Throwdown with Scott Phillips

It’s been a while since I did a throwdown, and this is an issue that I have been thinking about for some time. I am going to defend intrinsicness in one specific instance, not in the abstract say it vs any da.

The instance I am thinking of is this: The neg reads a CP that is arguably plan inclusive, perhaps the easiest example to conceptualize is an agent counterplan. In addition to having another agent do the plan, they also have a line in the CP that seeks to spike out of the better literature based answers to that CP.

Example:

1AC- End drone strikes

1NC: Court end drone strikes, court also rule this won’t effect deference

2AC: Deference DA

2NC: We fiated out of the deference DA

It seems here that if the negative is also going for a politics DA, reciprocity demands that the affirmative be able to non intrinsic that da. I will leave flushing out warrants etc till the response post, so lets assume the example above occurred and the 2AC says the following:

“you can do the plan and pass start, intrinsicness is legitimate in instances where the negative uses fiat to moot our literature based offense vs their counterplan. Reciprocity and ground demand that we be given a theoretical argument to level the playing field- this is analogous to their cp spike”

So post in the comments negative responses you can think of to this line of argument, or any thoughts/ideas you have on it

Throwdown with Scott Phillips

I honestly did not really want to do this, but this is the issue I have gotten more questions about than any other since I started working as a debate coach/lab leader. Some rules

1. I am not going to do any research on this one- framework files have been turned out by major camps/planet debate in the past and are more than sufficient to give you the 2 or 3 cards you may need to support this argument.

2. I realize many different affs could have different responses, in all likelihood when I write the response I will group a lot of them together into categories for a few reasons- i’m lazy, it will make the blocks more useful, and lets be honest the arguments aren’t areally that different.

3. I’m only going to respond to comments that are well explained, so writing “t= genocide” will not prompt a response, clearly explain the argument you want addressed in a few sentences if you want a response.

Some notes

1. Cards aren’t underlined- a few people whined to be about this. If you are so lazy that not only do you not cut your own cards, but you are complaining that the cards on 3NR aren’t spoon fed enough to you then you prob. suck and should join the band.

2. I couldn’t really decide how to approach this- obviously there is a lot of argumentative overlap between many of these positions, and if you had to give a 2NC to answer all of them it would be a nightmare/probably overrun by theory. So many of the “blocks” below are quite short, and would need to be elaborated upon if the aff chose to go for that argument in the 1AR.

3. Evidence over me talking- many of the better arguments I chose not to belabor and instead provided a card that explains them- I could go either way on whether it is better to have a card or your own explanation, but since I think a lot of people may just cut and paste out of here prob. better they have a card. Let me repeat that for those of you reading this who want to be really good at debate- the cards here contain every argument you need to crush on the neg for the reps K- if you read them carefully, repeatedly, and master then you will be much better off than if you cut and paste a bunch of theory blocks together.

AFF is responsible for Reps/Plan Focus Bad

First, debate percentage- the plan is a much smaller portion of the debate than the representations. Focusing exclusively on the plan limits us to the tip of the iceberg politically. (perhaps read Smith from the judge choice thread).

Second, choice. Plan choice is constrained by the resolution whereas advantages are unrestrained. The fact that they have more choice means they should have more responsibility for the reps and be held more accountable. They don’t have to read bad reps or trite and stupid impact cards like Kagan- they can chose from anything. Live by the sword die by the sword- they chose their reps for a specific strategic advantage, they should have to bear the costs.

Third, Plan focus destroys context- an aff that gave family care to women in the military so they could fight would lose to the word “family” pic with the net benefit of reinforcing conservative values. Word pics are worse than reps K’s- they capture the whole plan, require only 1 garbage card to run, and divorce the 1AC from its context wrecking education. A proposal to abolish slavery so we can send slaves back to Africa is radically different then abolish slavery because everyone is equal.

Fourth, the ballot says “did the better debating” – a team who is unable to defend the majority of the justifications for their policy has not conceivably done the better debating.  Debate is an academic activity- in no other field can you submit a proposal with a bunch of crappy justifications and say “ok just ignore those” in any class you would get a bad grade, in policy making circles your credibility would be destroyed.

AT: Judge Choice- Analytics

First, Judge choice relies on the assumption of plan focus- it’s impossible to articulate a coherent rational for judge choice without presupposing the plan is the focus of the debate, that’s debated elsewhere

Second, Our critique will engage all representations- the justification for this model is that the judge can chose only the good ones, there will be none after we have properly done our job. But if there are- the remedy is the affirmative should be able to leverage those representations as offense. Just like if we read a cap K and only turned one advantage- the fact that our link was to the plan shouldn’t make a difference in impact comparison vs a reps K

Third, Town hall model is false – the affirmative isn’t tacking on good representations to the negative representations of another party, they are directly responsible for the good and the bad.

AT: Judge Choice -Ev

Judge choice misses the boat- symbolic battles of representation are as if not more important than the plan

James K. Stanescu PhD student at Binghamton University (SUNY) in the Philosophy, Interpretation, and Culture program 11-8-09 http://wrongforum.wordpress.com/2009/11/08/reps-ks/

Harrigan argues that the representations of the affirmative are not necessary components of the plan, and therefore the judge can choice to ignore them if they are problematic. He goes on to say that the most offensive person can have a good idea. However, Harrigan does not provide a guide for how we are to read the plan text. In Harrigan’s articulation, it seems as if the plan text is the only part of the 1AC that is solid, that is a proposition for action. Everything else in the 1AC seems to be so much chatter, so much ephemeral hints, so many ghosts. Under his view of the round, if someone were to propose not giving missile defense shields to Japan, and had as one of their advantages that our foreign policy should only be dictated by protecting Aryan civilizations, the judge could simply choose to ignore that because the affirmative had other, non-racist advantages. What is missed by this view is that every 1AC, every speech, has many propositions. There are more propositions of what should be done than those under the heading of plan text, and there is no reason that the neg cannot focus on rejecting those propositions (well, there are reasons of course, but that should be in the debate, not predetermined by the judge). Furthermore, the plan text itself is never a full bill (for good reason). But that means we never completely know the ways that a plan will be implemented and interpreted. The representations of the 1AC give us a context, a way to read the plan text. For example, you could have two different people advocating that abortion should be legal in some particular country. One person could be advocating greater social autonomy, more reproductive choices and rights for women, etc. Another person could be advocating that abortion could be a tool for scientific eugenics. The reasons given for a policy could be a hint for the ways that a policy is intended to be implemented. There seems no reason to radically decontextualize plan text, because plan text always needs a contextualization. Also, the reasons given for pushing for a policy agenda could splinter groups, making the real world implementation of such a policy harder to come about. To use the example above, think about the ways that such eugenicist discourses surrounding abortion supporters in the US not only made it hard to get support among women of color, but also further fragmented the feminist movement which has constrained their ability to make other goals. Lastly, it seems to me that Harrigan ignores the importance of symbolic battles. Harrigan seems to purpose that the only thing voted for at the end of the round is plan text. However, to use his example of a town hall meeting (which, I am not granting this is the right framework/analogy to understand debate, but to think within it for a bit), it isn’t just a plan that is being debated about, but an entire series of relays and rhetorics that support such a plan. If, for example, the Nazis really were suggesting health care reform to better protect Aryans, and I said, “Man, I hate Nazis and racism, but health care reform seems grand” I would be allowing the symbolic strength of the Nazis to increase by letting them win a battle of the importance of health care reform. The policy is not the only thing granted legitimacy, but the entire apparatuses and relays that garner support for the policy is also given legitimacy. I think it is perfectly reasonable to say that it might be more important to stop the Nazis and their racist agenda than it would be to pass the parts of the Nazi agenda I agree with. Every debate has a series of symbolic battles, that gather legitimacy through wins, and through the repetitions of those arguments. Now, I understand that all of the examples I give are extreme, but it seems that Harrigan invites such examples by saying that the worst sort can still have good ideas. In short, I think the extreme examples give us an ability to determine if reps sometimes should win the day. And if we believe that, then the entire type of discussion shifts. Debaters give many representations, and many propositions, for their plan texts. They have many rounds at a tournament, and many tournaments in a year. If we want them to not repeat certain representations, we have to open up the possibility that they can lose a round based on such representations. Otherwise, certain symbols are given more legitimacy at the end of the round, and others are given less. There are a lot of things that happen in the 1AC, and all of them are open for debate.

Judge choice obscures affirmative responsibility for advantage selection, the part of the case the aff is most responsible for. It also relies on flawed conceptions of judge, choice, and discourse

Turner, BA Dartmouth, Grad Student UGA, 11-7-09 http://www.georgiadebate.org/2009/11/the-illogic-of-judgechoice

The terminology used here reveals the problem with the theory of “judge-choice.” The focus is on the “necessary” connection between the plan and a justification for the plan. We should not start with a model of policy-formation and advocacy that presumes we are likely to identify necessary connections between action and result. Though the constraints of time mean that components of an affirmative will not be challenged if we’ve learned anything from the process of debate it is that there are no necessary connections only possibilities/probabilities. If we can say that any relationship in a debate is necessary it is that a plan requires a justification in order for the judge to vote affirmative* (I’m not addressing a form of affirmation disconnected from rationality—but that’s not at issue for the discussing the limitations of judge-choice). The extreme plan-focus of “judge-choice” breaks down if we acknowledge that the judge endorses something like a 1AC, not simply the plan text (The theory of “judge-choice” is not significantly different from plan-focus. Judge-choice seems for the most part a way to move the locus of deciding what portions of the affirmative to endorse from the affirmative team to the judge.) Most of the evidence on the importance of framing and representation claims the importance of kritik derives from our ability to demonstrate that what appears natural and necessary should be treated as contingent. Representational kritiks ask the question why given “such terminology is not necessarily an outcome” of a plan the affirmative decided to make the connection between the two. What are the conditions of the possibility for the appearance of the 1AC? Why did the stories that the 1AC initially told make sense to us so as to appear “necessary?” If we take Harrigan’s formulation of “judge-choice” at its word it is not intended to prevent the introduction of representational kritiks. Instead of being a reason to vote negative, in this theory they would be used to exclude certain reasons presented from the reasons for affirmation. The world encouraged by this theory is one of increasingly poorly articulated advantages supplemented by more obscure add-ons. Extra-T presents an analogous situation—introducing any number of reasons to support the plan allows the negative to kritik those advantages but at most to take them out and then have to win any number of other positions to win the debate. Sure, this isn’t “zero-cost” but it’s pretty close. This would fit with a general move away from probability/possibility at the level of link and internal link towards probability and magnitude at the level of impact. In a sense, judge-choice will make the already unfortunate aspects of the combination of plan-focus and quality evidence about the relevance of language/rhetoric/representation even worse. Extreme plan-focus makes any problematic terms in the resolution/implementation literature immediate fodder for any number of negative arguments (see: biofuels, nuclear weapons, CAFO, Sub-Saharan Africa, persons living in poverty, and many many others) that become quite difficult to defeat or increasingly awkward and annoying to avoid in spite of the fact that the 1AC is most constrained when it comes to wording plans. The area where the 1AC exercised less constrained choices* (“choice” here sits uncomfortably with many critical theories that we might draw on for the arguments, but it is required by the terminology of “judge choice” obviously and if we problematize the notion of “choice” that makes for a different way of breaking down the theory) – advantage construction/justification receives the least critical scrutiny. So, for example, an aff about animal liberation on the subsidies topic that articulated a set of advantages based on breaking down anthropocentrism and highlighted their use of the term “CAFO” as a strategic choice for reasons of implementation and access to exiting discursive framings/structures would be highly likely in our current understanding to lose to a PIC out of CAFO as sanitizing language (because there’s “no offense” grrrr…) but an aff that represents the issue of factory-farming purely in terms human-self interest or through connection to disease security can just read an add-on about how factory-farming makes animals suffer and the question of anthropocentrism is settled. On the issue of the judge’s “interaction” with the debate the theory of “judge-choice” as presented presumes a problematic and contestable understanding of the position and role of a judge. First, the theory presumes a purely consequentialist form of evaluation as given by treating “outcomes” as entirely separate from reason-giving. For example, this sentence, “Good ideas are good if they have beneficial outcomes, regardless of how they are justified.” This is a theory of decision-making that presumes that one of the most contentious issues in ethical and political theory has already been resolved. Quality evidence suggests that reason-giving substantially effects outcomes. This issue is likely resolved in this theory by pointing out that even if reason-giving cannot be strictly separated from consquence there is still the ability of the judge to “choose” not to use those reasons that would have negative effects. However, this brings us to another important issue in the understanding of judging. The judge Harrigan refers to “chooses” which reasons to use in their decision. This understanding of the judge-subject is itself the subject of many representational kritiks. The theory of “judge-choice” constructs the judge as an agent who believes that justification/rhetoric/representation can be separated strongly from action – that type of judgment may itself be responsible for many of the negative effects of particularly problematic representational systems. “Judge-choice” presumes that rhetoric is a set of discrete objects over which a detached subject can exercise choice. Negatives could characterize the role of rhetoric as constitutive – thus an affirmative hails us/interpellates us as subjects of a particular type. Alternatively, the subject-position of judge and decision could be an effect of discourse rather than an agent. There are a variety of other possibilities—all of which we should resolve through substantive argument rather than by theoretical fiat. Adding complexity to our understanding of possible judges also helps clarify the claim that only “judge-choice” presumes an “interactive” judge. Interactivity here is constrained to easily detachable reasons that a judge can choose between easily. Affective, constitutive, or ideological effects of speech clearly do not “interact” with this type of judge. Interaction also occurs in this vision only at the moment of decision. It is odd to say that this is the only way to preserve a “dynamic” judge given the static understanding of language and subject that it accompanies. Consider Harrigan’s explanation of the effects this has on our theory of judging: that you should hold speakers to every reason they cite as justification and use it to assess their policy—is one of the most reactionary and anti-critical stances one could take. It prioritizes who speaks over what is spoken about. It ignores content for form. It punishes instead of compromises. And, fundamentally, it is a tactic used by conservative political forces to crush progressivism. Do the critique folk really want to be in this company? I agree that reliance on some language of punishment/severance could be a good argument against the phrasing/theory of language and judgement. That way of explaining what is going on in these debates isn’t our only option (more on this below). However, this groups all criticisms of this style together and presumes they are “progressive” or that content and form can be strictly separated. Ironically, if obnoxiously, we could at this point write a representational kritik of Harrigan’s post regarding the language of “progress.” What seems like one word might indicate a whole system of thought about the end goal of pure consequentialism and a “use” oriented theory of the relationship between language and the subject. At the very least, we should acknowledge that for much of the critical theory we’re drawing on for this type of position would say that what is spoken about constitutes the “who” that is speaking or judging. Rather than associating the construction of the 1AC with the debaters (the “who speaks”) as a type of personal corruption most of these positions rely on evidence about the role of criticism/negation as productive. They do not have to be about punishing individuals but instead about engaging in criticism of processes that all to often occur without much thought because they appear “necessary.” Severance is probably problematic and I agree that importation of counteprlan theory into debating alternatives has typically obscured issues instead of clarified them. The use of terms like severance seems more a symptom of judge-adaptation or inertia/debate-laziness than an intrinsic characteristic of criticism. If we take this claim from Harrigan, “Thus, the judge, at the end of the debate, should be able to choose (for themselves) why to vote Aff or Neg. Logically, one can choose the best arguments from the set of available reasons presented in the debate,” I think it potentially works if we permit plan-inclusive or aff-inclusive alternatives. People fear the number of different arguments that can be raised about individual words. I think that we ought to treat these issues on a case-by-case basis (and with less commitment to offense-defense) in terms of how important a particular set of representations appear for an aff. Frankly, affirmatives should also be thinking about these issues. Also ignored in this fear is that there are significant circumstances where the negative cannot separate the plan from the problematic reasons presented by an affirmative. Negatives have often been dishonest about the degree to which something purely a contingent connection between justification and policy. Particularly in adopting a language that implies a strict separation between the plan (action) and advantage (justification/frame) the negative may be using a model of discourse/representation etc. that is in tension with the overall theoretical vocabulary. However, much of the responsibility for this phenomenon lies in the hands of affirmatives desperate to protect the special status of the plan. We have typically debated all of these as questions of absolute priority (the K equivalent of offense-defense). Rather, most of the evidence read for these claims (including Doty) indicates that these are issues worth engaging, not issues that are logically prior to consequnce—but something that should shape how/whether we ought to evaluate consequences (particularly in the manner described by many affs). I think that the analogy to the town-hall is loaded and misleading (we would change a lot more about debate than the question of representational kritiks and plan focus if we were actually concerned with modeling a town-hall format). However, even if we take it as a guiding analogy for evaluating debate the theory of “judge-choice” fails to account for the potentially productive components of the analogy. First, I would hope that in listening to the various proposals made in public deliberation that attendees would investigate not only the policies being presented or believe that advocacy for a policy could easily be detached from the rhetoric that often surrounds it. If one fails to pay attention to the connections between ideology and advocacy then we will have serious problems in deliberation. In a town-hall style exchange we’d likely witness AIK style advocacies—I agree with the general course of action, but in order not to have the course of action create X set of issues we ought to frame our actions differently.

AT: Policy Relevance

First, there is no “role of the ballot”- these arguments are always arbitrary and self serving. Debate is a competitive game; the only role of the judge is to decide a winner. The ballot says “the team who did the better debating is X” , not “the team who made up the most arbitrary BS reason to exclude the other teams arguments”. The only question the judge  needs to grapple with is which side DEBATED better- measured by argument quality and presentation. The affirmative gets infinite prep to select their justifications, if they can’t defend them they deserve to lose

Second, their interpretation excludes topicality- the judge is not allowed to consider procedural issues. This may be a cheap shot but you would think if you were going to try and cheat your way out of arguments you would at least do it well. This explodes affirmative ground and destroys topic education- this link turns every conceivable affirmative justification for plan focus.

Third, No Basis- the 2AC does not even attempt to provide a justification for why policy relevance is predictable or fair. Obviously relevance is a subjective standard that provides no bright line for teams to decide what they do and do not have to be ready to debate.

Fourth, Kritik is logically prior to policy relevance- making an accurate decision about the plan’s desirability presupposes a certain set of facts that kritik calls into question. You wouldn’t spray liquid on a fire before knowing if it was water or gasoline. Their narrow conception of politics rigs the game in favor of the plan

AT: Policy Relevance

Batterman loses

Lee Jones is lecturer in International Relations at Queen Mary, University of London, BA Honors Univ of Warwick, MA in IR St Anthony’s, PhD IR Nuffield , Journal of Critical Globalization Studies Issue 1 2009

Having conceded where Nye has a point, let’s now consider the ways in which he may simply be wrong. His assumption is that the academic should be, needs to be, policy-relevant. As indicated above, this can be a very pernicious assumption. As an invitation to academics to contribute to discussions about the direction of society and policy, no one could reasonably object: those who wished to contribute could do so, while others could be left to investigate topics of perhaps dubious immediate ‘relevance’ that nonetheless enrich human understanding and thus contribute to the accumulation of knowledge and general social progress (and, quite probably, to those scholars’ research communities and their students). As an imperative, however, it creates all sorts of distortions that are injurious to academic freedom. It encourages academics to study certain things, in certain ways, with certain outcomes and certain ways of disseminating one’s findings. This ‘encouragement’ is more or less coercive, backed as it is by the allure of large research grants which advance one’s institution and personal career, versus the threat of a fate as an entirely marginal scholar incapable of attracting research funding – a nowadays a standard criteria for academic employment and promotion. Furthermore, those funding ‘policy-relevant’ research already have predefined notions of what is ‘relevant’. This means both that academics risk being drawn into policy-based evidence-making, rather than its much-vaunted opposite, and that academics will tend to be selected by the policy world based on whether they will reflect, endorse and legitimise the overall interests and ideologies that underpin the prevailing order. Consider the examples Nye gives as leading examples of policy-relevant scholars: Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Brzezinski, both of whom served as National Security Advisers (under Nixon and Carter respectively), while Kissinger also went on to become Secretary of State (under Nixon and Ford). Kissinger, as is now widely known, is a war criminal who does not travel very much outside the USA for fear of being arrested à la General Pinochet (Hitchens, 2001). Brzezinski has not yet been subject to the same scrutiny and even popped up to advise Obama recently, but can hardly be regarded as a particularly progressive individual. Under his watch, after Vietnam overthrew the genocidal Khmer Rouge in 1978, Washington sent tens of millions of dollars to help them regroup and rearm on Thai soil as a proxy force against Hanoi (Peou, 2000, p. 143). Clearly, a rejection of US imperialism was not part of whatever Kissinger and Brzezinski added to the policy mix. In addition to them, Nye says that of the top twenty-five most influential scholars as identified by a recent survey, only three have served in policy circles (Jordan et al, 2009). This apparently referred to himself (ranked sixth), Samuel Huntington (eighth), and John Ikenberry (twenty-fourth).2 Huntington, despite his reputation for iconoclasm, never strayed far from reflecting elite concerns and prejudices (Jones, 2009). Nye and Ikenberry, despite their more ‘liberal’ credentials, have built their careers around the project of institutionalising, preserving and extending American hegemony. This concern in Nye’s work spans from After Hegemony (1984), his book co-authored with Robert Keohane (rated first most influential), which explicitly sought to maintain US power through institutional means, through cheer-leading post-Cold War US hegemony in Bound to Lead (1990), to his exhortations for Washington to regain its battered post-Iraq standing in Soft Power: The Means to Succeed in International Politics (2004). Ikenberry, who was a State Department advisor in 2003-04, has a very similar trajectory. He only criticised the Bush administration’s ‘imperial ambition’ on the pragmatic grounds that empire was not attainable, not that it was undesirable, and he is currently engaged in a Nye-esque project proposing ways to bolster the US-led ‘liberal’ order. These scholars’ commitment to the continued ‘benign’ dominance of US values, capital and power overrides any superficial dissimilarities occasioned by their personal ‘conservative’ or ‘liberal’ predilections. It is this that qualifies them to act as advisers to the modern-day ‘prince’; genuinely critical voices are unlikely to ever hear the call to serve. The idea of, say, Noam Chomsky as Assistant Secretary of State is simply absurd. At stake here is the fundamental distinction between ‘problem-solving’ and ‘critical’ theory, which Robert Cox introduced in a famous article in 1981. Cox argued that theory, despite being presented as a neutral analytical tool, was ‘always for someone and for some purpose’. Problem-solving theories ultimately endorsed the prevailing system by generating suggestions as to how the system could be run more smoothly. Critical theories, by contrast, seek to explain why the system exists in the first place and what could be done to transform it. What unifies Nye, Ikenberry Huntington, Brzezinski and Kissinger (along with the majority of IR scholars) is their problem-solving approach. Naturally, policy-makers want academics to be problemsolvers, since policies seek precisely to – well, solve problems. But this does not necessarily mean that this should be the function of the academy. Indeed, the tyranny of ‘policy relevance’ achieves its most destructive form when it becomes so dominant that it imperils the space the academy is supposed to provide to allow scholars to think about the foundations of prevailing orders in a critical, even hostile, fashion. Taking clear inspiration from Marx, Cox produced pathbreaking work showing how different social orders, corresponding to different modes of production, generated different world orders, and looked for contradictions within the existing orders to see how the world might be changing.1 Marxist theories of world order are unlikely to be seen as very ‘policy relevant’ by capitalist elites (despite the fact that, where Marxist theory is good, it is not only ‘critical’ but also potentially ‘problem-solving’, a possibility that Cox overlooked). Does this mean that such inquiry should be replaced by government-funded policy wonkery? Absolutely not, especially when we consider the horrors that entails. At one recent conference, for instance, a Kings College London team which had won a gargantuan sum of money from the government to study civil contingency plans in the event of terrorist attacks presented their ‘research outputs’. They suggested a raft of measures to securitise everyday life, including developing clearly sign-posted escape routes from London to enable citizens to flee the capital. There are always plenty of academics who are willing to turn their hand to repressive, official agendas. There are some who produce fine problem-solving work who ought to disseminate their ideas much more widely, beyond the narrow confines of academia. There are far fewer who are genuinely critical. The political economy of research funding combines with the tyranny of ‘policy relevance’ to entrench a hierarchy topped by tame academics. ‘Policy relevance’, then, is a double-edged sword. No one would wish to describe their work as ‘irrelevant’, so the key question, as always, is ‘relevant to whom?’ Relevance to one’s research community, students, and so on, ought to be more than enough justification for academic freedom, provided that scholars shoulder their responsibilities to teach and to communicate their subjects to society at large, and thus repay something to the society that supports them. But beyond that, we also need to fully respect work that will never be ‘policy-relevant’, because it refuses to swallow fashionable concerns or toe the line on government agendas. Truly critical voices are worth more to the progress of human civilisation than ten thousand Deputy Undersecretaries of State for Security Assistance, Science, and Technology. (p. 127-30)

AT: Policy Relevance

And policy relevance destroys scholarship- cold war proves- makes effective policy making impossible- that’s a turn

Christopher I. Xenakis Assistant Professor of Political Science, Tidewater Community College What Happened to the Soviet Union? 2002

Why did so many American Soviet experts fail to anticipate the possibility of reform taking place in the USSR? A number of prominent scholars, whose work we have examined at length in these pages, have argued pointedly that Cold War Sovietology was perversely influenced, or co-opted, by totalitarianism model thinking and the Cold War consensus. And it stands to reason that if Sovietologists themselves thought they were co-opted, some of them probably were. This explanation accords with Thomas S. Kuhn’s account of why scholarly communities are often reticent to accept new and anomalous data. As Alexander Dallin and Gail W. Lapidus recalled, the Gorbachev reforms of the mid-1980s “challenged the prevailing academic paradigms and conventional wisdom regarding the Soviet system. The initial Western reaction to the Gorbachev program was one of profound skepticism,” the two scholars noted.86 “The widely held belief among U.S. Soviet experts was that “basic [Soviet) change was impossible and could not be carried out by people who had themselves grown up in and benefited from the system." Eventually, with the delegitimation of Communism in 1989 and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, a "scientific revolution" occurred in western Sovietology, as Soviet experts saw many of the familiar realities they had taken for granted—notably, the Cold War and the USSR—changing or evaporating. Stephen F. Cohen adds that Sovietology was politicized from its inception as a result of its dependence on government funding and the formation of an unhealthy "scholarly consensus" around the totalitarianism model. Wedded to this model, many Sovietologists "eliminated everything diverse and problematic from [their] subject.” and Soviet studies became, in quick order, a kind of Kuhnian normal science that found it difficult to assimilate new information about the Soviet Union. “What belatedly infused new ideas into Sovietology was less its own intellectual dynamic than political changes in (Moscow] that the profession had not anticipated and could hardly explain” or ignore, Cohen said. The discipline of Sovietology came into being “during the worst years” of the East-West conflict. Cohen added, at a time when U.S.-Soviet relations “intruded into academia both] politically and intellectually “ The Cold War put a premium on “usable scholarship” that served Washington’s policy interests and diminished “more detached academic pursuits.” If most early Sovietologists were honorable and well-intentioned scholars, “many came to [their discipline through] wartime experience and [their] interest in ‘national security,’” and not out “of an intellectual passion” for Soviet studies. These were joined by ex-Communists who had more political zeal than expertise. Foundations subsidized general Russian studies, but the Pentagon, the State Department, and the Central Intelligence Agency asked for—and only funded—”policy-related research.” Scholars “established many open and reasonable relationships with government” during this time, “but also some that were covert and troublesome. As a result, academic Soviet studies became, a highly politicized profession imbued with topical political concerns, a crusading spirit, and a know-the-enemy raison d’etre.” Cohen concluded. It taught “its basic ‘lessons’ in a single voice, which fostered consensus and orthodoxy.” This practice “narrowed the range of [acceptable] interpretations,” and “minimized intellectual space to be critical-minded and wrong”11 Similarly, Alexander Motyl revealed that during much of the Cold War, the influx of government money into academic political science departments and Russian studies institutes went hand in hand with the government’s attempt “to set Sovietology’s research agenda” along policy-analysis lines.*8 But this was aFaustian bargain for American universities, because “notwithstanding its importance for democratic government, policy analysis inclines Sovietologists to eschew the very stuff of theory—big questions with no simple answers.” Analogously, Frederic J. Fleron and Eric P. Hoffmann argued that far too many U.S. scholars were focusing on short-term policy-oriented research during the Cold War years. Such analyses were “neither historically grounded nor far-sighted”; they “place[d] heavy emphasis on current political personalities, top-level power relationships, and international and domestic crises” and skimped “on the thinking and behavior of counter-elites and citizens; on underlying socioeconomic and scientific-technological trends; and on policy options, policy implementation, and policy outcomes at the national, regional, and local levels.”*9 In addition, such research was “more focused on means than ends, more speculative than analytical, more partial to simplistic than complex explanations,” more eager for quick fixes than durable solutions, more accepting of official than independent views, and more cognizant of immediate than eventual political costs and consequences.” According to scholar Raymond C. Taras, Cold War scholarship simply followed geopolitics and followed the money. Since the government was paying universities and think tanks for research pertaining to the Soviet threat, little attention was focused on the Baltic states or on the individual Soviet republics.90 Even as late as 1992, “western universities ha[d] trained few students in the languages spoken in the breakaway republics, making prospects for incisive empirical research not promising.” The existence of a pervasive co-optative relationship between academic Sovietology and the government is also suggested by the career mobility many scholars enjoyed between these two environments. According to Jerry F. Hough, there existed, throughout the Cold War period, a virtual revolving door between American universities, think tanks, and government foreign policy and national security-related agencies and departments—and a number of Soviet experts moved repeatedly and often from one of these professional environments to another.91 Not only did Sovietologists move freely from academia to government and back again; this study argues, more perversely, that there was an insidious homogeneity of scholarly opinion within these settings. While there were significant distinctions between realist, political cultural-historicist, and pluralist points of view, the scholarly differences between professors, researchers, and policy makers of the same Sovietologiest school were relatively slight. Thus, political cultural-historicists tended to think alike, whether they taught at a university or sat at a policy desk at the State Department—and the same was true of realists and pluralists. What this suggests is that Sovietological co-optation by government was endemic—both in the early Cold War years and in the 1970s and 1980s—if for no other reason than that all Sovietologists, regardless of the professional setting in which they worked, needed good data, and the government both supplied much of this data (for example, in unclassified CIA and Department of Defense studies) and controlled scholars’ ability to acquire it on their own (through the tacit threat of denying research grants and passport renewals to researchers who stirred up trouble). If it is true that many scholars became policy makers, and in turn, that a significant number of government officials were also scholars, then we should expect that these professional communities courted and cooperated with one another as much they competed against each other. And it should come as no great surprise that academic Sovietologists were co-opted by policy-making interests, or that, as Cohen argued, this cozy relationship between government and the academy was asdeleterious to good scholarship as it was commonplace. (p. 165-7)

AT: Policy Relevance

The affirmative’s interpretation of “policy relevance” is self serving and flawed- this card will smoke them

Greg Marston, Bachelor of Social Science (QUT), PHD (UQ) Social policy and Discourse Analysis , 2k4 p. 14-15

The positivist paradigm informs an idealized rational actor understanding of the policy-making process. The rational approach to policy-making is an extension of particular forms of positivism and neo-positivism that seek to purge the social scientist of values (Bryman, 1988, p.14). This idea of reason without values is maintained through instrumental and technical rationality. Instrumental rationality in policy-making can be defined as follows: ‘in any organization there might be a number of ways of reaching goals; and when faced with the need to make a choice between alternatives the rational decision maker chooses the alternative most likely to achieve the desired outcome’ (Ham and Hill, 1993, p.77). The idealistic representation of policy as a form of ‘rational decision making’ between available choices and options is problematic for a number of reasons. The limitations of rational approaches to policy-making arise from an insufficient account of the political context, insufficient emphasis on the participants in the process (and their conflicting interests) and the ‘ideal type’ nature of the models themselves (Dalton et al, 1996, p.17). A positivist view of policy-making asserts policy solutions as universal truths waiting to be discovered by the so-called policy ‘expert’. Hillyard and Watson (1996, p.324) argue that this perception denies the constitutive role of discourse. In short, a positivist epistemology is not an adequate position for researchers and policy analysts aiming to explore and understand how policy meanings are discursively constructed, how regulatory functions of the state are being transformed and how policy actors represent and articulate policy problems and solutions. By focusing on ‘objective’ outcomes and grand narratives of ‘progress’, ‘rationality’ and ‘truth’, we remain blind to the multifaceted nature of policy-making processes. Positivist accounts of the social world do not recognize the constructive nature of discursive processes that produce knowledge and identities, or how conflict over policy meanings is manifested within specific policy environments. While not denying the place of positivist informed research in social planning, this paradigm is limited when it comes to understanding questions of power as experienced in the production, reproduction and transformation of policy agendas. As Yanow (1996, p.6) argues. ‘positivist knowledge does not give us information about meanings made by actors in a situation. When we read a policy we see more than just marks on a page. we hear more than just sound waves’. Exploring the discursive dimensions of policy-making requires alternative theoretical frameworks and epistemologies that are able to capture the processes of subjectification and the relationship between agency, identity and discourse in local policy contexts. The various strands of critical social theory and post-structuralism are areas of theorizing that offer social policy researchers different ways of thinking about language and culture.

This is an independent link- the claim that policy relevance should have priority masks oppressive structures and epistemological problems

Diane Stone , Marie Curie Chair and Professor of Public Policy at the Central European University in Budapest Towards a global polity P. 139-42 2k2

‘Knowledge’ does not signify a single body of knowledge that is commonly recognised. On the contrary, it implies a struggle between different ‘knowledges’ or what are often described as ‘discourses’. ‘world-view s’ and ‘regimes of truth’. For many, the issue is not simply the creation and dissemination of knowledge. but the kind of knowledge that is produced and the kind of knowledge that dominates. This requires recognition that knowledge and expertise are contained by and connected to material interests. Those who demand and fund the creation and supply of policy analysis, advice and research can have powerful sway over what is researched and the issues considered important. There is also demand for information to be managed. International organisations and governments require knowledge organisations and reputable professionals to sift and vouch the welter of ideas, information and analysis pressed upon them by NGOs, governments. corporations and others. Editors, filters, interpreters and cue-givers become more in demand, and this is a source of power. There will be an imperfect market for evaluators. Bland names and the ability to bestow an international seal of approval will become more important. (Keohane and Nye 1998: 89) Consultants, think tanks and academics represent legitimate and neutral vehicles to filter, to make sense of the conflicting evidence, sets of argument and information overload. The social status and reputation of academics, thinkers, experts and professionals are an important dimension of the trust that both the general public and official actors place with them as ‘filters and interpreters’ of information. However, it is not only as mere filters that they gain power. Knowledge creation, dissemination and application bestow power. Foundations, professional associations, scientific assemblies, actuarial bodies advocate their own intrinsic intellectual value, policy relevance and knowledge capacities. However. it is not necessarily that the most sound knowledge or best ideas will inform policy developments. A danger in this kind of analysis is to privilege the influence of experts and over-state the power of ideas. Ideas matter but so do interests. Furthermore. as noted in a study of Eastern and Central European think tanks. ‘It is the management of expert discourse and not in-depth research that has empowered think tanks’ in post-communist transition (Krastev 2000). This statement need not be restricted to think tanks: academics, foundation executives, consultants, law firms and financial advisers adopt a discourse of intellectual authority and/or deploy their professional rhetoric in order to gain access, to influence and to benefit from global policy networks. Certain practices and nonnative standards are essential in maintaining the public stature of knowledge producers or their ‘brand name’. Some research is more rigorous, professional and scholarly, adhering to recognized standards of peer review. Standards need to he cultivated and protected as policy-makers and other users want policy research and analysis that meet professional standards. Attracting foundation support or funding from national (social) science regimes bestows credibility. Rhetorical resort to the professional and scientific norms of scholarly discovery, intellectual investigation and impartial advice is particularly important to think tanks and consultancies in order to set themselves apart from NGOs and highlight their superior knowledge base, professional standing or business experience. Practices such as peer review and professional accreditation are exclusionary processes in which only those with the relevant credentials can participate. Such authority and legitimacy is a necessary component in effectively diffusing ideas and propelling then) into official domains. The power and authority of those with knowledge when interacting in policy networks lies in knowing how to locate and juxtapose critical pieces of information and being able to organize certain modes of understanding that others will demand. In other words, they make ideas Matter and use their intellectual authority to verify certain forms of knowledge as more accurate. persuasive or objective. For example, transnational knowledge elites are often attractive to local governing elites. They represent an authority beyond their borders to which to appeal in reform processes. The major bond-rating agencies like Moody’s and Standard and Poor’s set international standards in global financial markets (Sinclair 2000). In other circumstances, conditions attached to development assistance or foreign loans coerce governments into accepting foreign expert advice awl international ‘best practice’. Here, the discourse coalition/communities literature is of use. A specific set of ideas of progress and reform – financial liberalisation and the `PM mentioned earlier – have prevailed over other paradigms. The discourse of certain think tanks and consultancies has come to be viewed as technical, expert and authoritative. This status is reinforced when foundations, governments and international organisations like the OECD direct funds and other resources to such experts. It holsters their position and it serves to amplify favoured discourses throughout official circles and civil society. Accordingly. questions about what is deemed to be international ‘best practice’ conic to focus on the mobilisation of bias, and why some ideas are selected and others systematically ignored. Global networks -and the individual experts and knowledge organisations in them – are instruments for the ‘mobilisation of bias’ in the global polity. Networks are flexible, evolving, re-structuring arrangements that move within and around institutions. Connections, intersections and overlapping of networks present nebulous and opaque policy arrangements based on consensus, informal power and ‘soft laws’. It is an assumption of responsibility and ‘reinvention’ of authority (Sinclair 2000). The global governance of HIV/AIDS. the definition of the world’s development problems, and the dialogues of corporate and government leaders establish decision-making processes, lead to resource allocations and institute policy practices that are beyond existing structures of public scrutiny. ‘Networks undermine responsibility by shutting out the public’ (Rhodes and Marsh 1992: 200). Public representation in this mode of global governance has not been advanced as if in many national polities. Accordingly, the global polity is responding better towards the well-organised, wealthy, skilled and knowledgeable who are organised through networks and other institutions rather than to disorganised, poorly financed, unskilled groups and those who target the institutional structures of nation-states. Moreover, members of the general public often have neither the expertise, nor the time, nor the inclination to be active participants in the policy at the national level, let alone participate in global policy debates. As a consequence of the lack of transparency and mechanisms for public representation, transnational policy communities are more able to act with relative autonomy. Additionally, they are more able to thwart the emergence of challenges to the dominant values or interests in the global polity, suppressing demands for change in the existing allocation of benefit and privilege. Pluralists usually stress the openness and informal participation to decision-making offered by networks. This tends to he the flavour of trans-national advocaey networks that are non-exclusionary in character and are often effective in exercising ‘voice’ in global policy debates. Networks can promote greater pluralism or representation of diverse views, but networks can also function as exclusionary devices that limit alliances and curtail exchanges to a select elite. As has been said of the epistemic community literature, but which applies to many other network approaches, the approach is ‘a model of elites by elites for elites’ (Jacobsen 1995: 303). It can also be said that a network approach accommodates Marxist perspectives that networks are dominated by interests representing capital (Smith 1993) and especially neo-Gramscian accounts that focus on knowledge creation and idea formation as central to the capitalist system of hegemony (Gill 1999: Sinclair 2000). However, the hegemony of established interests is incomplete. uneven and contested. While there are many question marks over the democratic accountability of networks, they also represent a medium through which alternative world-views and new policy thinking can be articulated, although discourse structuration and institutionalisation may remain elusive. This is the case with the GDN which is characterised by many schools of development research and knowledge. However, it is also a research association where certain mainstream liberal economic institutes have acquired a dominant position, have privileged access to resources and whose research agendas agree in considerable degree with thy policy preferences and values of the main CDN sponsors. The asymmetries in the broader global polity are reflected inside networks in their internal power arrangements.

AT: Solt

First, if representations are secondary you are doing it backwards- the way policy making should work is we develop an understanding of a problem to the best of our ability and THEN search for solutions. This evidence is a link- it concedes the affirmatives isntrumentalized approach to the world is the opposite- decide on a course of action and then search for a justification. This process produces error replication- Vietnam, Iraq, etc. If representations are “discredited” the policy conclusion CAN NOT logically hold.

Second, this assumes a purely defensive reps K- i.e. “You are not 100 % accurate”- that’s above.

I think reading these debate theory cards is a bit lame, but to be thorough:

Solt presupposes a rationalist mode of policy making that is incomplete and totally at odds with real world policy makers- their model of debate has nothing to do with actual policy analysis

Pat J. Gehrke (MA. California State University, Chico) is a doctoral student in Speech Communication at Penn State University.  CONTEMPORARY ARGUMENTATION AND DEBATE 19 (1998)

One of the primary criticisms leveled against all such critiques is that they fail to address policy questions (Jinks A14; Shors and Mancuso A 1 5; Solt, Anti-Kritik xiii; Solt, “Demystifying” A9). Most debate theorists who oppose critique arguments advance a rationalist paradigm of policy evaluation. In their minds, a strict cost-benefit analysis, particularly a quantitative analysis based on the preservation of human life, is the only means by which an advocate can justify or dejustify a policy. In his criticism of scientific models of public policy, Robert Formaini, the former vice president for public policy at the Cato Institute, explains the rationalist policy paradigm: According to the policy rationalist, if the risks are “acceptable” and the “benefits” are greater than “costs,” what person can argue that the proposed policy ought not be done, and on what inductive basis? It will not work to say that the proposed policy is “wrong,” “immoral,” “unjust,” and a “waste of time and effort.” These arguments are “unscientific” and “value-laden” with the citizen’s personal, irrational prejudices. (69) In policy debate, the rationalist perspective marginalizes critiques by mistakenly representing a particular approach to policy evaluation as the essential means of policy deliberation, implying that one theoretical perspective is both appropriate for all policy questions and preferable to all other means of policy comparison. Marouf Hasian and Edward Panetta argue that “both the promise and the peril of the critique come from its use as a method of questioning some of the assumptions behind `policy’ debate itself” (47). They continue, “the use of ‘the critique’ in policy debate means a virtual abandonment of many of the cherished assumptions of policy decision making” (53). If by policy debate and policy decision making, Hasian and Panetta are referring only to the conventional practices of academic debate, they would be correct. However, their criticism is not that critiques simply challenge academic policy debate as we commonly practice it, but rather that critiques are “politically irrelevant and counterproductive” (54). This conclusion is arrived at by giving primacy to rationalist policy models, including claims such as that “debating is an inherently rationalistic activity” (54). Faith in rationalism as the core element of policy debate leads Derek Jinks to posit that if critiques have any theoretical legitimacy, “they should take the form of disadvantages, counterplans, solvency arguments, etc.” (A14). Jinks argues that resolutions imply the context for academic debates, and since contemporary resolutions are interpreted as policy questions, they should be addressed from a policy perspective (Al2). While this line of reasoning may bear some merit, Jinks begs the question of whether the rationalist model is the only possible policy perspective. Jinks relies on a rationalist cost-benefit analysis model for decision making. He argues that policy decisions cannot be made without comparing unique costs and benefits of proposed courses of action (A14). Jinks likewise contends that policy debate should begin from a set of shared assumptions about the values at stake, which should simply be taken as true (A13). Matthew Shors and Steve Mancuso propose an extreme division between critiques and policy discourse. Shors and Mancuso make the same error as Jinks by generalizing from rationalist policy models to all policy deliberation. They claim that critiques are “utterly irrelevant” and that critiques ask us to believe that “it is pointless to discuss policies” (A16). Shors and Mancuso would have us believe that critiques “ignore policy issues altogether” (A16). It is because critiques do not argue unique commensurable costs or benefits that they contend that critiques carry “little, if any, weight in policy comparison” (A16). Only by failing to recognize the broad diversity of policy perspectivescan Shors and Mancuso come to conclude that “the Critique is wholly incompatible with, and non-germane to, policy debate” (A17). Perhaps the most vehement opponent of critiques has been Solt. Solt makes many of the same assumptions about policy analysis as do Jinks, Shors, and Mancuso. Solt so strongly believes that critiques challenge the assumption that “what we are essentially engaged in is a policy debate” that he recommends the first response to critiques be to reestablish the policy framework (“Demystifying” A9). For Solt, “the kritik is a non-policy argument” (Anti-Kritik ii). He sees debate as a policy forum, and critiques are considered not to be “germane to the subject at hand” (Anti-Kritik xxii). Solt argues that “at root, the kritik misunderstands the nature of the policy calculus” (Anti-Kritik xxiii). Solt’s rationalist assumptions are apparent in arguments encouraging us to “take an a priori ethical and political framework for granted” (“Demystifying” A 11). Similarly, he ignores a whole body of interpretive and communicative policy analysis literature when he claims that “ideas are more important than the rhetoric with which they are expressed” (“Demystifying” All). Here, Solt is attempting to refute language critiques by retreating to a separation of policies and the words that express, present, and form those policies. For Solt, the policy has a pure form outside of language, and it is that form that is to be evaluated, rather than any of the words that might malign it. Such a position is distant from much of both contemporary communication studies and policy studies literature. The arguments against critiques advanced by the policy debate rationalists are suspect because they are grounded in the traditions of academic debate rather than contemporary theories of policy studies. Consequently, they dismiss questions they can not force-fit into policy rationalism as neither worthwhile nor relevant to policy discussions. As two policy analysts wrote of the hegemony of the rationalist paradigm, “When all you have is a hammer the whole world looks like a nail” (House and Shull 163-164). Berube attacks critiques from a perspective not overtly founded on policy rationalism, holding that critiques are fundamentally pre-fiat arguments and that they disregard post-fiat substantive claims (“Criticizing” 68-72). Nonetheless, he bases his arguments upon similar assumptions about the relationship between critiques and policy debate. Here, “fiat” is a stand-in for “policy focus,” in that fiat represents an enacted policy. To claim that critiques disregard issues that arise after fiat is to claim that they disregard questions raised by enacting policies. Berube’s argument is also predicated upon the assumption that academic debate should extend no further than “intentional, intended, naïve, objective, and rogate” meanings (“Criticizing” 77). This means that debaters and critics should not question any of the assumptions or presuppositions of texts or advocacies, uncritically accepting the premises inherent in propositions. In the context of policy analysis, Berube’s standards require that policy advocates and analysts not ask of each other: “But what are your assumptions? Are they valid, or consistent, or morally acceptable?” This position is extraordinarily dangerous. Wayne Booth argues that we must consider precisely those questions texts attempt to foreclose: Each literary work implicates within itself a set of norms about what questions are appropriate. Hemingway, to choose a favorite example of the new feminist critics, does not demand of us that we ask of his works, “Is it good for men or women to accept uncritically my machismo bravado?” Indeed, he seems to work quite hard to prevent our asking such a question. But surely, the feminist critics say, and I think they are right, surely any teacher who teaches A Farewell to Arms without inviting, somewhere along the line, a critical consideration of Hemingway’s heroes as human ideals, and of his portraits of women as reflecting a peculiarly maimed creative vision, and of his vision of the good life as a singularly immature one—surely any such teacher is doing only half the job. (301) Similarly, we might say that any policy debater who does not seek a critical consideration of the questions that a policy proposal tries to foreclose is only doing half the job of a policy analyst. 22-5

This turns their offense- their version of policy making results in worse decisions

Pat J. Gehrke (MA. California State University, Chico) is a doctoral student in Speech Communication at Penn State University.  CONTEMPORARY ARGUMENTATION AND DEBATE 19 (1998)

Policy narratives both rely upon and reinforce basic value assumptions about human beings and the world that we construct. If we fail to take value assumptions and implications into account, we cannot consider that we have a meaningful analysis of a policy question. Connie Bullis and James Kennedy note that policy analysts too often ignore values because of rational models of policy evaluation (543). The primacy of the rational model of policy evaluation similarly undercuts academic debate’s ability to consider policy options. Garry Brewer, a policy scholar at Yale, and Peter deLeon, a policy analyst for the RAND Corporation, note that theories and models for social description and policy choice involve making value judgments (135-137). The long term implications of any policy option are perhaps best reflected by the value systems that support them and the options they reflect and reinforce (Bullis and Kennedy 543). When one implements a policy, one also implements a value system. While the implementation and technical aspects of the policy may shift through agency and interpretation, the fundamental core value assumptions of the policy may be more enduring and have broader implications. The intrinsic connectionbetween values and policies were not ignored by early non-policy debate theorists. For instance, David Zarefsky’s notes the importance of criteria for the evaluation of quasi-policy propositions (9-10) and Jan Vasilius comments that “values precede policy formation, influence policy implementation and assess policy results” (35). Policy debate that fails to incorporate value discussions may be deceptive and misleading. A belief in the ability of humans to produce an analysis of human interaction not laden with values can only be a grave self-deception. Value-free policy analysis is neither possible nor useful. This is in part because both policy analysts and policy makers inextricably inhabit “a world structured by values” (Vickers 95). Thus, as one sets forth to clarify and evaluate options, one inevitably ends up clarifying and ordering values. This is especially true in policy debate, where the entire argument rests fundamentally on some conception of what is the public good. Thus, it is inevitable in debates over policy options that we engage in the construction of value systems and moral premises. The real question is whether we should do such a priori, behind a veil of objectivity, or as a part of the subject of the debate itself. The latter alternative is far preferable. No strict ethical rule or community standard can replace debate about value choices. Nor can the policy rationalist perspective account for value choices. The policy rationalist relies upon methods such as cost-benefit analysis to strive for scientific objectivity and authority in policy evaluation. Brownlee and Crossman note that cost-benefit analysis is unable to incorporate value conflicts into policy deliberations because cost-benefit analysis relies upon objective commensurable measurements that are often not possible with values (4-6). Rationalist policy analysts “either omit certain values or force them into inappropriate comparisons” (Brownlee and Crossman 6). It would be a grave mistake to push normative value considerations out of the debate round and behind some mystical curtain. As one senior policy analyst put it, “Simply, values are too central to the various stages of the policy process to permit them to be covertly inserted, neglected, or left to some hidden marginalist hand ‘muddling through’” (deLeon 39). We can reasonably expect to find our way through such issues only if we continually open them to discussion and include them in policy deliberations. We should consider that public policies and policy debates are about things that are happening. Debate is not fiction. The evidence and advocacies of our authors do not mystically originate in a vacuum, nor do they come from some entity creating game pieces for our amusement. It is essential that as policy advocates and analysts we not lose sight of these normative roots. 28-30

AT: Batterman- Voting neg not required

Voting aff or neg is not an endorsement of an advocacy or ideology- it is a statement about which side did the better debating. If the affirmative cannot intellectually sustain the arguments they presented in the 1AC, they are not doing the better debating.

AT: Incommensurability

One slight editorial- incommensurability does not mean “can’t weigh things”, though that is the way it has recently been thrown around in debate. The conclusion drawn by some, “can’t weigh things, throw out K” is also so contrary to the theory it is mind boggling. I will write responses, however, assuming Batterman’s articulation.

First, It’s inevitable- rights vs death, Economy vs Hegemony, intrinsic perms vs conditionality, debates always have to compare the incomparable. To dodge the harsh questions through theoretical fiat does an educational disservice- the alternative is that the affirmative could argue the positive benefits of the plan outweigh representational damage

Second, Incommensurability relies on a false dichotomy- there is always a third language that speaks the common ground between theories

Ruth Ronen, Tel Aviv University, Incommensurability and Representation AS/SA Nº5, Article 3 : 1998

http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/french/as-sa/ASSA-No5/RR4.htm

This change of emphasis in Kuhn is related to the fact that most of his critics center on the question of translatability between languages when raising objections against the notion of incommensurability. Philosophers of science who criticize Kuhn’s incommensurability see it as tantamount to untranslatability; they hence aim to show that two languages will retain referential relations even under substantial conceptual change.1 Both Kuhn and Feyerabend were criticized for denying the idea of “a third language“, for overseeing the fact that as radical as a scientific change may be, at critical moments in the history of science, there is always a language in which this change is registered. No matter how discontinuous the choice of scientific theories may have been, scientists “must have at their disposal a range of terms adequate to the empirical testing of these theories, whose meaning was unaffected by the theories themselves“.2 There is hence an idiom within which continuity is held, even if temporarily. Equipped with a third language, radical changes in meaning do not entail epistemic and ontological incompatibility. It can be shown, then, that there is no incommensurability once the difference between theories is reduced to a difference between two scientific languages. (continued- this is footnote 2 from this section) 2. Hung Hin-Chung (1987). “Incommensurability and Inconsistency of Languages.” Erkenntnis 27, p.323-352; Hung shows how the paradox of incommensurable theories (the fact that they are both about the same subject-matter and differ in subject-matters) can be accounted for. Behind the intensional relation of inconsistency in the content of theoretical assertions there is an extensional relation of realizability. Hence incommensurable theories differ in internal subject-matter but they share an external subject-matter: true sentences of one language are realizable in a second language. For instance, Thermometry is the external subject- matter of both the Caloric theory and the Kinetic theory of heat. The resulting inconsistency between these theories is however an intensional notion. The relation of extensional sameness which guarantees realizability in a new theory (of the sentences formulated in another theory) also enables scientific growth.

Third, representations critiques are the FOUNDATION of a coherent concept of incommensurability

Ruth Ronen, Tel Aviv University, Incommensurability and Representation AS/SA Nº5, Article 3 : 1998

http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/french/as-sa/ASSA-No5/RR1.htm (Applied Semiotics is a peer reviewed journal)

Incommensurability occurs in science where two theories lack a common measure, a standard reference, or an external criterion that could have served as grounds for comparison. Yet, although incommensurability appears to stem from the absence of a world beyond theory, I will claim that there would be no place for the notion of incommensurability in our epistemology were we not giving our theories realistic interpretations. In other words, in order to assume that theories are incommensurable, we have to assume that each theory works as a conceptual net through which the world is seen differently. We have to assume that a theory employing the term ‘star’ sees an object through this term; and each theory can give the term ‘star’ a different realistic interpretation, that is, identify the term with another celestial body. Incommensurable theories, while each sees the star differently, all represent stars. Without realism towards theories and towards the entities they assume, theories would have been straightforwardly intertranslatable and commensurable.

AT: Reps K’s are Defense

The K isn’t defense- while accuracy is one element we contest, we also present offense about why the affirmatives representations have negative effects on the real world. This isn’t the equivalent of saying “collapse of heg doesn’t cause war” as impact defense on the case. Their downplaying of our impacts is an independent link- self serving categorization of what impacts “matter” is the ideological process that sustains representational violence.

AT: Intrinsic to the Plan /Intrinsicness Perms

First, Define Irony- creating a system of resolving debates based on a K of “importing cp language” and then make as one of its main tenants the idea that reps K’s aren’t “intrinsic”. This is stupid- obviously no representation is directly tied to the plan EVER- the aff choses them. /discussion

All of these arguments rely on an incoherent model of debate as explained on plan focus/rob etc etc etc. This is all just plan focus repacked a million different ways.

AT: Faber its inevitable/math card

First, representations may be inevitable, that doesn’t mean the judge should normatively endorse them- it’s a total non-sequator- inevitability does not prove that the affirmative did the better debating.

Second, that card is irrelevant.

AT: Perm- alt solves the links

Don’t use the plan as the basis of comparison- our K doesn’t indict the plan, “permutations” as a “test of competition” are designed to test the link- ergo combining something we are not claiming a link argument to is asinine- its like saying skateboard and do the alt. The only way this argument is winnable is if they win plan focus which is a separate discussion.

No possible aff offense-any inclusion of their representations links to our offense meaning the perm is always less desirable than voting negative alone.

AT: Perms That no longer defend 1AC Reps

Argument consistency is essential to negative ground- the affirmative gets the first and last speech, write to chose case area and plan wording, and infinite prep time. In order to balance these advantages they must defend a stable advocacy throughout the debate. These kind of permutations make debate impossible because the affirmative can jettison the arguments we generated our links off of. This is entirely self serving- if we read a K of the plan they could easily argue the opposite- that the plan was less important than their representations.

AT: Perm- Plan Plus Alternative

First, the kritik should not be tested as to whether it’s competitive with the plan since that isn’t what we are arguing against. The affirmative should be responsible for their justifications (separate block), so the test should be “is it desirable to represent things in the alternative fashion outlined by the negative AND the way the affirmative represented it, or is it more desirable to only use the negatives representations”.

Second, the affirmative should be held to a basic standard of argument consistency- they need to have a stable advocacy for the debate to occur. If they can advocate inconsistent positions from speech to speech being negative is impossible- we can never answer their 2AR clarification. The permutation violates this standard-this is proven by the link arguments and is facially obvious.

For this I will defend the Neg reading a reps K vs any theory argument or permutation based arg about why K’s that don’t link to the plan are legitimate.

Assume for the 1NC the neg read this card from the reps card picking thread as a justification for why reps matter:

Discussion of representations is logically prior to consideration of the plan since the cognitive filters they establish determines what counts as evidence

Dibyesh Anand   PhD (Bristol), MA (Hull), BA Honours (St Stephen’s College, Delhi)   Reader in International Relations Centre for the Study of Democracy, Westminster University, London,Geopolitical exotica: Tibet in western imagination p. 12-16 2007

WORLD POLITICS AS THE POLITICS OF IMAGINATION Social and cultural identities by their very nature have always been discursively constructed. What is new and peculiar to modernity is the desire and ability to construct a bounded identity based on a fixed and autonomous idea of self. This has been paralleled by the power of representations to construct identity and by highly unequal access to discursive and representational resources at a global level. Representational practices feed the dominant knowledge regimes and structures and shape the very identities they seek to represent. The best-known example of this is the ideational construct of Orientalism, which reflects the close connection between particular modes of cultural representations, anthropology, and European imperialism (see Said 1978). In the process it also creates the categories of “Oriental** and “Occidental” people. Representation and Critical IR Within IR, it is important to look at Western cultural representations of non-Western people. This is so for various reasons. Representations populate the world with specific subject positions within which concretized individuals arc then interpellated (sec Wcldcs T999). Identity claims of various non-Western communities thus operate within power relations put in place by the West. This does not deny non-Westerners their agency, for there is always space for resistance and accommodation. Rut it emphasizes differential access to the creation and molding of discursive (both material and nonmaterial) resources. It offers ways of challenging and denaturalizing modes of representation that abet domination by “making it acceptable and coherent within the dominant ethos that constructs domestic selves and exotic Others” (Shapiro 1988, 122-23). Recognition of the productive dimension of representation implies that the very basis of world politics—identity—is challenged. The recognition of the salience of Western representations of the non-West in world politics also questions the conventional view of international studies as a social “science” that has little to do with culture, morality, society, and the like. It underlines the importance of culture as a factor in molding, sustaining, and questioning political practices. It recognizes world politics as a process of cultural interactions in which the identities of actors (including their values and visions) arc not given prior to or apart from these interactions. Instead, they are shaped and constituted in the complexes of social practices that make up world politics. Rather than denying the importance of actors in enacting and reshaping the social practices in which they are embedded, it focuses our attention also on the social construction of actors. Thus, representation is an inherent and important aspect of global political life and therefore a critical and legitimate area of inquiry. “A whole range of analyses in IR have taken this [Said's] idea up and mapped the different ways in which the West constructs the non-western world” (Diken and Laustsen 2.001, 768).This comment is surprising given that IR, including critical IR, with few exceptions (see Biswas 2001; Doty 1996b; Gustcrson 1999) has more or less ignored the questions raised by Orientalism critique. The question of representation has historically been excluded from the academic study of international relations and the “price that international relations scholarship pays for its inattention to the issue of representation is perpetuation of the dominant modes of making meaning and deferral of its responsibility and complicity in dominant representations” (Doty 1996b, 171). The focus on representation within critical IR has been mainly on the constitutive function of representation in generating and sustaining particular policy regimes {sec Dory 1996b) and on the identity politics of the representee For instance, Campbell argues that the inscription of otherness was linked to American foreign policy and the enframing of American identity: At one time or another, European and American discourse has inscribed women, the working class. Eastern Europeans, Jews, blacks, criminals, coloreds, mulattos, Africans, drug addicts, Arabs, the insane, Asians, the Orient, the Third World, terrorists, and others through tropes that have written their identity as inferior, often in terms of their being a mob or horde (sometimes passive and sometimes threatening) that is without culture, devoid of morals, infected with disease, lacking in industry, incapable of achievement, prone to be unruly, inspired by emotion, given to passion, indebted to tradition, or . . . whatever “we” are not. (iyy8b, 8y) In Weldes (1999) as well as Weldes et al. (1999), representation is analyzed as a central concept of international relations and foreign policy. As in Campbell, it is the foreign policy regime sustained by particular representational practices and the identity of the repre-senter (the United States) that is under investigation. Doty (1993, 1996a, 1996b) provides effective analysis of representation as foreign political practice. Similarly, Neumann studies the “use of ‘the Hast’ as the other” (1999; emphasis added) as a general practice in the identify formation of Europe; Klein examines NATO “as a set of {representational] practice by which the West has constituted itself as a political and cultural identity” (1990, 313); and Dalby (1988) analyzes how the Soviet Union was constructed as a dangerous Other in order to produce an ideological rationale for the U.S. national security state-In all these studies of Western representation of the Other, the focus is on either its rationalizing role in some foreign policy regime or on its productive effect on dominant identity discourses within the West. These works have not dealt with the poetics and politics of Western representations of the non-West from the vantage point of the latter. The focus has remained largely on a critique of Western practices, not on its productive and restrictive impact on the non-West. This is at best an incomplete step in the right direction. While recognizing the significance of representation of the Other for the representee we must identify and analyze the impact on the identity of the represented. Chapters 4-6 focus on the productive dimension of representations vis-a-vis the represented through the empirical study of the identity of Tibet and Tibetans. My emphasis is on the ways in which particular encounters between the West and the non-West have shaped the latter. Representations support not only particular politics of the representor toward the represented but, significantly, they construct the very identities of the actors involved, especially the Other. Representations are productively linked with identity discourses of all kinds. The conventional idea that representation draws upon a pregiven identity is turned on its head, for it is identity that is fashioned out of particularized representations. In the case of Exotica Tibet, then, representational discourses are not reflective of, but actually productive of, Tibetan identity. Within critical 1R, the paucity of serious consideration of the “how,” “why,” and “what impact” questions of Western representations of/on non-Wcstcrn communities shows that the task of provincializing the West has only just begun. Theorizing Representation Constructionist theories (Hall 1997b, 15-74) are best suited for a contextualized understanding of social and political concepts like representation and identity. They do not argue that the material world does not exist but that it acquires meaning only through the mediation of language and discursive systems. Though such a discursive approach characterizes the work of many scholars, no one has been more prominent than Foucault (1970, 1971, 1980, 1984, 1986) in shaping it. Foucault is concerned with the production of knowledge and meaning not through language but through discourse. Discursive practices have their own inclusionary and exclusionary aspects. Discursive practices are characterised by the delimitation of a field of objects, the definition of a legitimate perspective for the agent of knowledge, and the fixing of norms for the elaboration of concepts and theories. Thus, each discursive practice implies a play of prescriptions that designate its exclusions and choices. (Foucault 19X6, 199) Foucault’s reformulation of discourse also calls for recognition of the explicit linkage between knowledge, truth, and power. Identification of the knowledge-power (pouvoir/savoir) nexus reveals the linkage of truth claims with systems of power: Truth isn’t outside power, or lacking of power: contrary to a myth whose history and functions would repay further study, truth isn’t the reward of free spirits, the child of protracted solitude, nor the privilege of those who have succeeded in liberating themselves. Truth is a thing of the world: it is produced only by virtue of multiple forms of constraint. {Foucault 1980, Z91) The recognition of the constructed character of truth facilitates a critical political positioning. Nothing is sacrosanct. However, this docs not undermine the impact of truth claims on the lives of people. All knowledge, once applied in the “real” world, has real effects and in that sense becomes true.1′ This Foucauldian identification and exploration of the link between power, knowledge, and truth is radical in its implication. It shifts the terrain of inquiry from the question “What is truth?” to the question How do discursive practices constitute truth claims?” In terms of representation, we may see the implication as a shift in the focus from some core reality beneath/behind representations to the modalities of their functioning. The question is no longer whether a representation is true or false but what discursive practices operate to render it true or false. It is not about how representations reflect some subjects but, more crucially, how subjectivity itself is constructed within discursive practices, how representational regimes are productive of subjectivity. Discourses then are “practices which form the objects of which they speak” (Foucault J972., 49). Adopting this approach to Tibetan identity, the pertinent question shifts from “How far do representations (both Western and self-) of Tibetans reflect their identity?” to “How do representational regimes affect the discursive production of Tibetanness?” This helps us look at Tibctanness as a politicized identification process, instead of some pregiven, essentialzed, fixed object.

The more detailed you explain your argument the more detailed the response will be, so fragments like “plan focus k2 learn about the plan” will be met with responses like “turn reps focus k2 learn about the reps”.

One problem I think aff’s have with these sort of theory args is they don’t have great answers to the carded neg arguments about why representations are important. An important tactic the aff should adopt is why an inclusion of reps discussion is possible in their fwork rather than an explicit plan focus fw. Having evidence for this sort of argument can help as well:

Elizabeth A Pritchard. Hypatia. Bloomington: Summer 2000. Vol. 15, Iss. 3; p. 45

The third way in which a feminist reinscription of the development logic of mobility jeopardizes women’s well-being is that a fixation on development or liberty as escaping or exiting the “closure” entailed in various locations reinscribes a utopianism that jeopardizes the possibility of a politics directed toward constructing an alternative and liveable world. And here again, some postmodern theorists betray the legacy of the Enlightenment. The dislocated mobile subjects of the Enlightenment are “at home” in a utopianism that defers the burden of the definitions, representations, and affiliations necessary for democratic political action. Such burdensome tasks are seen to threaten closure–and hence are repudiated.Reinhart Koselleck argues that a legacy of the Enlightenment is the persistence and pathology of utopianism (Koselleck 1988). The tradition of Enlightenment critique arises in the context of political absolutism that is instituted in the wake of religious wars. Setting themselves against the constraining tendencies of absolutism, the Enlightenment thinkers, whose field of action is a “single global world,” engage in a “ceaseless movement” of depersonalized critique within the horizon of an “open-ended future.” This produces a utopian self-conception whereby “modern man is destined to be at home everywhere and nowhere” (Koselleck 1988, 5). The error in this legacy of modernity, according to Koselleck, is that an unpolitical position of utopianism is mistaken as a political position. The Enlightenment thinkers were unwilling to take responsibility for history by formulating concrete policies and goals and designing and joining social and political institutions; instead they resorted to polar positions as persons who negate present realities and dream of a future they are powerless to realize.In their espousal of utopianism, some postmodern feminist narratives again betray their fidelity to a concealed Enlightenment narrative of development. A strand of postmodern feminist rhetoric not only reduces advancement to a “way out” of a confining reality–in this instance patriarchy and not the monarchical absolutism decried by the Enlightenment philosophers–it also forbids the representation of the elsewhere evoked by this reference to a “way out.” In other words, fixation on a “way out” forbids the sketch of a “way in” to somewhere else. Describing the efforts of French postmodern feminists, Drucilia Cornell writes: “Utopian writing reaches out to the impossible in the flight from the enclosed reality of the [masculine] symbolic…. Utopian thinking demands the continual exploration and re-exploration [sounds like Western expansionism] of the possible and yet also the unrepresentable” (Cornell 1991, 163,169; italics added). The monotonous ode to mobility or dislocation as the measure of development precludes the representation of an alternative development. Luce Irigaray advises women: “… don’t congeal your dreams or desires in unique and definitive representations. You have so many continents to explore [also sounds like Western expansionism] that if you set up borders for yourselves you won’t be able to `enjoy’ all of your own `nature’” (Irigaray 1985, 204). Lucy Sargisson, who draws upon both deconstruction and French feminism, argues that “most (contemporary) feminist utopian works lack a sense of stagnancy, being instead fluid and dynamic constructions.” Over and over again she stresses the appropriate open-endedness of feminist utopianism and celebrates the transgressive nature of feminist texts which subvert “closure.” These characteristics are set in opposition to the closure of patriarchy which seeks coherence, unity, sameness, and perfection (read: closure). In order to counter this masculine economy, Sargisson enjoins feminists to repudiate all attempts to draw a “blueprint” for the future and instead to revel in a “feel of dislocation” (Sargisson 1996, 20, 52, 59, 54).

Throwdown with Scott Phillips

This post will be in more 1AR form than nuanced explanation.

Extend our offense- pics artificially inflate bad disads by creating any risk of a link analysis which skews research and pre round prep focus. We’ll defend the whole plan, but forcing us to defend isolated parts in a vacuum is unpredictable and doesn’t reflect real world literature. There is no logical limit to pics- they can change the scope or implementation of the plan in unpredictable ways.

AT: Fix your plan

-no plan is immune to pics, you can’t just “fix” it. Fixing involves making the plan as vague as possible like “provide water africa” a la the hooch 2 years ago that are bad for education.

AT: You were just defending consult

-This is a blog about switch side debate.

AT: Who runs these 1 penny counterplans

-Lots of people run CP’s like grandfather 10% of the permits that the aff is never prepared for, they have solvency advocates and people win on them.

AT: Solvency Advocates check

-Empirically denied- judges are unwilling to firmly hold the neg to this standard- just having a link card is usually good enough. Proliferation of internet blogs (and law review footnotes) allow cards to be found for anything

AT:If solvency advocates exist and net benefits exist, then maybe it’s a real question in the literature.

-”real question” does not equal- far and good for debate. There are lots of “real questions” like how are we going to pay for this that in debate we chose to ignore

AT:The counterplan tests whether the Aff would be a better idea if done slightly differently

-If your disad is not enough to outweigh the case, it sucks. Why should we give the neg a mechanism to make crappy arguments round winners? Sounds a lot like you are defending a K JC…

AT:The damage to the 2AC strategy is done? What strategy are you talking about?

-a good 2ac will not read offense solved by the pic because that would be a waste of time, if the negative then has the CP go away due to theory the aff is left without some of their best arguments

AT:Reciprocal – they inflate the solvency deficit to the same degree. If you can’t win that this outweighs the disad it means either the CP isn’t competitive or you deserve to lose.

-This is false- its easier to construe a net benefit with an impact “including roy in the HC provided by the plan is unpopular” then it is to win a solvency deficit “providing for roy is key to solve”.

AT:A strong 1NC barrage of defensive case arguments and DAs that turn the case accomplishes the same effect

-Yes it does, it takes 10X as much time as reading a 1 sentence cp text which makes it different

AT:This argument also justifies banning all CPs because they force you to make certain solvency deficit arguments and not others

-False, you can use your whole plan as offense against non plan inclusive cps

AT: This neg ability to focus on a specific part of the plan is justified by the aff ability to set the focus of the entire debate

-It does not logically follow that because the aff picked X the neg gets to pick a subset of X-this is a claim without a warrant

AT: See above – aff gets to choose their side in almost every PIC debate. “penny saved” counterplans aren’t viable because the neg can’t win that the DA outweighs the solvency deficit

-This is empirically denied- gfather example above, font pics, word pics, exclude a state, exclude a sub group like natives the list goes on an on

AT: Roy’s counterplans are stupid for reasons other than that they’re PICs, they’re either only textually or not competitive. This logic is the equivalent of banning DAs because you think politics is stupid

- you are hinting at some standard for competition that “only allows the good ones” but you conveniently leave it out because it doesn’t exist. This is the classic problem with PICS, one out of 100 is good/fair/the center of the debate about that aff- the rest are nonsense.

AT: “Using a different mechanism” is the same as a PIC+an additional plank

-No-  USFG do cap and trade vs Japan inject iron oxide into oceans. I think you are trying to say “including the agent makes it a pic” which I think is arguable- it includes none of the plan ACTION. I don’t think if a cp that has a different agent doing a different action includes 1 word or 1 letter or is in the same font as the plan that makes it a pic.

AT: the alternative energy PIC is an example of a “different mechanism” CP.

-Its the exact same mechanism, it just uses a different name

AT:

Running the net-benefit without the CP is overly constraining – proving that the plan is sub-optimal and that a viable, competitive alternative exists negates the aff. To answer this statement you’d have to argue neg fiat bad, and that (or even just no PICs) would regress us to 1960s, Greg Varley era debate where the aff always wins.

-It “overly constrains” bad arguments with low probabilities, true. PICS bad does not logically rely on no neg fiat, you have no warrant for that claim.

AT:

(to use a real world analogy, the argument that the fact that the plan is an improvement over the SQ is a sufficient reason to merit adoption would hold no water. see the health care debate – rational policymakers don’t adopt policies if better alternatives that are smaller than the plan exist. If the public option PIC succeeds, Obama loses.)

-Yes look at the real world- these kind of minor counter proposals suck and guarantee nothing ever gets done. But more importantly there are constraints in debate like the topic and time which make this model a bad one to import.

As per request, the next throwdown will be on pics bad. There can be a lot more nuance to this than consult I think- whether agent CP’s are pics, pics that compete off the text (word pics) vs the implementation (exclude native americans) etc. I will try and keep this as broad as reasonably possible.

So here is a quick pics bad 2AC, post comments defending pics or attacking these args for the throwdown

PICS are illegitimate
A, They artificially inflate the worth of bad disads by creating any risk of a link analysis
B, They steal aff ground – they change the way we debate every argument by effecting which parts of the plan we can leverage as offense
C, Not predictable- they create an infinite regress to a penny saved is a penny earned style of arguments
D, alternatives solves- they can run the net benefit as a disad or use a different mechanism

This is a voting issue- the damage to 2AC strategy is done, rejecting the argument creates a perverse incentive for them to abuse us

First I want to say that most of these debates revolve around absurd hyperbole. Consulting NATO over whether or not we should give the homeless mailboxes is clearly not what was intended when the NATO charter was drafted. However, that this was not intended does not deny the fact that NATO and other international actors do in certain circumstances expect (and have a legal basis for doing so) consultation. Similarly, conditioning homeless mailboxes on democracy reform in Tanzania is similarly ludicrous, whereas conditioning public health assistance on that assistance being implemented in transparent and democratically accountable ways is definately something real world policy makers consider. I bring this up becasue I do not think you can draw a brightline theoretically and say “consultation is acceptable in this instance, but not in this other instance” in terms of “is it fair to debate”. If the nature of a certain type of CP, say it includes the whole plan, is illegitimate then it should not matter in what instance on what topic or supported by what evidence.

Lets start off with the Kerpen article

1. The lumping together of all these CP’s as “plan contingent” is flawed for a number of reasons-most notably a delay CP fiats the implementation of the plan as a guarantee. Consultation and condition counterplans do not- the affirmative can make solvency arguments about whether or not the plan would be implemented.

2. This distinction is meaningful- the states CP can claim to result in the plan through federal modeling- that is not a fiated outcome, it is a possible outcome.

3. Kills topic education- umm, turn? This topic is the worst- if you told me I could go to two different tournaments

A. Debate about the poverty topic

B. Consult counterplans and impact turns to their net benefits

I would chose B every time.

And now to deal with the rest of the posts, Cyrus Ghavi:

”

The problem with the way consultation is debated today is that everybody just writes them off as “stupid counterplans” without having a discussion about why that is true.  The result is that there are multiple generations of debaters that have irrational knee-jerk reactions to the counterplan, saying it is illegitimate when they can either give no reason why or can only make arguments about why it is at a very basic, shallow level.  If this is not true and if consultation counterplans are really that bad, then there is literally no reason why the affirmative would not be winning every single consultation debate on either theory or substance.

“It’s Make Believe”
Both the US-Japan Alliance and NATO have codified prior and binding consultation mechanisms. While it’s true that these mechanisms are limited to security issues, it does prove that the concept of consultation is not a “fantasy of the debate world.” The mere mention of consultation in these institutions means that it is less “fantasy” than most common counterplans (e.g. Lopez/States) or disads (e.g. relations/politics/economy).

While your argument is largely made moot by official international documents regarding consultation, there are also definitely cards written about it. Mochizuki, for example, specifically discusses prior consultation in which Japan “gains the right to say no.” Also, if you’re right about this, then the aff would win all of these debates because there would be no evidence that binding consultation is key, so the permutation would solve the net benefit.

If your argument is that “it would never happen,” then you are both overlimiting and wrong. Most plans and counterplans would never happen in the real world, that’s why we’re able to debate about them. Your standard is not pretty arbitrary given that the entire point of debate is to discuss what we “should” do about a problem as opposed to what we “would” do. The Bush v. Kerry presidential debates in which the “global test” issue was prominently featured also shows that this issue can actually be at the forefront of American foreign policy decisions. In a rapidly changing world in which the U.S. has substantially less soft power, policy-makers consider consultation as an option to bolster goodwill abroad.

Finally, I’ll just appeal to rationality:  why do you think the people that write disads to consultation,
namely hegemony, make those arguments? To answer non-existent consultation advocates? I don’t think so.

As an aside, you didn’t even impact this argument anyways. Discussing only policy mechanisms that are common or traditional encourages intellectual stagnation and provides a disincentive for debaters, and even policymakers, to explore new possibilities or at least understand why certain alternatives are a bad idea.

“Impossible burden”
First of all, it’s important to understand that the burden is squarely on the negative when it comes to “say yes” vs. “say no” debates. If there’s a decent shot that Japan/NATO will say “no,” then the aff will win because they solve the entire case and outweigh the net benefit by itself.  The affirmative is not “expected” to have case-specific evidence, but if they have it they are probably going to win.

Cutting “say no” cards is not an impossible burden given that there are only a couple consultation counterplans with the binding consultation evidence required to win.  Also, it’s their plan – the affirmative is in a much better position to have evidence specific to the case.  More importantly, your argument about “say yes” evidence that is tangentially related to the resolution cuts both ways. If the neg is relying on generic “say yes” evidence then the affirmative can use equally generic, tangentially related evidence in the debate.

Your “Japan cares about food” example, you should have pointed outthat the card only proves Japan cares, not that they would say yes. If you made arguments why they wouldn’t like the plan, you probably would have won. You don’t need absolute defense. If you win they’ll say no, you will win the debate.
This argument is also infinitely regressive because politics disads and other generics all use tangential links to the plan, and just like in consultation debates, the negative is more likely to win when they have specific links and the affirmative is more likely to win when their link takeouts/turns are more specific (analogous to “say no” cards in this instance).

Even if you are right about the “say yes” vs. “say no” debates, the affirmative can still beat consultation without ever making a “say no” argument. There are several generic consultation disads that can be read, go for perms, impact turn the net benefit, or use a short-term advantage to outweigh the net-benefit.

“Anti-educational”
Not surprisingly, I’m offended by your argument that the neg will “leave debate only knowing how to cheat and not how to research or strategize.” That could only be true for bad consultation debaters. In order to win these debates consistently at the highest level debaters have to do a lot of research and be learn to execute the argument near-flawlessly. This is particularly true if a team gets a reputation for reading a consultation counterplan (as I did) because the affirmatives will start to do a substantial amount of research in preparation for these debates. In order to win in these circumstances, good debaters need to do the same things necessary in any big debate: prepare new responses to the litany of attacks the circuit comes up with and keep a constantly updated file — from CP
uniqueness and disad answers to say yes evidence and add-onb advantages.

Your cheapshot aside, the education argument has other problems. First, it begs the question of what the plan’s mandate is. Consultation doesn’t require passage of the plan, so it’s not the same as the plan. It’s also not immediate, as the plan mandates. If you don’t that a plan mandate then you are also eliminating all agent counterplans, which is another debate altogether.

Second, many accepted debate arguments are similar in terms of education.  I’ll go with the politics example again.  It’s a stock negative strategy that is often a crutch for 2N’s that requires non-topic related research.  You’ll say that at least they have to do research before the tournament, but good consultation debaters will do the same (uniqueness updates, say yes updates) and I don’t think that research for the sake of research is a good standard by which we exclude or include arguments in the community. Politics disads are only specific to the aff via their link argument, just like consult counterplans are specific to affs with their say yes evidence.

It is also short-sighted to argue that these debaters will ignore the topic completely.  No one reads one-off consultation counterplans.  You have to have a strategy outside of the 90 seconds it takes to read you Mochizuki cards.

Granted it’s not the same, but there is also much to learn from reading consultation counterplans, and indeed I feel that I have. In my research I have become educated on Japan’s population, political structure, extended deterrence, military alliances, etc. Also a benefit that people might not realize is that when looking for say yes evidence it requires you to delve into the policy specifics of affirmatives, giving you a detailed look at what the affs are all about.

Also, consultation forces better education. The secret to beating consult is combining a decent “say no” argument with an affirmative with a short-term advantage. The delay in the counterplan becomes its worst enemy — that means that consultation encourages affirmatives with timely advantages/impacts so that we actually debate the IMPORTANT issues in the topic, not just the random squirrly cases.

And let’s get rid of the blinders and make one thing perfectly clear about debate: people are there to win.  How many times to you remember walking into a round, seeing your opponent and thinking “gee, I really I hope I get to learn something new in this debate!” Highly unlikely, I think most debaters are busy thinking about how they are going to beat their opponent into submission.
“Aff Ground”
Give me a break. Side bias is a dumb argument generally, but when you make these generic whiney claims it actually makes sense. YOU’RE THE AFF. You get to pick your plan, which means you can take a little bit of time to research some say no cards OR a short-term impact to your plan OR some consultation disads OR some uniqueness cards against the counterplan.

Your neg bias argument is another example of bad consultation debate. No good neg is going to win with Consult Costa Rica. There are not infinite consultation actors, you need real, legit evidence if you are going to win — and that basically limits it down to Japan and NATO. I could also say counter-interpretation, only consult coutnries in which there is a treaty-based mechanism to do so (Japan and NATO) – much less arbitrary than your interp.

I’m not sure what you mean by the argument that the aff will be rejected if you make a “say no” argument. That would only be true if you had a Japan advantage to your aff — in which case, I think you
should probably be ready for the CP since it’s pretty relevant.”

Throwdown with Scott Phillips

The Consult CP is now the official black sheep of the debate family, hating on it is so hot right now. To try and stem the tides of arrogant unilateralism, this Throwdown will be defending the Consult CP and will have a guest appearance by US-Japan relations expert Cyrus Ghavi. So post your objections here- you can copy and paste your 2AC block or write out a more long winded rant but this will be limited exclusively to non permutation issues- so you can argue that the CP competes artificially for example, but this will not be a response to all the various consult permutations.

Throwdown with Scott Phillips

First, as clearly explained in the original post this is not a question of “policy focus”- fort hays can just as easily say the aff should get to chose as wake forest can. A good majority of responses totally missed the boat on this so yeah for reading comprehension. I will give a few cursory defenses of “policy only” but its not really my bag as I think it’s stupid as explained in previous blog posts.

Second, this post is more of a hybrid between rant and speech than just “speech” like I said it would be. I felt like going a tad more in depth to alleviate confusion in some spots, so obviously just copy and pasting this into your 1AR block would be disastrous (well for many reasons).

“Aff Choice is arbitrary”

-Arbitrary means done without principle or logic- aff choice is the only logical option- we have to talk first. You can’t give a speech and make arguments without implicitly selecting a framework. Since frameworks are often mutually exclusive the framework we select is the only non arbitrary one- the negative does not logically need a new framework to refute ours, therefore lack of affirmative choice is arbitrary.

-Debating the “merits” of alternative frameworks trades off directly with topic education- this should be self evident. You can productively decide whether to eat at McDonalds or Burger King without a metaphysical debate about western capitalism.

-Alternative frameworks avoid clash- they sidestep the central questions posed by the affirmative. You can easily clash without needing your own framework.

“Negative frameworks are relevant opportunity costs”

-if frameworks trade off so to speak, that proves our point-the negatives framework will exclude 8 minutes of affirmative arguments, which is unfair (obviously done for strategic benefit) and anti educational (since the 1AC is the only thing close to being about the topic in most debates)

-Impact framing solves offense- if there are logical kritik arguments that respond to the 1AC you should not need a new framework- i.e. if threats are not real, that is a substantive response to the china war advantage, the only reason you need an alternate framework is to artificially inflate the worth of bad arguments and exclude reasonable affirmative claims with argumentative sleight of hand.

-There are many opportunity costs, not all of which are relevant- reading mead 92 instead of Bearden is a tradeoff- that doesn’t mean the neg should win if they convince the judge bearden is a better card. This theory of opportunity costs logically supports one of my least favorite arguments deployed with the reps K- do the plan but for different reasons. Debates, like economic hypotheticals, are improved when we assume away many tedious questions to focus on more interesting issues.

“definitions prove the aff must defend”

-This argument is interesting but I think would result in the most generic and irrelevant kritiks being unbeatable (like the “the”pic). I don’t think that because the affirmative defends the resolution, they must defend each word in a vacuum. If the resolution said “we should fight Nazis” and the neg read a k that argued Nazis were evil and we should not use that word, that would seem to miss the point of the resolution entirely, but if the aff is forced to defend the word nazi without reference to the rest of their 1AC it is pretty dicey. Obviously an extreme example, but is kind of what happens in a lot of instances I can think off where the resolution is “change X” and the neg K says “traditional notions of X are bad” and the aff is all like “uhh, but we change that” and the neg is like “but you don’t get your plan!”. Now this is certainly not every k debate ever, maybe its like 20-30% of them at most. But those debates are so annoying they stick out in my mind. One step further, if the neg had a sweet K of the word should or substantially they would own every topic (btw- why is substantially in every topic- in some of the proposed college wordings its in there like 12 times- does substantially have lobbyists that wine and dine the topic committee? What is the deal…). I may go into this more in depth later because I do think this is the most interesting of the arguments, but I will stop here with superficial top level analysis and absurd analogies.

“No neg resolution… no reason to constrain neg etc”

-CP’s are different- I understand that an agent cp may “moot” the 1AC in some way by solving an advantage for instance. But the solvency of the CP is debatable, the aff can still win its relevant. Framework arguments try to definitionally exclude things- this may be a thin distinction but I think its relevant and meaningful. I think just due to the strategic benefit it grants the neg it is obvious that these two args are different, though close together theoretically. I think your military/philosophers example is a good example of the way this can be dealt with in an alternate way- its just a qualifications issue where the biased ev should be discarded. That doesn’t require a framework that says “anyone who read biased evidence should have all of their arguments excluded”. I guess maybe this begs the question of what exactly is a “framework” and what is impact/argument comparison. When I think framework I think like, conceptual schema, not like util vs deontology. Aff framework choice doesn’t exclude arguments it just exclude the exaggerated impact claims about XYZ coming first. If you can prove that your argument is relevant to the aff (that it indicts or undermines their claims) you can still read it. Maybe I’m an old curmudgeon, but if you can’t prove its logically relevant without recourse to framework I think that’s probably a lame arg you have there. I think your china threat arg is illustrative- you can prove china is a threat in a realist AND constructivist “framework”- it just requires radically different arguments. So if the aff is realist, and you read a china threat K, the aff can elaborate on their 1AC and respond. If instead you make a framework argument about how reps of china come first, and they already made bad reps of china so even if they make alternative reps they are SOL since they said a “dirty word” or something like that, that stifles debate instead of encouraging it.

“there are a lot of disads”

-disads don’t fundamentally alter the question being asked/answered in the debate so they don’t moot the 1AC

“you only need one block defending yours- no research burden”

-it will be difficult to win vs a prepared neg when you have no specific responses to their framework. Just think about debates where the aff is like “policy good” and the neg says “policy bad and reps good”- when the aff has no reps cards they usually lose.

“in what other area do we protect one side to not engage”

-topicality

-you do it all the time when you arbitrarily exclude dropped arguments that you don’t personally agree with

“the aff doesn’t get to chose XYZ”

-they do get to defend their plan. If your framework makes their plan irrelevant, then they get to chose nothing, and there is no point in them being involved in the debate

“The negative is obligated to make responsive arguments.”

-kind of my point

]]> http://www.the3nr.com/2009/06/10/aff-choice-throwdown/feed/ 0 http://www.the3nr.com/2009/05/20/throwdown-aff-framework/ http://www.the3nr.com/2009/05/20/throwdown-aff-framework/#comments Thu, 21 May 2009 03:57:37 +0000 Scott Phillips http://www.the3nr.com/?p=112 So this is the first of the “throwdown ” posts. Basically, I will post an argument, then wait like a week or so. During that week anyone can post in comments a response or series of them. I will then …

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So this is the first of the “throwdown ” posts. Basically, I will post an argument, then wait like a week or so. During that week anyone can post in comments a response or series of them. I will then write a new post with how I would answer those arguments as if this was an actual debate. Thats were it will end though as I will have to move on to more pressing matters like Fallout 3.

Throwdown with Scott Phillips

A few notes on comments

-no need to post like 1,000 things- don’t just cut and paste your 2NC block into the comments. I won’t waste time responding to things where the answers are probably well known among non mouth breathers. So think about either tough arguments you have had to answer and were stuck on or something like that

-don’t post repeats- that will just slow everything down

-the response will be measured to the initial comment- so if you post a 3 word claim I will respond with a similar short warrantless arg like “you smell..bad” or some such. If you post a legit arg or god forbid a card, you will get a legit response.

Perhaps more ground rules will be thrown out later. So this week we will start with the classic aff choice fwork arg. I will articulate it here as I very first wrote it though I think many more subtle nuances make it more easily defensible, I will defend it in its raw and unct form:

The aff should get to chose the framework- the negative has position on us- there are an infinite amount of mutuall exclusive frameworks they can pick so there will always be one we don’t fit in- they could say debate should be an iron chef competition and since we didn’t cook anything we should lose.

Obviously this argument is not related to other generic framework args like role playing good/bad etc so save those for when Alderete judges you.

HE IS THE LAW!

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