An In Depth Look at Significance
Do you ever have that argument that you’re not sure how to frame? It doesn’t seem to fit squarely under the stock issues or other argument categories. All you know is a defensive argument that takes the bite out of the aff case, but you’re not sure how to run it. You’re probably dealing with significance, you’ve just had too narrow a view to realize it. In this post we’ll be examining the distinctions, overlaps, and impacts of significance and its cousins substantial-topicality and inherency to see when and how significance should be used.
First, let’s compare and contrast significance with substantial topicality. The primary difference between the two is that significance addresses the size/impact of the affirmative arguments while sub-t addresses the size/impact of the affirmative plan. Another distinction is that significance is founded in net-benefits and its impacts (should) trace back to NB as well. Sub-T on the other hand is a punitive/procedural/technical argument that examines if the mandate falls within the resolution, which it must per the rules. In other words, it’s not a real world argument that impacts whether or not the plan is a good idea. In short, significance is about practicality while sub-t is about legality. To give an example of why this line get’s blurred so much, let’s look a few years back to the CENTS act case from the 2019-2020 season. The mandate was to make minute adjustments (sometimes just a few percent) to the metal compositions of certain coins in order to save under $100m per year. Without even thinking it through most debaters had a gut instinct that this case was insignificant, unsubstantial and simply couldn’t be passed on naturally the leading arguments against it were Significance and Sub-T. Here's where it gets messy. You had some teams running significance on % change in metal and impacting to a rules violation, but this has no bearing on net benefits and likely just confused your opponents and the judge and made clear impact analysis a non-option in your rebuttals. Other teams ran Sub-T on the $100m savings and said something to the effect of “Impact: too small to pass”, but the resolution regulates the mandates be substantial, not the impacts there-of. Now let’s suppose a negative team ran Sub-T on the % change in metal, aff had prepped 5+ responses to comprehensively dismiss this. This leaves one valid argument that disappointingly few negative teams utilized. The real point negative teams were trying to make but often missed, was that the $100m savings was so insignificant that replacement costs and unintended consequences would vastly outweigh the good done by the plan.
The next argument significance has a remarkable amount of overlap with is inherency. It’s not surprising that these two get confused so often considering a) they’re incredibly similar and b) many debaters don’t have a clear understanding of how to impact inherency or how it plays into a net benefits analysis. The reason is that (and I know this next piece will be controversial) at its most fundamental level, inherency is nothing more than a subset of significance. Let me explain: in its most basic essence, significance asks the question “is the plan worth passing?” That can be answered in a number of ways. For example: by examining the size of a problem, the size of the benefit reaped by a plan, or by looking at what is already happening in the realm the plan effects. Inherency, in its raw form asks: “is/has something already been done about it?” See how similar that is to significance and also how it answers the same question of “is the plan worth passing?” Some would argue there’s other forms of inherency like “structural inherency” or “inherent barrier” ; these arguments are ultimately derivatives of others as well, but that’s a separate debate. Once we begin to view inherency in light of the question it seeks to answer, it ultimately makes sense to run the vast majority as significance arguments to begin with. Rather than say “something similar is being done, therefore aff fails inherency vote neg,” use common sense arguments that carry real world impacts like “given that something similar is being done, there’s not a significant enough need for the aff plan to warrant all the risks and expenses that come with it.”
Hopefully you’re starting to see the distinctive qualities and purpose of significance and are getting a better idea of how it links to net benefits. Now, I want to spend the remainder of this post talking about how it should impact your big picture strategy. Unfortunately, the persuasive potential of significance is largely untapped in today’s contemporary, theory-reliant, TP style and the word significance gets thrown around as if it's a sacred doctrine of debate judges and debaters are expected to revere solely because it's a stock issue and/or they were told to. Rather than count on your judge to have the same irrational ferver for a piece of terminology that you do, appeal to the common denominator of decision making all audiences can grasp: “can I reasonably expect the plan yield more benefit than harm?” also known as “net benefits.” What does this mean for how you run significance? It means two things. First, it changes the way you impact the argument from “aff fails sig, vote neg” to “this problem isn’t worth all the trouble we show in our DAs'' or “The savings promised by aff just aren’t worth x, y, and z.” Second, it means you stop running significance as if it's some standalone component of your negative strategies that’s supposed to win you rounds. We have to remember significance is a mitigating argument that only wins rounds on a net benefits scale when run in conjunction with other forms of argumentation. That’s not to say its weak or shouldn’t be used, its a powerful tool, but we have to understand what role it plays in the overall neg case in order to use it to its fullest potential.