understand permutation
theory in order to be successful against most opposition teams, and opposition teams will have
limited flexibility to forego the status quo without a matching understanding. As such, permutations
are an essential element of parliamentary debate strategy.
 30. Student-Run Programs

S TUDENT-RUN P ROGRAMS :
L ESSONS FROM THE CU B OULDER E XPERIENCE
R ACHELLE H ARRIS , NATHAN J EFFRIES , & W ILLIAM VAN T REUREN – U NIVERSITY OF
C OLORADO -B OULDER

Introduction

Institutional support for debate programs can be hard to come by. There are many reasons for this,
not limited to scarce financial resources, demanding time commitments required for participation,
and a general lack of understanding of the benefits of the activity. Even when the lack of a debate
program is not explicitly purposeful, there can be substantial hurdles to overcome when trying
to debate at a school that lacks a program. In starting a debate program at Colorado University-
Boulder, beginning in 2005, we encountered a slew of these hurdles. In this chapter, we intend to
outline some of the basic strategies you may find useful in facing these challenges, and elaborate
on how you can turn them into opportunities.

Starting and Maintaining a Team with Limited Institutional Support

There are two different goals that you may have going into this process. They are by no means
mutually exclusive, but they do require different kinds of focus and direction of energy. The first
goal is to travel and participate at debate tournaments, pure and simple. Presumably this is your
primary goal, so the focus of this discussion will be on making that happen most effectively. The
second goal of obtaining long-term institutional support is, nevertheless, an important one. Thus,
we will also include the insights we have into making inroads in this regard as well. Several “steps”
are required to get off the ground to begin debating:
294 Chapter 30. Student-Run Programs

Recruit other interested debaters

This is an obvious first step, given that parliamentary debate is a partnered event; you will need
at least one other individual to debate with. Finding other like-minded individuals to help you
navigate the waters of creating a debate program can be invaluable, not to mention critical to
building a competitive base, including having people to practice with. This can be a tricky process
for a variety of reasons. First, depending on the size and culture of your school, reaching out to
people who may be interested could be very easy or very difficult. CU Boulder, as a very large
school, was a blessing and a curse in this regard. Having a large school means you have a very
large audience and potentially a very deep pool of individuals with a debate background who
may be interested in continuing with or initiating their debate experience. However, such a large
audience can also be difficult to access in a meaningful or impactful way. If your school is small,
you may have fewer potential recruits to work with, but can probably get their attention more easily.
Whatever your situation, take advantage of the resources your school has in place for dissemination
of information: listservs, posting boards in public areas, chalking on the sidewalks, Greek-life
parties, and the old fashion meet-n-greet. Put up posters and talk to people. Set up an informational
meeting to both generate and gauge interest. Find out what recently graduated high-school debaters
attend your school. Collect and maintain student’s contact information. Start an email chain or a
Facebook group to keep in communication and have a common space for exchange of ideas and
information.

You may get an overwhelming response from a lot of people – that would be great. More than likely,
however, you will find a few moderately interested people who are unwilling to really dive into
something so unsure. While it would be great to have a large numbers of interested parties in some
regards, too many people can rapidly get extremely unwieldy to manage. So, focus on generating
genuine interest in the people who express it, rather than trying to launch a huge program right off
the bat.

Find some coaching help

Having the insights and input of someone familiar with the activity and the community is absolutely
invaluable, unsurprisingly. Since you are likely working with limited financial resources, you are
probably not going to convince anyone to work for you full time. However, if there are experienced
college debaters in your area, you might be surprised how many of them would be willing to help
out in ways that seem small, but can have a huge and meaningful impact on your success as a small
program. Ask them to do what they can, and let them. Whether this means watching a couple of
practice rounds or helping you understand how to structure your latest kritik idea, you should seek
and take advantage of any help available. Even better, find someone who is willing to travel with
you to tournaments to act as a judge and prep coach. If you are able, you should pay this person for
their time and effort, and certainly cover their travel expenses.

Research your school’s funding design

If you want to not pay out of pocket for all your competition and travel expenses, obtaining funding
from your school should be of top priority. That said, it could be rather arduous to do so, depending
on the structure of how your school allocates funding to student groups and how generous or
restrictive they are with such allocations. It is more difficult for us to speak in generalities here,
since every school is different, but here are some funding lessons learned (and being learned!) from
the CU Boulder experience:

Be persistent. We made our first attempt at garnering school funding in the fall of 2005. It took
 295

a full two years for the team to get a meaningful sum of money from the school. For better or
worse, universities and colleges, big or small, are really good at maintaining their bureaucracies.
While this can be incredibly frustrating, it is almost always something you will have to deal with.
Figure out how your school allocates money for student groups, and build a good case for your
own need as soon as possible. Prepare yourself to defend the merits of debate as a productive
intellectual, academic, and social endeavor (if you need help with this, ask anyone in the debate
community - they will likely overwhelm you with reasons that debate can provide meaningful
academic experiences). If you get rejected, or do not receive the money you have requested, carry
on. Keep pushing the relevant people in the right direction, and search for new avenues of funding.
You might find that there is allocable money in the student government, individual colleges within
your school, specific departments, or any number of other places. Do not be afraid to cobble
together a patchwork of funding sources if you can - you should take advantage of any opportunities
you have available.

Be creative. If you have a knack for fundraising, use it (or develop one). One possible way to
raise money for your squad, if your area has a viable high-school circuit, is to host a high-school
tournament. This process is a vast undertaking unto itself, but if you have some support from local
high-school coaches, or at least a their willingness to pay for/come to a tournament at a university
(high school debaters typically enjoy this type of opportunity), you can generate some revenue
for yourselves. If you are successful in hosting a high school tournament, use this as another
argument for funding – you are hosting potential students on campus, an opportunity that school
administrators typically embrace. Also consider other traditional fundraising mechanisms - bake
sales, concession stands, tutoring services, or even car washes.

Be resourceful. For a period of time in CU Boulder’s competitive history, we were paying our own
way to tournaments. Since for most of us this was in addition to paying our way through school,
life and working full time, as it may be for many people, this is generally not a sustainable option.
However, the community is full of people and resources that are more than capable and willing to
help you spread your money as far as possible. Reach out to tournament directors and explain your
circumstances; they are often willing to help. We will discuss effective use of community resources
in detail later.

Be strategic. One of the best ways to stretch your available resources is to be strategic in the
competitions you choose to attend. Figure out what the circuit in your area looks like, and which
competitions will give you the most value. If you are just starting out, this may not mean attending
the most competitive tournaments. It may mean attending the tournaments that are nearby, or the
ones where you have a family member with whom you can stay, or the ones that will waive your
entry or judging fees. Whatever your decision calculus, recognize that you cannot attend all the
tournaments each year, so you need to maximize the utility of the ones you can.

Strategy on a Small Team

Operating a small team, likely with a volunteer coach or no coach at all, means you have constraints
(and freedoms) other teams do not have. In the CU Boulder experience, the most serious constraints
are institutional indifference/hostility, a research disadvantage and a practice disadvantage. Here
we will attempt to relate how we addressed each of these constraints and the shortcomings of each
of the strategies.
296 Chapter 30. Student-Run Programs

Institutional Indifference Disadvantage

Among the most frustrating challenges we encountered were the lack of institutional support or
acknowledgement and the impact it had on classwork. Ultimately, programs that lack large amounts
of institutional support will run into conflicts between each participant’s obligations to her own
coursework and her work for the debate program. Traditionally, debate programs with institutional
backing are able to resolve these problems in a few ways. First, coaches are often faculty members
who can lobby other members of the faculty to excuse absences that are the result of debate or to
extend deadlines for students with prior debate obligations. Second, institutionally backed programs
will often allow students to actually receive course credit for their participation in debate. This
reduces each student’s class workload outside of debate, and, thus, reduces the risk of conflict.
Finally, programs with institutional backing often consider participation in intercollegiate debate
tournaments as “university or college sponsored events,” explicitly creating a policy that excuses
student absences.

Sadly, programs that do not have large amounts of institutional support, like Boulder’s, cannot
rely on faculty support in resolving these conflicts. As such, it is important for student directors to
make sure that coursework and debate do not become mutually antagonistic activities. This can be
accomplished in a couple of ways. First, we felt that it was important that every member of our
program know that coursework always took priority over debate work. While we still expected each
member to carry her fair share of the research burden, we never expected teammates to sacrifice
their education in the name of debate. Any other attitude will likely foster resentment and ultimately
be ineffective. Secondly, we found that it was best to try and synergize the work we did for our
classes with the work that needed to be done for debate. What this really meant was taking a step
back from every project, test, or paper and seeing if this material could be used in a debate round. In
doing so, we were often amazed to find that a Lit Theory paper would function equally well, if not
better, as a Kritik, or that a Poli Sci course’s required reading on North Korea created a wonderful
impact and uniqueness arguments for a US-Sino relations disadvantage. Even hard sciences can be
useful in this regard. Will and Than won the NPTE in 2010 as Math and Science majors. Shifting
debates into this arena proved extremely important to that achievement. In this way, that you are
not confined or encouraged to perform coursework in a certain department actually is a strength to
student-run programs.

While this strategy of synergizing course work and debate work seems obvious, the number of
teams that failed to rely on it always amazed us. We found the strategy extremely advantageous
for small team like ours for a few reasons. First, it allowed us to shift debates into areas that
where we had a greater depth of knowledge than our opponents. By shifting debates to areas we
actually studied, it provided us with an advantage over other teams because we simply had a better
understanding of the literature surrounding our arguments. This allowed us to make more nuanced
and sophisticated arguments as a whole. This was a huge advantage when debating teams that
lacked the same foothold of information. This strategy was also more efficient because it meant
that we were “wasting” fewer hours on non-debate work. As discussed in more detail below, the
biggest advantage that large teams have over a small team is in research volume. While this gap
can never truly be eliminated, in working to do so, it often meant that each member of our team
would have to put in more hours to stay competitive. Thus, finding ways to pull more hours out of
the day was always important. Generally, this meant finding ways to have course work for class
simultaneously benefit our debate goals.

Research Disadvantage
 297

Critical to success in parliamentary debate is having a wide knowledge and file base in a variety of
topics. Policy debate offers a certain transparency in evidence production and file sharing that is
absent from parliamentary debate. Operating with a smaller team means that you will not have the
ability to cut the same evidence and arguments that other squads have, both in quantity of evidence
and breadth of topics; nor will you have the same ability to scout other teams at tournaments.
Luckily these problems are much less detrimental to a parliamentary debate team than they would
be to a policy team because interpolation from limited known information is often more valuable (in
the Leader of Opposition Constructive/Member of Government Constructive) than knowing every
last fact about your politics disadvantage. In other words, the disadvantage you may be placed in
by having a smaller, student-run program can be overcome with hard work and creativity.
To overcome our evidence/argument disadvantage we ended up lucky rather than good; we had
two former policy debaters on the team (and later Scott Weaver as a coach) who had extensive
knowledge of the basic arguments frequently used in policy debate. This came from familiarity
with the evidence (back-files) used in recent years. Having core back-file knowledge is essential
because although topics in parliamentary debate shift, that does not mean that the underlying links,
internal links, or impacts change all that much. If you have an understanding of recent high school
or college back-files, you are able to know and understand every internal link you are likely to
hear in any parliamentary debate, or need to generate yourself for your LOC or PMC. Even if you
have not debated or coached the high school or college policy topics, a huge amount of evidence is
available for free from sources like the open evidence project, the cross-x evidence trading forums,
random scribd files online, the college wikis, blogs (the3nr) and on torrent sites. If members of your
squad pursue all these avenues to acquire and read files, you will have the background knowledge
required to answer most arguments outright, and interpolate between known facts in the cases
where you do not know.
If the notion of interpolation is unclear, we mean that you are often forced to answer a scenario
about which you have no in-depth knowledge, particularly in the LOC/MGC. In those situations,
you can often construct answers from knowing two unrelated pieces of information that are common
back-file knowledge. For example, the PMC may read a plan banning CAFOs with an advantage
concerning antibiotic resistance. While you might have no direct information on the relative rates
of antibiotic resistance pre and post-CAFO introduction, if you had read back-files for the last
four years you would know that antibiotic resistant strains of various common human pathogens
are spreading throughout southern prison systems (as well as returning with US armed forces
from Afghanistan). You could read alternative cause arguments (admittedly, not round winning),
solvency arguments, etc., which, coupled with your prepared economy disadvantage, might be
sufficient to win the round. This research strategy is effective because the best internal link/impact
scenarios have already been identified and used in other debate rounds; most PMCs/LOCs are really
just finding new ways to generate a link in the context of the resolution. Again, this means that
if you know and understand the underlying logic and basic background information about these
arguments, you are well positioned to engage them.
It is important to note that for back-files to be effective, you have to read back-files correctly.
Just having the files available before a tournament is not sufficient. You cannot integrate enough
information (even with the prodigious short term memory debate develops) in twenty minutes on
an unfamiliar subject. You need to read back-files prior to competition and you need to analyze
how you can use the arguments contained in your rounds. For example, having simply read the
“Orstein ‘93” evidence will not be good enough to explain why “winners win” outweighs an issue-
specific link on a Politics Disadvantage. You need to know the non-underlined warrants for the
argument. Using these files and arguments in practice debates, team strategy discussions, and
even speed/speaking drills can help you begin to truly dissect the arguments’ utility, and be able to
298 Chapter 30. Student-Run Programs

deploy them effectively.

Another strategy, which CU used effectively to close the research gap, was to have an excellent
command of domain specific knowledge in a particular discipline or argumentative area. For Nathan
and Rachelle, this was critical arguments and uniqueness tricks; for Dan and Dara, this was the
criticism; for Will and Than, this was science/ecology. This is effective because it gives you the
ability to bring many debates into your area(s) of strength, even if it would not be the debate’s
natural trajectory. Additionally, it forces other teams to avoid some positions because they might
give you links to talk about your area of expertise. As a note of caution, developing such a specific
strength or becoming a “one trick pony” can become more detrimental than helpful if you depend
on it too much. If your specific focus is too necessary to your success, you will have difficulty
succeeding at the high levels; every top-level team will be able engage you on your area of expertise
even if their knowledge is not as advanced. Teams will learn your favorite tricks and adapt to them.
Peerless domain specific knowledge is no substitute for being generally well read (and knowing
your back-files). So, in reality, this strategy is best for developing a strong competitive foothold,
but should not be relied upon at the expense of developing other knowledge and skills.
Additionally, our program found that creativity was one of the most effective ways to overcome
the research gap. In particular, we would endeavor to have at least one new generic position for
every tournament with the understanding that we may never run the argument beyond that weekend.
Usually, this argument would be a new politics disadvantage, but they could also be new criticisms
or simply interesting disadvantage with broad, generic links. We found that this accomplished
two goals. First, it provided us with a position that was unique and for which other teams were ill
prepared. As a result, we would have a tactical advantage in that we would have a much deeper
knowledge of the literature surrounding the position. Second, it prevented us from becoming too
one-dimensional, because the pet position for the team would shift for every tournament. Thus,
even if teams knew that we were running a new politics disadvantage, they would have to cobble
together new answers on the spot. This provided us an advantage because we had the luxury of
preparing and practicing the argument in the weeks leading up to a tournament while our opponents
would have (at most) an evening to develop answers.
Ultimately, for a start-up program it is important that you force your opponents to come to your
debate. You will never be able to have the breadth of research that larger programs have. As a
result, you must focus on having a depth of understanding in key areas that is able to overwhelm
your opponents. One smart, well-constructed argument will defeat a swath of under warranted
arguments. We found that the most effective use of our research was to focus on quality and depth
over anything else.

Practice Disadvantage
Another disadvantage of having a small squad is the inability to practice against varied opponents
and strategies. This is probably a much smaller disadvantage than the research difference, but it
is still significant. In the case where you have two teams of comparable skill, the disadvantage
reduces to training each of your teams in all forms of argument that they will encounter. This can
be tricky, however. As an example, if you have two teams that never read “projects”, learning how
to debate a well prepared “project team” is going to be difficult because neither of your teams is
going to be able to read the argument effectively. If you have just a single team (or two teams of
radically different skill) the problem is even more acute because it can be impossible to practice
entire debates that are useful for both teams.
Do not despair, however, there are still plenty of speaking and debating drills you can do to
get practice at diverse argumentative strategies. Some of the easiest are just to pair partners of
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comparable skill level and have them debate single pieces of paper (e.g. engage in a full debate
over only the soft power disadvantage, or topicality, or a critical advantage, etc.). Force yourself to
go deeper into second and third line arguments on the position, and take the time to discuss and
understand its pieces and parts while completing rebuttal re-dos. While this does not necessarily
build the round vision provided by a full debate, you could do everything with this approach
that you can do with full debate drills (ladders, time differentials between sides, stop and goes,
etc.).
Another extremely useful activity is to judge debates in your local high-school community. If you
live somewhere that is home to a well-developed high school circuit, go judge as many debates as
you can. Judging good rounds is second only to actual practice in terms of generating round vision
(being a judge makes you realize how few of the things that are discussed in a debate are relevant
to the decision calculus), and has external benefits like giving back to the community we love.
Community participation can also help you recruit team members – giving you another argument
for funding that can be made to your administration.

Writing Front-lines
A final method for improving when practice partners/teams are not available is a drill/activity
that Will estimates to be the most critical component of his success throughout eight years of
debate. The idea behind the drill is to write a frontline to whatever argument you just heard
in round, read about in a file, or came up with in your sleep. A frontline is often understood
to be a general outline of the strategies and arguments you could use for answering generic
disadvantages/criticisms/theory arguments. Instead, if you think of ‘front-lining’ against any
position regardless of size/generalness/role in the debate, the following discussion will make more
sense.
Four general steps to doing this will be discussed here. There is some fuzziness in the steps (you
might go between 1 and 3 or 2 and 3 over and over) but the general model is good for two reasons.
First, it forces you to write arguments and ideas out which helps your retention of the information,
your word economy, and your understanding of what is and is not relevant. Second, It shows you
where you need to do more research.
Steps for writing a frontline to a given position:

(In the following example, assume that you are debating on the opposition and that you are writing
answers to a PMC that includes a biodiversity advantage that claims to solve overfishing.)

1. Research the position so you have a basic familiarity with the argument you need to answer. In
our example this means you need to know what their advantage argues; you’ll need to know what
their basic claims for uniqueness, links, internal links, and impacts are, and some basic idea of how
they might deploy these throughout the round.

2. Write out the arguments you would use to answer the position. Keep time constraints in mind
(how much of your speech can/should this take?). Also consider the necessity to create offense
(is their position something you can easily generate offense against, like hegemony, or something
where good defense is a better option - racism?), how it might function with other strategies (e.g.
if you write wipeout as an answer to the position, that likely will not be compatible with other
strategies), and the relevance/truth of your answers (12 bad answers – ”global warming solves
the coming ice age” are always inferior to 2 good answers – ”ocean acidification is locked in
300 Chapter 30. Student-Run Programs

because of the H2CO3 equilibrium even if we keep CO2 at 400 ppm”). In this example, you would
probably write some alternative causes to the IL like ”plan doesn’t solve alternate causalities for
bio-d collapse.”

3. Edit the arguments you wrote in Step 2 so that you could read them like you were in a policy
round (literally reading them as written). This means eliminating extraneous arguments, words,
concepts, examples while adding relevant concepts, examples, data, and structure. This step is
essential to the training value of this activity because it forces you to eliminate the unnecessary
arguments and words, develop a mechanistic understanding of the internal links, and requires
multiple iterations so that you remember for the future. In our example we might take ”plan doesn’t
solve alternate causalities for bio-d collapse” and turn it into:

#1 - No solvency for alt causalities of bio d collapse because:

a. Bottom trawling: China, Europe, and Africa will continue to bottom trawl regardless
of US action because it is critical to their economies. If their overfishing internal links
are true then collapse will just start in one of these countries and spread.
b. Ocean Acidification: ocean acidification is guaranteed for several hundred years
because of the H2CO3 equilibrium even if we keep CO2 at 400 ppm. This will inde-
pendently collapse fish species worldwide regardless of conservation efforts because
fish have a narrow physiological pH range.
c. If their internal link is ’biodiversity collapse spreads worldwide’ then any of the
collapses caused by these alternate causalities guarantees that the government solves
none of their advantage.”

This example could probably be edited to be more word economical, but notice that we have loaded
in warrants (why will China keep fishing regardless of US action) that answer what the government
will likely say (they model the US).

4. Add extensions and alternate ways of framing some of your arguments so that they are compatible
with multiple strategies. For example:

”Extend 1a - the government plan doesn’t solve bottom trawling by other countries. These
other countries will continue to trawl because it’s a key sector of their economy. In fact,
China brings in XXX billion dollars from bottom trawling a year which means they will
never model the US - it would be too expensive.”

If you apply this strategy to a wide range of arguments that you encounter, you will become well
positioned to engage in any level of debate.

Using Existing Community Resources

For CU Boulder, networking and tapping into community resources was one of the most important
things we did, especially at the beginning of our program. We found the parliamentary debate
community to be incredibly accessible and overwhelmingly helpful, and hope that you will find the
same. Here is a non-exhaustive list of ideas of how to tap into these resources:
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Proactively Talk To Directors Of Other Programs

Send emails, make phone calls, and arrange visits with the directors and coaches of programs near
you and nationally. Ask them for ideas, insights, and assistance with your team. In our case, this
came in many forms, ranging from guidance about how to register for and find tournaments to
suggestions and recommendations for how to structure team practices and management. Most
directors have chosen a profession in this activity because they love it, which means that most are
more than willing to help in whatever ways they can to expand the activity to new arenas, including
your modest school, and they are not as intimidating to approach as they may seem. Also, do not
stop engaging with these people once you are off the ground and running. Creating and maintaining
good relationships with coaches and directors is in your interest, not only as a decent human being
but also competitively, socially, and perhaps even professionally.

Do Not Be Afraid To Ask For Assistance

This stems somewhat naturally from the last suggestion, but is important to dedicate a specific
mention. Especially in terms of the financial challenges of being a small student-run team, asking
for help can be extremely useful. Ask tournament directors if they can waive or reduce your entry
fees; ask other teams if they are able and willing to share their hotel room floors for you to sleep
on; see what transportation sharing options might be available to you. All of these things can save
you money and help you get to know people. It should go without saying, but do remember to be
gracious about this; most programs have tight budgets, and though many people will help you when
they can, it is important to remember to ask nicely and accept rejection with grace.

Get Online
Online exchange of information is more the norm than not these days, and you should make sure you
are involved and informed. Here is a brief list of some Parli-specific outlets that may be of use to you:
Net-Benefits (www.net-benefits.net), Parli Listserv (https://lists.bethel.edu/mailman/listinfo/parli)
and The Debate Blog (http://thedebateblog.com/)

Get Active In The Social Scene

Debate is an inherently social activity, as it draws together somewhat like-minded individuals from
all over the country to coalesce in a single space for extended periods of time throughout a school
year. Getting to know the people with whom you will compete and the people who will judge you is
invaluable. This can be somewhat intimidating initially, but if you take a little initiative to say hello
to people in the halls at tournaments, talk to your judges after rounds, and establish yourself as an
engaged member of the community, you will be well received. The social aspect of debate makes
your time competing more enjoyable (and in fact, will probably be the part you remember most
fondly) – it will expand your network of resources that will support your success and continued
participation in the activity and beyond.
One important way to socialize is staying at the tournament hotel. While developing relationships
at the tournament is a good starting ground, it is hard to really get to know people at the tournament
itself. The tournament is a fundamentally competitive environment. While people are generally
polite and personable, they are still most concerned with their performance. At the tournament
hotel the stress is reduced and people are more outgoing. There will often be hotel get-togethers
around the pool or in the hotel bar. For us, these provided a great opportunity to not only meet
people, but also show others we were worth meeting.
However immodest it may sound, it is undoubtedly true that one of the most important aspects of
the success of our program was the fact that people generally liked us. Debaters often pretend that
302 Chapter 30. Student-Run Programs

debate is an objective activity in which there is a definite winner and loser, but the truth is that
judging a debate is much closer to judging figure skating than most are willing to admit. There
are objective criteria by which rounds are judged, but these criteria are ultimately employed based
on the judge’s subjective viewpoint. As a result, if a judge views one team more credibly, she will
often give that team the benefit of the doubt on an argument. The same can be said when it comes
to whether or not the judge likes a particular team. While you will likely not encounter any judges
would make a decision based wholly on liking one team over the other, judges do have implicit
biases in favor of competitors they particularly enjoy. As such, we felt it was important to put
ourselves in the social scene. It is a lot more fun to make friends at the hotel bar than sit and watch
the third repeat of Sportscenter.

The Tournament

One aspect that start-up teams often overlook is the actual tournament. There are many tricks of the
trade that can drastically improve your odds of success if you follow them. The following is an
outline of a few of those tips.

Get A Prep Room

One of the biggest early mistakes we made as a team was failing to secure a prep room at tourna-
ments. Though it is increasingly common in some regions, many tournaments do not assign prep
rooms. Due to this you will need to arrive at the tournament early enough the first morning to lay
claim to a classroom for your team and your team only. For the first year of our existence, CU never
bothered to find a prep room and, in retrospect, it made us far less competitive at tournaments. First,
when you prep in common areas that lack privacy, you risk having your argument inadvertently
exposed to people listening in on your conversations. Second, it is important to have a space where
you and your team can be yourselves. Having a prep room gave us a place to joke around or vent or
have conversations that we could not have if we were in common areas. In effect, your prep room
very much becomes your team’s safe zone. It is far more valuable than you would expect

Use Prep Time Effectively

Much of what goes into using prep time effectively will actually occur prior to the round and
tournament. With only twenty to thirty minutes of prep time, it is important that the team not spend
a lot of time going over questions that could have been answered before the round even starts. This
means that, prior to the tournament, all members of the team should have read all the files that
could be used that weekend. In fact, the team should have a meeting before the tournament starts
where every member explains the new positions they have authored and provide all other members
an opportunity to ask questions about the position. This guarantees that every member of the team
is familiar with all the team’s positions and no prep time will be wasted on understanding the basics
of any strategy.
Before the topic gets released, you should organize your prep space. This process might ultimately
differ from team to team – but it is important that you have a defined, agreed upon plan. We would
divide our squad into Government and Opposition factions. Once the topic is out, each side would
discuss strategy. We would devote between five to ten minutes to this process. This discussion
would revolve around which of our pre-prepped positions linked to the resolution, what potential
theory arguments were available (or if government, we were likely to see), and to do any quick
internet research to gain background information on the issue. By the end of this time each team
will have decided on a strategy and would begin to prep it. While it is not required that the whole
 303

team utilize the same strategy, we generally found that it was most effective. It was easier to have
everyone working on the same positions, considering the limited amount of coaching support we
received.
As we prepped the positions, each team would break into two groups. On the government side, one
partner would write the PMC while the other prepped answers to likely theory arguments, solvency
extensions, and answers to any off case positions that we were likely to see. On the opposition side,
one partner would prep all the theory front-lines while the other would write the off case strategy
and case arguments for the plan that we were most likely to see. If we had two teams on the same
side, these two teams would work together.
The role of the coach (or, if you are really lucky, coaches) in this process was to be available to prep
whatever position or side that they were most needed. Since we wrote most of our own positions,
our team felt fairly comfortable prepping without coach assistance if need be. Due to this, our
coaches rarely drove prep in our prep rooms. Instead, the coach’s role was to act as a resource for
the team as needed. Typically this would take the form of directing the initial strategy discussion,
helping draft positions that he or she came up with, and, most importantly, playing devil’s advocate
for any position we were drafting. Often the coach was responsible for trying to predict what
answers we could expect from the other team. In doing so, this would give us a leg up in having
answers and extensions prepared before the round.
While the structure we outlined above was very effective for us, it is only a general outline. In
reality, prep time is a very fluid process throughout which there will quite a bit of give and take
between the whole team. Ultimately, teammates in student-run programs must rely on each other
quite a bit in preparation time, because there is often not a consistent coaching staff. In the end,
all that matters is finding a system that works best for your team’s unique structure. The most
important thing is to remember that the more work you do outside the room, the easier prep will be.

Scout Your Opponents

Always know your opponent. This will make your prep easier and more effective. This goes
beyond simply knowing their name and school. You should familiarize yourself with the types
of arguments that they run. Are they a critical team? Are they a disadvantage/counterplan team?
Do they have a particular pet position? The answers to all these questions will be crucial to the
strategic decisions you make in prep time. The easiest way to get this information is to ask people.
Generally, we would look at the posting and then ask around to see if anyone knew the team and
what kind of arguments they ran. Once you have this information you can tailor your prep to the
positions that your opponent is most likely to run. Of course, in-depth familiarity with opponents is
also a function of experience and time, so work at it, and it will pay off.

Scout Your Judge

This is at least as important as scouting your opponent. Your judge will ultimately decide whether
or not you get the ballot. Every judge has their own set of stylistic preferences, and the better
you are at complying with those preferences the more likely you are to win. Once again, the best
way to get information on a judge is to simply ask other competitors. Generally, other people
will have experience with the critic and will be able to give insight into how they decide a round.
Another excellent resource is the judge philosophy books provided by the tournament. If you’re at
a tournament without judging philosophies, this is another good time to get resourceful – there are
internet archives on net-benefits and from previous NPTE/NPDA national tournaments. Use them!
Most critics on the national circuit have at some point posted their personal philosophy in one of
these. These will give a detailed description of how your judge approaches rounds and what they
304 Chapter 30. Student-Run Programs

prefer to see.

Come Prepared!
This likely goes without saying, but we were amazed by how often one of things listed below would
not make it to the tournament site. At a minimum, you will always want to make sure that you
have, water (be environmentally friendly, and use a reusable water bottle), snacks (using your brain
at such high levels for such extended periods uses a ton of energy. You will perform substantially
better if you keep up your blood sugar), pens, at least two reams of paper, a computer with internet
access, one timer for each team member, and all your files in an easily accessible form.

Watch Elimination Rounds

Even when you are not competing in them, watching elimination rounds is extremely valuable.
Watch and learn from as many as you can. Doing this consistently was crucial to our development
at CU. In many ways, success in debate is an exercise in repetition. The more you expose yourself
to it, the more capable you become. One of the best ways to learn how to debate is to watch teams
that are better than you. Watching elimination rounds will allow you to see what strategic decisions
high-level teams make. It also lets you see a round impartially so that you can get a sense for what
wins and loses a round (similar to judging high school rounds). Elimination rounds will also expose
you to the judging tendencies of more critics and allow you to see positions from teams you may
debate in the future. We know that often, after a long day debating and not advancing, the last
thing you will want to do is watch more rounds. But take our word for it – if you can drag yourself
to do it, the long-term benefits outweigh the short-term inconvenience. Another thing we would
recommend is to offer to help your friends prep for their elimination rounds or ask for permission
to watch them prepare. Teams tend to be very inviting when it comes to prep help – this is one free
way that teams may be willing to assist your team. The experience can be very enlightening. Even
if you do not say a word, being present in the room to watch successful teams prep can give you
surprising insight into what your team can do better. Again, remember to do this with deference to
the coaches and competitors - if they do not want you around, get out of there.

Have Fun
This is the most important bit of advice in this chapter. You will likely give up holidays, weekends,
and most of your free time debating. If you are doing it only to get a taste of that hardware, you
invariably will be disappointed. Also, you are going to lose at some point. Probably a lot, actually.
It is impossible for anyone to win them all, and even if you do, someday your competitive career
will come to a close. As such, it is important to remember that debate is about far more than just
winning. For us, it introduced us to people that, to this day, continue to be some of our best friends.
It also brought each of us memories that we will always cherish. It developed skills that remain
applicable in the ‘real world’ in ways none of us would have predicted. It is definitely not easy, and
it will try the patience of even the best of us. Yet, it is worth it if you are having fun. In the end, if
you love debate, there is no better place to be.

Go CU.