Actor (policy debate)
Encyclopedia
In policy debate
Policy debate
Policy debate is a form of speech competition in which teams of two advocate for and against a resolution that typically calls for policy change by the United States federal government or security discourse...

, an actor is an entity that enacts a certain policy action. If a plan were to have the U.S. send humanitarian aid to Sudan, then the actor would be the United States federal government.

Many times, actors are subdivided into more specific "agents".

The most common agents include the Supreme Court
Supreme Court of the United States
The Supreme Court of the United States is the highest court in the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all state and federal courts, and original jurisdiction over a small range of cases...

, the President
President
A president is a leader of an organization, company, trade union, university, or country.Etymologically, a president is one who presides, who sits in leadership...

 (usually through the use of an Executive Order), and Congress
Congress
A congress is a formal meeting of the representatives of different nations, constituent states, independent organizations , or groups....

. Sometimes, the actors get smaller and devolve into Executive agencies. For example, on a previous high school debate topic—the use of renewable energy—the plan could use the Department of Energy
United States Department of Energy
The United States Department of Energy is a Cabinet-level department of the United States government concerned with the United States' policies regarding energy and safety in handling nuclear material...

.

Sometimes the Negative will use a counterplan
Counterplan
A counterplan is a component of debate theory commonly employed in the activity of parliamentary and policy debate. While some conceptions of debate theory require the negative position in a debate to defend the status quo against an affirmative position or plan, a counterplan allows the negative...

 to solve for the harms of the affirmative and the most common method of doing so is by the use of an agent counterplan
Agent counterplan
In policy debate, an agent counterplan is a counterplan that proposes to do affirmative's plan with another agent. For example, if the affirmative plan were: "The USFG should send troops to Liberia" an agent counterplan would be "France should send troops to Liberia." Like most mainstream...

, which simply does the mandates of the Affirmative plan through the use of another agent. Sometimes, the Negative will even use another country. If the Affirmative plan were to send peacekeeping troops to Congo
Democratic Republic of the Congo
The Democratic Republic of the Congo is a state located in Central Africa. It is the second largest country in Africa by area and the eleventh largest in the world...

, then the Negative would have Bangladesh
Bangladesh
Bangladesh , officially the People's Republic of Bangladesh is a sovereign state located in South Asia. It is bordered by India on all sides except for a small border with Burma to the far southeast and by the Bay of Bengal to the south...

(or any other country), do it.

Theoretical debates often ensue as to the legitimacy of agent counterplans. For a video about agent counterplans, try http://ddw.wikispaces.com/Counterplan+PICS+and+agents
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