Advanced Debate Skills 

Counterplans

Introduction

The counterplan is a negative offensive position that supplements a disadvantage. It proposes a policy action to solve the affirmative harms without triggering/linking to the disadvantage’s impact. This introduces an advocacy for the negative to defend. The structure of a counter plan is:

  • (Counter)plan text: The specific policy action being advocated.

  • Solvency advocate: Evidence explaining how the counterplan solves the affirmative harms.

  • Net benefit: What makes the counterplan preferable to the plan.

    • This is typically but does not have to be that it does not link to a disadvantage.

When the net benefit is a disadvantage, the negative MUST read that disadvantage. While extending both the disadvantage and counterplan, the negative is presenting both the status quo and the counterplan as preferable to the affirmative plan; the negative can later choose to concede the counterplan and extend the disadvantage alone, defending only the status quo.

Answers to the counterplan can be remembered using STOP:

  • Solvency deficit: Arguments that the counterplan does not solve the affirmative harms.

  • Theory: Arguments that the counterplan is bad for debate and should not be rewarded with the judge’s vote. These arguments often focus on fairness and/or the educational value of debate being compromised

  • Offense: Arguments that doing the counterplan will have consequences (disadvantages to the counterplan, turns). The affirmative can even link the counterplan to the disadvantage presented by the negative.

  • Permutation: advocates a combination of the affirmative plan and the counterplan. Common ones are:

    • Permutation: do both the plan and counterplan.

    • Permutation: do the plan then counterplan/counterplan then plan.

    • Permutation: do the counterplan (arguing that the plan and counterplan do the same thing).

The affirmative should always make at least one permutation against a counterplan. It is a quick argument that allows the affirmative to win even if they do not have strong arguments specific to the counterplan. The key factor in whether or not a permutation is viable is whether the plan and counterplan are mutually exclusive. This is often a matter of whether or not the plan links to/triggers the disadvantage.

Learning Objectives

In this section, students should:

  • Learn the structure of a counterplan.

  • Understand how a counterplan relies on a net benefit.

  • Be able to make permutations and discuss mutual exclusivity between a plan and a counterplan.

  • Distinguish between a disadvantage alone and with a counterplan as two separate worlds/strategies.

Points of Improvement

Here are some things to look out as students learn about counterplans:

  • Arguments that the counterplan on its own is sufficient to win just because it is “better” than the affirmative plan.

  • Reading a counterplan without a net benefit or with a disadvantage for which the counterplan is not a net benefit.

  • Fixating on the net benefit without extending the disadvantage’s impact.

  • Not making any permutations when debating as the affirmative.

Signs of Mastery

Here are some positive signs that students understand how counterplans function:

  • Students can explain how an argument against a disadvantage (as a net benefit) also affects the counterplan.

  • Students articulate arguments for or against a permutation in terms of accessing the net benefit.

  • Affirmative debaters consistently make a permutation against the counterplan.