Can you identify how this new theory of how plan texts are intended to relate to the topic is ground in prior scholarship about how plans, resolutions and topicality are understood?
There is a vibrant history of academic scholarship regarding these questions, but your assertion that:
"We will discuss affirmatives through some competition models. There are many (maybe even infinite) models—planicality, positionality, and resolutionality are the most common ones debated."
Invokes entirely new theories of competition and plan writing that have emerged soley at a small number of national circuit debate camps over the past 5-10 years.
It's true that there are other forms of competition that this article doesn't take into account (although many can be "looped into" the broader header of "positional competition," or are subject to many of the same issues).
In my experience in debate (mainly on the national circuit) the three forms of competition presented in this article are the most common ones debated. We may have titled these competition models differently from what they're normally called in debates but were trying to standardize naming conventions.
I'd be happy to explain how this model relates to any specific form of competition that this article might ignore, if you're able to specify the forms of competition you're referring to.
What I'm trying to point out is that these interpretations are new even within national circuit debate. I like that you have attempted to formalize this emergent understanding of commpetition that is being developed in response to the recent trend towards plan texts that are so vague they're essentially meaningless.
As you will learn, debaters tend to have a very short memory and are typically totally ignorant of the development of debate that came prior. But when it comes to competition theory there is a very robust history of academic development grounded in academic publications attempting to connect debate practices to larger and more well established histories of political, economic and legal reasoning that informs our understanding of competition.
As someone who's been coaching teams to the outrounds of the TOC since the late 90's up to this most recent TOC, I'm not ignorant of the forms of competition you're describing. But my hope is given the impressive way you have organized this incipient and emerging approach, you might be able to try to connect those theories to the already well established and vetted understanding of competition that has driven competitive debating for 30-40 years now.
I should specify...up until the past 5-8 years, competition was always grounded in the mandates of the plan and only the mandates of the plan. The problem was that negative conditionality theory had progressed to the point that AFF's were having trouble with the CP burden and instead of pushing back on conditionality theory, they opted to start stripping their plan texts of all their mandates. Thus the need for a new theory of competition had to emerge.
Traditional theories of competition always started with econometric notions of opportunity cost. Essentially "function" competition was the only form of competition. Debaters tried to invent a theory of "textual" competition, but that theory lacked any academic or real world grounding, so a coherent and consistent theory never evolved.
My concern is your theories while elegant, don't appear to have a relationship to established theories of opportunity cost evaluation. Thus, if these interps just vary from debater to debater and camp to camp, rather than being grounded in established academic and professional theories, these new theories are just the next iteration of textual competition that will fail to produce predictable and debatable grounding for debate.
I agree that there's certainly been a trend towards plan-text vagueness in order to minimize aff teams' burden to answer counterplans.
That does mean that the number of counterplans that the aff can go for "do the CP" versus is massively larger than it would be if plan texts were still as detailed as they were many years ago.
The solution presented to this several years ago was actually positional competition, in order to expand the number of things that counterplans could compete off of.
To discuss predictability, I believe that the most predictable model is the one that is most resolutionally based. If the resolution only forces aff teams to mandate some set of things, it seems unpredictable for them to be forced to mandate any more than that. I think that's probably the reason for the trend towards vagueness. Aff teams aren't sure why they should be forced to specify beyond the resolution, and the resolution serves on a "check" against egregious under-specification.
These models only explain when the aff can go for "perm do the CP," instead of other permutations that juggle functions or perms like "do both." It's not meant to represent every counterplan that doesn't present an opportunity cost, since determining that requires both substantive debating and deciding on a competition model such as the textual versus functional divide you described. The models are also supposed to explain traditional topicality impacts like limits, ground, and predictability.
I apologize if I'm misunderstanding your comment—please let me know if I am.
But let me ask you to take a step back for a moment and evaluate the activity we do beyond just trying to win a debate round.
For instance as a DOD I have additional burdens like justifying what we do to teachers, parents and administrators in order to make sure we continue to get to travel around and debate against each other. I also have the burden of identifying overarching and coherent theories of what we do in debates that make it possible to present coherent pedagogy when introducing and teaching this activity to new debaters. Sometimes what makes for fun debate at the very top of the national circuit don't necesarily fit nicely within those two objectives and thats OK. But, when competitive trends at the outer edges of the community start to erode the two main objectives of a DOD, we have a significant risk of the long-term sustainability of our activity.
What makes those things a DOD must do possible is being able to point to our connections to the larger academic and decision-making sphere. I do that by creating parallels between what we do in debate rounds and what scholars, activists, policy makers and politicians actually do on a daily basis. So any theory about "what we do here" can't just be grounded "in the resolution" but must also be grounded in the goals and expectations of the larger ecosystem in which the round takes place.
With that goal in mind, I'm looking for some academic grounding of these theories of textual competition you have offered. (Note I think all your competition theories fall under varying interpretations of textual competition--we can come back to this later).
How do those theories connect to decision-making theory in the larger outside world of debate. What econometric/political/legal decision-making theories are you pointing towards from academic research to justify this interp?
Otherwise, from the perspective of debate scholarship. These are "ungrounded theories" based in anecdotal perspectives of individual debaters and small subsets of the community. But they are not the foundations upon which we can continue to grow and thrive as a community.
One more addendum...the problem you speak towards as far as debaters not knowing what needs to go in the plan text. That used to be answered by theories of our activity grounded in actual real world decision-making theories. Do some research on the paradigm wars of the 70's and 80's that eventually resulted in the dominant policy-making/game-theoretic hybrid we now have.
These very new and short-sighted trends towards "Game/Fairness" above all else. And "we only look at the resolution" that has produced the current state of ungrounded theoretical debates. And from the perspective of someone fighting to keep the activity alive, we really need to find ways to reconnect to the outside world quickly, or more and more policy programs will be shuttered.
Ishan's debate opps cut 10 cards today and he's writing about the 4 dimensional topicality hexagon
LMFAO
Can you identify how this new theory of how plan texts are intended to relate to the topic is ground in prior scholarship about how plans, resolutions and topicality are understood?
There is a vibrant history of academic scholarship regarding these questions, but your assertion that:
"We will discuss affirmatives through some competition models. There are many (maybe even infinite) models—planicality, positionality, and resolutionality are the most common ones debated."
Invokes entirely new theories of competition and plan writing that have emerged soley at a small number of national circuit debate camps over the past 5-10 years.
Thank you for your comment!
It's true that there are other forms of competition that this article doesn't take into account (although many can be "looped into" the broader header of "positional competition," or are subject to many of the same issues).
In my experience in debate (mainly on the national circuit) the three forms of competition presented in this article are the most common ones debated. We may have titled these competition models differently from what they're normally called in debates but were trying to standardize naming conventions.
I'd be happy to explain how this model relates to any specific form of competition that this article might ignore, if you're able to specify the forms of competition you're referring to.
Hi Pranav,
What I'm trying to point out is that these interpretations are new even within national circuit debate. I like that you have attempted to formalize this emergent understanding of commpetition that is being developed in response to the recent trend towards plan texts that are so vague they're essentially meaningless.
As you will learn, debaters tend to have a very short memory and are typically totally ignorant of the development of debate that came prior. But when it comes to competition theory there is a very robust history of academic development grounded in academic publications attempting to connect debate practices to larger and more well established histories of political, economic and legal reasoning that informs our understanding of competition.
As someone who's been coaching teams to the outrounds of the TOC since the late 90's up to this most recent TOC, I'm not ignorant of the forms of competition you're describing. But my hope is given the impressive way you have organized this incipient and emerging approach, you might be able to try to connect those theories to the already well established and vetted understanding of competition that has driven competitive debating for 30-40 years now.
I should specify...up until the past 5-8 years, competition was always grounded in the mandates of the plan and only the mandates of the plan. The problem was that negative conditionality theory had progressed to the point that AFF's were having trouble with the CP burden and instead of pushing back on conditionality theory, they opted to start stripping their plan texts of all their mandates. Thus the need for a new theory of competition had to emerge.
Traditional theories of competition always started with econometric notions of opportunity cost. Essentially "function" competition was the only form of competition. Debaters tried to invent a theory of "textual" competition, but that theory lacked any academic or real world grounding, so a coherent and consistent theory never evolved.
My concern is your theories while elegant, don't appear to have a relationship to established theories of opportunity cost evaluation. Thus, if these interps just vary from debater to debater and camp to camp, rather than being grounded in established academic and professional theories, these new theories are just the next iteration of textual competition that will fail to produce predictable and debatable grounding for debate.
Thank you for your detailed response!
I agree that there's certainly been a trend towards plan-text vagueness in order to minimize aff teams' burden to answer counterplans.
That does mean that the number of counterplans that the aff can go for "do the CP" versus is massively larger than it would be if plan texts were still as detailed as they were many years ago.
The solution presented to this several years ago was actually positional competition, in order to expand the number of things that counterplans could compete off of.
To discuss predictability, I believe that the most predictable model is the one that is most resolutionally based. If the resolution only forces aff teams to mandate some set of things, it seems unpredictable for them to be forced to mandate any more than that. I think that's probably the reason for the trend towards vagueness. Aff teams aren't sure why they should be forced to specify beyond the resolution, and the resolution serves on a "check" against egregious under-specification.
These models only explain when the aff can go for "perm do the CP," instead of other permutations that juggle functions or perms like "do both." It's not meant to represent every counterplan that doesn't present an opportunity cost, since determining that requires both substantive debating and deciding on a competition model such as the textual versus functional divide you described. The models are also supposed to explain traditional topicality impacts like limits, ground, and predictability.
I apologize if I'm misunderstanding your comment—please let me know if I am.
You're getting there.
But let me ask you to take a step back for a moment and evaluate the activity we do beyond just trying to win a debate round.
For instance as a DOD I have additional burdens like justifying what we do to teachers, parents and administrators in order to make sure we continue to get to travel around and debate against each other. I also have the burden of identifying overarching and coherent theories of what we do in debates that make it possible to present coherent pedagogy when introducing and teaching this activity to new debaters. Sometimes what makes for fun debate at the very top of the national circuit don't necesarily fit nicely within those two objectives and thats OK. But, when competitive trends at the outer edges of the community start to erode the two main objectives of a DOD, we have a significant risk of the long-term sustainability of our activity.
What makes those things a DOD must do possible is being able to point to our connections to the larger academic and decision-making sphere. I do that by creating parallels between what we do in debate rounds and what scholars, activists, policy makers and politicians actually do on a daily basis. So any theory about "what we do here" can't just be grounded "in the resolution" but must also be grounded in the goals and expectations of the larger ecosystem in which the round takes place.
With that goal in mind, I'm looking for some academic grounding of these theories of textual competition you have offered. (Note I think all your competition theories fall under varying interpretations of textual competition--we can come back to this later).
How do those theories connect to decision-making theory in the larger outside world of debate. What econometric/political/legal decision-making theories are you pointing towards from academic research to justify this interp?
Otherwise, from the perspective of debate scholarship. These are "ungrounded theories" based in anecdotal perspectives of individual debaters and small subsets of the community. But they are not the foundations upon which we can continue to grow and thrive as a community.
One more addendum...the problem you speak towards as far as debaters not knowing what needs to go in the plan text. That used to be answered by theories of our activity grounded in actual real world decision-making theories. Do some research on the paradigm wars of the 70's and 80's that eventually resulted in the dominant policy-making/game-theoretic hybrid we now have.
These very new and short-sighted trends towards "Game/Fairness" above all else. And "we only look at the resolution" that has produced the current state of ungrounded theoretical debates. And from the perspective of someone fighting to keep the activity alive, we really need to find ways to reconnect to the outside world quickly, or more and more policy programs will be shuttered.
Wallah