Subj: Problem Solved - Intl Fiat Paper Date: Tue, Dec 6, 1994 12:04 PM EST From: Arnie.Madsen@uni.edu X-From: Arnie.Madsen@uni.edu (Arnie Madsen) To: debatecent@aol.COM The New Utopias: The Theoretical Problems of Fiating International Policy Action Arnie Madsen Formerly of the Department of Communication 1117 Cathedral of Learning University of Pittsburgh Pittsburgh, PA 15260 The Annual Convention of The Southern States Communication Association and The Central States Communication Association April 1993 Lexington, Kentucky The New Utopias: The Theoretical Problems of Fiating International Policy Action Abstract This paper argues international fiat is inherently suspect, and that negative fiat only extends to actions by domestic public policy actors. Reasons for this position include the lack of competitiveness of international action, theoretical problems of international fiat, and the lack of traditional stock issue analysis regarding inherency and solvency for the counterplan. The New Utopias: The Theoretical Problems of Fiating International Policy Action With the 1992-1993 policy debate topics at both the college and high school levels, negative teams quickly discovered that the the topics severely limited available counterplan and disadvantage ground.1 Thus, they sought to expand their ground in an attempt to regain argumentative equity. One of the primary expansions in negative ground was the re-discovery of the international actor counterplan. The international actor counterplan had appeared on past topics, most noticeably the 1975-1976 high school topic on creating an international organization to control scarce world resources.2 After extensive use in the 1980s, in recent years the international actor counterplan had reverted to its earlier dor- mant state.3 This paper argues that the re-discovery of international actor counterplans creates numerous problems for academic debate. The problems examined in turn in this paper include the inherent lack of competition between an affirmative plan and an international actor counterplan, problems of fiating international action, and the lack of traditional stock issue analysis regarding inherency and solvency. TYPES OF INTERNATIONAL COUNTERPLANS At the outset, it is useful to briefly describe some of the various types of international actor counterplans that are theoretically possible (see also Katsulas 2; Mitchell A-7 - A-8; and Solt 123-4). The first form of international fiat would be where a different sovereign nation, such as Japan or Germany, adopts the mandates of the affirmative plan. The focus of the debate would then be over the advantages and disadvantages of U.S. vs. Japan or German action, rather than over the merits of action per se. The second type of international counterplan is action through an existing non-governmental organization acts. With this counterplan, a non-governmental organization, for example the Asia Foundation or the Islamic Bank, would implement the affirmative mandates instead of the United States government. With this counterplan, the focus becomes the relative advantages and disadvantages of U.S. government action vs. those gained through non-governmental means. The third type of international counterplan is for the negative to implement mandates through an existing multilateral organization, of which the United States is a member.4 Examples of this counterplan would be action by the World Bank, the United Nations, NATO, etc. A fourth form of international counterplan would be for the negative to create a new non-governmental organization, or multilateral organization, that would act to solve the problem. Here the negative team would advocate the creation of the Asian AIDS Foundation, or the International Coalition to Combat AIDS, or even a single world government. Regardless of the merits of the other forms of international action counterplans, the counterplan that creates a new international structure seems particularly abusive, as there is no precedent for the existence and effectiveness of such an organization. The affirmative thus has no solvency or disadvantage link arguments for the agent specified in the counterplan. If debate theory allows the negative to implement these forms of counterplans, there appears to be no limits on the scope of legitimate counterplan options (see Mitchell A-8). THE LACK OF COMPETITION ANALYSIS This section argues that international actor counterplans inevitably do not compete with an affirmative plan. At the outset it is useful to recall the two primary standards of counterplan competition: mutual exclusivity and net benefits. With mutual exclusivity, if the plan and the counterplan cannot co-exist at the same time, the counterplan is competitive. With net benefits, a negative counterplan competes if it is superior to the adoption of the affirmative plan or the affirmative plan in concert with the counterplan (see, for example, Lichtman and Rohrer 75-77).5 There are several reasons for why the international action counterplan does not compete with the affirmative plan. Initially, the counterplan is not germane to the affirmative system (see also, Katsulas 2-3; Perkins; or Solt 126). This argument suggests that counterplan competition functions like the link to a disadvantage. If a negative disadvantage has a link to the affirmative plan, it is then a legitimate issue for advocates and a critic to consider. Without a link, the disadvantage is non-germane and dismissed without further consideration. This argument suggests that the central question of all recent policy resolutions is whether the U.S. should act, or if alternatively the U.S. should not act. On the recently completed college topic the question was whether the U.S. should change its development assistance policies, or if the U.S. should not change its development assistance policies. With the current high school topic the question is whether the U.S. should change its trade and aid policies, or if the U.S. should not change its trade and aid policies. The core focal point is the public policy action, and it is not on the actor that initiates the policy. However, the international action counterplan introduces a separate third question: whether another agent should act instead of the U.S. on development assistance or trade and aid policies. While this third question may be interesting to examine, it is irrelevant to the debate over the public policy change articulated by the specific resolutions advanced for debate. The counterplan thus begs the question of the resolution, and as such policy makers should dismiss the counterplan from consideration. A related concern is that agent counterplans shift the focus of debate away from the relevant issues of each topic to trans- national debates over actors. Thus, the central resolutional question itself becomes moot as the debate becomes one over the desirability of U.S. vs. Japan action, rather than a debate over the desirability of changing development assistance policies. This problem destroys the purpose of having a new resolution each year (Solt 126). Instead of debating privacy in one year and development assistance in another year, we would instead debate Japan or the U.N. every year. Second, if they are germane to the affirmative plan (if they link), international actor counterplans usually do not provide a unique reason to reject the affirmative. In this sense, counterplan competition must function like both the link and uniqueness arguments on a disadvantage: as a negative disadvantage must both link to the affirmative and apply only to the affirmative, so too the counterplan must both compete with the affirmative and only compete with the affirmative. However, most international actor counterplans are not unique. In most instances, the counterplan applies with equal force to the unaltered Status Quo.6 If, for example, U.S. action in the affirmative plan would cause trade friction with Japan, so too U.S. action in the unaltered Status Quo would also cause trade friction with Japan. Thus, a counterplan that bans U.S. action to instead have Japan act is non-unique: the counterplan applies equally to the Status Quo, thus the counterplan functions like a non-unique disadvantage, and policy makers should not consider the issue. Some examples of this form of counterplan are even more intriguing: with some instances of the international action counterplan, the counterplan mandates only compete with the Status Quo and not with the affirmative plan. For example, consider the affirmative plan that acts in concert with a multilateral organization (for example, increasing U.S. funding to the World Health Organization). The negative presents an international counterplan, such as Japan funding of WHO, or U.N. action on the specified harm area. The competition argument is that U.S. bilateral actions trade off with, or impairs, multilateral efforts. However, in this example, the counterplan only competes with the Status Quo and does not compete not the affirmative plan. It is only current U.S. bilateral efforts that impede multilateral action. The affirmative plan, instead of competing with the counterplan, merges with the counterplan to form a more cohesive whole. Third, international actor counterplans are readily susceptible to permutation arguments. Permutation theory suggests that if a plan and a counterplan can desirably co-exist is some hypothetical fashion, then the plan and the counterplan do not compete. Consider, for example, an affirmative plan that increased U.S. developmental assistance to India for dealing with the AIDS crisis. A negative team could present a counterplan suggesting that Japan should instead adopt the policy. An affirmative could easily permute this counterplan with the affirmative plan. The affirmative could argue that the U.S. should increase developmental funding for dealing with the AIDS crisis, but Japan should act to solve all the other development problems of South Asia (famine, flooding, etc). The permutation quickly illustrates that the counterplan does not compete, as it maximizes the effectiveness of both the U.S. and the action by the alternative agent. The combination of the two proposals would better solve for the sum of overall developmental problems of South Asia. Similarly, one could easily argue that adopting the two policies together, or adopting the affirmative first followed by the counterplan, could actually increase the chance of the overall effectiveness of the two policy actions. For example, unilateral U.S. action could serve as a unique mobilizing agent for the U.N.: based on the response of the U.S. to a problem, that could galvanize support for similar action within the U.N. In such a situation, the affirmative plan should both inevitably lead to the policy response by the U.N., while simultaneously increasing the chance of solving the underlying problem. In other words, the additional impetus provided by the affirmative plan increases the likelihood of counterplan solvency. Similarly, adopting the affirmative and the counterplan together would probably increase the amount of the harm area solved by changing the course of policy action. Two separate actors working to solve the problem would be more likely to solve the problem than would a single policy actor -- two could devote more resources, increasing redundancy and the overall level of success. For example, U.S. efforts to stop the civil war in Bosnia might have a certain level of success, and a different level of success might result from U.N. action in Bosnia. However, a joint response by both the U.S. and the U.N. could lead to an even quicker resolution of the ethnic conflict. THEORETICAL PROBLEMS OF FIATING INTERNATIONAL ACTION This section presents several reasons for the claim that allowing negative teams to fiat international action is theoretically suspect.7 The first reason is specific to fiat of action by the United Nations or other multilateral organizations. In this instance, fiat of action by these organizations would be illegitimate because it would involve the simultaneous fiating of action by multiple policy actors (see also Katsulas 4 and Solt 134-5). For example, a prerequisite for U.N. action is that at least a majority of the U.N. members must vote for a proposal. Thus, a United Nations counterplan requires fiat of not only the U.N. or a foreign government, but instead simultaneous action on a policy by 100 or so foreign governments. If the counterplan involved the World Bank, an organization with a membership of over one hundred nations and twenty-two executive directors, several nations would again simultaneously act. Not only does the counterplan require fiat of action on the part of each of those governments, but each of those governments has different political, economic and military interests. Some might argue that this is no more of a problem that the fiat concerns encountered with a negative counterplan that fiated simultaneous action by the 50 states (see Dempsey and Hartmann). However, the key difference is that the state counterplan is ac- tion solely taken within the boundaries of the United States, under the umbrella jurisdiction of the United States Constitution, and through the legal framework of existing United States policy action. On the other hand, the international action counterplan requires action on the part of a hundred other nations, each with their own geographical boundaries, with their own legal structures, and with their own ethnic, religious, and cultural heritage. The international action counterplan thus requires a more drastic leap of faith before policy makers can enact the change advocated by the negative team. Mitchell argues that this form of counterplan has no fiat problem because "individual foreign governments have already ceded authority to the U.N. and World Bank" (A-8). Thus, the counterplan merely fiats additional U.N. action or World Bank action, not the action of individual nation-states. However, to achieve U.N. or World Bank action, representatives from the relevant nation-states must vote for a proposal, thus, the nation- state is acting through the mechanism of the U.N. or World Bank. Mitchell's solution thus really changes nothing regarding the fiating of action by multiple actors. As a result, this paper argues that negative counterplans can only fiat through domestic public policy actors, and further that the relevant public policy literature should contain discussions that advocate the counterplan.8 At the base of this standard is the assumption that certain pre-conditions must exist to engage in productive debate. To respond to a plan suggesting the U.S. should increase military spending with a proposal for Russian dis- armament would imagine away a precondition of the debate, thus abolishing the framework for constructive argument. International actor counterplans (or anarchy, socialism, etc) similarly imagine away a precondition of debate. On the other hand, restricting the negative to domestic public policy actors provides clear limits on the debate process, and maintains the underlying assumptions of the resolution. Such a limit would also avoid the slippery slope mentioned earlier, the risk of legitimizing any imaginable policy alternative. Such a standard thus prevents the risk of abuse associated with international action counterplans. Some might argue that this standard would overly restrict negative ground. However, this standard is not an unfair constraint on the negative's policy options. For example, the negative team can argue the opposite of the affirmative, advocating either an increase or a decrease in development assistance to South Asia. They could similarly offer a com- petitive alternative that restructured present development assistance. The counterplan could also offer military assistance or disaster relief, or some other form of non-development assistance as an alternative to the affirmative plan. There are at least two independent reasons for why limiting negative fiat to the same actor as the affirmative is a superior process. First, allowing international fiat would violate reciprocity. In this situation, the negative would have the entire universe of non-topical options available to them. Broadening any search far enough will lead to the discovery of a superior alternative to a policy option. Thus, any negative counterplan ground that does exist should not extend any farther than the affirmative's ground. For example, negative teams argue they need the ability to fiat international action because of the number of possible affirmative alterations to development policy or trade and aid policies. However, allowing international action would then require the affirmative not only to answer alternative solutions on the part of the United States government, but also the universe of possible alternatives by all foreign nations and international organizations. The balance then inevitably tilts to the negative, as the research required by the affirmative to answer the possible counterplans would be overwhelming. If a resolution confines the affirmative to U.S. policy actions, then reciprocity demands that similar constraints operate on the negative. Second, without this limitation, international fiat is abusive (see also Katsulas 3; Solt 126). Once debate theory allows negative teams the concept of international fiat, it is only a small step to allowing counterplans that would have India and Pakistan disarm, to have the topic nations fully integrate women into society, to discover a cure to AIDS, and so on, eliminating all affirmative ground. Allowing these counterplans then inevitably prevents recovery from the slippery slope. On the other hand, the domestic public policy actor limitation removes such problems from the realm of possibility. The domestic public policy standard is essential, as there is no alternative standard for clearly determining which policies a negative team can fiat, and which it cannot. In other words, there is no bright line test to distinguish between legitimate and illegitimate uses of international fiat. As a result, debate theory should reject any fiat of international action. THE LACK OF STOCK ISSUE ANALYSIS This section is not, as its name implies, a call for a return to the Dark Ages of debate where stock issues was the predominant paradigm. Rather, this section argues that the stock issues are critical elements of policy making, and that use of international fiat typically ignores consideration of those stock issues, particularly the issues of inherency and solvency. Initially, most instances of international fiat ignores the question of inherency. There are very real inherency questions involved in discussions of international action. Why, for example, is the United Nations or Japan choosing to ignore action on the policy question in the present system? Instead of asking and then answering that question, the counterplan merely fiats the international action and ignores the issue of inherency. Second, and as a result of the lack of inherency analysis, it is unclear whether the mandates of the counterplan text are sufficient to overcome the inherency(ies) preventing current international action on the problem area. Thus, inevitably questions of the ability of the counterplan to work, or to avoid cooptation by present international policy makers, become glossed over. Third, there is little or no solvency evidence for the mandates of the negative counterplan.9 Usually all that the negative team has to offer is a link -- that U.S. action generally trades off with actions by the U.N. or by Japan or other international actors. However, there is little or no evidence indicating that the agent specified in the counterplan has any concern about, or can effectively act to solve, the specific problem area identified by the affirmative team. For example, it is unlikely that a negative team has solvency evidence for alternative actors that is specific to AIDS policies in India. While Japan might be focusing on India and South Asia, and might see trade there as critical, there is little evidence to indicate that Japan has any concern about the AIDS epidemic in Asia, or that they would backlash against U.S. action on AIDS, or that Japan would be able to act effectively to limit the spread of AIDS. Fourth, the counterplan is not a probable or likely alternative to the affirmative. Thus, the probability of the counterplan action is much less than the affirmative in the real world. There is no evidence on the likelihood or probability of action by the U.N. or Japan on the specified problem area. To consider the counterplan as an alternative to the affirmative, there must be some likelihood that it would come into being absent the affirmative, or at least that it appears in the literature as a relevant option. Further, if there is evidence on counterplan solvency (or the lack thereof, or on disadvantage links), it is likely inaccessible to U.S. policy debate researchers. If there truly is solvency evidence on Japan's involvement in development assistance policies to South Asia, it likely appears in the literature of the Japanese language. Such literature is not available to the typical English-speaking college or high school debater. Finally, fiating over transition problems is utopian. The problem of transition is one of the main reasons for the demise of other agent counterplans, such as socialism and anarchy. While it is possible for the negative to have evidence stating that socialism or anarchy, when fully implemented, would lead to the ideal state, there is little evidence indicating that a transition to that ideal state is possible. Similarly, with international action the negative team fiats international action on the affirmative's problem area, while ignoring all of the political elements of the transition to that action. The counterplan instead imagines away any circumvention, backlash, or other disadvantage and solvency arguments. That Japan or the U.N. is theoretically a superior system when fully implemented is adequate in the eyes of the advocates of these counterplans. Advocates of international fiat dismiss these concerns by focusing on the term "should" and its implications for fiat. By defining should as meaning "ought to but not necessarily will," advocates of international fiat argue that international action should occur in a specified area, not that international action will occur (Snider, "Fiat" 90-91). This view then divorces questions of implementation or circumvention or backlash, as the focus is not on whether policy makers implement the counterplan mandates as intended, but rather that the policy makers should adopt the change. The problem with this analysis is that it removes a vital connection between debate and the real world. If we ignore all considerations of implementation, etc., then we open debate to a purely metaphysical speculation game that is irrelevant to practical questions of public policy that society encounters every day. Once we remove debate from the real world questions of policy analysis, such as transition and implementation, its utility for students and educators also then diminishes. CONCLUSIONS Some argue that removing international action counterplans from the negative arsenal would u policy actor as described in the resolution, and still has the ability to run actor-based arguments as disadvantages against the affirmative plan. Also, opponents of restrictions on international fiat base this competitive equity argument on examination of the outcome of actual debates on a specific public policy resolution. Thus, the community must allow international fiat on the 1992-93 policy debate resolutions because the wording of the resolutions eliminates significant negative ground, thus leading to too many affirmative victories. Such topic-dependent theory constructions do not justify the use of international fiat, instead they justify the drafting of different resolutions. A separate argument posed against limitations on international fiat is that such a position is ethnocentric in that it ignores the values and structures of non-U.S. actors (Edwards and Srader 4). However, there is a similar problem of ethnic considerations with an international actor counterplan. When a negative team advocates international action, they in essence suggest that they are "experts" in that foreign culture, and that they can "prove" that foreign action would be superior to domestic action. Such a claim seems to have ethnocentric problems of its own, namely that the negative team implies that they can become experts in other cultures merely by reading a few books or journal articles on that culture. The problems of negative ground encountered on several recent policy debate topics are real -- few compelling arguments exist for why the United States should not change its existing development policy toward South Asia. However, searching for a remedy in international fiat is the wrong solution for the problem. International fiat merely alters the equity balance, tipping the scales to favor a strategy that has little theoretical validity. A better solution to the problem is to seek topics that provide adequate ground to all advocates. WORKS CITED Dempsey, Richard H., and David J. Hartmann. "Mirror State Counterplans: Illegitimate, Topical, or Magical?" The Journal of the American Forensic Association 21 (Winter 1985): 161-166. Edwards, Rich, and Doyle Srader. "`Yes': Is International Fiat Legitimate? An Exchange." Policy Caucus Newsletter 4 (February 1993. Date misprinted in original as February 1992): 2+. Edwards, Richard E. "In Defense of Utopia: A Response to Katsulas, Herbeck, and Panetta." The Journal of the American Forensic Association 24 (Fall 1987): 112-118. Freeley, Austin J. Argumentation and Debate: Critical Thinking for Reasoned Decision Making. 8th ed. Belmont: Wadsworth, 1983. Kaplow, Louis. "Rethinking Counterplans: A Reconciliation with Debate Theory." The Journal of the American Forensic Association 17 (Spring 1981): 215-226. Katsulas, John. "`No': Is International Fiat Legitimate? An Exchange." Policy Caucus Newsletter 4 (February 1993. Date misprinted in original as February 1992): 2+. Katsulas, John P., Dale Herbeck, and Edward M. Panetta. "Fiating Utopia: A Negative View of the Emergence of World Order Counterplans and Futures Gaming in Policy Debate." The Journal of the American Forensic Association 24 (Fall 1987): 95-111. ---. "Fiating Utopia, Part Two: A Rejoinder to Edwards and Snider." The Journal of the American Forensic Association 24 (Fall 1987): 130-136. Lichtman, Allan J., and Daniel M. Rohrer. "A General Theory of the Counterplan." The Journal of the American Forensic Association 12 (Fall 1975): 70-79. Madsen, Arnie. "General Systems Theory and Counterplan Competition." Argumentation and Advocacy 26 (Fall 1989): 71- 82. Mitchell, Gordon. "New Tools for the Negative: International Fiat and Plan-Inclusive Counterplans." Effluents and Affluence: The Global Pollution Debate. Ed. Ross K. Smith and Roger E. Solt. Winston-Salem: Debater's Research Guide, 1992. A-6 - A-9. Patterson, J.W., and David Zarefsky. Contemporary Debate. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1983. Perkins, Dallas. "Counterplans and Paradigms." Argumentation and Advocacy 25 (Winter 1989): 140-149. Pfau, Michael, David A Thomas, and Walter Ulrich. Debate and Argument: A Systems Approach to Advocacy. Glenview: Scott, Foresman, 1987. Snider, A.C. "Fantasy and Reality Revisited: Gaming, Fiat Power, and Anti-Utopianism." The Journal of the American Forensic Association 24 (Fall 1987): 119-129. ---. "Fiat Power and International Organizations." Advanced Debate: Readings in Theory, Practice and Teaching. 3rd ed. Ed. David A. Thomas. Skokie: National Textbook, 1981. 89- 94. Solt, Roger. "Negative Fiat: Resolving the Ambiguities of `Should.'" Argumentation and Advocacy 25 (Winter 1989): 121- 139. Thomas, David A. "The Editor Replies." Advanced Debate: Readings in Theory, Practice and Teaching. 3rd ed. Ed. David A. Thomas. Skokie: National Textbook, 1981. 95-96. Winkler, Carol, William Newnam, and David Birdsell. Lines of Argument for Policy Debate. Madison: Brown and Benchmark, 1993. NOTES 1 The 1992-1993 college topic was Resolved: That the United States should substantially change its development assistance policies toward one or more of the following nations: Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Burma, Bhutan, India, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka. The high school topic was Resolved: That the United States government should reduce worldwide pollution through its trade and/or aid policies. 2 The 1975-1976 topic was the last high school policy resolution calling for international action. The last policy topic at the college level that dealt with international action was the 1962-1963 resolution on establishing an economic community (Katsulas 2; Freeley 459). 3 Few examinations of international fiat exist in the policy debate literature. Instead, most articles deal with fiat in general (see Perkins; Freeley 59-60; Patterson and Zarefsky 154-6 and 201-3; Winkler, et al 4, 52, 114-5 and 119-120; or Pfau, et al 151-2 and 198), or with the problems of "utopian" fiat (seeKatsulas, et al, "Fiating Utopia"; Katsulas, et al, "Fiating Utopia, Part Two"; Edwards; or Snider "Fantasy"). For specific discussions of international fiat, see Edwards and Srader; Katsulas; Mitchell; Snider "Fiat"; Solt; and Thomas. 4 For this essay, no distinction is drawn between international organizations that the U.S. is a member of, and those to which the U.S. does not belong. For discussions of the distinctions between these types of counterplans, see Solt or Mitchell. 5 Note that most current theorists see mutual exclusivity as a subset of the net benefit standard of competition. For example, it would always be theoretically possible to adopt policies that simultaneously move in opposite directions, though at face value they appear to be mutually exclusive. However, the only reason not to take such opposing actions would be if adopting contradictory policies were undesirable. 6 This analysis suggests an interesting aspect of counterplan theory that has remained unexplored. In the original Lichtman and Rohrer essay, they state that the negative team argues "the present system plus the alterations it suggests are superior to the present system plus the alterations suggested by the affirmative" (75). As such, a negative counterplan's alteration of the present system would, to be a competitive alternative, need to compete not only with the affirmative plan, but also with the unaltered Status Quo (Lichtman and Rohrer imply such a theoretical position on page 78. See also Kaplow 220-221). Thus, for example, counterplans that fiat an additional increment of Status Quo action would not be a competitive policy alternative, since the Status Quo and the counterplan could reasonably co-exist. Such "counterplans" would instead be contemporary manifestations of the traditional "minor repair." Indeed, the core assumptions of systems analysis, on which Lichtman and Rohrer base their competition standards, also suggest that for a counterplan to be competitive it must compete not only with the affirmative plan but also with the Status Quo. For more in-depth discussion of systems analysis and counterplan theory, see Madsen. 7 This section does not rely on the argument that negative teams do not have fiat (for a discussion of this position, see, for example, Solt 127-130; Perkins 144-5; Winkler, et al 114-5; or Edwards and Srader 3). In fact, this author would argue that negative teams do not need fiat ability for counterplans, as the function of the counterplan is merely to indicate that one should not adopt the affirmative plan since other options are more desirable. Whether one adopts the counterplan as an alternative to the affirmative plan is an irrelevant issue. Instead, this section merely argues that certain negative counterplans are not legitimate arguments within a competitive policy debate round (see also Perkins 148). For an interesting perspective on counterplan fiat, a perspective that suggests either "all debates are counterplan debates" or "no debates are counterplan debates," see Kaplow 221-2 and 226. 8 For other articles on this standard, see Katsulas or Solt (133- 138). There is at least one similar standard that is acceptable to the author of this paper. That standard is that the negative should be limited to the same actor as articulated in, or implied by, the resolution (U.S. government, federal government, etc.) (see Solt 132-3) 9 Even advocates of international fiat admit there must be solvency evidence for the counterplan. As Edwards and Srader argue, "the existence of affirmative fiat does not excuse the affirmative team from having to read solvency evidence . . . The same test should be applied to negative uses of fiat" (4).