Planorama #1: A New Way to Plan (Bob Overing)

This is the first in a limited series of theoretical and strategy posts on plans, topicality, semantics, and specifying regimes on JF19. Future topics will include the shortcomings of a certain view of topicality, the inevitability of ‘plans good/bad,’ and some elaboration on why non-plan debate is much worse than commonly thought.

The (Alleged) Problem with Plans

Plan opponents[1] say affs that defend withdrawing aid to one authoritarian regime aren’t topical because they don’t prove the resolution true. This ‘semantic’ argument rests on a number of assumptions: (1) that topicality concerns whether the plan entails the truth of the resolution, (2) that the ‘no plans’ interpretation is most semantically accurate, and (3) that semantic accuracy greatly outweighs pragmatic considerations.

There are good objections to all three of these premises, which I’ve covered in previous posts. The first premise is the weakest. I argued in 2014 that (1) is likely false and bad for debate; to my knowledge, no one has mustered a defense of it since.[2] I objected to (2) here because ‘no plans’ is not always the most accurate.[3] John Scoggin and I argued that (3) is false when there are strong reasons for a less ‘accurate’ reading of the resolution. Non-plan debate is often so bad that it justifies deviation from the most accurate meaning.[4]

But suppose you’re not convinced by any of the objections to (1) through (3), each of which is sufficient to defeat the semantic argument from plan opponents.

Could you concede all three and still justify the permissibility of plans?

Absolutely, but not the way you’d think. The conjunction of (1) through (3) is often taken to mean affs must discuss the resolution generally, but that’s not true. On this view, affs must defend the resolution generally to be topical, but they can prove it true however they like. Affs can use examples of authoritarian regimes, like Saudi Arabia, so long as they don’t advocate only withdrawing aid to Saudi Arabia.

So, you can read your Saudi Arabia plan without the plan text and everything is copacetic as far as the semantic argument is concerned. Why don’t teams do it? Well, there’s no guarantee the debate will be about the aff. The neg can argue for aid to other countries, say Israel or Egypt, which might be completely irrelevant to the Saudi Arabia debate. The neg can also refute the inductive inference from Saudi Arabia to the resolution, i.e. by arguing it’s not a representative or generalizable example, so it doesn’t prove the resolution true.

The Solution: Examples

What’s needed is a way to avoid semantic topicality arguments but still force debate about the aff’s example. To do so, affirmatives can defend the whole resolution, read their plan as an example, and justify why the negative ought to debate just the example itself and no other examples. This would also mean the neg accepts the inductive inference from Saudi Arabia to the resolution, i.e. the neg can’t say Saudi Arabia is a special case.

In advocating the whole resolution and its truth, the aff meets the topicality burden established by (1) through (3) above. Sure, the aff might concede, the example alone (without an inductive inference) does not logically entail the resolution. But arguments to the contrary are unfair and uneducational, so the negative must accept that the aff entails the resolution.

Why might one think debating anything other than the aff’s example is unfair and uneducational? Every argument for plans good! Plans are predictable approaches to policy topics, increase clash, encourage deep research, prevent shiftiness in the rebuttals, avoid drawing difficult distinctions between plans and non-plans, and shut down generalizability/representativeness debates that favor the negative and are not supported in topic literature. So too of example debate.

There are a few ways affs can go about this.First is to say, “As an example of the resolution, the United States ought not provide military aid to Saudi Arabia.” If the negative reads topicality, the aff meets because it defends the whole resolution. If the negative reads disadvantages unrelated to Saudi Arabia or makes objections to the aff’s induction, the aff can make a theory argument for ‘example focus.’ The theory argument would merely contain the typical ‘plans good’ justifications. Alternatively, the aff could set up the burden explicitly and say, “I defend the resolution, but my burden is to prove the United States ought not provide military aid to Saudi Arabia.” Another phrasing could be “The negative may not argue that the United States ought to provide aid to authoritarian regimes other than Saudi Arabia or that my example does not entail the resolution.” The justifications for these burdens or interpretations would also be typical ‘plans good’ arguments.

This thought experiment demonstrates the inevitability of the pragmatic ‘plans good/bad’ debate when dealing with single-regime affs. This is a topic I hope to take up again in a future post. There are a number of ways to neatly sidestep semantic issues, and ‘example focus’ is an underutilized one.

Why would an aff do this? It takes a tool out of the neg’s toolbox. Semantics is strategic because it forces the aff to debate against potential 2NRs where the neg goes for heavy semantics offense accompanied by jurisdiction-type weighing, heavy pragmatics offense, or both. Affs can eliminate that layering option off the bat in the 1AC. Further, the aff’s pragmatics offense for plans might be superior to its semantics offense, putting the aff in a much better position on the standard-level debate.

Objections

Objection 1: This is strange, and it seems fairly unpredictable to bar the negative from making certain types of objections to the affirmative case.

Response: It is strange, but so is the interpretation plan opponents forward (you’d have debates where the advantages of aid to Bahrain are compared against the advantages of withdrawing aid to Azerbaijan). Ultimately, single example debate is no less predictable than traditional plans, since their effect on substantive debate is identical. The way we get there is a little weird, but predictability is generally about whether opponents can fairly debate given the interpretation, not the wording or means by which the interpretation caused that debate to occur. Interpretations like AFC/ACC do something similar in barring a type of negative argument. Example focus is even more predictable since the neg can make all the arguments they would against a traditional plan.

Objection 2: If you’re conceding the example alone doesn’t entail the resolution, then every advantage to debating the truth of the resolution is a disadvantage to ‘example focus.’

Response: Yes, if debating the truth of the whole resolution is better than debating specific examples, then ‘example focus’ will be just as bad as plan focus.

By default, semantics arguments assume a lot of the truth testing worldview (much more than folks realize). To see this, consider that their view of topicality is that the following must hold: “if the plan is true, then the resolution is true.” By contraposition: “if the resolution is false, then the plan is false.” Semantics supporters can try to draw a line between their assumptions and truth testing, but they’re logically committed to strategies that disprove the resolution rather than the plan directly. That enables a grab bag of neg tricks (skepticism, a prioris, NIBs, etc.) as well as examples completely unrelated to the plan.

This objection is often said to have more bite: plan opponents say anything other than the most accurate reading of the resolution must outweigh all the virtues of topicality. The slippery slope is unjustified, particularly in the present context. Example focus doesn’t justify radical departure from the resolution; the aff must still provide an example of the resolution and is constrained by its words. If the aff’s example is not military aid or not aid to an authoritarian regime, it wouldn’t be an example of the resolution. In that case, a theory or topicality argument would be strong.

Objection 3: The judge doesn’t have jurisdiction to vote aff if the aff hasn’t proven the resolution true.

Response: Under the example focus interpretation, the aff has proven the resolution true. The aff implicitly or explicitly makes an inductive inference from its example to the resolution, which means its example is proof of the general principle expressed by the resolution. The neg is simply barred from disputing that aspect of the case. By tabula rasa standards of judging, if the aff proves its example, the resolution is true.

We might not even need to go that far. If the neg can’t argue other examples or induction, winning the aff would be the only offense for or against the resolution. Unless a judge is prepared to say a single example counts for zero, the aff is adequate—albeit weak—proof of the resolution.

End Notes

[0] Thanks to Michael Overing, John Scoggin, and Kenan Anderson for their reactions to this material.

[1] I’m using the term ‘plan opponent’ as shorthand. Folks who hold the view I’m about to describe needn’t be against all plans, but since the vast majority of plans specify one authoritarian regime, they’re functionally equivalent on this topic at the very least.

[2] There are a variety of other models of topicality that neatly accommodate plans. Some might think (1) follows from truth testing, but that’s not necessarily the case. One might think debate should center on the truth of the resolution, but plans needn’t logically entail it. Or perhaps debate about the truth of the proposition expressed by the plan text could capture the same benefits.

[3] My view is that many terms in our LD resolutions are vague, and that (semantic) vagueness permits a wider range of affirmatives than plan opponents would like to see. For another example, see my quick thoughts on the jury nullification topic here.

[4] John and I marshalled many arguments for this conclusion. The most obvious one is that plan opponents will admit that some resolutions ought not be debated as written, e.g. when they are harmful to debaters (such as the retracted November 2010 PF topic or the January/February 2012 LD topic). Plan opponents can characterize these as tiny exceptions, reasons to debate another topic, or reasons to ‘play a different game.’ However you spin it, pragmatic justifications can override semantic ones, which means plan opponents must justify their non-plan model of debate on pragmatic grounds too. To my knowledge, no one has done this publicly in many, many years.