Team Policy Burdens–What Do I Need to Prove? Part 2–Planism? Resolutionism?

Today we are going to look at what AFF needs to prove to win a Team Policy round.

There are two main camps: resolutionism and planism.

Resolutionism (also called “rez-centrism”) is the idea that debate is centered around the resolution. The AFF’s burden is to prove that the resolution is true. Because policy resolutions call for reforming policy, the AFF proves the resolution true by proposing a policy that is an example of the resolution, and proving that the policy is a good idea. For example, if I prove that sneaker tariffs are an import policy and prove that we should remove sneaker tariffs, I have proven that we should reform our import policy, hence proving this year’s NCFCA resolution.

Planism is the idea that debate is centered around the plan. The resolution sets the boundaries for what plans can be proposed, but once the affirmative proposes their plan, the plan becomes the “resolution for the round.” The debate then becomes centered around that plan, and whether it is a good or bad idea.

Pragmatism revisited (briefly)

There is also a third category of thinking that says rather than picking one of these two options, we should just go with what makes debate better on a case by case basis. That philosophy is concerning to me for the reasons discussed in the last post.

I can’t help but make one more argument against pragmatism. My basic concern with pragmatism is that my focus in debate is on the truth, but I can’t help but note that pragmatism is also not pragmatically a good idea. Will putting together a hodgepodge of different debate theories based on what seems to make debate best on a case-by-case basis really make debate better? When debaters disagree on what makes debate the best (as they often do) you have a very subjective debate on going on–and many pragmatists say that this should be argued about regularly in debate rounds! I can’t think of a way to make debate worse than regularly arguing (in front of parent and community judges no less) about what is the best way to approach debate, with our only metric being “what we think would make this debate round better.”

A Fourth Camp: Traditionalism

Then there is the fourth camp–what I’ll call traditionalism. This is the philosophy of debate based on all of the “rules” about debate that have accumulated over the past several decades. This is often the de facto philosophy of many debaters and coaches. There is a process to it: a coach teaches a student about how debate works without explaining why it works. Then, once that student starts teaching others, their philosophy of debate will be built on their coach’s rules, plus things the student learned from experience. That student’s students will then learn all of the original coach’s “rules” plus the next generations “rules” and things just keep going from there.

I don’t fault coaches and students that hold to traditionalism. The average club coach doesn’t have the time or motivation to dive into debate theory, and most of them are doing great work teaching students how to debate.

However, if you want to debate excellently, and particularly if you want to be able to apply debate to every other discipline in life, learning the reasons why things work the way they do is critical.

Arguing for Planism

Most planists (at least the ones who write blog posts or get into theory arguments with their friends) are planists because they are pragmatists. They usually agree with planism insofar as it fits with their pragmatism. That is not what I’m sharing arguments for here. There are some good non-pragmatic reasons to be a planist.

I actually see a major advantage to planism. NCFCA’s rules say that TP simulates legislative debate. In a legislative body, there are preliminary questions about what committee to assign a bill to (topicality) but then the rest of the debate focuses on the plan. Planism accurately reflects that.

Planism can be a truth centered framework–it reflects reality (truth) by simulating a particular kind of real world debate about what is true in the context of a legislature.

Arguing for Resolutionism

Resolutionism is all about the truth of the resolution. It is a clear way to have a back and forth debate about the truth of a specific statement.

While planism does reflect the reality of debate in a legislature, it is confined to a simulation–we have to imagine we are in a legislature debating this policy. Resolutionism reflects a real life conversation, or real life formal moderated debate. Formal debates are held all the time, on topics ranging from politics to history to theology and almost anything else. All of these formal debates are centered around a resolution, because a resolution focuses a discussion enough to have a debate. This can be a helpful way of learning the truth about a topic. These debates aren’t simulations–the debaters are actually trying to persuade the audience.

Planism runs into another problem–the simulation breaks down. In a real legislative body, we aren’t limited to just proposing plans related to a specific topic (like imports/exports, Europe, prisons, or AI). One way to explain this is to imagine that we are within a committee or a subcommittee, but that seems to make the simulation quite complex. Resolutionism clears up this difficulty–the reason we are limited to plans relating to the resolution is because we are debating about the truth of the resolution.

Planism only works in the game of debate. Although it does focus on truth, it still has to exist in a simulation. Resolutionism takes us a step closer to arguing about the truth–it puts us directly into a debate about what is true, a debate that closely aligns with real life.

And yet… they aren’t that different

The actual implications of resolutionism and planism are not that different when it comes to how to approach debate. Under both, most debates are about whether or not we should pass a topical plan that AFF proposes. Generally speaking, planist and resolutionist coaching looks similar.

However, it does impact how a coach explains debate. We already talked about the importance of teaching why debate works the way it does. In the process of doing that, eventually a coach has to talk about either a plan centered or resolution centered framework.

Where I stand

I lean towards resolutionism more because it helps us focus on communicating truth, and I think it does so slightly better than planism.

I teach from a resolutionist perspective, but as long as you’re truth-centrist (focused on the truth), it's not extraordinarily important if you’re plan-centrist or rez-centrist. Luke teaches debate in a way that leans more towards planism (see his post on topical counterplans). He’s a fantastic coach, he trains debaters to communicate truth excellently, and we work together all the time (we are coaching two clubs together). There are great coaches on either side of this issue. Look at the arguments, and pick the framework that you think best centers debate on the truth and best aligns with reality.