 In most governments and organizations, decision-making and action tends to take place through a lens of policymaking. We see this locally in our city councils and school boards, statewide at state houses, and nationally with our Congress. In part, this tradition is what has led to policy-based debating to become so popular at U.S. colleges and high schools. Today, we will discuss how to debate resolutions of policy on the affirmative. We'll cover how to evaluate the resolution, what is needed when providing background, how to propose a plan, and what is needed to argue that a plan is advantageous. First, let's discuss the resolution analysis. When debating a policy resolution, there are a couple things that you need to do at the very beginning of the first speech. First, you should take a look at the resolution and see if any of the words or phrases need to be defined. Most of the time, it won't be necessary to define much. That said, if there are any acronyms or words with multiple conflicting meanings, you should take the opportunities to clear them up. When providing a definition of a word, try to be as concise as possible. Remember, time is passing. It's also important to cite a source if possible. This helps establish credibility and helps ward off any definitional squabbles that may arise in the round. When you are done defining key terms, let us know by telling us all remaining key terms will be defined contextually. The second part of the resolution analysis is to provide a framework for evaluating the debate. This is often referred to as the weighing mechanism or criteria for judging. When debating policy resolutions, debaters almost exclusively use the criteria of net benefits. This asks judges to consider if the affirmative has proven, with sound logic and evidence, that passing their policy would leave the world a better place than it was before. Now that you've finished the resolution analysis, you are ready to provide background. There are three arguments that you want to make on your background point, the harm, the significance, and the inherency. Let's take them one at a time. For the harm, you want to give us a brief overview of what undesirable things are happening in the status quo without your advocacy. You will go on in more depth and your advantage, so keep this short and just overview the problems. For the significance, tell us why the aforementioned harms are important. This is a good place to mention the scale and scope of the harms. Having an idea how many folks are affected by the harm and to what severity they are impacted helps us understand the need to act. The final part of the background is the inherency argument. This is the reason the problem is not getting better on its own. There are a couple of different types of inherency that you can argue. First is structural inherency. This means there is something actively preventing the problem from getting better. Oftentimes, this is an existing policy that allows the problems to continue. Another type of inherency is gap inherency. Here you would argue that while the present system is aware that the problem exists, the steps in place fail to solve the existing harms. In other words, we know there is a problem, but what we are doing to fix it is not working. The third type of inherency argument is called attitudinal inherency. Here you would argue that there are beliefs or attitudes which prevent problems from getting better. There is a fourth and somewhat controversial type of inherency argument known as existential inherency. Extential inherency argues that if the harms exist and the plan has not been done, there must be something blocking action, even if we don't know what it is. Extincential inherency relies on several assumptions. First, no one is acting on any level. Two, no one is interested in acting now. Three, there is no propensity for any level of change. And four, there are no alternate solutions being proposed now. The reality is that while the fourth type of inherency is theoretically possible, it is highly unlikely to be the reason the problem is not getting better. You'll be more successful if you choose one of the first three. The next part of your 1AC is presenting a plan. A typical plan text usually takes anywhere from 5 to 10 seconds to read, but is one of the most important parts of your speech. This small bit of text oftentimes is the focus of the debate and the point of origin from which all your offense arguments connect. For this reason, you must know precisely what you want the plan text to say and why each part of the plan is written. There are a couple of things you need to understand about plans before you can get to writing one. First, the plan is a hypothetical policy action. One of the burdens of the affirmative's teams in policy debates is to be topical. This means they must present a plan text that falls within the boundary set by the resolution. Affirmative teams that read a plan that falls short, surpasses, or otherwise fails to follow the action called for by the resolution can accused of being not topical. This means that they will lose the debate regardless of how good their other arguments are. The second important thing to understand about plans is that they are implemented through the power of fiat. Fiat in simple terms means the power to enact policy as Congress does when it creates law. In debate to avoid questions of probable real-world adoption, fiat assumes that your plan passes as soon as you read it. This allows us to argue about whether an advocacy is good or bad, not whether it is likely to be implemented. If you're ever in a round and an opponent makes an argument that Congress or a state legislature would not pass your plan, simply remind them that you have the power to fiat your plan and move on. Now that you have an understanding of what plans do, let's talk about how to write one. In order to be topical, you always need to look to the resolution when writing a plan. There are two things a resolution will have that shapes your plan, text, the agent of change, and the action. In most resolutions, the agent of change is left somewhat broad. For example, if you were given the resolution that starts with the United States federal government, you will always need to choose an actor that falls under the federal government of the United States. This includes the president via executive order, the courts, and Congress. If your resolution calls for state government action, such as the state of California should, you would need to either use the state legislature or the voters of California, since California allows for voters to pass policies via a state proposition system. This is not true of the federal government. Sometimes the resolution will simply begin with this house should. In instances like this, the affirmative can define this house to be any actor they choose. If you use an actor that is not called for by the resolution, you'll be likely found to be non-topical and would lose the debate. So make sure you're fiatting the right people. The second thing you need to know when writing your plan text is what the resolution is calling for you to do. This is found by looking at everything that comes after the word should in the resolution. In some debates, the action you must take will be very specific. For example, if you were given the topic, the United States federal government should pass a law that sets the federal minimum wage at $15 per hour. The only topical plan text would be a variation of the United States Congress will pass a law that increases the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour. If the resolution were more broad, such as this house should raise the minimum wage, you would have more flexibility to have Congress increase it by a smaller or larger amount than $15. You also could choose another state or even country to pass the plan since there was no limit on who the actor was. So in this example, you could say the People's Republic of China through an act of the National People Congress should raise the minimum wage to $15 per hour. After the plan text has been presented, debaters can also present some solvency arguments. Most of this time, this will include any specifics about how the plan will work or be implemented. It can be a good idea for some topics to specify the funding, timeline and enforcement here. Most debaters will say that the plan will be passed as soon as possible and will be funded and enforced through normal means. The final part of the 1AC is to present at least one advantage. In policy debate, advantages are a structured four-part argument. It is important to understand all four parts as missing even one of them can impede your ability to prove a net benefit. Let's look at each of the four subarguments. First is uniqueness. In an advantage, the uniqueness is a description of a specific undesirable thing happening in the status quo. Typically, you would want to describe something that is bad and getting worse. This directionality is important as you will later argue that your plan will reverse the direction and will improve the status quo. Try to structure your uniqueness argument to contain both directional claims and some evidence to support its truth. Facts and statistics with a source citation will help you make your argument harder to defeat. I'll also point out that it is vital to keep your uniqueness argument specific. Even if there are multiple harmful things occurring in the status quo, you don't want to cram them into a single advantage. Limit yourself to one situation that you think your plan will solve. If time allows, you can add a second additional advantage with another situation. The second part of the advantage is the link argument. This tends to be the simplest part of your advantage. All you really need to accomplish here is to tell us that your plan passes and changes something. Keep it simple and within the realm of what you fiated. In this way, you reduce the places that your opponent can attack your offensive argument. The third part of the advantage are the internal links. The goal here is to explain what takes place after the passage of your plan. There are two schools of thought about how to argue the internal links. First is the linear approach. To achieve this, you would present a series of causal internal link arguments that if the plan was passed, the undesirable things that you explained and the uniqueness would improve. Try to support these claims with evidence. If plan has been tried on a smaller scale or a different place, you may be able to use evidence of its success to support your claim that it would work in this instance too. The second internal link option is the non-linear approach. Here, you argue that absent plan, the situation that you described and the uniqueness would continue to worsen. Most of the time, when you run a non-linear scenario, you would want to argue that things would get so bad that we would approach a terminal impact. As much as possible, try to plug in sources here too. Here, expert analysis and predictions may serve you best. The final part of the advantage is the impact. The impacts are the reasons why your plan is net beneficial. If you ran a linear set of internal links, explain to us why improving the situation of the uniqueness is good for society. If you went the non-linear route, you would want to explain what horrible things will take place if the status quo is left to proceed unchecked. Regardless of which internal link method you use, try to elaborate on the size, scope, and severity of your impacts. This will help you later in the debate when you need to weigh them against the offensive arguments of your opponent. If you can bring some evidence that supports these arguments, they will be all the stronger. Today, we discussed the best way to put together an affirmative case when debating a policy resolution. We covered resolution analysis, background, the plan text, and advantages. Regardless of where life takes you, there is a good chance that you will either be directly involved in policy making or affected by it. Debating these types of topics is a useful way to understand how policies can impact and change our lives. Thanks for watching. This video series is written and produced by me, Ryan Guy, with the help of a wide variety of scholarly research and open educational resources. For more information on the references and materials used, see the description page on YouTube. This video is published under a Creative Commons license. Please feel free to share, use, and remix its content.