Writing and Defending the Affirmative Plan

Though sometimes writing the plan is almost an afterthought in the affirmative research process, how the plan is written and how the affirmative defends it are of central importance to affirmative strategy.

There are three important considerations in writing the plan, and they offer competing ways to do so. The plan must be topical, it must implement a solvent mechanism, and it must be written with potential counterplans in mind. This post takes as its point of departure that the most important consideration in writing the plan is to defend against negative counterplans, particularly those that rely on generating competition through the use of an alternative process or agent. When defending the plan, the affirmative should approach the plan as establishing a set of parameters for action, which if fulfilled demonstrate the truth of the plan. This is distinct from defending the plan as representing a single necessary action with a specified timeframe. Before defending the plan in this way, it must be written to facilitate that orientation.

The most important consideration in writing a plan is what counterplans compete, then how the plan meets the topic, followed finally by the solvency mechanism of the plan. This order relies in part on the current negative emphasis on finding a generic counterplan that avoids a net benefit. Negatives are typically worse at going for topicality than they are at going for counterplans, and smart affirmatives can prepare more than the negative on that issue. Though case debates are getting increasingly popular, solvency debates are less likely than impact defense, and so this consideration is third when writing a plan. The remainder of this post focuses on writing and defending the plan in relation to potential counterplans.

Given that many negative’s preparation is directed at writing a counterplan that competes with the majority of affirmatives, the more that the plan can be written to disrupt these strategies, the better. Towards that end, plans should avoid using resolutional language to the greatest extent possible, as it is likely that the negative will have a wall of arguments about what those specific terms mean in generating counterplan competition. Rather, the affirmative plan should use language that can be defended as topical, without relying on the specific terms in the resolution. There are of course some terms that cannot be avoided, such as the resolutional agent, typically the United States federal government. The affirmative team should consider using terms that are synonymous with important terms in the resolution, such as defending “ought” rather than “should”. Additionally, the presumption in writing the plan should be against specification, unless there is some particular offensive reason to do so. This includes the specification of the agent, the mechanism, quantities, or other items that may be defined generally. The reason to avoid specification is that preserving affirmative flexibility in defending the plan differently in different circumstances can allow a team to decide what they want to defend based in part on the negative strategy. The affirmative should also never include terms that specify beyond what the resolution dictates, including the timeframe of implementation or the process. This includes specifying “normal means.” Avoiding these simple traps can force negatives to defend the competitiveness of their counterplan more thoroughly than they might like.

Defending the plan against counterplans requires thinking about the plan in a certain way as well. Rather than considering the plan as a single instantiation of the resolution, the affirmative should approach defending the plan as a range of possible actions, with each one representing an affirmative victory. The relationship between the plan and its potential implementations is analogous to the relationship of the resolution to the plan. Just as the resolution offers certain parameters for the affirmative to defend, the plan establishes certain parameters that if proven true, demonstrate the need for an affirmative ballot. The delay counterplan doesn’t disprove the need for the resolution unless the affirmative incorrectly answers a cross-x question or a deficient Topicality argument. If the plan is written to avoid over-specification, and the affirmative avoids typical cross-x traps then many of the counterplans that are taken for granted as competitive (such as a Supreme Court CP against a USFG plan, or essentially all conditioning and consultation counterplans) would no longer be a viable option for the negative.