Team Policy is Broken, Part 4: Math
This is part 4 in our series. Catch up:
Part 1: Volleys
Part 2: Constructives
Part 3: Division of Labor
Most debaters think of Team Policy in a linear way. A speech is a speech. Shorter speeches have similar numbers of arguments, but with less evidence and a faster delivery.
The numbers do not bear this out.
Rejoinder
Rejoinder (responding to arguments) is a defining quality of debate. The ideal format encourages debaters to present their arguments at the beginning and then exchange multiple volleys on them. We should be able to expect intermediate debaters to fully participate with coherent arguments and full coverage of the flow. By the end of the round, the judge should feel like all the arguments had a chance to be weighed and refuted and defended.
In Team Policy, that’s not just difficult; it’s impossible.
Measuring the Format
We won’t count prep time, since it may be used throughout the round or not at all. Instead, we’ll track speeches and the cross-examinations attached to them.
A typical high school Team Policy round has 8-minute constructives, 3-minute cross-examinations, and 5-minute rebuttals. That means the distribution of time looks like this:
This has several surprising implications.
2NC arguments are presented in the second half of the debate. The round is not gearing up in the negative block, it’s 53% over. No matter how masterfully you present them, the judge will always be far more predisposed toward 1AC and 1NC arguments because they were the only ones in play for the first half of the round.
New arguments are expected for the first 85% of the round. The first chance that the affirmative has to respond to 2NC arguments is the 1AR. That means we’ll hear the affirmative position on those arguments for the very first time with only 15% of the round remaining.
The strategic scenario is too extreme. Genuine back-and-forth refutation is hard enough as it is; Team Policy makes it almost impossible. If you keep watching high-level Team Policy rounds and wondering why the flow becomes such a mess, remember: it’s not entirely their fault. The pressure of the format is crushing.
That’s not an excuse to be incoherent or drop arguments. But we ought to acknowledge that the lengths you have to go to just to put something on the flow against a skilled negative are unreasonably great. It’s not a competitive balance problem, it’s a rejoinder problem.
Remember: even in the final round at Nationals, it's a foregone conclusion that at least some of the flow won't see decent rejoinder. It's likely that some of it will be forgotten, and other parts will become a chaotic mess. That’s strategically interesting, but not ideal for academic debate.
Other Formats
Since we’re here, let’s glance at some other formats for comparison. With each of these charts, the yellow line marks the point when we can reasonably expect to stop hearing new arguments. It’s calculated as follows: find the last constructive in the round, then go to the end of the next rebuttal from the other side.
Judgements:
Lincoln-Douglas is a solid format. It has no block, one constructive per side, a better rebuttal/constructive balance, and gets all the new arguments out twice as soon - giving them a better chance of being properly evaluated before the round is over. This isn’t about value vs policy, or the merits of debating with a partner. Strictly evaluating the format by the numbers, LD is better than Team Policy. You may quote us.
American Parli is a mess. In American Parli, the format is so dramatically skewed that debaters are essentially forced to choose between good refutation and good strategy. The opposition block takes all the problems plaguing Team Policy and cranks them to 11. That means you could be hearing the affirmative stance on arguments for the very first time in the final seconds of the round.
Socratic fixes Team. As you may have guessed, Paladin League created Socratic Policy specifically to fix the problems we’re talking about in this series. It has no negative block and a shorter constructive period so the arguments come out much earlier. In Team Policy, strategic mastery is massively important and you’re limited to a smaller range of functional arguments. Socratic still rewards good strategic decisions, but it puts a much stronger emphasis on back-and-forth refutation and makes all argument classes viable. Learn more about Socratic here.
That doesn’t mean we’re suggesting that Team Policy be abandoned. That would be a massive undertaking with a lot of significant disadvantages and costs. We'd be walking away from the most well-recognized and time-honored debate format in America, for which there are mountains of prep materials and legions of experienced coaches and libraries of books and showcases. The format has been explored inside and out. It deserves a lot of respect.
Building formats for competition is a complex practice. There are many factors to consider. At some point in the future, we may recommend that TP leagues switch either to a heavily modified version of TP or Socratic. But Socratic is still fairly new. We want to see it in action for awhile before making any specific recommendations.
Which begs the question:
Why are we saying all this if we don't have a way to fix it?
The target audience is not league officials, it's you - the policy debater. We want you to fully understand what TP is - the good and the bad - because it will help you master the format. Learn it all, then go win TP championships.
This series isn’t over.
Up next: the Presumption problem.