Difference between revisions of "Counterplans"

A common negative strategy is to introduce a counter-proposal into the debate, called a “counterplan” (CP).  Normally, the affirmative reads a plan advocating that a specific policy be passed, and the negative defends that the status quo is net better than the affirmative.  However, when the negative introduces a counterplan, the debate shifts to whether the CP is better or worse than the plan.  This might seem unnecessarily complicated, but can provide great strategic benefit.  Often, the status quo is just bad: government policies are pretty messed up.  Against an AFF that defends a plan saying the United States federal government ought to provide jobs to formerly incarcerated people, the negative’s position is far strengthened when they propose a different way to check back against recidivism and stigmatization than to try to argue that a minor harm to the economy outweighs structural racism.  The CP can be thought of as sopping up AFF offense --- voting NEG doesn’t foreclose the possibility of solving the plan’s impacts because they can be solved in a different way while avoiding the disadvantage to the affirmative (a net benefit to the counterplan).  Importantly, a counterplan by itself is often not enough to vote negative; there must be a “net-benefit,” or reason why the world of the counterplan is better.  This comes in two forms: a [[disadvantage]] (external net-benefit) or internal net-benefit.  A disadvantage is a reason why the plan is bad that the counterplan avoids.  For example, a negative strategy against a plan to reduce intellectual property protections for medicine as a way to solve disease might include: a disadvantage about reducing intellectual property protections for medicines ceding important technology to China which destroys US hegemony and a counterplan to increase monitoring and tracking of disease outbreaks.  The disease counterplan makes the AFF offense negligible since the world of the counterplan solves the same as the plan, but it avoids the disadvantage that is specific to intellectual property, so the world of the negative is net better.  The other method of garnering offense is through an internal net-benefit.  Very similar to a disadvantage, an internal net-benefit is an independent reason the counterplan is good.  For example, say there’s a plan that uses Congress to pass a policy about a living wage.  The negative could read a counterplan that says a living wage should be passed through an executive order instead of through Congress, with an argument that says this creates precedent for more executive flexibility, and executive flexibility is key to respond to a variety of existential threats.  While this is not exactly a disadvantage to doing the affirmative, it is a reason why the counter-plan is net better, hence, net benefit.

Finally, [[Theory|theoretical]]  arguments are often used against counter-plans.  The most common types of theory are arguments about the “status” of the counter-plan.