The 3NR https://the3nr.com a blog about high school debate Thu, 07 Jul 2022 06:05:42 +0000 en-US hourly 1 yes The 3NR no episodic The 3NR podcast@the3nr.com podcast The 3NR https://the3nr.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/burden-of-rejoinder-logo-1.jpg https://the3nr.com/category/burden-of-rejoinder-podcast/ Bi-weekly debate,policy,cxThe 3NR Podcast features in-depth discussion of high school debate.Like a post-round discussion that never ends. A Debater’s Research Guide To NATO’s 2022 Madrid Summit https://the3nr.com/2022/07/07/a-debaters-research-guide-to-natos-2022-madrid-summit/ Thu, 07 Jul 2022 06:04:58 +0000 https://the3nr.com/?p=3658 Last week, NATO held a summit meeting in Madrid, Spain. Leaders from NATO member and partner countries gathered to “discuss important issues facing the Alliance,” “set NATO’s strategic direction for the future,” and “ensur[e] that the Alliance will continue to adapt to a changing world and keep its one billion people safe.”

For students preparing to debate the 2022-2023 high school policy topic about NATO and emerging technology, the Madrid Summit was a significant event. Some arguments that were designed before the summit no longer make sense, and many new arguments can be constructed based on evidence reacting to the summit.

In this post, I will share resources to help students more effectively understand and research the summit and its implications for the topic.

What Happened at the Summit?

The official agenda outlined the following goals:

  1. Strengthening NATO’s long-term deterrence and defence.
  2. Sustaining support for Ukraine.
  3. Launching NATO’s 2022 Strategic Concept.
  4. Reinforcing Partnerships and maintaining and open door.
  5. Adapting to threats and challenges from any direction.
  6. Transatlantic unity and alliance solidarity.

Most of that happened. The most significant announcements from the summit were:

  • Troop and weapon system deployments in Poland, Romania, and the Baltic States will increase. This will include a permanently stationed U.S. presence in Poland.
  • NATO’s Rapid Response Force will be expanded from 40,000 to 300,000 troops.
  • Allies agreed to increase direct support of Ukraine including nonlethal equipment and cyber defense systems.
  • Finland and Sweden were formally invited to join the alliance.
  • NATO adopted a new Strategic Concept (see below).

The following resources will be helpful for students researching the summit and its consequences:

What Is The Strategic Concept?

The Strategic Concept is NATO’s statement of strategic purpose:

The Strategic Concept is a key document for the Alliance. It reaffirms NATO’s values and purpose, and provides a collective assessment of the security environment. It also drives NATO’s strategic adaptation and guides its future political and military development.

The Strategic Concept is reviewed and updated regularly. Since the end of the Cold War, it has been updated approximately every 10 years to take account of changes to the global security environment and to make sure the Alliance is prepared for the future.

The previous Strategic Concept was adopted at the NATO Lisbon Summit in 2010. The new Strategic Concept describes the new security reality facing the Alliance, reaffirms NATO’s values, and spells out NATO’s key purpose of ensuring Allies’ collective defence.

The 2022 Strategic Concept emphasizes deterrence of Russia, strategic competition with China, innovation and resilience related to emerging and disruptive technologies, counter-terrorism, climate change adaptation, and cooperation with the EU.

There have already been many articles written about the new Strategic Concept, and more will be published in the weeks and months ahead. The following resources will be particularly helpful for debaters:

What Happened With Emerging Technology?

The new Strategic Concept explicitly addresses emerging and disruptive technologies:

17. Emerging and disruptive technologies bring both opportunities and risks. They are altering the character of conflict, acquiring greater strategic importance and becoming key arenas of global competition. Technological primacy increasingly influences success on the battlefield.

Paragraphs 15-17 and 24-27 are particularly relevant, but there are several other parts of the Strategic Concept that also address emerging tech-related issues. MeriTalk summarized the key cyber provisions as follows:

* Bolstering Ukraine’s cyber defenses and resilience, and supporting the modernization of its defense sector to strengthen interoperability with NATO;

* Taking a “360-degree approach across the land, air, maritime, cyber, and space domains, and against all threats and challenges”;

* Boosting “our resilience to cyber and hybrid threats and strengthening our interoperability”;

* Building out and exercising “a virtual rapid response cyber capability to respond to significant malicious cyber activities”;

* Strengthening cyber defenses through “enhanced civil-military cooperation” and expanding partnerships with industry.

As an initial step to implement the emerging technology parts of the Strategic Concept, NATO also formally announced a new NATO Innovation Fund to “help bring to life those nascent technologies that have the power to transform our security in the decades to come, strengthening the Alliance’s innovation ecosystem and bolstering the security of our one billion citizens.” The fund is intended to support DIANA, the previously-announced NATO defense technology incubator.

Debaters will find the following resources useful when researching the emerging technology-related effects of the summit:

There have already been many articles, videos, podcasts, and other materials published about the Madrid Summit. Soon there will be many more. The above resources only scratch the surface of what debaters will find as they research the NATO topic in the weeks and months ahead, but I hope this post will help give them a useful head start.

]]> Researching The NATO Emerging Technology Topic: Recommended Congressional Research Service Reports https://the3nr.com/2022/07/07/researching-the-nato-emerging-technology-topic-recommended-congressional-research-service-reports/ Thu, 07 Jul 2022 04:06:28 +0000 https://the3nr.com/?p=3655 The Congressional Research Service (CRS) is Congress’s think tank: a policy research institute housed within the Library of Congress that produces non-partisan reports for members of Congress and their staff members.

The research produced by the CRS is extremely valuable for debaters. Their reports are an excellent source of issue briefings that can help students quickly get up to speed on a policy issue. They are also a useful source for topicality, inherency, “normal means,” and other descriptive (“factual”) evidence. Think of them like Wikipedia entries, but written for a policy audience and with more depth and details. (Not surprisingly, many CRS researchers are former debaters.)

When learning and researching a new topic, CRS is always one of the first sources I consult. I was reminded of this today when Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez posted on her Instagram story about the importance and value of CRS reports:

As AOC noted, the CRS’s research is now (mostly) available to the public. Before 2018, many CRS reports could be found on various websites — they aren’t subject to copyright laws — but they were officially “confidential” and required formal approval before they could be legally published. (And before internet access became ubiquitous, debaters had to write a letter to the Library of Congress to request paper copies of CRS reports; I did that several times when I was in high school, and receiving the big envelope of CRS reports in the mail was always an exciting day.)

Now, the CRS is required by law to share their research with the public via their official website: https://crsreports.congress.gov/. Their research is also accessible via unofficial sites like EveryCRSReport.com and the Federation of American Scientists, but those sources are less necessary now that CRS officially publishes their research.

Below, I have shared a list of CRS research materials that will be useful for debaters preparing for the NATO emerging technology topic. They are sub-divided by general topic area, but there is significant overlap between the categories. Each category’s reports are listed in chronological order with the most recently published reports at the top.

NATO

Ukraine

Security Cooperation

U.S. Relations with NATO Allies

Emerging Technology

CRS is constantly publishing new research. An RSS feed of newly-published reports is available from the unofficial EveryCRSReport.com.

]]> A YouTube Playlist To Help Debaters Learn About Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine https://the3nr.com/2022/06/20/a-youtube-playlist-to-help-debaters-learn-about-russias-invasion-of-ukraine/ Mon, 20 Jun 2022 05:29:46 +0000 https://the3nr.com/?p=3652 One month after the 2022-2023 high school policy debate topic about NATO was selected, Russia invaded Ukraine. This will have major ramifications for many of the issues students will be researching and debating this year. Even when Ukraine is not the explicit subject of a debate, it will be the elephant in the room. In order to debate the NATO topic intelligently, students will need to know a lot about Ukraine, Russia, and the war.

To help debaters get started, I have curated a YouTube playlist with a series of videos about the history of Ukraine and Russia, the geography of the war, the important military developments so far, and the competing theories about the causes of the war.

I will continue to update this playlist throughout the summer with additional videos. Have a suggestion? Post a comment or email me.

]]> Analyzing The NATO Topic Using Justification Burdens: Strategic Considerations and An Affirmative Case Selection Checklist https://the3nr.com/2022/06/15/analyzing-the-nato-topic-using-justification-burdens-strategic-considerations-and-an-affirmative-case-selection-checklist/ Wed, 15 Jun 2022 09:07:26 +0000 https://the3nr.com/?p=3650 In sharing David Cheshier’s 1981 article “Justification vs. The Counterplan,” I noted the continuing importance of the justification argument in contemporary debates about counterplan theory. If you haven’t yet read Cheshier’s article, I suggest doing so before continuing.

More broadly, I think the concept of the justification argument provides a valuable tool for analyzing a debate topic and generating research ideas for affirmative and negative arguments. In this post, I will use the concept of the justification argument to break down the 2022-2023 high school policy debate topic:

Resolved: The United States federal government should substantially increase its security cooperation with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in one or more of the following areas: artificial intelligence, biotechnology, cybersecurity.

When using this method to analyze a resolution, one starts by identifying each of the affirmative’s “justification burdens” as derived from the resolution’s wording. In other words, what does the affirmative need to “justify” in order to make their prima facie case for the resolution? When making this list, it is helpful to pose the burdens as questions: has the affirmative justified the need for XYZ?

For the NATO topic, there are five main justification burdens that the affirmative must arguably meet. For each burden, I will briefly explain the issues that it raises, the negative strategies it invites, and the strategic considerations the affirmative should therefore consider when selecting and designing their cases. For simplicity’s sake, these five burdens are presented in the order that they appear in the resolution.

After identifying and discussing these burdens, I have also provided a checklist that can be used to vet affirmative case ideas. I hope that students and coaches find this helpful as they begin their summer research.

1. Has the affirmative justified the need for United States federal government action?

The agent question is always important in policy debate. On domestic topics, it most often centers on the comparison of federal vs. state or local government action. In short, could the advantages be obtained from action by another actor? On the NATO topic, the federal vs. state or local issue is less likely to be important, although there might be areas in which coordinated state action or private sector action could accrue some (especially emerging tech-related) advantages.

What about action by NATO itself? Or by one or more NATO member countries acting without U.S. involvement? Or by one or more non-NATO member countries acting without U.S. involvement? Or by a non-NATO international organization? Or — as noted above — by the private sector?

This justification burden will create a set of generic counterplans that will be quite powerful: the NATO CP, the Single Non-U.S. NATO Member Country CP, the Coordinated/Uniform Non-U.S. NATO Member Countries CP, the European Union CP, the United Nations CP, and the Private Sector (Silicon Valley) CP (among others).

To be winnable strategies for the negative, these counterplans need to be paired with disadvantages to U.S. federal government action. Historically, this has included Politics DAs, Spending/Budget Tradeoff DAs, Diplomatic Capital DAs, and Soft Power/U.S. Influence Bad DAs.

For these disadvantages to be credible net-benefits, the negative will need to prove that their counterplan can be enacted without U.S. involvement. While this is usually perfunctory, it might be more complicated than usual on the NATO topic. For example, does action by NATO require explicit approval by the United States? If so, in what form can or would that approval be provided? This will be an important research area during the summer.

From the affirmative’s perspective, this burden highlights the need to prepare a “U.S. action key” advantage. A plan-specific advantage and impact is ideal, but that might significantly limit the number of viable affirmative cases. Generic “U.S. key” advantages typically claim that the plan strengthens U.S. leadership, soft power, credibility, etc. The more generic the advantage, the more easily the negative will be able to impact turn it. Depending on the relative strength of the other arguments in play, that might be fine for the affirmative.

2. Has the affirmative justified the need for action with NATO?

Even if the affirmative proves the need for United States action, could the advantages be obtained without the United States acting with NATO? By the United States acting alone? By the United States acting bilaterally with one or more NATO member countries? By the United States acting bilaterally with non-NATO allies? By the United States acting multilaterally with allies via another organization like the Five Eyes? By the United States acting with another international organization like the EU or UN? By the United States acting bilaterally or multilaterally with non-NATO member countries like China or Russia?

This justification burden invites another series of generic counterplans that will force affirmatives to choose cases with a credible “NATO key” advantage. Broadly, this includes the Unilateral CP, the Bilateral with NATO Member Countries But Not NATO CP, the Bilateral with Non-NATO Member Countries CP, and the Multilateral But Not NATO CP.

To become a winnable negative strategy, these counterplans must be coupled with a “U.S. Action With NATO Bad” DA. These will likely include NATO Bad DAs, U.S. Influence In NATO Tradeoff DAs, and NATO Cohesion DAs. The latter two categories (perhaps best conceptualized as NATO Politics DAs) will likely be more strategic than basic NATO Bad DAs, but this will be an important set of arguments to research during the summer.

For the affirmative, a “NATO key” advantage is essential. While this might seem straightforward, I predict that it will be relatively difficult to simultaneously justify the need for U.S. action and the need for NATO action. Strategically, the negative can present several counterplans in the same debate: the U.S. unilateral action CP, the U.S. bilateral action with NATO member countries CP, the U.S. multilateral action with the EU CP, the non-U.S. NATO member countries CP, and the NATO CP. To be in a strong position to defeat all of these counterplans, the affirmative’s “NATO key” advantage actually needs to be a “U.S. action with NATO key” advantage. That kind of advantage could be used to defeat all of the counterplans mentioned so far, but researching and crafting it is much easier said than done.

Practically, most cases will need to claim a more generic NATO advantage. When researching these advantages, the affirmative should explore the same areas suggested above for negative DAs: the U.S. Influence In NATO Tradeoff DA can become a U.S. Influence In NATO Good Advantage, the NATO Cohesion DA can become a NATO Cohesion Advantage, etc.

For both the affirmative and negative sides of these arguments, it will be especially important to be attentive to inherency and link uniqueness issues. Given the current U.S. relationship with NATO, how will the plan affect the impacts identified? In some debates, these link uniqueness issues will be moot: in order for the negative to win their non-NATO CP and NATO Bad DA, they generally can’t claim that status quo U.S. involvement with NATO solves the affirmative’s NATO Good Advantage. (That’s why the NATO Bad DA is less valuable for the negative than the NATO Politics-style DAs.) Regardless, it is important to distinguish between “generic” NATO Good/Bad arguments and potentially plan-/resolution-specific NATO Good/Bad arguments as you research the topic. The latter will be much harder to find but much more valuable.

3. Has the affirmative justified the need for its (U.S.) security cooperation?

The first two justification burdens have already made affirmative case selection difficult. This one makes it even more daunting. As I noted in my initial analysis of the NATO topic last December, “security cooperation” has a relatively clear definition:

DoD Security Cooperation is defined in Joint Pub 1-02: All DoD interactions with foreign defense establishments to build defense relationships that promote specific US security interests, develop allied and friendly military capabilities for self-defense and multinational operations, and provide US forces with peacetime and contingency access to a host nation. DoD Directive 5132.03 provides DoD-wide policy and describes DoD organizational responsibilities regarding Security Cooperation activities.

DoD Security Cooperation includes International Armaments Cooperation (IAC) activities as well as the various elements of Security Assistance, including Foreign Military Sales (FMS) and Building Partner Capacity (BPC). Most DoD Security Cooperation policy, organization, and activities (other than IAC) are led and managed by USD(Policy) rather than USD(Acquisition & Sustainment) and USD(Research & Engineering), but many U.S. Government/DoD Security Cooperation activities are implemented through USD(A&S), USD(R&E), and DoD Component acquisition-related IA&E efforts.

“Its security cooperation with NATO” was an odd choice for the resolution’s mechanism because the United States does very little (if any) security cooperation with NATO as a whole. Instead, its security cooperation activities are primarily bilateral, with NATO member countries among the largest partners. This limits the number and quality of available solvency advocates in ways that are likely to necessitate “square peg-round hole” approaches to argument construction.

In terms of debate strategy, even an affirmative that has justified the need for U.S. action and the need for U.S. action with NATO has not done enough. The affirmative must also more specifically justify the need for U.S. security cooperation with NATO. Could the advantages be obtained by other forms of U.S. action with NATO? If so, the affirmative has not justified the resolution.

The range of possibilities here is difficult to identify at this early stage of the research process. What are the alternatives to security cooperation? This should be a major area of summer exploration, but a promising idea described by Kevin McCaffrey on the MSU Debate Blog (scroll to “An Early Attempt to Limit the NATO Topic”) is that security cooperation includes only activities conducted by the Department of Defense. Therefore, the affirmative must justify the need for DOD action rather than action by the Department of State (or another agency).

This creates at least one more generic counterplan: the Department of State CP. It might also create additional counterplans that propose action by other agencies or even action by the Department of Defense via other mechanisms than security cooperation, but further research will be required to vet these ideas.

Whether this genre of negative strategy is viable will depend on two primary factors: (1) whether the negative can prove that “its security cooperation with NATO” should be defined to exclude the counterplan’s mechanism (i.e., that the counterplan is mutually exclusive with the plan), and (2) whether the negative can construct credible disadvantages to increased U.S. security cooperation (i.e., that the counterplan is net-beneficial).

Regarding the former issue, McCaffrey’s research (.docx link) suggests that this will be a viable but debatable basis for competition. Regarding the latter issue, it seems likely that net-benefits will include Security Cooperation Tradeoff DAs, DOD Budget Tradeoff DAs, DOD Influence Bad/DOS Influence Good DAs, and perhaps Politics DAs with DOD-specific links.

How strong these DAs will need to be in order to win competitive debates will depend on the existence and quality of the affirmative’s “security cooperation key” advantages. When selecting a case, the affirmative will need to (as much as possible) craft one or more advantages that prove the need for U.S. security cooperation. Based on my early research, this will be extremely difficult. Practically, it will likely require relying on more expansive definitions of “security cooperation” that include diplomatic activities. Otherwise, the Bilateral Action With NATO Member Countries CP seems like it will be difficult to defeat.

It is also important to remember that the negative can simultaneously propose the Non-Security Cooperation CP (with a Security Cooperation Tradeoff-style DA) and the Bilateral Security Cooperation With NATO Member Countries CP (with a NATO Influence Tradeoff/Politics-style DA). The affirmative will need a “security cooperation key” advantage to defeat the former strategy and a “security cooperation with NATO” key advantage to defeat the latter strategy.

Again, this latter advantage is much easier to name than to research and construct. If the affirmative can craft a credible one, they will be in a great position to defeat most counterplans. But as noted earlier, most affirmatives will likely need to rely on a more generic advantage. As with the NATO DAs, one promising approach is to explore the same areas as the Security Cooperation DAs, but to craft them as advantages: the Security Cooperation Tradeoff DA becomes the Security Cooperation Tradeoff Advantage, the DOD Influence Bad/DOS Influence Good DA becomes the DOD Influence Good/DOS Influence Bad Advantage, etc.

As with the NATO arguments, inherency and link uniqueness will be important to keep in mind while researching these arguments.

4. Has the affirmative justified the need for a substantial increase in security cooperation?

This burden presents an additional challenge for the affirmative. Even if U.S. security cooperation with NATO is needed, is a substantial increase needed? Or could the advantages be obtained by reforming or reprogramming existing security cooperation?

Historically, this kind of burden has invited the Offsets CP: a counterplan that “PICs out of” the resolution’s (and usually plan’s) call for a substantial increase (in this case of security cooperation with NATO). Sometimes, this kind of counterplan is paired with a straightforward Budget Tradeoff-style DA. Usually, the counterplan’s text explicitly specifies another status quo program that should be cut in order to “offset” the plan (hence the name “offsets CP”).

For example, consider an affirmative plan that proposes increased U.S. security cooperation with NATO over AI. In response, the negative could propose an Offsets CP that mandates a reduction in U.S. security cooperation with NATO over peacekeeping operations in Iraq and a commensurate increase in U.S. security cooperation with NATO over AI. The net-benefit is that U.S. security cooperation with NATO over peacekeeping operations in Iraq is bad. In response to “permute: do the counterplan” and “permute: do both,” the negative will argue that the permutations sever the “substantial increase” mandate in the plan/resolution because they maintain the status quo level of security cooperation with NATO. Therefore, they do not justify the resolution.

While it has many defenders, the Offsets CP has typically been viewed skeptically by most coaches and judges. Importantly, the wording of this year’s resolution calls for a substantial increase in U.S. security cooperation with NATO in one or more of the following areas: artificial intelligence, biotechnology, cybersecurity. In the example above, the permutations (to do the counterplan or to do both) arguably fulfill the resolution’s burden: they prove the need for a substantial increase in U.S. security cooperation with NATO in the area of AI; proving the need for a substantial increase in U.S. security cooperation with NATO writ large is not an affirmative burden. If this is right, even an Offsets CP that offsets an increase in one of the three listed areas with a decrease in one of the other two listed areas wouldn’t compete: the affirmative’s burden is to prove the need for a substantial increase in one or more (but not all three) of the listed areas.

Perhaps counter-intuitively, this kind of counterplan would be more promising if there was more U.S. security cooperation with NATO in these areas in the status quo. The Offsets CP has been much more popular on previous topics when inherency (and therefore link uniqueness) was difficult to establish. When the resolution is written as “do even more of what’s already being done a lot in the status quo,” this kind of strategy can help the negative defeat cases that propose relatively small increases and rely on “link not unique” arguments to beat disadvantages. Whether this will be true on the NATO topic likely depends on how broadly “security cooperation with NATO” is eventually defined.

5. Has the affirmative justified the need for action in the areas of artificial intelligence, biotechnology, and/or cybersecurity?

These three areas are quite broad, but they don’t encompass everything that NATO does. Therefore, they create one last justification burden: could the advantages be obtained by U.S. security cooperation with NATO over another issue than AI, biotech, or cybersecurity? The negative will use this question as the basis for an “other area” counterplan.

Strategically, this will be relatively less important than the other burdens (especially the first three). In order for the Other Area CP to be a viable negative strategy, it will need to be coupled with an AI, biotech, or cybersecurity DA. Constructing a generic “area DA” will be relatively difficult given the existing scope of NATO activities and the diversity of possible plans within each area. Therefore, the negative will need to prepare a more specific DA against common cases. If they are prepared with a plan-specific DA, they don’t need to rely as much on a generic counterplan. And when answering this kind of DA, the affirmative will rely on plan-specific arguments, link uniqueness presses, and (probably) impact turns. That reduces the strategic importance of preparing for this genre of counterplan.

Still, this type of strategy should be taken into consideration during this summer’s research. When affirmative cases are being vetted, the credibility of their “AI, biotech, or cyber key” advantage is an important variable. But its importance pales in comparison to the need for a strong “security cooperation with NATO key” advantage. As long as the AI, biotech, or cybersecurity advantage is “good enough,” the relative strength of the “security cooperation key” advantage should be the primary consideration when selecting a case.

NATO Topic Affirmative Justification Burdens Checklist

To help make the affirmative vetting process easier, the following is a checklist based on the justification burdens identified above.

[ ] Can the affirmative prove the need for United States federal government action?
[ ] Can the affirmative prove the need for U.S. action with NATO?
[ ] Can the affirmative prove the need for U.S. security cooperation with NATO?
[ ] Can the affirmative prove the need for a substantial increase in U.S. security cooperation with NATO?
[ ] Can the affirmative prove the need for U.S. security cooperation with NATO in the areas of AI, biotech, and cybersecurity?

Specifically, can the affirmative prove that one or more of its advantages can’t be solved by the…

[ ] NATO Do It CP
[ ] Single Non-U.S. NATO Member Country Do It CP
[ ] Coordinated/Uniform Non-U.S. NATO Member Countries Do It CP
[ ] Non-NATO Member Country Do It (China, Russia, etc.) CP
[ ] European Union Do It CP
[ ] United Nations Do It CP
[ ] Private Sector Do It CP
[ ] U.S. Do It Unilaterally CP
[ ] U.S. Do It Bilaterally With NATO Member Countries CP
[ ] U.S. Do It Bilaterally With Non-NATO Member Countries CP
[ ] U.S. Do It Multilaterally Without NATO (Five Eyes, EU, UN, etc.) CP
[ ] State Department Do It CP
[ ] Reform/Reprogram Existing Security Cooperation CP

Keep in mind that this list is not exhaustive. For one thing, additional topic-specific counterplans will be revealed through further research. More importantly, there are a series of trans-topical generic counterplans that affirmatives will also need to be prepared for — including at least a few that will likely have topic-specific twists. For example, should increased U.S. security cooperation with NATO be conditioned on NATO or its Member Countries fulfilling particular U.S. requests? That’s the conditions (or quid pro quo) counterplan. Should increased U.S. security cooperation with NATO be subject to Australia’s (or another non-NATO ally’s) approval? That’s the consultation counterplan. This list will eventually become quite extensive, but I have not included these counterplans here because they are not derived from resolution-specific language. (Many plan-contingent counterplans claim to compete based on “Resolved:” and “should,” but that’s beyond the scope of this article.)

Finally, it is important to remember that perfection in affirmative case selection is impossible — and due to the dearth of solvency advocates, I think that will be particularly true on the NATO topic. When choosing and designing cases, affirmatives will need to accept tradeoffs: being better prepared to defeat some counterplans will leave one less prepared to defeat others. And all of this needs to be balanced against other considerations relating to topicality, kritiks, one’s competition circuit, one’s interests and strengths and weaknesses, etc. Such is the nature of debate as a strategic argument contest. However, approaching affirmative case selection with the counterplans described above in mind will help maximize the affirmative’s chances of success by weeding out case ideas that can’t defeat the most likely resolution-based generic negative strategies.

]]> Digging Into The Debate Theory Archives: Cheshier on Justification Arguments https://the3nr.com/2022/06/15/digging-into-the-debate-theory-archives-cheshier-on-justification-arguments/ https://the3nr.com/2022/06/15/digging-into-the-debate-theory-archives-cheshier-on-justification-arguments/#comments Wed, 15 Jun 2022 05:57:10 +0000 https://the3nr.com/?p=3646 Digging Into The Debate Theory Archives is a series highlighting “old” debate theory articles that are particularly thought-provoking, influential, or illuminating and that active debate students would benefit from reading.

In tracking the transition from what I called the “policy testing” paradigm of the late 1990s and 2000s to the currently predominant “hypothesis planning” paradigm that first emerged in the 2010s, I noted the importance of the view — derived originally from the hypothesis testing paradigm of the 1970s — that counterplans are merely “justification arguments,” not counter-advocacies. As described by David Zarefsky, the leading theorist of the hypothesis testing paradigm, the counterplan “is merely the justification argument in a different form.”

To understand modern counterplan theory thus requires one to understand the justification argument. While rarely encountered in modern debate, this genre of argument was once quite popular even on the national circuit. Conceptualized as a way for the negative to import the concept of a counterplan into a more traditional stock issues or conservative policymaking paradigm, the most common version of the justification argument claimed that the affirmative had failed to justify some part of the resolution.

For example, if action by state governments could possibly address the harms outlined by the affirmative, the negative would claim that the affirmative had not “justified” the need for federal government action. Framed as a justification argument, the negative was not advocating a states counterplan; it was instead arguing that the affirmative had failed to meet their burden to defeat a potential states counterplan, even though the negative had not specifically proposed one.

The appeal of this style of argument was that it used the language of “burdens” that was central to the stock issues paradigm. In the same way that the affirmative was obligated to meet its prima facie stock issues burdens (most commonly understood to include topicality, inherency, significance, harms, and solvency), the negative argued that there were other prima facie burdens that the affirmative must also meet. This allowed the negative to adapt counterplan-style arguments to appeal to judges that were unfamiliar with or opposed to the use of counterplans as a negative strategy. Even in the early 2000s, it was still common to see justification arguments at the CFL and NSDA (then NFL) National tournaments where conservative judges made up a significant percentage of the pool.

Over time, the counterplan fully replaced the justification argument. However, the underlying theory of the justification argument still plays a major role in how counterplans are understood and debated. Many plan-inclusive and plan-contingent counterplans are still defended on the theoretical grounds that they test whether the affirmative has met its burden to justify particular parts of the plan or resolution. The increasingly popular genre of resolution-based counterplans takes this logic even farther, arguing that counterplans can compete based on the resolution (not just the plan) because the affirmative has the burden to justify all parts of the resolution.

Thankfully, students seeking to better understand the theoretical basis for these arguments can revisit the debate about justification from the late 1970s and early 1980s. Here, I have shared an article by David Cheshier (then a debater at Wake Forest University; he later became the most prolific published debate theorist of his era) summarizing the state of the justification argument and arguing that it should be replaced by the counterplan. Thinking through his arguments (and the arguments of the theorists he cites) will be helpful for contemporary students as they seek to improve and refine their counterplan theory arguments.

The full text of Cheshier’s article is reproduced below.

Cheshier, David M. “Justification vs. the Counterplan.” Debater’s Research Guide (Alternatives in Education: Stagnation or Renewal), 1981.

Many coaches and commentators on high school (and college) debate are critical of the growing tendency of students to revert to complex gamesmanship in rounds where a more reasoned approach would suffice. This complaint carries a great deal of persuasive validity; too often semantic “games” are played for no apparent reason than that the guilty debater is unprepared for the round.

It is this predominant sentiment, right or wrong, that has triggered the overuse of the justification argument. Many debaters see the justification argument as a “safe” way to argue a counterplan, without the concurrent assumption of competitiveness and topicality burdens. This paper will argue that debaters have unfortunately taken a misguided and somewhat convoluted view of what was intended to be nothing more than a simple explanation of the debate process.

Justification is a catchword run wild. It is a word describing the sum-total of prima facie burdens. That is, if I win inherency, harm, significance, solvency, and topicality, I can be said to have justified the resolution. Justification means nothing more, nothing less. But negatives have taken the label and given it a life and rhetorical power of its own, arguing in essence that:

You may be solvent, but not solvent enough to justify adoption. You may be topical, but not enough. You may win some harm, but not enough…

… ad nauseum. Unfortunately, the debater is never able to tell you what “enough” is. And with good reason. It cannot be done; for once prima facie burdens are met, any additional requirements are by necessity purely arbitrary and/or superfluous. Justification has been granted substance without authority, becoming a sixth prima facie burden. This tilt in the strategic balance in favor of the negative, as below indicated, can only damage the activity.

Justification is at best a vague concept. Even those textbooks purporting to define the word for the lay audience describe it in overly broad, open-ended phrases. Sayers, for example, describes the term as follows:

Justification — to uphold the burden of proof, those advocating change must demonstrate a need or rationale for making the change, a method whereby change can be practically implemented, and the method must not be so disadvantageous as to overwhelm the benefits of the new system.1

Although all debate concepts are of necessity somewhat broad, this vagueness has allowed debaters to widely misinterpret and misuse the concept of justification. The result is a construct so diluted that it lacks argumentative validity. Definitional latitude is also reflected in the more “popular” literature on the topic. Even the most cursory reading tends to divide this discussion into two parts.

The first group of theorists, reflecting an older view of the term, argue that the plan, including each of its independent provisions, must justify the resolution. This point of view was explained by Sklansky:

The justification argument…maintains that the affirmative has not justified adoption of all its plan, and therefore still has not justified the entire resolution.2

Gary Turner, representing this viewpoint, argues that debaters too often under- or over-justify plan provisions. By this he means that the plan planks (or even more generally, plan mandates) and case-side advantages do not adequately correspond.3 If, for example, solvency evidence indicates that sex education in high schools only is needed to reduce the incidence of teenage pregnancy, but the plan offers sex education in both secondary and elementary schools (presumably this part unexplained), the latter half would not be justified. To Turner, these “mis”-justification arguments are underdeveloped, and could possibly become voting issues.

This view, however, is not the most common interpretation of justification as articulated in most debate rounds. In fact, by the end of the second affirmative’s rebuttal the typical judge is often faced with a situation where strategic concessions render much of the plan irrelevant. Especially at the higher levels of high school debate, some teams purposely write plans with full intent to jettison planks late in the debate, presumably having diverted negative attention from the more critical, “hidden” advantages.

The second general view is a more refined interpretation of the first. It evaluates justification as it regards the resolution. As many debaters now argue the issue, and as Thomas explains:

The affirmative team is bound to justify acceptance of the resolution, not the affirmative plan whether it implements the resolution or not.4

On the 1981-82 high school resolution the negative might, for example, argue that the word “educational” and the phrase “elementary and secondary schools” were unjustified by an affirmative case advocating vocational training. They might instead argue for expanded work-site training as a preferable policy. In short, the plan becomes an argument for a different resolution; namely, that the federal government should expand job training programs for United States citizens.

Thomas and Trapp view this interpretation from more sophisticated, if opposing, viewpoints. Both argue that the justification argument, although distinct, is closely related to topicality analysis. Thomas, however, gives the argument much more credibility than Trapp. He asserts:

The affirmative is vulnerable to topicality attacks (1) when the plan fails to fully implement the resolution in all its operative terms, (2) when the plan goes beyond the requirements of the resolution, or (3) when the case does not justify all the proposed changes in policy required by the resolution.5

As Trapp points out, however:

The first two items ask whether the affirmative plan when implemented conforms to a reasonable definition of the resolution. The third item asks whether the affirmative case justifies each individual term of the resolution. The first two items will be referred to as topicality while the third will be referred to in this analysis as justification.7

Once analysis is crystallized to this degree, essentially we have returned to Turner’s point of view, and the relatively outmoded concepts it engenders. Thus, even this more reasoned discussion of the issue fails to aid the contemporary debater. Instead, we are once again left with the outmoded construct where every plank and phrase must in some way be “justified” by the case.

Trapp indicts the Turner/Thomas view of justification, claiming it is an abuse of presumption.7 More recent views of presumption make this a tepid indictment with little or no “impact” on current discussion. Most judges rarely think about presumption, let alone factor it into their decision-making calculus. It has been ignored — if only because of utter subjectivity in its application. Who knows, or cares to speculate, what level of presumption the affirmative has to overcome to warrant change?

The wide disagreement between theorists should alone indicate the ambiguity of its interpretation by the more confused debater. Not only is there a great difference in the literature as to what justification is, but there is no conceivable theoretical framework or argumentative consensus as to how it should be dealt with in a round. This conflict has left the door open to widespread exploitation of the argument, especially at the high school level (where at least perceived ambivalence to the counterplan renders justification a viable alternative). Why should a judge’s decision be risked because of resistance to the state counterplan when it can be rephrased as a “federal” justification argument?

There are several serious problems with this view, in light of a number of flaws in the justification argument. A failure to acknowledge such flaws creates the appearance of logical validity when in fact no substance exists, posing a danger to high quality debate.

To state the obvious, the very fact that justification is so broadly defined makes it nearly impossible to pragmatically evaluate in a given round. Presumably, judge subjectivity should be reduced to the lowest level possible, leading to a more precise and fair evaluation of relative skills and proposals. This increased objectivity concurrently reduces the judge’s ability to vote on specious arguments. This goal is destroyed by the justification argument. As the Sayers definition proves, the word justification is essentially a blanket term, describing the larger debate process. It includes topicality (as Thomas and Trapp point out), and all other prima facie burdens as well (as Sayers proves).

This broadness could perhaps be warranted if it created a unique argumentative circumstance. However, it does not.. As several commentators have pointed out, all the “advantages” of the justification argument can be easily achieved (and with a much higher degree of argumentative specificity) through alternative conventional means. The most obvious is the counterplan. As Trapp notes:

Given the views expressed above, a more consistent approach than the justification argument would be a counterplan… The negative would then argue that their counterplan would produce the same advantages while avoiding unique disadvantages of the affirmative plan.8

This analysis seems particularly persuasive, for the justification argument is today used increasingly to hide non-competitive policies behind a cloak of respectability that affirmative analysis should expose. Or, as Sklansky points out:

A justification argument…is simply the threat of a counterplan. The negative team is saying that the affirmative team has not shown why the affirmative plan is superior to a counterplan the negative could propose.9

How is the judge to weigh the justification argument? Proponents of the argument leave this question vaguely overlooked or tantalizingly unanswered. Turner writes:

To what degree should underjustification or overjustification be a voting issue in the debate? For underjustification the issue is centered around the degree that an affirmative can make the unjustified planks viable… (O)verjustification the issue is centered around the degree that the negative can minimize the advantage through a plan-meet-need.10

In other words, evaluate other prima facie as met by the affirmative for that portion of the plan. Given this option, then, why bother with justification when solvency can serve the same function without justification’s accompanying ambiguity?

In addition, the justification argument is singularly out of place in nearly every current decision-making paradigm. A brief survey of the policymaking paradigm proves this especially true. There is no corollary in the real world of decision-making that reflects the debate justification argument. The most critical distinction is that the real world simply views the “resolution” as implying jurisdiction. Or, more simply, the resolution is something to be met, not justified. How often, for example, does Jesse Helms justify his committee’s jurisdiction when considering a tobacco subsidy bill? One can scarcely imagine him, or any other Congressman for that matter, interrupting each committee hearing to expressly “justify” the jurisdiction of the committee over that day’s set of bills. It is like saying that Helm’s agriculture committee has a bill on food stamps before it, but that the bill must be rejected because some other committee could hear it, and might be better equipped. Or similarly arguing that the House Committee on Education and Labor should reject a bill to mandate civics education because another group of Representatives might be entitled to hear it also. The Congress would be running circles around itself. This failure to reflect the real world is true for good reason — such confines would bog down the world of policymaking in endless discourse, for no apparent purpose. This is especially true in a situation where branches of the decision-making process are set in opposition to each other (like the American system). As Reike and Sillars explain:

… (J)ustification satisfactory in one context may not serve another. A Senate committee may be satisfied, and say so in its report, that government officials are guilty. But the materials on which they justify that position might be rejected in a court of law or a political meeting. A justification for expenditure of billions of dollars for space exploration may be satisfactory in Congress, but be rejected by groups representing the poor… (C)ases must be constructed in such a way as to provide sufficient justification for the adherence of all decision makers.11

Likewise, the debate process gets bogged down in an argumentative swamp, one with which the judge (faced with absolute vagueness) is ill-equipped to extricate himself.

There are a number of other reasons why justification makes for bad debate. For one, it can only stifle substantive and innovative research by the negative. Educational value cannot be served where debaters need not research beyond a bad counterplan, as hidden in justification. Additionally, justification creates a situation where a negative can conceivably research one argument to last for the entire year. If, for example, I find evidence saying workplace education is great and occasionally better than school-based standards (as in the 1981-82 high school debate topic), I can presumably read that against every topical case, and, judge willing, win every negative. Evidence used will carry a much lower degree of specificity (as regards the case). Any generic negative card comparing the resolution with some alternative would presumably cast enough doubt on the affirmative’s interpretation of a resolutional word to force the affirmative to read only case specific evidence. In this event, the negative is instantly granted an evidentiary advantage. This problem is unique to justification, for these arguments, if properly argued as counterplans, could often be reasonably disposed of via competitiveness or topicality arguments. Finally, justification arguments allow the negative to “implicitly defend” any number of positions, without a simultaneous advocacy burden to actually argue the specific of the issue. Thus, the judge, by the utterance of a few phrases in first negative is forced to analyze multiples of decision-making combinations. As Trapp explains:

The negative in essence is supporting the present system, but arguing that there is a policy system outside the affirmative resolution (which the negative team does not support) that also produces the benefits of the affirmative resolution-plan. The question now becomes, should the judge weigh three policy systems in the balance even though only one system is not supported by either team or should the judge weigh only two policy systems — the resolution; as supported by the affirmative team vs. the present system as supported by the negative team? I obviously support the latter view.12

Sklansky agrees, adding:

Unless a negative is actually proposing the counterplan, however, its merit is irrelevant. Only two systems are being compared: the status quo and the affirmative plan. If the affirmative shows its proposal to the present system, the proposal, and thus the resolution, has been fully justified. If we require the affirmative to attack a counterplan that has not been proposed, the negative can threaten to propose any number of counterplans. It is physically impossible for the affirmative to attack what is obviously an infinite number of alternate systems. To expect it to do so would be equivalent to asking the negative to attack all possible examples of the resolution.13

Justification is easy to criticize, if only for its abuse in the typical round. What is more important than this consideration however (all arguments tend to be abused at some point), is the simple fact that justification encourages vagueness, illegitimate approaches to complex problem areas, and unnecessarily shifts the argumentative advantage to the negative. Such a practice should be discouraged, hopefully stopped together, given its theoretical weakness as a legitimate argument. Certainly it should not become a voting issue — ever: other prima facie burdens are quite capable of determining the winner of the round, and (as in the case of the counterplan) in a much more satisfactory way. Avoid the temptation to run “federal” justification when a state counterplan will do just as well, if not better. In spite of the counterplan’s occasional accompanying ambiguity, it is vastly superior to the muck of justification.

At the time of publication, David M. Cheshier was an undergraduate student and debater at Wake Forest University.

Notes


1. James Edward Sayers, Argument and Debate (Sherman Oaks, California: Alfred Publishing Co. Inc., 1980), p. 125.
2. David Sklansky, “A Response to Gary Turner,” in Advanced Debate: Readings in Theory, Practice, and Teaching, ed. David Thomas (Skokie, Illinois: National Textbook Co., 1979), p. 81.
3. Gary Owen Turner, “Attacks on Misjustification,” in Advanced Debate: Readings in Theory, Practice, and Teaching, pp. 79-80.
4. David Thomas, “What Makes an Affirmative Case Topical?” in Advanced Debate: Readings in Theory, Practice, and Teaching, ed. David Thomas.
5. Ibid., p. 74.
6. Robert Trapp, “A Response to Thomas,” Advanced Debate: Readings in Theory, Practice, and Teaching, p. 75.
7. Trapp, p. 75 writes: “The first reason that justification arguments are not as valid as topicality arguments is that they misapply the concept of presumption. We presume that the negative team preoccupies a piece of argumentative ground. We should not presume, however, that the negative occupies all argumentative ground not claimed by the affirmative resolution (that is, all policy systems except the affirmative resolution) but simply that ground defined as the policy system currently in force.
8. Ibid., p. 76.
9. Sklansky, p. 81.
10. Turner, p. 80.
11. Richard Reike and Malcolm Sillars, Argumentation and The Decision Making Process (New York: John Wiley and Sons, Inc., 1975) pp. l68-169.
12. Trapp, p. 76.
13. Sklansky, p. 81.

]]> https://the3nr.com/2022/06/15/digging-into-the-debate-theory-archives-cheshier-on-justification-arguments/feed/ 1 Breaking Down The Final Two 2022-2023 Topic Choices: Why I Am Not Voting For The NATO Emerging Technologies Topic https://the3nr.com/2021/12/10/breaking-down-the-final-two-2022-2023-topic-choices-why-i-am-not-voting-for-the-nato-emerging-technologies-topic/ Fri, 10 Dec 2021 19:39:01 +0000 https://the3nr.com/?p=3629 With the 2022-2023 high school policy debate topic selection process nearing completion, I explained my concerns about the multilateral climate regimes topic. This time, I will share my thoughts about the other option on the final ballot: the NATO emerging technologies topic. Is it the better choice? Unfortunately, I don’t think so. I’ll return to this answer at the end of the post, but first I’ll share my analysis of the NATO topic.

Unlike the climate change topic, the NATO topic is supported by a thorough topic paper. It is worded as follows:

Resolved: The United States federal government should substantially increase its security cooperation with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in one or more of the following areas: artificial intelligence, biotechnology, cybersecurity.

This is a relatively interesting subject area that would hopefully encourage students to learn more about the many timely and complicated policy challenges related to AI, biotech, and cybersecurity. But how will debates actually play out given the topic’s wording? How well does it divide affirmative and negative ground?

Here’s the official NFHS synopsis for the topic:

Most Bond films open with 007 in the middle of some major crisis with the audience waiting for the opportunity of Q’s new technology to resolve the conflict. However, emerging technology like AI, biotechnology, and cybersecurity, can be easily created, intercepted, and used by the “enemy”. Clearly, the U.S. and its allies need to collaborate for the best solution. Possible case affirmatives would be creating a U.S.- NATO emerging technology investment fund; instituting a NATO treaty on autonomous weapons; increasing cooperation in biotechnology (e.g., on vaccine diplomacy, biofuels investment, or agricultural biotech cooperation); establishing a new U.S.-NATO infrastructure for thwarting and responding to cyber threats; banning offensive cyber operations; and forging U.S.-NATO partnerships with private technology companies to bolster the alliance’s leadership in emerging technologies. These emerging technologies are vulnerable to outside threats. The negative will have multiple strategies. These technologies create case specific disadvantages generating specific links and turns. Theoretical discussions of offensive and defensive cyber weapons, the effectiveness of deterrence, the role of the U.S. as a hegemon, and global politics will be popular. Economic repercussions and interdependence of the global economy will be key. Negatives can argue alternative methods of engagement by using public/private non-military partnerships. Various perspectives on philosophically driven arguments will be intrinsic. The voices of the disenfranchised will be argued. A diverse set of arguments creates a level playing field for all students by debating emerging technologies. This topic affords students from across the nation in rural and urban areas from coast to coast, with ample research and provides scaffolded skills’ development. The topic is broad, but the strength in it is the balance of affirmative and negative material. Debaters will gain experience in a well-rounded understanding of how emerging technologies are reshaping society, the advantages and disadvantages of different policy approaches, and how the issues surrounding emerging technologies will shape the global security agenda for decades to come. Students’ knowledge of how crisis and opportunity work, with a collaborative approach to the solution, are essential skills for life.

As with the climate topic, I tried to determine whether this description was a persuasive prediction about what debates would actually look like if this topic was selected. Let’s start with the part of the synopsis that summarizes affirmative case areas:

Possible case affirmatives would be creating a U.S.-NATO emerging technology investment fund; instituting a NATO treaty on autonomous weapons; increasing cooperation in biotechnology (e.g., on vaccine diplomacy, biofuels investment, or agricultural biotech cooperation); establishing a new U.S.-NATO infrastructure for thwarting and responding to cyber threats; banning offensive cyber operations; and forging U.S.-NATO partnerships with private technology companies to bolster the alliance’s leadership in emerging technologies. These emerging technologies are vulnerable to outside threats.

The mechanism in the resolution — the USFG should “substantially increase its security cooperation with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization” — seems to require that topical affirmative plans act in partnership with (or “through”) NATO, but what this means is a little more complicated than I thought.

Notably, the definitions of “security cooperation” in the topic paper are all in the context of the Department of Defense. Does “security cooperation” exclusively refer to actions or programs by the DOD? It seems like the answer is yes. This is the broadest definition included in the topic paper:

Security cooperation is the effort to advance U.S. national security and foreign policy interests by building the capacity of foreign security forces to respond to shared challenges.

Under that definition, topical plans must build the capacity of NATO to respond to shared AI, biotechnology, and cybersecurity challenges. What does “build the capacity” of NATO mean? As far as I can tell, the Defense Security Cooperation Agency doesn’t have a definition of “capacity building,” but it does define “Institutional Capacity Building:”

Institutional Capacity Building (ICB) programs, overseen by DSCA, encompass Security Cooperation activities that directly support U.S. ally and partner nation efforts to improve security sector governance and core management competencies necessary to effectively and responsibly achieve shared security objectives. Understanding an ally or partner’s institutional capacity is critical to the development of a full-spectrum approach to Security Cooperation.  A Full-Spectrum approach assists allies and partners by ensuring they have all that is necessary and sufficient to successfully perform a security role in support of shared objectives. ICB assists allies and partners in examining and addressing broader, systemic factors essential to delivering what is needed (e.g., money, things, people, ideas, decisions) to:

* Understand requirements, develop forces, and purchase or obtain the articles and services as required to develop, employ, and sustain required capabilities;

* Successfully absorb and integrate fully developed capabilities into their existing security forces;

* Effectively and responsibly employ those capabilities in the pursuit of common objectives between the U.S. and the ally or partner; and

* Adequately staff, sustain, and maintain, those capabilities throughout their lifecycle and eventually retire them when appropriate.

Other definitions in the topic paper also define “security cooperation” as a specific subset of DOD programs:

Security cooperation (SC) encompasses all Department of Defense (DOD) interactions, programs, and activities with foreign security forces (FSF) and their institutions to build relationships that help promote US interests; enable partner nations (PNs) to provide the US access to territory, infrastructure, information, and resources; and/or to build and apply their capacity and capabilities consistent with US defense objectives. It includes, but is not limited to, military engagements with foreign defense and security establishments (including those governmental organizations that primarily perform disaster or emergency response functions), DOD-administered security assistance (SA) programs, combined exercises, international armaments cooperation, and information sharing and collaboration.

This seems like a relatively well-established (and wonky) definition:

DoD Security Cooperation is defined in Joint Pub 1-02: All DoD interactions with foreign defense establishments to build defense relationships that promote specific US security interests, develop allied and friendly military capabilities for self-defense and multinational operations, and provide US forces with peacetime and contingency access to a host nation.  DoD Directive 5132.03 provides DoD-wide policy and describes DoD organizational responsibilities regarding Security Cooperation activities.

DoD Security Cooperation includes International Armaments Cooperation (IAC) activities as well as the various elements of Security Assistance, including Foreign Military Sales (FMS) and Building Partner Capacity (BPC).  Most DoD Security Cooperation policy, organization, and activities (other than IAC) are led and managed by USD(Policy) rather than USD(Acquisition & Sustainment) and USD(Research & Engineering), but many U.S. Government/DoD Security Cooperation activities are implemented through USD(A&S), USD(R&E), and DoD Component acquisition-related IA&E efforts.

The term “security cooperation” has never been used before in a high school or college policy debate topic. The 2019-2020 high school topic focused on a subset of security cooperation (Foreign Military Sales and Direct Commercial Sales of arms), but it was written in the other direction (topical affirmatives reduced rather than increased FMS/DCS).

Based on these definitions, let’s revisit the case list. First: “creating a U.S.-NATO emerging technology investment fund.” It seems like this already exists, but presumably the U.S. could increase its contributions to the fund? Is increased funding an increase in security cooperation? What about diplomatic efforts to change the focus or procedures of the fund? Or outreach to allies to convince them to increase their commitments to the fund? Those all seem like topical proposals, but I’m not sure if there is any literature to support them.

Second: “instituting a NATO treaty on autonomous weapons.” Is signing a new treaty “security cooperation” based on the above definitions? Perhaps only if it is a defense treaty? I’m not sure. There do seem to be related proposals to harmonize NATO autonomous weapons standards, but this process — and many other topical proposals — might already be underway.

Third: “increasing cooperation in biotechnology (e.g., on vaccine diplomacy, biofuels investment, or agricultural biotech cooperation).” As far as I can tell, there aren’t many articles about NATO and vaccine diplomacy. Here’s the one referenced in the topic paper:

Whether it comes from natural causes or from an enemy, the crippling effects of a new virus are the same, said Stefano Stefanini, a former Italian ambassador to NATO, now head of the Brussels office of Project Associates, a consultancy. Stefanini thinks NATO should have reacted to coronavirus in the same way it would react to a biological attack, he said.

In the future, the defense alliance should consider how to help its members better prepare for this kind of emergencies, maybe as part of their defense spending budget, he said. When a vaccine would be approved, NATO could play a significant role by using its logistics to help deploy it to member countries and maybe to other countries, as well, Stefanini said.

NATO Spokeswoman Oana Lungescu rejected this criticism, saying the organization is not the first responder in these situations. That’s up to nations, but NATO can use its capabilities to support them, she said.

Maybe there are proposals for a bigger NATO role in vaccine distribution; U.S. policies to support those initiatives might be “security cooperation,” especially if they were implemented by the DOD — e.g., as a response strategy against bioterror attacks.

Regarding biofuels, this seems like it could be part of the larger issue of NATO’s response to climate change. In June, NATO adopted a set of climate change goals and plans as part of its NATO 2030 agenda. Topical plans could potentially increase U.S. support for these initiatives, but I was unable to find a solvency advocate about biofuels; there isn’t one in the topic paper.

As for agriculture, there are some older articles about NATO’s food security role, but I couldn’t find a solvency advocate for increased security cooperation on agricultural biotech.

Fourth: “establishing a new U.S.-NATO infrastructure for thwarting and responding to cyber threats.” Cybersecurity seems like a major issue for NATO, but it is unclear what proposals exist for increased U.S. security cooperation in this area. The topic paper includes a few cards about how NATO could or should change its cyber policies, but the resolution requires the affirmative to defend a U.S. security cooperation plan. What if anything can the U.S. do to change NATO’s cyber policies? Are those actions/policies “security cooperation”? I’m not sure.

Fifth: “banning offensive cyber operations.” From my experience researching the 2015-2016 surveillance topic, there seems to be an interesting and robust debate in the scholarly literature about OCOs and whether/how to regulate them. However, a plan that has the U.S. ban its own offensive cyber operations seems clearly untopical: it is not “security cooperation with NATO.” NATO seems to be increasing its use of OCOs, so perhaps a topical plan could encourage NATO to reverse this policy? This could reasonably be described as a DOD “interaction, program, or activity with foreign security forces and their institutions to build relationships that help promote US interests,” but is there solvency evidence to support its efficacy? This gets at the larger issue of how much U.S. security cooperation can change NATO’s policies or behavior; I’ll discuss that again below.

Sixth and finally: “forging U.S.-NATO partnerships with private technology companies to bolster the alliance’s leadership in emerging technologies.” Again, this seems like it is already happening: NATO announced the creation of a DARPA-like research program and “an innovation fund to support private companies developing dual-use technologies.” As with the emerging technology investment fund, there might be proposals for adjustments to these initiatives; if they exist, some might be topical “security cooperation” plans.

In addition to these six cases, this is the longer list of “Aff Cases” in the topic paper:

  • Regulate/Ban Autonomous Weapons
  • AI for International Supply Chains/Logistics
  • NATO Emerging Tech Investment Fund
  • AI Oversight Body
  • Regulate Facial Recognition
  • Vaccine Diplomacy
  • Agricultural Biotechnology Cooperation
  • Limit DNA Databases
  • Regulate CRISPR
  • Investment in Biofuels
  • Critical Cybersecurity Infrastructure
  • Layered Cyber Deterrence
  • Defend Forward Cyber Strategy
  • Strengthen norms and non-military cyber tools
  • Create a “Cyber State of Distress” and cyber response and recovery fund Military Cyber Mission Force
  • Deterrence First Cyber Strategy
  • Name and Shame Cyber Deterrence
  • End Offensive Cyber Operations (OCO’s)
  • International Legal Frameworks for Cyberspace – Military & Non- Military NATO Cyberspace Operations Center Cooperation
  • NATO Industry Cyber Partnerships

As with the short list, these case areas do not explain why they can be constructed as U.S. security cooperation plans. This is concerning for reasons I will explain below.

Before that, let’s review the topic synopsis’s summary of negative ground:

The negative will have multiple strategies. These technologies create case specific disadvantages generating specific links and turns. Theoretical discussions of offensive and defensive cyber weapons, the effectiveness of deterrence, the role of the U.S. as a hegemon, and global politics will be popular. Economic repercussions and interdependence of the global economy will be key. Negatives can argue alternative methods of engagement by using public/private non-military partnerships. Various perspectives on philosophically driven arguments will be intrinsic. The voices of the disenfranchised will be argued. A diverse set of arguments creates a level playing field for all students by debating emerging technologies.

This explanation reflects the focus of the topic paper: that debates about emerging technologies are interesting and timely. On balance, is artificial intelligence good or bad? How should it be regulated? What about biotechnology? Cybersecurity? These are interesting debates, but the resolution accesses them indirectly. In order for “emerging technology debates are interesting” to be a good reason to vote for this topic, one needs to be confident that the topic will actually result in debates about emerging technologies. After doing some research, I’m not convinced that this will be true.

Why? Counterplans. While the NFHS synopsis suggests that “negatives can argue alternative methods of engagement by using public/private non-military partnerships,” I think this misses the central negative ground on this topic. In my view, there are two core generic counterplan-based strategies that every affirmative case will need to be able to defeat:

First, the Unilateral (or Bilateral or Multilateral, but Not Via NATO) U.S. Action Counterplan and Security Cooperation With NATO Bad DA. This strategy will challenge whether the U.S. needs to increase its security cooperation with NATO in order to solve the affirmative’s advantage(s). If an advantage is about emerging technologies, it will be very difficult for the affirmative to prove that only U.S. security cooperation with NATO can solve it. If NATO’s involvement is important only because it is a multilateral institution, the negative can counterplan to have the U.S. act through the UN or in partnership with the EU and other allies. By forcing affirmatives to claim NATO-specific advantages, this strategy will create a strong functional limit on topic. Whether that functional limit will be too strong is unclear, but I was surprised at how few solvency advocate cards were included in the topic paper. That seems like a significant red flag.

Second, the NATO (Or Other Countries) Action Counterplan and U.S. Security Cooperation Bad DA. This counterplan might be theoretically illegitimate; fiating action by NATO might reasonably be criticized as an unfair and uneducational example of “object fiat.” If it is theoretically acceptable, however, the NATO counterplan will directly solve most advantages while avoiding procedural disadvantages to U.S. action; the NATO CP and Politics DA combo will be tough for affirmatives to defeat.

Even without being able to fiat NATO, negatives will likely be able to turn to other forms of international fiat. If an affirmative advantage requires changing a NATO policy, the counterplan could fiat action by one or more of the other 29 NATO member states. Again, this will create a very strong functional limit on the topic: to be viable, an affirmative case must be able to prove that U.S. security cooperation (and U.S. security cooperation alone) is necessary and sufficient to change the NATO policy in question. Even if affirmatives can convince judges to reject NATO fiat, this will still be quite difficult.

There are two complications related to this second strategy. First, the U.S. is a NATO member state and would be involved in any NATO discussions about policy changes. Second, NATO operates via a consensus decision-making model:

Consensus decision-making is a fundamental principle which has been accepted as the sole basis for decision-making in NATO since the creation of the Alliance in 1949.

Consensus decision-making means that there is no voting at NATO. Consultations take place until a decision that is acceptable to all is reached. Sometimes member countries agree to disagree on an issue. In general, this negotiation process is rapid since members consult each other on a regular basis and therefore often know and understand each other’s positions in advance.

Facilitating the process of consultation and consensus decision-making is one of the NATO Secretary General’s main tasks.

The principle of consensus decision-making applies throughout NATO.

While somewhat of an oversimplification, this means that the U.S. has functional veto power over NATO policy decisions. As such, the affirmative might persuasively argue that the NATO counterplan includes the (U.S. security cooperation with NATO) plan and is therefore not competitive. They might also persuasively argue that the counterplan links to the procedural U.S.-based disadvantage for the same reason; if the counterplan requires the U.S. to support the NATO policy change in question, this might also link to (for example) the politics DA.

These complications might be a good thing: they could conceivably reduce the power of NATO CP and Politics DA-type strategies. Still, their existence is likely to make them the central subject of many debates — not issues related to AI, biotech, and cyber policy.

There are also potential drawbacks to the first (“Unilateral (or Bilateral or Multilateral, but Not Via NATO) U.S. Action Counterplan and Security Cooperation With NATO Bad DA”) category of negative strategies. Most obviously, “U.S. security cooperation with NATO” — or at least “U.S. security cooperation with NATO member states” — is not unique: it exists now.

Again, this might be good. In order to win link uniqueness for their disadvantage, the negative might need to add an anti-NATO cooperation plank to their non-NATO counterplan (e.g., reducing current U.S. security cooperation with NATO). In response, the affirmative can argue that decreasing U.S. cooperation with NATO is bad. While inelegant, this might produce the interesting “NATO Good/Bad” debates that I think many proponents of this topic are imagining.

Ultimately, however, my concern with the NATO topic is that it is not a NATO topic. Had the resolution’s actor been NATO — something like Resolved: NATO should substantially reform its artificial intelligence, biotechnology, and/or cybersecurity policies. — I think it would have been more likely to produce the kinds of debates that the topic paper authors are describing.

As written, however, the topic is a U.S. security cooperation topic — and it is not clear to me that the literature base defending the importance of U.S. security cooperation with NATO over emerging technologies is robust enough to defeat the generic counterplans described above.

If I’m right, this will make for a frustrating season of debates. Unable to reliably win debates with big core-of-the-topic cases, affirmatives will shift to contrived, process-focused cases to try to dodge the negative’s powerful strategies. This will be similar to how affirmatives adapt to the states counterplan on domestic topics, but the shift will likely be even more aggressive. This affirmative maneuver might “work,” but it will mean that students learn a lot about arcane NATO procedures and relatively little about the major tech-related controversies that motivated this topic’s creation. That won’t be very much fun to debate, judge, or coach.

So, which topic is the better choice?

On one hand, the multilateral climate change regimes topic might be unmanageably large. U.S. “support” for multilateral climate regimes might include nearly any domestic or international climate-related policy, from an aggressive national cap-and-trade policy to symbolic diplomatic initiatives to modest changes in climate financing measures. While the affirmative will have abundant ground, the negative will lack a core generic strategy that links to all (or even most) cases. This could be terrible, but perhaps the inherent quality and quantity of the scholarly literature about climate change will make it a good topic despite its flaws. Empirically, climate change-related topics have generally been pretty good; maybe this one will be, too.

On the other hand, the NATO emerging technologies topic might be too difficult to affirm. Transforming a NATO problem area into a U.S. security cooperation topic mechanism might have overestimated both the quantity and quality of affirmative solvency evidence and underestimated the strategic power of both NATO and U.S.-but-not-via-NATO counterplans. Instead of interesting debates about AI, biotech, and cybersecurity, this might shift the focus of most debates onto arcane issues of NATO procedures, the definition of “security cooperation,” and counterplan competition. That sounds awful, but maybe the shortcomings of the negative’s counterplan-based strategies will be severe enough that affirmatives can find winnable cases. And maybe those same shortcomings will convince negatives to engage those cases on their merits rather than resort to generic process-based strategies.

In my opinion, either choice is defensible. Given the potentially serious flaws in both topics, picking the one that seems more interesting to research seems like a reasonable choice. Or if one of the topics seems likely to attract more interest from new-to-debate recruits, pick that one.

If all you care about is choosing the “best” topic — the one that will produce the best debates — I think you should vote for the climate topic. Despite my very serious reservations about its wording, I am more convinced that the negative will be able to construct winnable strategies on the climate topic than I am that the affirmative will be able to construct winnable cases on the NATO topic. I might be wrong — and I generally prefer more limited topics to broad ones — but I am simply unconvinced that the NATO topic can sustain a year of high-quality debates.

Neither option on the final ballot is ideal, but I’ll be reluctantly casting my vote for the multilateral climate regimes topic.

]]> Breaking Down The Final Two 2022-2023 Topic Choices: My Concerns About The Multilateral Climate Change Regimes Topic https://the3nr.com/2021/12/07/breaking-down-the-final-two-2022-2023-topic-choices-my-concerns-about-the-multilateral-climate-change-regimes-topic/ https://the3nr.com/2021/12/07/breaking-down-the-final-two-2022-2023-topic-choices-my-concerns-about-the-multilateral-climate-change-regimes-topic/#comments Tue, 07 Dec 2021 20:32:01 +0000 https://the3nr.com/?p=3627 The final round of voting for the 2022-2023 national high school policy debate topic is nearly complete. The two resolutions on the ballot are:

1. Resolved: The United States federal government should substantially increase its support of multilateral greenhouse gas emission reduction regimes.

2. Resolved: The United States federal government should substantially increase its security cooperation with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in one or more of the following areas: artificial intelligence, biotechnology, cybersecurity.

Which one is better? I’ve had a difficult time deciding. Both have serious problems. In this post, I will explain my concerns about the climate change topic. In a subsequent post, I will do the same for the NATO topic. If you haven’t voted yet, I hope you will find these posts helpful as you deliberate over your final choice.

The biggest issue confronting voters is that the climate change topic paper does not support the wording of the resolution. Originally submitted to the college topic committee, the paper proposes the following resolutions:

Resolution 1: Elegant, broad
The United States Federal Government should substantially increase restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions in the United States.

Resolution 2: Carbon price
The United States Federal Government should impose a substantial carbon price in the United States.

Resolution 3: Cap-and-trade + Carbon price
The United States Federal Government should substantially increase restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions through a cap-and-trade and/or carbon price.

Resolution 4: Less elegant, potential debates over agent
The United States Federal Government should enact a domestic climate policy, at least
substantially increasing restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions in the United States.

Resolution 5: Less elegant, potential debates over agent, list
The United States Federal Government should enact a domestic climate policy, at least substantially increasing restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions through a cap-and-trade and/or carbon price in the United States.

Resolution 6: Zero-Carbon economy
The United States Federal Government should require a transition the United States to a zero-carbon economy.

The paper supports resolutions one and especially two:

The primary focus of each resolution will be forcing the affirmative to actively restrict emissions. Unlike policies that have a downstream effect of limiting warming (e.g., painting roofs a lighter color, planting trees, building high-speed rail systems, etc.), topical affirmatives must impose a direct restriction on greenhouse gas emissions.

Resolutions number one and two are my preferences. Number one is broad, allowing affirmative teams a variety of mechanisms by which they could restrict emissions. It entirely encompasses resolution two, and also includes regulatory mechanisms like amendments to the Clean Air Act or enhanced policing via the Environmental Protection Agency. It could target specific sectors, and there is no reason to believe that the affirmative would be required to defend a specific agent. I would imagine that resolution number one would elicit concerns that it is too broad; however, resolution two may resolve those criticisms.

Resolution two is more narrow than resolution one; but, I believe that it has a more balanced division of affirmative and negative ground. The carbon price resolution would allow the negative team to read regulatory changes as counterplans, while the affirmative team would defend its specific pricing mechanism versus those changes. These would be good debates, because there are strong defenses of a price: it is the clearest signal to businesses and fossil fuel producers, it can be imposed on imported goods to change global emissions prices and it is an efficient way to modify consumer preferences. Thus, affirmative teams under resolution two would have ample opportunity to refute the regulations counterplan. It is possible that resolution number two would elicit concerns that it is too narrow. However, for over two decades there has been an intense debate about the viability of a carbon tax and cap-and-trade, including dozens of articles comparing the two against each other. Although the debate may be narrow, it is deep and rich, and it would encourage debaters to research varying nuances of each mechanism. For example, should a cap-and-trade be upstream or downstream, should the permits be traded or auctioned, what should the cap be set at, should it be linked to the global market, etc. Similarly, should a carbon tax be imposed at the point of production or consumption, what should the revenue be spent on, should it be revenue neutral, should the tax apply to all goods at the border, etc. These are concerns that economists and environmentalists have been addressing for years; hopefully, debaters on the topic would walk away with a strong understanding of these varying nuances.

This is a convincing case in favor of the carbon price resolution, but that’s not what high schools are voting on. Indeed, the word “multilateral” appears only twice in the topic paper; both mentions are in a card (Stavins 97) tagged “Domestic policy is defined as direct regulation of firms or individuals in the US—international policy is distinct, and includes global tax harmonization.” The author begins by distinguishing between domestic and international climate change policies:

Two distinct categories of policy instruments need to be considered to address global climate change. First, there are fundamentally domestic policy instruments, intended to enable individual nations to achieve their specific targets or goals. Second, there are international (bilateral, multilateral, or global) instruments that can be employed jointly by groups of nations. By necessity, I investigate both domestic and international instruments, but it should be acknowledged at the outset that although there is abundant precedent for national environmental policy actions, there is much less experience with successful environmental initiatives at the international level.

The author then summarizes domestic and international policy instruments as follows:

2.2 Domestic Policy Instruments
The most frequently employed approach in virtually all countries of the world for addressing a variety of environmental problems has been to set standards and directly regulate the activities of firms and individuals: so-called command-and- control instruments (Table 2). Conceivably, such approaches could be employed in the greenhouse context as well. By mandating standards, governments could ban or attempt to alter the use of materials and equipment considered to be damaging. For example, standards could be applied to buildings (energy efficiency), fuel use by motor vehicles, energy efficiency of household durables, and the content of fuels. In contrast, market-based instruments have recently been employed by governments to alter price signals to ensure that polluters face direct cost incentives to control emissions. The primary market-based instruments to be considered for greenhouse management are taxes and tradable permits. Under a true emissions tax, a charge is imposed per unit of pollutant discharge.9 A closely related application would be a tax on the carbon content of fossil fuels. As an alternative, under an emission trading scheme, sources receive permits to emit, and can then buy and sell these permits among one another.10 Because these market-based instruments have the effect of inducing decision-making units (typically firms) to choose control levels at which their marginal abatement costs are the same, overall pollution abatement costs will, in theory, be minimized.11 That is, market-based instruments can, in principle, be cost effective.

2.3 International Policy Instruments
Climate change is truly a global commons problem. The location of emissions of greenhouse gases has no effect on the global distribution of damages, and so free-riding problems plague unilateral or multilateral “solutions.” Further, nations will not benefit proportionately from greenhouse-gas abatement policies. In fact, some countries — such as Canada and Russia — might experience no benefits from control, since they actually stand to gain from global climate change (due to the effects of increased temperatures and precipitation on agricultural production). Thus, for some countries, costs of control may exceed benefits. This means that to be successful an international (voluntary) agreement needs to include a mechanism for transferring gains to countries that would otherwise not benefit from joining an agreement. This is a central challenge for any international policy instrument that is to allocate responsibility among nations. It is at least conceivable that standards could be employed that are uniform among countries participating in an international emissions reduction agreement. It would be difficult, however, to achieve wide agreement about any large set of specific instruments, because such approaches would place severe limits on individual countries’ domestic policy choices. An alternative regulatory approach would involve countries agreeing on fixed national emission levels. But marginal abatement costs would then vary greatly among participating countries, and so total global abatement costs would be much greater than necessary. Instead, some degree of aggregate cost effectiveness could be achieved if market-based instruments were employed internationally. Four possibilities stand out. First, if countries agreed to apply the same level of domestic greenhouse taxes (harmonized domestic taxes), marginal abatement costs would tend to be equalized among countries. Second, a uniform international tax on greenhouse emissions could be employed, with the total tax revenue being allocated among participating countries according to some set of rules. A third potentially cost-effective approach would be a system of international tradable permits, in particular, a system of tradable carbon rights, the total allocation of which would reflect the overall emissions target. International permit trade would establish a market price — an implicit international tax rate — which would equate marginal abatement costs among countries, leading — in theory — to a cost-effective solution. Within the context of such an international tradable permit scheme, participating countries could then use whatever domestic policy instruments they chose to achieve their permit-determined targets. They might employ domestic tradable permits, domestic taxes, or conventional regulations.12 A fourth market-based instrument, closely related to the concept of international tradable permits, is joint implementation, essentially bilateral trading arranged on an ad hoc basis. This policy mechanism, which we also consider below, has received considerable attention from policy makers and others in the past few years.

This evidence is quite old and is not defining any of the relevant terms in the proposed high school resolution. Does “increase its support of multilateral greenhouse gas emission reduction regimes” mean the affirmative is limited to international policy instruments? Or can domestic policy instruments (like a carbon tax or cap-and-trade program) increase the U.S.’s “support” of multilateral regimes? Is this an international topic, a domestic topic, or both?

Here is the official synopsis of the topic and problem area provided by the NFHS:

Climate change is a pressing global crisis that has the potential to dramatically change life on earth. Many of these risks, such as desertification in the Middle East and Africa and disparate health outcomes in urban America, can be seen today. Unfortunately, our students are already dealing with the consequences of these issues. A 2019 poll found that the prospect of devastating climate change is causing fear, anxiety and anger among a “solid majority” of American teenagers. The same Post-KFF poll found that Black and Hispanic teens expressed the strongest sense of urgency, because “they are more likely to live in vulnerable areas and less likely to be able to insulate themselves” from the drawbacks of the changing environment. There are a variety of people and groups with proposed solutions, ranging from de-growth of the industrial economy to more tech growth with energy efficient solutions. Some believe regulatory fixes similar to the Clean Air Act can solve the problem, while others think we may need to geo-engineer the earth itself. Although each solution is similar in that it attempts to address the problem of climate change, each comes with its own unique benefits and
drawbacks.

This topic provides a fair division of affirmative and negative ground. On the affirmative, teams can use international regimes as a basis for affirmatives. Affs will require a command and control and top down approach to climate regulation. Negatives will have a variety of economic and political based disadvantages. Negative ground also includes unilateral counterplans and counterplans that focus on private sector solutions. Finally, there are a ton of relevant kritik arguments ranging from identity based arguments to arguments about neoliberalism.

Despite the importance of the climate change debate, fewer than half of K-12 teachers discuss the topic with their students When it is discussed, it is most frequently taught in science classrooms, which, although important, misses the social, economic and political elements of the topic. This reality is reflected in national polling, which found that “the number of teenagers who say they are being taught in school how to mitigate climate change appears to be on the decline.” Thus, a debate topic focused on the contributing factors, harms and solutions to climate change has the potential to address a significant pedagogical gap in our nation’s educational system.

Only the second paragraph is about the actual resolution and how it might be interpreted. In the rest of this post, I will break down its claims.

This topic provides a fair division of affirmative and negative ground.

Hopefully, but I guess we’ll see.

On the affirmative, teams can use international regimes as a basis for affirmatives.

This is self-evident, but it doesn’t explain how affirmatives can “use” international regimes.

Affs will require a command and control and top down approach to climate regulation.

Why is this true? What word in the resolution establishes this requirement? It seems like this statement is based on the resolutions proposed by the topic paper, not the resolution on the ballot.

The only word that might establish this requirement is “support,” but why does “increase its support of” multilateral climate regimes mean “adopt a command and control and top down approach to (presumably domestic) climate regulation”?

It seems like this statement is assuming not only that domestic policies are topical, but that only domestic policies — and a particular subset of domestic policies — is topical. I can’t find any evidence to support this assertion.

First, dictionary definitions of “support” are quite broad: “agreement with and encouragement for an idea, group, or person” (Cambridge), “help and approval that you give to a particular idea, politician, organization, etc.” or “money that is provided to a person or organization in order to help them to do their work or to achieve a particular goal” (Macmillan), “approval that you give to somebody/something because you want them to be successful” or “money or goods that you give to somebody/something in order to help them” (Oxford).

Second, the word “support” seems to have a relatively broad definition in foreign policy discussions. For example, here’s a back-and-forth from a background press call with the NSC from earlier this year:

Q Thank you for doing this. As you know, anti-corruption activists periodically urge the U.S. government to use its various assets and capabilities, including the intelligence community, to expose specific cases of corruption overseas, to name and shame corrupt officials — and the arguments they make are familiar — but also include not only, you know, a deterrent to corruption, but also a possible contribution to the promotion of democracy.

Does the does the memorandum — does the program include any component that connects with that?

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: What I can say on that front is that the memorandum includes components of the intelligence community. So, the work on that front, in part, remains to be seen, but they are included — the Director of National Intelligence and Central Intelligence Agency.

And so we’re just going to be looking at all of the tools in our disposal to make sure that we identify corruption where it’s happening and take appropriate policy responses.

And I’ll take the opportunity to mention that we’re also going to be using this effort to think about what more we can do to bolster other actors that are out in the world exposing corruption and bringing it to light.

So, of course, the U.S. government has its own internal methods, but, largely, the way that corruption is exposed is through the work of investigative journalists and investigative NGOs.

The U.S. government — to my point earlier, in terms of the support we’re already providing — in some instances provides support to these actors. And we’ll be looking at what more we can do on that front as well.

Q What does the word “support” mean in that context?

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Well, sometimes it boils down to foreign assistance. There are lines of assistance that have jumpstarted investigatory journalism organizations. What comes to my mind most immediately is OCCRP, as well as foreign assistance that goes to NGOs, ultimately, that do investigative work on anti-corruption, as well.

Q Thank you.

This is consistent with other references to the broad range of actions that can be included under the banner of “support”:

The word “support” has a precise meaning within the trade-policy community. The OECD, for example, refers to support when discussing its aggregate of subsidies and transfers to producers created through artificially high prices (i.e., market price support), the producer support equivalent, or PSE. Domestic support and aggregate measurement of support are terms used in reference to obligations under the WTO’s Agreement on Agriculture.

In the political sphere, however, “support” is highly imprecise. When a government declares it “supports” a particular technology, industry, or sector, that “support” can mean anything from simple well wishes to suitcases of money.

This seems to be the case in the climate context as well. For example, the Brookings Institution’s “How the United States can return to credible climate leadership” report begins with this introduction:

The United States is rejoining international efforts against climate change in a crucial year. All members of the Paris Agreement are obliged to submit updated pledges for emissions reductions prior to a global climate meeting in November. President Joe Biden wants to re-establish U.S. leadership on climate. Doing so will require the United States to make an ambitious but achievable pledge and to assist other nations in doing the same. The political landscape for enacting climate legislation in the United States is still tricky, but U.S. subnational actors have continued emissions reduction efforts during the Trump administration and will be a key part of efforts going forward. These subnational actors can share their skills and ambition with their counterparts abroad. The United States also has an opportunity to lead through its role in the global financial sector. It can encourage greener investing by requiring disclosure of climate risks and support global efforts to finance emissions reduction and climate adaptation in developing countries.

Which of these proposed policy changes would “substantially increase [the USFG’s] support” of the Paris Agreement? Contextually, it seems like the authors think the answer is “all of them.” Here’s the “Policy Recommendations” section:

Against this backdrop, the United States can and should re-engage fully with the international community to support global action. To do so, it must act in five linked ways.

Embed climate action into U.S. society. The core project for the United States this year, and for years to come, is to develop and implement a national climate strategy that brings to bear all possible areas of policy action. In many ways the U.S. is playing catch-up, but one important advantage developed during the Trump years. As the federal government dismantled its climate efforts, the subnational community substantially increased its climate commitments. As a result, the United States has highly motivated and experienced actors outside the federal government. Federal action to catalyze and encourage these local efforts will be a key part of a bottom-up climate strategy, enabling more robust policy through oscillating political cycles at the national level.

Subnational actions are key, but some actions must take place at the federal level. New legislation is a first potential contributor. Given the current makeup of Congress, actions rooted in tax credits, investment, and stimulus are likely to have some traction in the near term. Other policies will have to be evaluated in light of their potential support. A second possible contributor is administrative actions that can be implemented by the executive branch, including regulatory actions under existing laws. Such administrative actions are less durable than legislative outcomes, but remain on the table as options.

Advance subnational diplomacy. While not all countries are structured like the United States, bottom-up leadership and implementation are central to success in some form in all countries. The United States can use its non-federal actors in its diplomatic efforts to support and bolster climate action around the world. For this, U.S. cities, states, and businesses can collaborate with their counterparts in other countries to discuss opportunities and strategies, supported by the U.S. diplomatic effort. Such efforts could take place through a U.S. State Department Office of Subnational Diplomacy, as recommended by Anthony F. Pipa and Max Bouchet in their brief for this series.

Announce an ambitious yet credible U.S. nationally determined contribution. As a central pillar of the Paris Agreement, countries around the world regularly offer their NDCs and report on progress. Each country’s NDC is viewed as an indicator of the country’s overall climate ambition. The U.S. target will likely have an outsized impact on overall global action this year.

President Biden has committed to offer the next U.S. NDC at a leaders’ meeting that he will host on Earth Day, April 22. In parallel with developing the national climate strategy, Washington will be undertaking an assessment of the possible emissions reductions associated with such a strategy. International perception of the U.S. domestic commitment is important; the commitment must be seen as sufficiently ambitious to unlock the other diplomatic opportunities available to the United States. The goal of achieving emissions reductions of approximately 50% below 2005 levels by 2030 is receiving a great deal of attention, but is highly ambitious for the United States. Achieving such a target would be a challenge, but the whole-of-society approach described above could improve the probability of reaching such a goal.

Revisit U.S. domestic financial regulations and international climate finance. Mobilizing new sources of finance to support a rapid economic and technological transition is central to addressing climate change. Here too, the United States provides an important link between domestic and international actions. Domestically, the U.S. financial system leads the world, but U.S. financial regulations do a poor job of requiring disclosure of climate-related risk, including the physical risks associated with climate change. Recent movement toward addressing these issues can be accelerated. For example, the Federal Reserve recently joined the Network for Greening the Financial System and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen made clear in her confirmation hearing that she believes climate change is a risk to the financial system. Through its outsized influence on the global financial system, the United States can encourage greener investment. Greater disclosure of climate risks would allow investors to direct funds to low-carbon and resilient assets, potentially moving the needle in areas where policy lags behind.

The United States must also exercise leadership in marshalling the financing that developing countries, especially the larger emitters, will need to raise their climate ambition, and to help poor and vulnerable countries adapt to the already evident impacts of climate change. This includes ensuring that developed countries live up to their commitment to mobilize $100 billion per year in climate finance, a central tenet of the climate accords. For the United States, meeting its commitment to the Green Climate Fund, established under the U.N. climate framework a decade ago, will be an immediate litmus test. The United States must also play a leadership role in unleashing the potential of the International Monetary Fund and the multilateral development banks in supporting more ambitious climate action. These institutions can play a role beyond their own financing by catalyzing private investment through reducing and sharing risk. The COVID-19 pandemic provides an opportunity to “build back better” by tackling the interrelated challenges of job growth, climate change, pollution, and biodiversity.

Support international efforts and national strategies. The United States can employ its substantial foreign policy apparatus to engage with key countries, partners, and allies around the world. In doing this, the United States can first communicate how it will achieve its own ambitious goals, then seek to understand how other countries anticipate delivering on their own goals and work with them bilaterally or multilaterally to support their national climate strategies. Finally, it can work with partners around the world to ensure that there is broad support for a strong outcome at the climate conference later this year.

Fundamentally, the climate challenge requires pushing the technological frontier in a dozen key sectors, from electricity to cars to building materials. In every sector the challenge is different, and in every sector there are different arrays of international partners, such as national and subnational governments and pioneering firms. The United States should ally with the U.K. government as it advances key “campaigns” that reflect this sector-focused approach to deep decarbonization. The effort should identify a few sectors, such as cars and electricity, where the United States is at the frontier and can particularly shape the global effort.

This suggests that the U.S. has a wide range of policy options at its disposal that would “increase its support” of multilateral climate regimes: enact or administer domestic climate regulations or policies, encourage sub-national climate regulations and/or diplomatic efforts, increase its nationally determined contribution, change domestic and international climate financing regulations/systems, increase climate funding/financing directly or via a multilateral institution, and increase diplomatic efforts related to climate change.

Could the negative craft a topicality argument that limits the term “support”? Perhaps, but I’m not optimistic. As far as I can tell, “support” is not a term of art with a well-defined meaning, and it is often used colloquially to refer to a broad range of actions and policies.

Negatives will have a variety of economic and political based disadvantages.

This depends on whether the scope of topical affirmatives is limited. As explained above, I don’t think this is likely to be the case.

For example, what is the economic disadvantage against a case that encourages sub-national diplomatic participation in climate summits? What is the economic disadvantage against a case that requires greater transparency in U.S. climate financing? What is the economic disadvantage against a case that increases diplomatic engagement with developing countries related to multilateral climate agreements? Against some cases, the economic disadvantage may be strong; against many others, it will be weak or non-existent.

I am less concerned about political disadvantages; they exist regardless of the topic (and regardless of whether or not they make sense). But the kinds of affirmatives that dodge economic DAs will also be able to sometimes dodge politics DAs, and relying on the existence of a strong politics DA to guarantee good negative ground is a terrible idea.

Negative ground also includes unilateral counterplans and counterplans that focus on private sector solutions.

I don’t think this is true. Regarding private sector solutions, federal policies to encourage or incentivize private sector action seems like it can reasonably be defined as “support” for multilateral climate regimes. A “private sector do it” counterplan would be competitive, but historically this type of negative fiat is generally considered theoretically illegitimate.

Understanding why the unilateral counterplan is not realistic requires a deeper dive.

As far as I can tell, there were no references to the term “multilateral greenhouse gas emission reduction regimes” on the internet before this resolution was released. Presumably the term “greenhouse gas emission reduction regimes” was chosen to distinguish multilateral regimes that are primarily about climate change from multilateral regimes that have some relationship to climate change. Arguably, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change is the only “multilateral greenhouse gas emission reduction regime:”

The foundational treaty of the international climate change regime – the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) – was adopted at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992.1 Its signatories agreed to ‘achieve… stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system’.2 The states that have ratified the UNFCCC meet annually at the ‘Conference of the Parties’ (COP) to assess and review the implementation of the convention.3 The COP has negotiated two separate treaties since the formation of the UNFCCC: the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, and the Paris Agreement in 2015.4

The Paris Agreement was adopted by 196 parties at COP21 in 2015 and entered into force less than a year later.5 The goals of the treaty are to keep the rise in the global average temperature to ‘well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels’, ideally 1.5°C; enhance the ability to adapt to climate change and build resilience; and make ‘finance flows consistent with a pathway towards low greenhouse gas emissions and climate-resilient development’.6 The agreement adopts a ‘bottom-up’ and non-standardized approach, where parties themselves set their national emission reduction targets and communicate these to the UNFCCC in the form of nationally determined contributions (NDCs).7

However, the resolution’s use of the plural regimes seems to suggest that more than just the UNFCCC is included. If this is true, there are a wide range of multilateral “regimes” that could arguably be called “greenhouse gas emission reduction regimes,” including:

A number of established multilateral regimes offer important avenues for climate mitigation efforts complementary to those of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UN FCCC ). Tackling discrete dimensions of the climate challenge in regional, sectoral and other global venues can yield action on multiple fronts, contributing toward closing the gap between national pledges and the UN FCCC goal of limiting warming to 2 degrees Celsius. This brief examines ongoing and potential efforts in the International Maritime Organization, the International Civil Aviation Organization, the Montreal Protocol, and the Convention on Long-Range Transboundary Air Pollution.

It seems like one can quickly go down a rabbit hole when attempting to define “regime” in the climate change context:

2 What Is Global Climate Change Governance?

Before embarking on a domain-mapping exercise, it is important to be explicit on the definitional boundaries of that domain. Climate change has emerged as a priority issue within the broader framework of global environmental governance over the past four decades. Pluralization of authority beyond the nation state is a key feature of this domain, where ‘reconfiguration of authority across various actors and multiple levels of decision-making’ is a longstanding feature (Hickmann, 2017). More broadly, scholarly efforts to grapple with a globalizing climate governance arena exemplify a rapidly developing cross-disciplinary convergence across a highly diverse body of social, technical and geophysical scholarship (Coen and Pegram, 2018). However, as a useful point of departure, global climate change governance can be defined generally as, ‘all purposeful mechanisms and measures aimed at steering social systems towards preventing, mitigating, or adapting to the risks posed by climate change, established and implemented by states or other authorities’ (Jagers and Stripple, 2003: 385).

A focus on ‘all purposeful mechanisms and measures’, as well as the implementation prerogatives of ‘states or other authorities’ provides the coordinates for this Element’s mapping exercise. We build upon this definition by differentiating among key definitional elements along the dimensions of types of actors (state and non-state), scales of governance (global-to-local), as well as functional domains (regime complexes). The concept of regime complex has become a prominent lens through which to examine increasingly dense clusters of ‘partially overlapping and non-hierarchical institutions governing a particular issue-area’ (Raustiala and Victor, 2004: 279). Climate change is no exception. The UNFCCC-centred multilateral system constitutes an international regime in and of itself, understood as ‘principles, norms, rules and decision-making procedures around which actors’ expectations converge in a given area of international relations’ (Krasner, 1982: 186). However, it also forms part of a larger regime complex for climate change spanning diverse formal and informal arrangements (e.g. private regulations, clubs, transnational initiatives) operating within this issue-area which together constitute a system of loosely coupled regulatory elements that are only partially organized hierarchically (Keohane and Victor, 2011: 12). Crucially, understanding climate change as a regime complex acknowledges that international institutions are themselves embedded within broader institutional frameworks. Opening up inquiry into the causes and consequences of overlaps and intersections among different regimes with an authority claim for a particular issue area (or territory) presents a significant departure from earlier work which tended to focus on discrete regimes ostensibly designed to govern discrete problems (Alter and Raustiala, 2018: 330).

So who knows? The term “multilateral greenhouse gas emission reduction regimes” will probably provide some limit, but not a particularly strong one.

The bigger problem is that the term “multilateral” is not as meaningful as one might think. Most importantly, the distinction between a “multilateral plan” and a “unilateral counterplan” is not straightforward at all.

For one thing, consider the policy proposals in the Brookings report above. Many are “unilateral” U.S. policies that nonetheless “support” multilateral climate change regimes. The affirmative will be able to produce compelling evidence to prove this claim for nearly any domestic or international climate policy.

Second, consider this critique of the term “multilateral” in the climate change context:

Before turning to the Paris Agreement in particular, let me start with an admission. As a lawyer for the U.S. State Department for over thirty years (and the lead climate lawyer for over twenty-five), I was involved in negotiating many of the most significant multilateral environment agreements of the past few decades. But I have never been wild about the term “multilateralism.”

For one thing, I have found a lack of clarity when it comes to its meaning:

* To a lawyer, it’s confusing. When people talk about a “multilateral” approach, they might mean it in its literal sense (i.e., involving three or more parties), in its fullest sense (i.e., a global regime), or in a sense that is more political than legal (i.e., in contrast to “unilateralism” or “nationalism”).

* It is often not possible to motivate States to agree on a “multilateral” approach unless one State (or a small group of States) catalyzes such a solution by first acting unilaterally. When an international body reaches agreement, but was only able to do so because of a unilateral action, is that an example of multilateralism?

* An agreement might be “multilateral” in one respect but not necessarily in another. For example, a multilateral agreement might set an environmental standard but be silent on enforcement; if a State opts to enforce the standard through a trade measure, such as an import restriction, is that trade measure “multilateral” or “unilateral?”  If a multilateral environmental agreement requires Parties to restrict trade with non-Parties, is the trade measure “multilateral” vis-à-vis the State that did not join?

* Even within the context of a global regime, there can be gradations of “multilateralism.” The international climate change regime is arguably at the extreme end of the spectrum; not only is there near-universal participation, but decisions are taken by consensus. However, a global agreement could operate in a different way. The Montreal Protocol, for example, is global in terms of its membership but can take decisions by less-than-global super-majority voting, in some cases binding all Parties.

For these reasons, I think it is wrong to conceptualize the “unilateral counterplan” as a core negative generic. Most cases that do not have a “multilateral key” advantage will not include multilateral language in their plan. Consider a plan that enacts a domestic carbon tax, for example. To answer topicality “support,” the 2AC will argue that this domestic policy increases U.S. support for the UNFCCC. But the negative cannot respond with a competitive unilateral counterplan; there is nothing multilateral to “PIC out of” in the plan, and there is no “multilateral advantage” to impact turn.

Cases that do have a “multilateral key” advantage will also pose problems for the unilateral counterplan. For one thing, the same issues with the plan text and competition are likely to arise. A plan to increase diplomatic engagement with Brazil related to its UNFCCC commitments, for example, can’t be done “unilaterally;” that the affirmative has an advantage about the UNFCCC does not mean that a counterplan to “do the plan, but don’t support the UNFCCC” is competitive.

In addition, it will be difficult for the negative to construct a unique “multilateral climate regimes bad” disadvantage to pair with the unilateral counterplan. Setting aside link uniqueness — which will be difficult for the negative to prove — most policies which attempt to mitigate climate change will “support” the UNFCCC in some way. Even an explicitly unilateral counterplan — “The USFG should unilaterally reduce its climate emissions, but explicitly state that it is not doing so to support the UNFCCC” — probably “supports” the UNFCCC — or at least the affirmative could present evidence that suggests as much.

The “multilateral vs. unilateral” division of ground makes intuitive sense in the abstract, but the nature and ubiquity of the existing climate change regime makes it difficult to implement in practice.

To be a viable functional limit on the topic, it would need to be a competitive counterplan with a winnable generic disadvantage that links to the resolutional mechanism. My prediction is that the unilateral counterplan-based strategy will fail to meet both criteria: the negative won’t generally have a competitive counterplan nor a mechanism-based generic “multilateral bad” disadvantage. That seems like a recipe for a very bad topic.

Finally, there are a ton of relevant kritik arguments ranging from identity based arguments to arguments about neoliberalism.

“Identity-based arguments” and “arguments about neoliberalism” exist on every topic, so this isn’t helpful. I do think there will be strong kritik ground on the climate change topic, but there isn’t a core generic kritik that seems likely to establish a functional limit on the topic in the way that the abolition kritik did on the criminal justice reform topic. Instead, there will be a variety of climate-related kritik arguments; most will link to some but not all affirmatives.

That said, the kritik ground seems like it will be the best part of the climate topic. Perhaps this is enough to sustain a year’s worth of debates, especially because some affirmatives will choose to read “big” cases that give the negative a lot of ground. Empirically, climate change debates can be excellent; the carbon tax topic that was proposed by the topic paper would have been great.

However, can we count on this topic playing out like that? Will affirmatives be limited enough in their case selection to make negative preparation manageable? Will cases need to be controversial/significant enough to provide good negative ground? Is there a central topic controversy that can sustain a year of high-quality debates?

Based on my preliminary research — and without a properly-vetted topic paper to convince me otherwise — I am reticent to answer “yes” to any of those questions.

Is this still the better choice of the two topics on the ballot? Perhaps. I’ll explain my concerns about the NATO topic in a future post.

]]> https://the3nr.com/2021/12/07/breaking-down-the-final-two-2022-2023-topic-choices-my-concerns-about-the-multilateral-climate-change-regimes-topic/feed/ 1 An Updated List of TOC Qualifying Tournaments in Policy Debate, 1992-1993 to 2021-2022 https://the3nr.com/2021/12/06/an-updated-list-of-toc-qualifying-tournaments-in-policy-debate-1992-1993-to-2021-2022/ Mon, 06 Dec 2021 19:11:48 +0000 https://the3nr.com/?p=3623 When I was on the Tournament of Champions Policy Debate Advisory Committee in the late-2000s, I created a spreadsheet that tracked the history of TOC bid tournaments by level. At the time, I was able to compile information from 1997-1998 through 2009-2010. The spreadsheet was a useful resource for preparing or reviewing TOC bid tournament applications, and it was also helpful for anyone researching regional or national circuit participation trends.

While working on my recent post about declining participation, I decided to update this spreadsheet to include information through the current (2021-2022) season. I was also able to find information from a few older seasons. The spreadsheet — which is publicly available here (and embedded below the fold) — now includes complete information from 1992-1993 and 1994-1995 through 2021-2022; I couldn’t find information for 1993-1994 or for any seasons before 1992. If more issues of Rostrum are eventually digitized, I hope to fill in more gaps.

It is worth mentioning that this spreadsheet includes the announced bid levels for each season, not necessarily the actual bids awarded. While it is uncommon, qualifying tournaments are sometimes cancelled after the bid list is published — usually due to weather, but occasionally for administrative or other reasons. Sometimes, the TOC Advisory Committee has responded to cancellations by redistributing qualifying levels for other tournaments to make up for the “lost” bids; this happened in 2012-2013, for example, when the USC tournament was cancelled.

Until the mid-1990s, there was also a caveat attached to the list of finals bid tournaments: “Must have 50 of more teams in Varsity Debate from 5 or more states. Otherwise, do not submit.” I did not research how many of the announced finals bid tournaments reached that threshold; results from that era are difficult to find, especially from smaller/regional tournaments.

This year, there are 346 total bids available from 54 qualifying tournaments. This is the largest number of total bids allotted for any season included in the spreadsheet, and it is tied for the second-most total qualifying tournaments (2020-2021 also had 54; 1996-1997 had 55). Overall, the number of bids allotted has increased significantly over the last two decades.

]]> National Circuit High School Policy Debate Participation is Cratering https://the3nr.com/2021/11/26/national-circuit-high-school-policy-debate-participation-is-cratering/ https://the3nr.com/2021/11/26/national-circuit-high-school-policy-debate-participation-is-cratering/#comments Fri, 26 Nov 2021 19:30:52 +0000 https://the3nr.com/?p=3617 Since the beginning of the season, it has been obvious to me that participation in high school policy debate has declined. Anecdotally, tournament fields have been noticeably smaller and fewer schools have been actively competing. I’ve been concerned about this for months, but I thought maybe it was mostly an issue with the tournaments I’ve been (virtually) attending. While some tournaments might be smaller, I hoped that others might have grown and offset the difference. Has overall participation really declined? And if so, by how much?

I decided to find out. Based on my research, the answers are “yes” and “by a lot.” Participation in policy debate has declined significantly from 2020 to 2021. And it has declined even more significantly from 2019 to 2021.

I started this project a few weeks ago when the National Speech and Debate Association released its updated membership information for the 2020-2021 season. This data makes it possible to compare NSDA-tracked participation for the 2018-2019, 2019-2020, and 2020-2021 seasons.

According to the NSDA, 10,516 students earned points in policy debate in 2018-2019, 10,409 students earned points in policy debate in 2019-2020, and 7,223 students earned points in policy debate in 2020-2021. That represents a 1% decline in participation from 2018-2019 to 2019-2020 and a 44% decline in participation from 2019-2020 to 2020-2021. Yikes.

The other two most popular NSDA debate events — Lincoln-Douglas and Public Forum — also saw significant declines from 2019-2020 to 2020-2021. In LD, participation fell 34% (from 11,219 to 8,316). In PF, participation fell 31% (from 18,379 to 14,029).

While this data is troubling, it isn’t enough by itself to prove that policy debate participation has precipitously declined. For one thing, it only tracks the number of NSDA member students who have competed in at least one round of policy debate during the season. Many policy debaters are not members of the NSDA — either because their schools are not NSDA members, or perhaps because their schools did not purchase NSDA memberships during the first pandemic season.

It is also possible that the shift to online/virtual debate allowed participating students to compete in more rounds than they would have in a normal season. If that was the case, the decline in the number of students participating may have been offset by an increase in competition rounds by those students who did continue debating.

Finally, this data is only available through last season, and the most noticeable participation decline seems to be occurring during the current (2021-2022) year.

In an attempt to obtain better data about current policy debate participation trends, I created a spreadsheet that lists the number of policy debate teams and schools entered at “national circuit” tournaments in 2019, 2020, and 2021.1

To eliminate as many variables as possible, I included only TOC qualifying tournaments that were hosted for each of the past three seasons during the months of September, October, or November. Twenty-one tournaments fit those criteria.2

I used this data to calculate the percentage changes in entries (for teams and schools) from 2019 to 2020, from 2020 to 2021, and from 2019 to 2021.

This data covers the last pre-pandemic season with typical in-person tournaments (2019), the first pandemic season with entirely online/virtual tournaments (2020), and the current pandemic season with mostly online tournaments and a few in-person tournaments (2021).3

What does this data reveal?

In the first pandemic season, policy debate participation at TOC qualifying tournaments in September, October, and November declined by 6%, but the number of schools competing increased by 17%.

However, these shifts in participation were uneven. For octafinals and quarterfinals bid tournaments, team entries increased by 14% and school entries increased by 17% and 25%, respectively. For semifinals bid tournaments, team entries grew by 8% and school entries grew by 22%. But for finals bid tournaments, team entries actually fell by 46% while school entries increased by 11%.

On the whole, this is basically what one might have expected as policy debate tournaments shifted from in-person to online/virtual formats. While some schools chose or were forced to reduce their tournament competition, other schools were able to increase their tournament attendance because of decreased costs and the lack of required travel.

This also explains why participation shifted from finals and semifinals bid tournaments to quarterfinals and octafinals bid tournaments. With reduced barriers to entry, teams and schools that would have historically competed mostly within their geographic region were able to redesign their schedules to attend all of the biggest national tournaments regardless of “location” (which for online tournaments was mostly meaningless).

Some of the big tournaments maintained relatively similar field sizes. Greenhill, for example, had 104 entries in 2019 and 103 entries in 2020. Others grew dramatically: Kentucky went from 77 to 134 entries (a 43% increase), Grapevine went from 66 to 94 entries (a 30% increase), and Michigan went from 107 to 148 entries (a 28% increase).

Overall, 13 of the 21 tournaments on the list had more teams entered in 2020 than they did in 2019. That includes 13 of the 14 octafinals, quarterfinals, and semifinals bid tournaments; all five finals bid tournaments had fewer entries in 2020 than in 2019.

At the same time, 17 of the 21 tournaments had more schools entered in 2020 than in 2019. Only two tournaments — KCKCC and Washburn Rural; both finals bids — had fewer schools enter their tournaments in 2020 than in 2019.

While there were warning signs — Would the “upward” shift to higher bid level tournaments be sustainable? Would participation at the smaller regional tournaments bounce back? — the data from 2020 was relatively positive. Despite the shift to online/virtual competition during an ongoing pandemic that was substantially disrupting normal school operations throughout the country, policy debate tournaments were happening and students were competing in them at comparable levels to the previous season.

Unfortunately, the data from this season tells a different story. Across the board, participation at TOC qualifying tournaments has cratered. This chart shows the bottom line numbers:

Remarkably, team entries have declined from 2020 to 2021 in 20 of the 21 tournaments on this list (the other — Marist — had the same number of entries in both seasons). And school entries have declined in all 21 tournaments.

Overall, tournaments have had 45% fewer team entries and 50% fewer school entries in 2021 than they had in 2020. And this trend has affected all bid levels: by team entries, octafinals bid tournament participation is down 21%, quarterfinals bid tournament participation is down 56%, semifinals bid tournament participation is down 75%, and finals bid tournament participation is down 59%.

The two biggest tournaments on the list — Michigan and Glenbrooks — declined by 23% and 25%, respectively. Most quarterfinals bid tournaments also saw massive drops in entries: Bronx Science (121%), Grapevine (71%), Kentucky (63%), and Long Beach (55%) all declined by 50% or more from 2020.

And compared to 2019, the numbers look even worse. From the last pre-pandemic season to the current season, overall team entries at these 21 TOC qualifying tournaments has declined by 57%, and with an average of 22% fewer school entries.

Again, this decline has varied across tournament bid levels. The biggest tournaments have seen only negligible declines, with octafinals bid entries declining by only 3%. But the “lesser” tournaments have been hit hard: quarterfinals bid tournaments have had 33% fewer entries, semifinals bid tournaments have had 60% fewer entries, and finals bid tournaments have had 136% fewer entries.

This decline in participation has been sudden and severe. And from what I can tell from entry lists at upcoming tournaments, it doesn’t seem likely to end anytime soon. For example, the Blake tournament (an octafinals bid) had 128 entries in 2019 and 117 entries in 2020, but has only 75 entries for 2021 (at the time I am writing this). Anecdotally, other tournaments are in a similar position.

You can view the spreadsheet here:

Is it possible that participation as non-TOC qualifying tournaments has increased to at least partially offset these losses? I have not gathered the necessary data to definitely say “no,” but anecdotally this seems extremely unlikely. On the contrary, participation at non-TOC qualifying tournaments has decreased even more significantly — at least based on anecdotal evidence. In Georgia, for example, local tournaments that had healthy fields before the pandemic have struggled to even “make” this semester.

So what has caused this precipitous decline in participation?

The most obvious hypothesis is that students, coaches, parents, and/or schools are dissatisfied with online/virtual tournaments. For students and coaches, online tournaments aren’t as fun or socially and academically rewarding as in-person tournaments. For parents and schools, online tournaments may not be “real” enough to justify tradeoffs with other activities or absences from class. Together, these trends have convinced many students to quit debate entirely or to significantly scale back their participation. This seems like the most probable explanation.

Another hypothesis is that we are witnessing a time-compressed repeat of the national circuit’s hollowing out of regional and local debate. As teams and schools choose to enter only the largest “national” tournaments, the remaining tournaments struggle to sustain competitive fields. At the same time, the local tournament circuits that nurture and sustain debate programs have largely disappeared. When coaches and judges aren’t regularly gathering in-person and working together to create debate opportunities for one another’s students, their relative investment in the activity is likely to wane. Hosting an online/virtual tournament brings its own challenges, but it is not the same collective project of shared community-building that goes into the hosting of an in-person tournament.

This might partially explain why participation mostly survived the first pandemic season but not the second. While varsity participation at the most competitive tournaments was relatively strong last year, the second and third layers of participation — those involving less skilled and less experienced varsity debaters, JV debaters, and novice debaters — were probably significantly weaker. This season, that weakness has become visible in varsity divisions: with fewer students developing their skills and passion for debate last year, there are fewer students ready for (or interested in) high-level varsity competition. This is what happened in many areas of the country over the last few decades as the national circuit grew and local circuits slowly collapsed. If this is right, next year’s participation numbers will be even worse.

There are other possible explanations. Perhaps the academic and mental health struggles associated with the pandemic have taken their toll on students, and they are having trouble continuing to balance the demands of school and debate. Perhaps the nationwide return of in-person school gave students more opportunities to participate in in-person activities, and they opted for those instead of more online/virtual debate. Perhaps fewer students participated in summer debate institutes, and those that did not opted to switch to a different debate (or non-debate) activity. Perhaps this year’s water resources protection topic is less interesting than previous topics, and students are losing motivation to debate it.

Most likely, it is a combination of all these (and other) factors. The question now is whether this trend will be or can be reversed. Will the (probably slow, phased-in) return of in-person debate naturally rejuvenate policy debate participation? Will the schools that have largely opted out of online/virtual competition come back when in-person tournaments return? Will the current cohorts of novice and second year students be large enough and committed enough to sustain debate competitions for the next few years? Will the regional and local tournaments that have been hollowed out by the pandemic still exist if and when participation numbers rebound?

I don’t know the answer to any of these questions, but everyone who cares about high school policy debate should be thinking about them. Participation is cratering, and it’s going to take a lot of time and effort to reverse that trend — if it is indeed reversible. I certainly hope so.

Footnotes

1. I obtained the entry data from Tabroom.com; I manually counted the number of schools entered at each tournament.

2. While there are other national circuit-style tournaments that do not award TOC bids, this list of tournaments is a good proxy for “national circuit” policy debate.

All but one of the tournaments maintained the same TOC bid level in all three seasons; Westminster was a finals bid in 2019 and a semifinals bid in 2020 and 2021.

I excluded St. Mark’s from this list because it was hosted in October 2019, February 2021, and October 2021. As much as possible, I wanted to eliminate “time of year” as a variable; while some of the included tournaments changed weekends, they were mostly held about the same time in each of the three seasons.

3. As far as I can tell, the only in-person 2021 tournaments on this list are Washburn Rural, Blue Valley Southwest, and KCKCC.

]]> https://the3nr.com/2021/11/26/national-circuit-high-school-policy-debate-participation-is-cratering/feed/ 1 Digging Into The Debate Theory Archives: Hingstman on Topicality and the “Division of Ground” Standard https://the3nr.com/2021/11/06/digging-into-the-debate-theory-archives-hingstman-on-topicality-and-the-division-of-ground-standard/ Sat, 06 Nov 2021 18:33:15 +0000 https://the3nr.com/?p=3613 Digging Into The Debate Theory Archives is a series highlighting “old” debate theory articles that are particularly thought-provoking, influential, or illuminating and that active debate students would benefit from reading.

Dr. David Hingstman recently retired after a long and distinguished coaching career. In this post, I will share one of my favorite of his many scholarly articles: a 1985 conference paper explaining a “division of ground” framework for understanding and debating topicality.

In revisiting this article, it is surprising how “modern” it still is — especially in its description of how topicality “norms” or “common sense(s)” develop during the course of a season:

[The licensing standard’s] emphasis on abuse or potential for abuse as the benchmark of reasonableness mistakes enterprise for evil intention. Recall that licensing assumes that affirmatives seek new licenses in order to reap the advantages of surprise. There is little room for the possibility that the affirmative chose the interpretation because they found it to be the best example of the resolution on its merits. Thus unusual cases, and especially “new” cases, are immediately suspect on grounds of non-topicality.

According to this view, the resolution transforms itself into an analogue to the “problem area,” a type of boundary that recently has been attached to high school national debate topics. But in our case, the boundary is extremely porous, because it consists of various persons’ pre-tournament season ruminations about what the topic “means,” expanded by the run of cases from certain respected programs.

Again the difficulty lies in what the standard neglects—the strength of the interpretation itself and the justifications for it. A particular affirmative team may have very poor definitions and defenses of its overall interpretation. But if the case itself falls within the problem area analogue’s boundaries, few judges will vote on topicality, even if the negative challenge is vigorous on the interpretative issues. Conversely, an affirmative team might have developed analysis with strong intuitive appeal, only to have that analysis rejected because the case is too “squirrelly.” Indeed, the more able the defense, the more likely some judges are to believe that the affirmative implicitly concedes the non-topicality of the case because it has “overprepared” against possible attacks. This belief also encourages the negative to include a large number of quibbling (“junk”) topicality arguments in the hope that the affirmative will undercut their own credibility or at least waste a good deal of time responding to them. All of this maneuvering goes on in abstraction from the interpretative accuracy or cogency of each side’s definitions and justifications.

Hingstman’s contention is that the meta-theoretical debate between the “reasonability” and “best definition” (now called “competing interpretations”) standards for evaluating topicality begs the question of topicality’s underlying purpose. For Hingstman, that purpose is to divide ground — a concept that is more complicated than the rote 2NC “key to neg ground” impact claim that contemporary students might be familiar with.

Distinguishing his framework for topicality from the more common “licensing” framework that was popular at the time (and that remains popular), Hingstman attempts to move topicality beyond “objectionable quibbling” by grounding it in standards of policy judgment that are consistent with expectations of public argument. It is an interesting position, and I think students will benefit from revisiting it.

The full text of Hingstman’s article is reproduced below.

Hingstman, David B. “Topicality and the Division of Ground: Framing Policy Dialectic.” Proceedings of the Fourth SCA/AFA Conference on Argumentation, 1985, pp. 841-853.

Many of us are now confronting a problem of communication unique to our times. We want to be more fluent in our discourse with microcomputers. They will not work for us without it. So we initiate some pleasantries in simple commands, and, in gratitude, the computer processes some words. But on occasion the conversation becomes strained as the computer makes more demands on our lexicon. We are told that we must direct our comments to the program disk.

When we make contact with the program disk, we discover to our chagrin that someone else has already had a chat with the computer. In fact, this discussion made such an impression that the computer can sing it from memory. But listening to this recital does little for our understanding. What words we can make out are punctuated by choruses of #..C$pp. After recovering from the shock of unfamiliar sounds, we begin to wonder why the programmer doesn’t speak English. We become angry that our conversation with the computer has been interrupted by some dimly-perceived flaw in the gibberish of programming statements. But we are chastened by the thought that the programmer’s choice of language is her own business. If the use of program language is as arbitrary as it seems, arguing with the programmer would be mere quibbling.

Enough frustration with our inability to make full use of the system’s capability may lead us to enroll in a programming class. As our studies progress, our perspective on the nature of the conversation between programmer and computer changes. We discover that certain unusual symbols must be employed to avoid confusion with alphanumeric symbols processed in typing. Other symbols are in the language to facilitate optical character readers. We develop the ability to converse in the same language with computers (and in a corresponding verbal shorthand with other programmers).

After awhile, we even may be able to return to the programmer of our original disk and critique his use of language. Discussion of these issues is no longer quibbling, and the choice of programming language no longer arbitrary. When program talk diverges from standard English, we know why. Yet the program talk and our ordinary language do share common roots. We might even contemplate the possibility of a machine language that mirrors standard English, but for our present purposes and capabilities, such a language doesn’t merit the tremendous expenditure of human effort to realize it. [end page 841]

Our collective experience with the issue of topicality in academic debate shares qualities with our uninitiated reaction to computer talk. Many past conversations among debaters, judges and coaches have produced a tradition in our community that the requirement of fidelity to the meaning of the resolution should regulate “word processing” of specific arguments by advocates. But we find it difficult to explain what the language of fidelity means when applied to specific situations of advocacy, and, in particular, arguments about definitions and content.

Novice (and some not-so-novice) debaters view topicality as a special language of argument that is grounded in the arbitrariness of resolution drafters and judge perceptions. They learn to recite the command statements of topicality standards (a prior issue, debateability, field context, grammatical accuracy, fairness, etc.) while remaining unable to translate these standards into concrete implications for evaluation of argument about the resolution. They are in the position of the ordinary microcomputer user, trying to clear the program disk of unneeded data by typing in anything that comes to mind.

Despairing of the argumentative chaos that the uncertainty creates some participants turn to rules of thumb for evaluating the impact of specific definitional arguments. This process is similar to telephoning a customer service agent to get the proper command for the program disk. You still might not find out why you typed in that particular set of symbols. One method is to define “being topical” in a manner similar to the way that the British ethicist G. E. Moore defined “goodness”: as a simple, indefinable property that is intuited.1 Evaluation of arguments about specific definitions can be gained by the critic’s intuition that a plan just “is” or “is not” faithful to the thrust of the resolution. I will have more to say later about the perceptions of the role of topicality in debate that engender this rule. But the effect of the rule is to convert a problem of justification between participants into a psychological issue (each judge’s application of the rule of thumb).

Another way out is to elevate an analytical tool for evaluating specific definitional claims to the level of a metatheory about what the critic should do in assessing the impact of topicality as a whole. When some talk of “reasonableness” as a criterion, they refer not to the presumed qualities of specific definitions but rather to a presumption of indeterminate strength that the affirmative plan or parts thereof are faithful representations of the resolution. Others talk of “best definition” not as a call for comparing specific definitions according to some criteria of meaning but rather as a requirement that the affirmative be faithful to the best possible interpretation of the resolution. This view amounts in practice to a presumption in favor of the negative.

The use of the second strategy is not limited to those who don’t feel they understand the program language of topicality. The major proponents of “reasonableness” and “best definition” in the published literature both take advantage of the ambiguity between analytical tool and metatheory and accuse their opponents of subscribing to the “unfair” opposing metatheoretical position.2 [end page 842]

Choosing among the metatheories is not the end of the advocate’s or critic’s task. We must know how and why to apply these presumption rules to specific circumstances. At this juncture, we return to the vagaries of the topicality program language. We hear about right-to-define, division of ground, contextual accuracy, and “delimitation.” But the relationship of these standards to specific duties of the advocates remain unclear. In consequence, the metatheoretical versions of “best definition” and “reasonableness” encourage the judge to do what she probably would do anyway — to rely on a general sense of persuasive strength. This works well enough in most instances. But what happens when able advocates of specific definitional arguments center clash on the issue of topicality? Which presumption rule should apply? It doesn’t require extensive recollection of the heyday of arguments that “topicality is not a voting issue” to know what normally happens — judges don’t vote negative on topicality. We shut down the computer rather than take the risk that someone else will discover that we don’t understand the program language.

Rules of thumb in interpreting unfamiliar languages cannot be eliminated nor should they, for they respond to the unavoidable circularities of reasoning and reference that plague our efforts at comprehending and articulating what is true, good, and fair in our shared activity. But rules of thumb need not be applied in every situation. When we understand more about why we use certain languages, we push back the veil of uncertainty that occasions the judgment to invoke the rule. More debates become resolvable on the basis of superior analysis and explanation of the reasons why particular interpretations of the resolution are important to the quality and coherence of advocacy. If our goal as participants in the activity is to help ourselves and others to recognize and evaluate justifications for claims, this search for understanding should bring us closer to its realization.

What this essay offers is a short course in the programming language of topicality — how topicality controls the dialogue between advocates on particular resolutions. Like the study of machine language, this course seeks to explain patterns of resolutional interpretation according to the pragmatics of their use by debaters. Our syllabus will reflect the view that confusion about the connection between the theory and practice of topicality argument often arises from a neglect of pragmatics in the implicit theory of resolutional meaning topicality is not simply a matter of semantics (the referential relationship between words in the topic as signs and plan provisions as actions signified in the words) or of syntax (the internal coherence of the resolutional statement when definitions given to individual words and phrases in isolation are combined). Semantic and syntactical evaluation, rather, are tools to assist advocates in describing how particular definitions affect the regulatory functions of fidelity to the resolution. These regulatory purposes of topicality, in turn, are fulfilled in the pragmatics of resolutional interpretation by the advocates.

As is appropriate to short courses, the syllabus limits itself to one function — the division of argumentative ground between affirmative [end page 843] and negative. But mining this often-invoked but seldom-developed concept yields a surprising rich view of practical ore. In particular, we learn the decisive role that the paradigms of debate have conferred upon topicality argument in realizing in practice the decision rules that each paradigm’s model of truth-testing generates. We may no longer conceive of topicality argument as merely a preliminary check upon the range of cases from which an affirmative may draw and we can sort out our semantic and syntactical tools according to their relative sharpness in support of functional claims for interpretation.

Before we enter the first part of the course, we might spend a few moments expanding the notion of “division of ground.” What do we mean when we invoke this standard? I see at least two senses or purposes that are linked to the model of debate as dialectic. One pushes the two sides apart and moves them toward horizontal poles which each side defends as a discrete intellectual and active alternative. Label these poles “Policies” or “Resolution/Nonresolutional cores” as you will; the separation preserves an initial distance between the two sides within the same set of social problems. We endorse this distance when we extol the values of argumentative clash and of the development of genuine alternatives on propositions of policy. It is untidy and dissatisfying, to say the least, when a debate concludes with both sides dimly recognizing that they have advocated the same set of actions.

Yet there is another sense of “ground division” that ignites warning flares when advocates begin their inevitable effort to reposition their poles toward the center of the horizontal dialectic. We don’t need to be experts in the politics of presidential campaigns to appreciate the strategic value of or the inevitability of such maneuvers. The territory lying between the two sides is persuasive ground because it has political opinions and justifications for actions (advantages and disadvantages, if you will) buried in it. Capturing parts of what seems at first to be “no-man’s land” converts the matter of their hidden resources into persuasive force.

Arguments about division of ground create a path of justification for claims which challenge the legitimacy of these maneuvers. It is a vertical path in the sense that advocates move from claim-ground assertions of legitimacy to warrants and to regressions back from those warrants. Dialectic moves upward in a transcendental search for the preconditions of advocacy relevant to a judgment of legitimacy or downward in an empirical critique of the adverse practical consequences of illegitimate maneuvers in previous (or projected) situations of advocacy. The clash of advocates on these vertical justifications determines the final positions of the horizontal poles relative to each other and relative to the political concerns that provide context to our resolution of policy.

Does the implicit sanctioning of this practice cut against the previous ideal of strict separation between the two sides that facilitates clash? Yes. But it also recognizes that our resolutions have vigor and relevance to advocates and audiences only when they reflect what people in society are saying and doing about the policy context of the resolutions. When it functions well, the vertical [end page 844] dialectic and horizontal trench warfare between advocates in academic debate mirrors the ways in which we believe real-world advocates do or ought to connect facts and values in support of actions.3 We expect our debaters to enter such ways of life upon graduation, and their training in advocacy to improve their critical judgment about the rules, institutions, and substantive concerns for social policy. By assuming a stance that makes fidelity to resolutional purposes irrelevant to policy argument evaluation we unwittingly may lock the gates lending out to the vertical paths of justification. Forced to play within the small yard of “direct clash” during intellectual childhood, debaters may find the security of the yard irresistible in later years as well, and fashion their own padlocks. Such practices fit in well with the programs of political actions who cloak assertions of power and domination in the mantel of “respectable dissent” and empirical social science. Policy dialectic holds out the hope that we need not forfeit the power of judgment and critique to live the good life.

The Licensing Function of Topicality and Division of Ground

The most widely-held perception of the place for topicality argument in debate is in disputes over the fit between the affirmative case area and the resolution. Grounds for the belief lie in the notion that the drafters of national debate resolutions design topics to provide a solid year’s worth of fresh but thoughtful argumentative opportunities for both sides. The design criteria are two-fold: Make

the wording of the topic restrictive enough to permit adequate negative preparation of case-specific refutation but broad enough to give the affirmative an adequate range of problems and values from which to develop cases. A good topic is neither too broad nor too narrow for the purpose of debate.

The application of this idea to practical advocacy relies on appeals to legitimacy and a sense of good will on the part of debaters. The syntactical and semantic properties for various interpretations of the words in the resolution imply different degrees of affirmative freedom to choose among case approaches. The defense of a particular case as faithful to the resolution may require the affirmative to advance an interpretation with highly unusual properties. If they do, so the claim goes, they have abused their privilege to define terms in such a way as to license their case. We should presume that the affirmative intends to bend the bars of our topical prison to escape by surprise from clash with their opponents. The judge’s adverse decision on topicality is both punishment and deterrent to others who would commit the same offense. It is the only way to avoid the ultimate nightmare of affirmative teams who discuss any area of public policy that strikes their fancy under any resolution.

This view’s popularity should not be confused with its pedigree. Topicality as licensing for case choices is a relatively recent conception. Older debate texts devoted considerable space to the problems of drafting suitable national resolutions. The conclusions of these texts on the specificity of language often confirmed that of Alan Nichols, who told us that “the proposition should state, with all possible certainty, the specific solution advocated.”4 If we examine [end page 845] closely the intercollegiate debate propositions of the time, we see that some did achieve a high degree of specificity. One called for the enactment of the McNary-Haugen Bill, another for compulsory arbitration by the NLRB, yet another for the cancellation of interallied war debts.

Why the concern with specificity? Wasn’t this the golden age of affirmative responsibility for the whole resolution? Nichols implies otherwise. The 1933-34 topic, for example, called for a substantial increase in the powers of the president as a settled policy. “Teams could discuss virtually any subject and still bring it within the plausible meaning of the proposition. Debaters all over the country were quick to sense this opportunity.”5 And apparently took advantage of it, as Nichols proceeds to list ten very different subject areas employed successfully by affirmative teams.

What this bit of history reminds us is the extraordinary degree to which our notion of licensing is parasitic upon unarticulated assumptions about what constitutes good “substantive” styles of argument for or against particular policies. When Nichols and others called for specificity, they envisioned debates as products of intensive investigation into the specific merits of well-defined solutions.6 Debaters would be prepared to argue in depth about the grounds and warrants for those solutions. By contrast, the licensing notion proceeds more by extension than intension. Debaters are ready to clash when they possess a number of “case-specific” arguments, including harm denials, alternative methods for solving problems, and especially, disadvantages. But what makes this style of argument superior to Nichols’? We could beg the question by saying it works better, but our congenital guilt about employing fallacies inhibits us. Perhaps advocates should be directing more attention to answering that question.

Then again, perhaps not. They might be discouraged by the peculiar consequences for argument evaluation that come from the application of licensing as a rule of thumb. We might remember, for example, that some cases become more topical as the year progresses, by principles of fair notice and expectations of untiring negative research. Moreover, advocates are compelled to defend what might be considered fallacious reasoning. We may not know whether the strongest negative position against a particular case lies until that case has been argued for some time. But the fairness standard for licensing requires us to assume that it is possible to argue against a case on its specific merits, and to do so well.

Although not completely unreasonable, the assumption can be dangerous if it diverts the critic’s attention from the effect of each side’s interpretation on the ability of the negative to formulate the best defense of its position against the plan. The affirmative, on the one hand, in answering topicality, is forced to cast doubt on its own ability to defend inherency, solvency, and significance by arguing where case-specific attacks could be found. Oddly enough, judges often seem more likely to vote on topicality against “fringe of the topic” cases in the middle of the debate season if their debaters have had difficulty finding case-specific negative evidence. On the other hand, if negative teams continue to counterplan against the same [end page 846] “fringe’ cases through the latter parts of the season, many judges will refuse to entertain topicality strategies. The topicality argument suffers from guilt by association with the counterplan. From the point or view of success with topicality, it is almost better for the negative to make poor case-specific attacks and concede their weakness than to attempt the best negative response to the affirmative position.

Related to this is a second weakness of the simple licensing standard. Its emphasis on abuse or potential for abuse as the benchmark of reasonableness mistakes enterprise for evil intention. Recall that licensing assumes that affirmatives seek new licenses in order to reap the advantages of surprise. There is little room for the possibility that the affirmative chose the interpretation because they found it to be the best example of the resolution on its merits. Thus unusual cases, and especially “new” cases, are immediately suspect on grounds of non-topicality.

According to this view, the resolution transforms itself into an analogue to the “problem area,” a type of boundary that recently has been attached to high school national debate topics. But in our case, the boundary is extremely porous, because it consists of various persons’ pre-tournament season ruminations about what the topic “means,” expanded by the run of cases from certain respected programs.

Again the difficulty lies in what the standard neglects—the strength of the interpretation itself and the justifications for it. A particular affirmative team may have very poor definitions and defenses of its overall interpretation. But if the case itself falls within the problem area analogue’s boundaries, few judges will vote on topicality, even if the negative challenge is vigorous on the interpretative issues. Conversely, an affirmative team might have developed analysis with strong intuitive appeal, only to have that analysis rejected because the case is too “squirrelly.” Indeed, the more able the defense, the more likely some judges are to believe that the affirmative implicitly concedes the non-topicality of the case because it has “overprepared” against possible attacks. This belief also encourages the negative to include a large number of quibbling (“junk”) topicality arguments in the hope that the affirmative will undercut their own credibility or at least waste a good deal of time responding to them. All of this maneuvering goes on in abstraction from the interpretative accuracy or cogency of each side’s definitions and justifications. At least in the case of the high school problem area, we are given some other words to define and to add social context to resolutional interpretation.

To sum up, we can see the strengths and shortcomings of the simple licensing notion of topicality in its attitude toward the relationship between resolutional wording and argumentative clash. Licensing advocates believe that by establishing a workable range of cases (variable over time), the topic ensures that the two sides will examine the important issues implicit in the resolutional area of policy concern. This desire for clash coincides in part with the purposes of division of ground discussed earlier, and is commendable in its intentions. [end page 847]

But the tendency of licensing to endow a single, unstated model of argumentative clash as the ideal renders it unstable for and irrelevant to interpretative analysis of the topic. Because negative teams have not had the opportunity or desire to develop case-specific attacks against a wide range of “fringe” cases, their arguments about what the affirmative interpretation does not allow them to do are purely hypothetical and speculative. This vagueness is matched on the critic’s side by the arbitrary nature of the presumption against the new or unusual that the problem area analogue introduces. The affirmative’s ingenuity is limited not by the interpretative quality of its syntactical and semantic analysis but the creativity and geniality of the critic. In short, licensing does little to establish the division of ground because it often bears little relationship to the reasons for which advocates make strategic decisions on argumentative positions.

If we are to give the licensing notion a stronger place in grounding topicality analysis, we must flesh out the bare bones of the narrowness/breadth of topic dichotomy. Advocates should make specific connections between various forms of resolutional interpretation and the range of cases that result, to the point of telling the critic what those ranges might be. Even more important, however, is the articulation of the consequences of the interpretation and case range for argumentative choice. Does the interpretation make all counterplans topical? Is there any room for non-topical alternatives of any kind? Does the resulting interpretation encompass within affirmative territory solutions to all possible disadvantages? Notice that the questions point to the practical maneuvers of horizontal and vertical dialectic that make up the concept of division of ground.

These objections can be developed in a concrete manner even if the affirmative case area is unfamiliar to the negative. They can provide cogent reasons to reject exorbitant claims of effects topicality when those claims endanger clash. Licensing moves beyond rule-of-thumb when it becomes reflective about why topicality ensures quality argumentation. Rather than assuming the worst motives on the part of affirmative and negative teams, critics should consider and apply a view of licensing which recognizes and supports the search for alternative policies or resolutional tests.

Horizontal Dialectic: The Counterplan Example

For me, the clearest expression of the practical application of the hypothesis-testing view of debate is contained in David Zarefsky’s well-known article on causal argument. He calls upon to “…divide the universe of relevant options other than those embodied in the proposition (for convenience, this universe may be designated ‘Negative-land’) into characteristics which are essential to its non-propositional nature and those which merely are incidental features—a division, that is, into core and periphery.”7 How does the advocate go about discovering the “core” of negative land? Presumably she must discover the context of the policy areas for which the resolution serves as a call for action. The advocate must adopt a persuasive way of accenting certain words in the resolutional sentence to decide what [end page 848] constellations of attitudes and institutions inhere in the situations envisioned in the resolution and its absence.

Most of us have encountered this issue of ontological commitments from topic statements outside of the hypothesis-testing framework. Advocates of change-of-government counterplans, ban-the-subject counterplans, offset counterplans, and the like argue that the affirmative must support the continued existence of the institutions or actions that are eliminated by the negative counterplan. Whatever the merits of such claims in particular debates, these counterplans must be grounded in some kind of definitional analysis. The analysis denies the right of the affirmative to call for action on the contingency that the changes recommended by the negative fail to materialize. This path is the only way to replace arbitrariness with at least a gloss of reasons. Otherwise, for every claim of “reasonableness” by the negative, there will be an equal and opposite claim of fiat abuse by the affirmative.

I have pursued this diversion to illustrate a broader point. Counterplan competitiveness notions accepted by the majority of debate critics ground themselves in claims about topicality. Consider mutual exclusivity. Lichtman and Rohrer suggest that two policies are mutually exclusive when both cannot exist simultaneously.8 The conditions for impossibility and simultaneity, however, are embedded in the resolutional context. The simultaneity requirement, for example, is an interpretative gloss on and a commitment to an implied time frame for policy consideration. Reasonable disagreement upon this standard is possible. It may be good to strengthen our European troops for awhile and then eliminate them. Why must we assume that the “and then” phrase is excluded by definition from the resolutional wording?

Net benefits competitiveness, as modified by the recent theoretical discourse about permutations, also depends for its justification upon resolutional interpretation.9 Net benefits without permutations encourages a Maginot-line construction of counterplan advantages to outweigh affirmative claims. But permutations must not alter the topical nature of the affirmative plan. The question of how that nature is changed by selective incorporation of counterplan provisions must be settled by claims and proofs about resolutional context.

Counterplans are just one practical illustration of the horizontal poles of advocacy that frame the dialectic of policy in debate. Topicality analysis enables debaters to defend their deeds to the argumentative ground surrounding the poles. But if debaters neglect the interrelationships among competitiveness and topicality claims, they soon will discover that their poles are sinking into the ground. Interpretations of the resolution that draw from field context are especially useful in establishing what social advocates conceive as “live” alternatives or options within the policy area. These conceptions, in turn, can give rise to new and richer grounds for claims of policy competition. [end page 849]

Vertical Dialectic: The Disadvantage Example

The end of our short course, as in the case of our real-world experience, suffers from the effects of a shortage of teaching time and space. Let us use our remaining time together to evoke possible meanings for further inquiry.

Negative disadvantages are premised upon a prediction of the effects that a particular course of action will produce. Just as it is possible to achieve the effects of affirmative advantages through non-resolutional alternatives, the affirmative may discover ways in which the disadvantage effects may be mitigated without reducing the topical translation of the resolutional statement into plan action.

Hypothesis-testing, as we know, has a very generous standard of mitigation. The action may lie outside of the resolutional statement as long as it does not contradict the essence of the resolution. Policymaking, by contrast, applies a stricter standard of correspondence between plan and resolutional language. Although some critics require more, James Unger’s statement that all plan provisions must bear a rational relationship to a topical scheme of action to receive consideration reflects the majority position.10

It is impossible to evaluate the relationship between a plan provision and the essence of the resolution (topical scheme of action) without seeking justifications based upon interpretations of the resolution’s meaning. Why should we believe, for example, that policy- makers would conceive of guaranteed funding and enforcement as part of a call for action? Only if an advocate can show that the words of the resolution assume such things as preconditions do we feel justified in entertaining that belief. Semantic analysis accompanied by evidence of field understandings will supply reasons to believe that certain actions are included or excluded from the purview of the resolution.

The framework of this dispute over what we sometimes call “extratopicality,” then, is an illustration of the role of topicality in the raising and evaluating of questions in the vertical dialectic of debate. When a negative team encroaches upon the no-man’s-land between the advocates by presenting a disadvantage that links affirmative land with certain related actions and beliefs in an prediction of bad consequences, a challenge for justification of the linkage is made. The direction for further warrants lies upward in some notion of the preconditions set upon the scope of argument by the resolutional policy context. Without discussion of these preconditions and their grounds, debates constantly threaten to dissolve into a stalemate of competing claims and impacts. The values of argumentative clash and comparison call upon the vertical dialectic in part for their realization in practice. [end page 850]

Conclusion

If we have completed our assignments faithfully, we may come out of our short course understanding and speaking a different language, the language of resolutional dispute. To be sure, it is an artificial language. We do not expect to use it in discussions around the dinner table. But “artificial” need not be a pejorative term. We construct languages out of our general linguistic resources for specific purposes. As long as we continue to comprehend and employ these languages within their purposes, we cannot be ostracized justly. The computer is not condemned to the trash can when humans discover that it requires a machine language. If we disagree on the importance of language use in debate, our dispute will pass quickly to the goals of the activity of interpersonal, political argument in itself.

What we have learned is that clash over the definition of terms in a resolution of policy is not an end in itself. Little educational value can be gained by threatening to punish advocates for what in retrospect may have been minor lapses in the achievement of maximum grammatical accuracy and sensitivity to the shared understandings of policy experts. Critics are hardly in a position to stand in such judgments on these issues anyway, when we ponder what information and literary skills we would bring.

Considerations of grammar and field context, however, are important to the critical evaluations for which topicality arguments are appropriate. The advocates dispute resolutional interpretations because fidelity to resolutional contexts allows the judge to determine whether each side has made a persuasive claim to the argumentative ground it occupies.

Part of that division of ground lies in the relationship between the cores of the resolution and the non-resolution—the horizontal dispersion of argument. Whether we particularize that concern as the permissible range of affirmative cases or as the range of negative options for counterplan, the basis for disagreement is the same. Definitional interpretations which find support in rules of grammatical construction or field understandings establish boundary lines.

The other part of ground division involves critical supervision over attempts to capture the middle ground of beliefs and actions that on its surface seems to belong to neither side. Linkages between poles and middle, however, are an inevitable consequence of rhetorical sensitivity to the character of modern political discourse. Public actors, whether seen as technocratic elites or as faithful representatives of public will, are reflective about the intertemporal relationships among political decisions. Advocates in policy debate assume similar stances in an effort to ground their positions and their opponents’ positions in the larger context of social choice. When these claims are disputed, controversy takes on a vertical profile of warranting. Both sides search for an adequate explanation and defense of the preconditions for policy success. These justifications transcend the particularity of the discourse about the specific resolution or plan. Field contextual notions of what we reasonably can expect of [end page 851] political system performance after specific policy change are transmuted into definitional interpretations when advocates utilize them in disputes over resolutional ground.

Our task as forensics educators becomes clearer as well in the light of our new literacy. Argument about topicality deteriorates into objectionable quibbling when advocates lose sight of the reasons why the argument began. Instruction in techniques of resolutional interpretation should focus on the purposes that topicality serves in debate and the ways in which analysis of grammatical construction and field-specific understandings should be applied in practice to achieve those purposes.

At the time of publication, David B. Hingstman was Co-Director of Forensics and Lecturer at Baylor University.

Notes

1. See Alisdair MacIntyre, After Virtue (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981), p. 14

2. Compare James J. Unger, “Why Not The Best?” Rostrum 56 (Oct. 1981), 4-9, with Dale A. Herbeck and John P. Katsulus, “The Affirmative Topicality Burden: Any Reasonable Example of the Resolution,” Journal of the American Forensic Association 21 (1985), 133-145. (Hereinafter cited as “JAFA”).

3. For a discussion of various judging models, see Bill Balthrop, “Citizen, Legislator, and Bureaucrat as Evaluators of Competing Policy Systems,” in David A. Thomas, ed., Advanced Debate (Skokie: National Textbook, 2d. ed., 1979), pp. 402-418.

4. See Alan Nichols, Discussion and Debate (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1941), p. 257.

5. Nichols, p. 254.

6. See Nichols, pp. 256-257.

7. David Zarefsky, “The Role of Causal Argument in Policy Controversies,” JAFA 13 (1977), 184.

8. Allan J. Lichtman and Daniel M. Rohrer, “A General Theory of the Counterplan,” JAFA 12 (1975), 74.

9. See, e.g. Dale A. Herbeck, “A Permutation Standard of Competitiveness,” unpublished paper presented at the Speech Communication Association Convention, Washington, D.C., November 13, 1983.

10. See James J. Unger, “Analysis,” in U.S. Foreign Policy in the Future (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown Debate Handbook, 1979), p. 2.

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