Harms (policy debate)

This is a glossary of policy debate terms.

In policy debate, an actor is an entity that enacts a certain policy action. If a plan were to have the U.S. send humanitarian aid to Sudan, then the actor would be the United States federal government.

Many times, actors are subdivided into more specific "agents".

The most common agents include the Supreme Court, the President (usually through the use of an Executive Order), and Congress. Sometimes, the actors get smaller and devolve into Executive agencies. For example, on a previous high school debate topic—the use of renewable energy—the plan could use the Department of Energy.

Sometimes the Negative will use a counterplan to solve for the harms of the affirmative and the most common method of doing so is by the use of an agent counterplan, which simply does the mandates of the Affirmative plan through the use of another agent. Sometimes, the Negative will even use another country. If the Affirmative plan were to send peacekeeping troops to Congo, then the Negative would have Bangladesh (or any other country), do it.

In policy debate, the affirmative (AFF) is the team which affirms the resolution. The Affirmative side negates the negative side.

The affirmative team speaks first and last.

In policy debate, an agent counterplan is a counterplan that proposes to do affirmative's plan (or part of it) with another agent. For example, if the affirmative plan were: "The USFG should send troops to Liberia" an agent counterplan would be "France should send troops to Liberia." Like most mainstream argument forms in policy debate, they are presumed to be legitimate, though it is possible for the affirmative to defeat them on the grounds that they are illegitimate by arguing that they are unfair, uneducational, or illogical. Because they make it possible for the negative to win without refuting most of the claims of the affirmative case (mooting much of the 1AC offense), they are a key component in many negative strategies.

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