Permutations
This Article is Primarily Written to Address Questions When You're Negative or Affirmative
Ariana Arvanitis & Sam Meacham.
Original Publication: November 10, 2019. Updated: July 26, 2020.
A permutation (perm) is one of the most common arguments made by the affirmative to answer a counterplan (CP) when it is read in a debate. The point of the counterplan is to prove that there is a policy option that is different from, mutually exclusive with (meaning any combination of the plan and counterplan is worse than the counterplan alone) and better than the plan. A permutation is a way that the affirmative contests the idea that the counterplan is different from or mutually exclusive with the plan. You will often hear that perms are "tests of competition" which just means they are arguments meant to contest whether the counterplan is a legitimate way to disprove that the plan is the best option in the debate.
There are two main perms you should know about:
- 1. Permutation Do Both. This argument basically imagines the simultaneous implementation of both the plan and the counterplan together. The affirmative will usually argue that the permutation is better than the counterplan alone and that it is able to "shield the link," or prevent the triggering of the disadvantage that is the net benefit to the counterplan.
- For example, if the plan attempts to abolish the death penalty using Supreme Court action and the negative responds with a counterplan that uses Congress to abolish the death penalty and a disadvantage about Congress backlashing to liberal Supreme Court rulings, permutation do both could prevent such a Congressional backlash by ensuring that both the Court and Congress agreed to act simultaneously.
- 2. Perm Do the Counterplan. This argument boils down to "the counterplan is a possible example of a way the plan could be done." Against most counterplans, this permutation is not strategic as it will be obvious that the counterplan does something very different from the plan. However, this permutation becomes very effective against more tricky counterplans, such as agent counterplans or process counterplans.
- For example, if the plan advocates for action by the United States federal government and the counterplan advocates for action by only the Supreme Court, the affirmative could argue that Supreme Court action is a possible way to do the plan because the Supreme Court is part of the federal government.
The negative team can answer both of these perms in multiple ways:
- 1. Neg Answer To: "Perm do both"
- A. It links to the net benefit. Doing the plan and the counterplan together would still trigger the disadvantage.
- For example, if the plan was for Congress to decrease funding for the police, and the negative responded with a counterplan for the President to personally withhold funding combined with a politics disadvantage about a new Congressional bill being controversial, the negative could respond to "perm do both - have both Congress and the President decrease funding together" by saying that this combined action would still be controversial on the floor of Congress.
- B. The two options are mutually exclusive. It is literally impossible to do both. For example, if the plan is to decrease funding for the police, and the counterplan is to increase funding for the police, permutation do both is impossible because you can't both increase and decrease funding at the same time.
- A. It links to the net benefit. Doing the plan and the counterplan together would still trigger the disadvantage.
- 2. Neg Answer To: "Perm do the counterplan"
- This is severance - severance perms are bad for debate because they allow the affirmative to shift out of the meaning and mechanisms of the plan which makes debating harder for the negative. Severance is based on the idea that a permutation must include all of the plan and at least part of the counterplan, so a permutation that excludes some aspect of the plan is not allowed.
- For example, if the plan decreases funding for the police and the counterplan increases federal oversight and accountability for police departments, permutation do the counterplan would be severance because the counterplan does not include any decrease in funding.
- This is severance - severance perms are bad for debate because they allow the affirmative to shift out of the meaning and mechanisms of the plan which makes debating harder for the negative. Severance is based on the idea that a permutation must include all of the plan and at least part of the counterplan, so a permutation that excludes some aspect of the plan is not allowed.
- Answering the perm do the CP becomes trickier when the counterplan is simply a different actor, such as the Supreme Court counterplan example in the previous section. In this case, the negative will have to argue that it is not acceptable to allow the aff to possibly be Supreme Court action, usually based on a topicality interpretation of a particular word in the resolution or the plan text.