The goal of the Negative team is simple: successfully challenge the desirability of the Affirmative plan. Negative teams may achieve this goal by using three strategies (status quo, alternative policy, and rejection of the resolution) and four types of arguments (topicality, disadvantage, counterplan, and Kritik). This chap-ter explains how Negative teams select and utilize frameworks and arguments and offers an overview of each type of Negative argument.
Three Negative Strategies
By choosing a strategy before the round begins, the Negative team can make sure that their arguments do not contradict one another and that they will be able to clearly explain to the judge
why the Negative has won the debate round. The Negative has three strategy options: support the status quo, argue that an alter-native policy is better than the Affirmative plan, or contend that the resolution is flawed. In this chapter, we will study each strat-egy by using the resolution:
Resolved: The United States Federal Government should substantially increase its development assistance, including government-to-government assistance, within the Greater Horn of Africa.
DEFENDER OF THE STATUS QUO
Traditionally, the Affirmative defends the resolution and the Neg-ative defends the status quo. Using this strategy, the NegNeg-ative has to prove either that the Affirmative plan causes more harm than good or that the Affirmative has not proved that their plan solves their harms.
Assume an Affirmative team presented the following plan:
“The United States federal government should increase the amount of development assistance to Tanzania.” The Negative team might argue that the United States already gives aid to Tan-zania and increasing the amount of aid will have no effect on the harms or will cause significant, deleterious side effects.
PROPOSER OF ALTERNATIVE POLICIES
Negative teams who agree that the status quo needs to change can propose an alternative policy. Debaters call these proposals
“counterplans.” The goal of a counterplan is to prove that the Negative has a better policy option than the Affirmative’s plan to solve the harms.
For example, if the Affirmative plan is “the United States fed-eral government should increase the amount of development assistance to Tanzania,” the Negative could present a counter-plan: “the United States federal government should increase the amount of development assistance to Kenya.” This debate would then focus on why the Affirmative choose to devote resources to Tanzania rather than Kenya and why giving aid to Kenya is preferable.
REJECTER OF THE RESOLUTION
Negative teams opposed to the entire annual resolution (includ-ing the Affirmative case) are called “rejecters of the resolution.”
These Negative teams justify rejecting the resolution by criti-cizing a specific word in or the entire philosophical foundation of the resolution. For example, the Negative team might deem development aid “colonialist” and take issue with the aid the resolution requires.
Selecting Arguments
After selecting a strategy, the Negative team develops a variety of arguments. Most Negative teams begin the round by presenting multiple arguments in the constructive speeches and then nar-row the number down to one or two of the best arguments in rebuttal speeches. In the constructive speeches, this procedure enables the Negative to find weaknesses in the Affirmative’s case and ensure that the Affirmative is so busy answering arguments that they have little time to present additional arguments of their own. In the rebuttal speeches, the Negative limits their own argu-ments so that they make a detailed and comparative analysis of
both why they have won the arguments and how their arguments have mitigated the Affirmative’s case.
Regardless of the strategy, Negative teams use two classes of arguments, specific and generic.
Specific arguments focus on the Affirmative plan. If the plan calls for the United States to increase its technology imports from Japan, the Negative team offers specific arguments against those technologies or against increased Japanese imports. These arguments are hard-hitting and designed to test how well the Affirmative understands specific elements of the plan. The more specific these arguments are, the stronger they will be. To be competitive through an entire year, specific arguments must be varied and constantly updated with new research.
Generic arguments apply to any Affirmative that meets the resolution, but they do not address the specific Affirmative plan.
If the plan calls for the United States to increase its technology imports from Japan, the Negative might offer arguments against increased imports to the United States (but not specific to Japan or technology). Generic arguments are very strategic when the Negative is not sure what the Affirmative is planning to say before the round begins, for example, if the 1AC is new and your squad did not have time to research a strategy against this specific team.
Some teams prefer to use generic arguments in all rounds because they don’t have the resources to prepare specific argu-ments against every team. Or, they might want to take advantage of the in-depth knowledge they have gained from focusing on a specific argument. For example, a Negative team that argues that any action in the resolution would destroy the global economy would be extremely well-versed in the subtleties of the financial system. Yes, the Affirmative might be able to predict that Nega-tive teams will argue about the global economy, but it is unlikely that the Affirmative will be as prepared for economic arguments
as the Negative, who dedicate nearly all their time to that type of argument.
Try to use both argument classes to ensure that you have a wide variety of arguments that can keep the Affirmative on their toes.
Types of Arguments
The most common Negative arguments are: topicality, specifi-cation, disadvantages, counterplans, and Kritiks. Each type is used both offensively and defensively against the Affirmative case. Arguments are referred to as “offensive” when they both put pressure on the opponent and provide a specific reason that the opponent has lost the round. Arguments are defensive when they maintain the team’s position and prevent the team from losing the round.
TOPICALITY
Topicality arguments, referred to as “violations,” accuse the Affir-mative of violating the wording of the year’s resolution. The Negative argues that the Affirmative plan is outside of any rea-sonable interpretation of the resolution. The Negative can only be expected to debate about the resolution.
Offensive: Topicality violations argue that the Affirmative has been unfair and that a judge cannot vote for an unfair team.
Defensive: The Negative team uses the Affirmative’s violation of topicality to explain why the Negative team could not pre-dict that they should research the case and has, therefore, been unfairly disadvantaged by only being able to present generic arguments.
SPECIFICATION
Specification violations force Affirmative teams to clarify how their plan will be enacted. The Negative team uses specification arguments to claim that the Affirmative has failed to specify the nuances of their plan, making the debate vague and unfair. This argument is presented in one of three ways:
[np]Agent specification (A-spec) argues that the Affirmative has failed to specify who will execute the plan.
Implementation specification (I-spec) argues that the plan text has failed to specify how the plan is to be implemented and/
or enforced.
Over specification (O-spec) argues that the Affirmative plan has provided excess detail, making it too technical to understand or debate.[/np]
Just as with topicality, specification arguments are prima facie reasons for the judge to reject the Affirmative. Offensively, spec-ification violations argue that the Affirmative should lose for failing to provide necessary information about their case to the Negative team at the beginning of the round. Defensively, these arguments prevent the Affirmative from later clarifying the case in a way that undermines the relevance of the Negative strategy.
DISADVANTAGES
Disadvantages outline specific adverse effects of passing the Affir-mative plan. These scenarios could be political, economic, or social. A Negative team can present a variety of disadvantages in the same round as long as they don’t contradict one another.
Offensive: Disadvantages argue that the 1AC will have serious negative side effects.
Defensive: Disadvantages claim that the status quo is supe-rior to the 1AC plan because it prevents the scenarios the plan will cause.
COUNTERPLANS
Counterplans are alternative policy proposals that either change the way the 1AC is enacted or propose a different policy that solves for the Affirmative harms without causing Negative side effects.
Offensive: Counterplans compete with the Affirmative plan by proving that there are other, superior ways to solve the harms.
Defensive: Counterplans allow the Negative to argue that they have a better policy than the Affirmative.
KRITIKS
Kritiks are philosophically based criticisms of the resolution, the Affirmative’s policy proposal, or the Affirmative’s behavior during the round. Kritiks frame the debate round in one of three ways:
1. As a debate about the philosophical ramifications of a spe-cific policy action.
2. As a debate about the ideological assumptions underlying policymaking decisions.
3. As debate about the how debaters should interact during the round and then use their skills to affect the world of policymaking.
Offensive: Kritik arguments attack the Affirmative’s theoreti-cal ground.
Defensive: Kritiks argue that the judge should vote Negative in support of a superior theoretical framework.
The best Negative teams understand the fundamentals of each Negative argument. They will be prepared to use every type of argument during the round, but will have come to a consensus between partners about which arguments they like best. Affirma-tive teams should keep notes about which arguments NegaAffirma-tive teams most often present and which ones they tend to focus on at the end of the debate so they know how to debate the Negative team if they face them again. Consequently, Negative teams either need to be exceptionally good at one specific argument (so even though Affirmative teams know that will be the round-deciding argument, the Negative will still win) or the Negative team needs to create a unique mixture of arguments for each round and be willing to go for whatever argument best rebuts the Affirmative plan and best suits the judge’s preferences.
KEY CONCEPTS
1. The Negative must determine its strategy: status quo, alter-native policy, or criticism before the round.
2. The most common Negative arguments are topicality, specifi-cation, disadvantages, counterplans, and Kritiks, all of which can be used offensively and defensively.
3. The Negative should combine a variety of arguments in its constructive speeches and then focus on the best in the Neg-ative rebuttals.