Disadvantage

In policy debate, a disadvantage (abbreviated as DA, and sometimes referred to as: Disad) is an argument that a team brings up against a policy action that is being considered.

Structure

A DA usually has four key elements. These four elements are not always necessary depending on the type of disadvantage run, and some are often combined into a single piece of evidence. A Unique Link card, for example, will include both a description of the status quo and the plan's effect on it. A traditional threshold DA, however, has a structure as follows:

Uniqueness

Uniqueness shows why the Impacts have not occurred yet or to a substantial extent and will uniquely occur with the adoption of either the Affirmative's plan or the Negative's counterplan.

Example: If the negative team argues that the affirmative plan will result in nuclear proliferation, it would also argue that the status quo will avoid nuclear proliferation. If the Affirmative claims that nuclear proliferation is already occurring, the negative team could argue that adoption of the plan would result in a unique increase in nuclear proliferation. If the plan causes no net change in the rate of nuclear proliferation, the disadvantage is not unique to the plan, and therefore not relevant.