In policy debate, a disadvantage is an argument that a team brings up against a
policy action that is being considered. Structure
A DA usually has four key elements. These four elements are not always
necessary depending on the type of disadvantage run, and some are often
combined into a single piece of evidence. A Unique Link card, for
example, will include both a description of the status quo and the plan's effect
on it. A traditional threshold DA, however, has a structure as follows:
= Uniqueness = Uniqueness shows why the Impacts have
not occurred yet or to a substantial extent and will uniquely occur with the
adoption of either the Affirmative's plan or the Negative's counterplan.
Example: If the negative team argues that the affirmative plan will result in
nuclear proliferation, it would also argue that the status quo will avoid
nuclear proliferation. If the Affirmative claims that nuclear
proliferation is already occurring, the negative team could argue that adoption
of the plan would result in a unique increase in nuclear proliferation. If
the plan causes no net change in the rate of nuclear proliferation, the
disadvantage is not unique to the plan, and therefore not relevant.
= External links = For the disadvantage to have relevance
in the round, the negative team must show that the affirmative plan causes
the disadvantage that is claimed. If the DA stated that the plan takes money from
the government, and the affirmative team shows that the plan does not increase
governmental spending, then the DA would be considered to have "no link".
= Internal link = The internal link connects the link to
the impact, or, it shows the steps the link causes to get to the impact. Not
all DA's use an internal link but some have multiple internals. The internal
link in our example would be that government spending leads to economic
collapse. = Impact =
The impact is the result of the policy action that make it undesirable. These
results are at the end of the chain of reasoning of your DA, then the Going
along with the example, an impact would be that economic collapse may cause
nuclear war. The Impact is the edge of the sword of your DA and is usually a
significantly bad event caused by inertia evident through the internal
links inside the link off over the brink and uniquely so.
Internal links are often undesirable things by themselves, and could be
considered impacts. However, the worst of the consequences, or the final one in
the chain of events, is usually given the label of "impact". For example,
nuclear war is probably worse than economic collapse, so nuclear war is
given the "impact" label, even though economic collapse could itself be viewed
as an impact. The nuclear war impact is the terminal
impact in virtually every disadvantage today. While it appears outlandish to
outsiders and even to some debaters now, it originated in the 1980s during the
height of the nuclear freeze movement, specifically after the publication of
The Fate of the Earth by Jonathan Schell. Barring nuclear war, the
terminal impact usually ends up as extinction anyway, either human
extinction or the extinction of all life on Earth; the most common mechanisms for
these are cataclysmic climatic change, or uncontrolled undiscovered uncurable
disease. Most debate coaches use the nuclear war argument as away of training
young policy debaters. Other terminal impacts might include
severe human rights abuses, such as near universal slavery or loss of
individuality. These types of impacts are usually argued under a deontological
framework or as a turn to a human rights advantage.
Types of disadvantages = Traditional =
A traditional DA follows the structure above. Traditional DA's can include or
exclude the internal link. = Linear =
A linear disadvantage does not have uniqueness. The negative concedes that
the status quo has a problem but insists the plan increases that problem's
severity. A commonly accepted theory holds that a sufficiently philosophical
linear disadvantage with an alternative becomes a kritik. There is also much
controversy over kritiks being linear disadvantages, due to the fact that most
kritik argue the affirmative plan over a discursive level, while a disadvantage
argues the affirmative's actions. Non-kritikal linear disadvantages
frequently face attacks from the Affirmative on debate theory; the theory
that linear disadvantages are abusive to the affirmative team has much
popularity. = Brink =
A brink disadvantage is a special type of linear disadvantage which claims that
the affirmative will aggravate the problem in the status quo to the extent
that it passes a brink, at which time the impact happens all at once. The
negative team claims that in the status quo, we are near the brink, but the
affirmative team's plan will push us "over the edge."
= Politics disadvantage = A politics disadvantage is unique in the
way that it links to affirmative plan . Rather than linking to the specific plan
action, it links to the fact that a plan passes at all. Politics disadvantages
typically will say that a plan will pass through Congress, thus causing a shift
in the "political capital" of either the President, or a political party, which
will affect the ability of the affected group to pass other bills. An example of
a politics disadvantage would be: Uniqueness: Immigration Reform will pass
in the status quo. Link: Plan decreases the President's political capital,
perhaps with a specific link that increasing civil liberties would be a
flip-flop for President Obama. Thus, Obama has no political capital to pass
his Immigration Reform. Impact elections cycles. For example, in a presidential
election, it might argue that a certain Presidential candidate or his or her
opponent is currently weak, but the affirmative plan will cause him or her
to gain popularity, and that either his or her election is undesirable or the
election of his or her opponent is undesirable. A midterms version could
focus on particular races or the general balance of the Congress; an example of a
single-race midterms disadvantage would be that the reelection of Senator Daniel
Akaka is critical to free speech, and plan prevents Akaka from winning; a
"balance of Congress" disadvantage might hold that the plan is a credit to the
Republicans, who would increase their grip on Congress and allow extensive
drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
Controversy In some sections of the country,
politics disadvantages are frowned upon because they link to virtually every
affirmative plan, destroying the on case debate and focusing solely on the
disadvantage. Supporters, however, say the politics disadvantages are "real
world" and provide education on how bills are passed and politics in
general. Other debate theorists have recently
created a model of fiat that appears to preclude the politics disadvantage;
however, its use in any given debate round is entirely dependent on how well
the affirmative argues that the judge should accept the model, a somewhat
time-consuming process. Examples of these fiat arguments include Vote No and
Intrinsicness. Vote No says that the debate should be a simulation of the
debate before congress therefore the president has already exerted political
capital meaning there is no disadvantage. Intrinsicness, popularized
by New Trier Coach Michael Greenstein, says that there is no reason that
congress can't pass both the plan and the bill meaning they aren't
competitive. = Other types of D/As =
Tradeoff DA - plan takes money from more important things
Economy/Spending DA - plan leads to economy collapse/recession - Biscon:
Plan actually or perceptually harms business - Spending: Plan costs too much
money causing the dollar to lose value. A more nuanced version of this argument
focuses on rather invistors will buy our t-bills or if a credit agency will
downgrade our credit. Federalism DA - aka the "fism DA" - says
that plan = undermine federalism, and since most countries model their
democracy on the US, if the US destroys their federalism, then wars will break
out in other countries as a result Constitutionality DA - plan =
unconstitutional, and creating it would set a bad precedent, causing other
unconstitutional policies to be passed Overpopulation or "Malthus DA" DA - By
the plan saving lives, it undermines natural death checks, which lead to
overpopulation and a "Malthusian" catastrophe because of it
Relation Disadvantages: Plan harms our relationship with another nation.
Responding to disadvantages Disadvantage responses can generally be
classified into two categories: takeouts, which simply seek to refute a
claim made by the negative in the disadvantage, and turns, which argue
that the situation is somehow the reverse of the negative's claim.
= Takeouts = Non-unique
The "non-unique" argument says that the impact will happen in the status quo
with or without the passage of the plan or that it is happening in the status
quo. The links and impacts become largely irrelevant since the status quo
is no different from the plan. No link
A very simple argument. The affirmative simply claims that the plan does not
cause the impact. An example:
Uniqueness: The United States-India nuclear deal is likely to pass now, but
just barely. It requires extensive expenditure of limited political
capital. Link: The plan uses political capital
that would otherwise be used for passage of the deal.
Internal Link: Failure to pass the deal will reduce American influence on the
Indian subcontinent. Internal Link: Reduction of American
influence on the Indian subcontinent will lead to nuclear war between India
and Pakistan. Impact: India-Pakistan nuclear war will
spiral out of control into a global nuclear conflict.
No Link: The plan expends no political capital
No internal link A variant on the No Link, it states that
either the link or the previous internal link does not lead to another internal
link. Using the example above, a
no-internal-link could either be that the failure to pass the deal will not
reduce American influence on the Indian subcontinent, or that reduction of
American influence on the Indian subcontinent will not lead to nuclear
war between India and Pakistan. Impact uniqueness
Arguing the impact's uniqueness is an underused but effective argument. To
prove that an impact is non-unique the affirmative must show that the link has
already happened in the past but the impact didn't happen.
For example: Uniqueness: American oil consumption
high now! Link: Ethanol trades off with oil!
Internal: OPEC will flood the market with cheap oil
Impact: Destroys Russian and Canadian Economies—global economic
collapse—Nuclear war! Impact Uniqueness—OPEC flooded the
market last year with really cheap oil and there was no nuclear war
= Turns = Link Turn
The Link Turn is generally accepted to be a better attack on a disadvantage
than the defensive take-out arguments, as it is an offensive argument. The
link-turn is in two parts: a card that says the disadvantage is non-unique(the
impact is going to happen in the status quo)--and reading a link-turn.
For Example: Original DA
Uniqueness: US Military Strong Link: Plan Decreases military power
Impact: Weak military leads to nuclear conflict.
A non-unique and a link turn would go something like this:
Non-unique: Military weak now. Link Turn: Plan increases military
power. This strategy turns what was previously
a "disadvantage" to the plan into a benefit or advantage of the plan. This
helps the affirmative debaters prove that they should win on presumption(that
the aff plan is proven to be the better policy option than the status quo).
Impact turn Another way to debate against a
disadvantage is an impact turn, in which the affirmative team reads evidence
stating that the disadvantages impact would actually be good or that the
status quo creates a worse impact. If the impact to a disad was global nuclear
war, an impact turn would say that death is good or that the status quo creates a
bigger nuclear war. Often impact turns function at the level above this. The
argument is then sometimes called an internal link turn. For example, if the
disadvantage argued that the plan hurt free trade, which was key to avoiding
war, the affirmative might argue that in fact free trade caused war,
environmental destruction, and other negative consequences. This type of turn
is often much harder to convince the judge of, but some believe that it makes
a round much more interesting. Straight turn
One strategy the affirmative may use in order to attack the Disadvantage is to
"straight turn it." To straight turn something means to run only offensive
arguments against it. Such an example would be to run 3 impact turns against a
Disadvantage. This forces the negative team to not kick the Disadvantage
because it automatically becomes an extra advantage for the affirmative. If
the affirmative did run defensive arguments such as non-unique and an
impact turn, then the negative could concede that it is non-unique so the
impact turn would be rendered useless thus the negative could kick out of the
disadvantage. The affirmative team should never run an
impact turn and a link turn together—this is called double turning.
When the affirmative team double turns themself they claim that "right now the
status quo is doing something, and the affirmative plan stops it, but what the
affirmative stops is a good thing." In simple terms, the affirmative runs a
disadvantage on themselves. Other ways to answer a disadvantage
In answering the Link, an affirmative might argue that the link has no
threshold, i.e. that the link does not make clear when the impact will happen
or even that the impact will happen solely based on what the affirmative
plan causes. Or the aff may claim that uniqueness overwhelms the link; that
conditions in the status quo are so far away from the threshold that the impact
will not happen. This second answer is rarely made however, because it is a
strategic gamble. A disadvantage can also be answered by
no longer doing a part of the plan that causes the aff to link into the
disadvantage. This is often referred to as a severance perm, because by making
this claim the affirmative does all parts of the plan except the part that
links to the disadvantage, thus severing out of part of their own plan. This
argument is also rarely made, due to the theory arguments it brings up on the
affirmative changing its plan in the round in order to avoid the
disadvantage. Also if the negative runs a Counterplan
in addition to the Disadvantage the affirmative can make a permutation and
say that the combination of the counterplan and plan shields the link to
the disadvantage. For example: the plan repeals the Hyde Amendment to allow
abortion funding through federal sources by using congress; the negative runs a
courts counterplan that repeals the hyde amendment and runs a politics
disadvantage that says the plan will drain the political capital of the
president which causes a certain bill not to be passed; the affirmative would
claim that the "perm shields the link" because congress would claim that the
courts made them repeal the hyde amendment, therefore no political
capital would be lost. References
Cheshier, David.. Politics, Politics, Politics. Rostrum.