Beyond The Daily Me:
ARGUMENTATION in an age of Enclave Deliberation
Gordon R. Mitchell, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA (USA)
& Takeshi Suzuki, Tsuda College, Tokyo (Japan)
Paper presented at the Second Tokyo Conference on Argumentation
August 2-5, 2004, Tokyo, Japan

The Daily Me is an online newspaper of the future that gives readers the ultimate in editorial control (Negroponte, 1995, 153). By programming powerful content filters, readers are able to select exactly what kind of stories appear in their customized pages on the Internet. Are you a sumo wrestling fan? Make wrestling the lead story in every issue of your Daily Me and see NHK photos from the latest matches. Lean to the right politically? Program the filters to feed you the latest news stories from Fox News and the Weekly Standard. Hate Paul Krugman? Make sure you never see his columns again by setting your filters to block his views.
As public deliberation shifts increasingly to the Internet, signs abound that the Daily Me age is coming fast upon us. The news industry is following in the wake entertainment services such as TiVo and Sonicnet that specialize in delivery of personalized media content. Already, major newspapers such as the Wall Street Journal provide customized filtering options to online subscribers. University of Chicago law professor Cass Sunstein (2000, 2001) sees this trend accelerating rapidly in the near future, with possibly grave consequences for deliberative democracy.
Sunstein warns that proliferation of Daily Me-type individualized filtering has the potential to create isolated ‘deliberative enclaves,’ where like-minded people hunker down together in cyberspace to hear echoes of opinions consonant with their own. Sunstein draws from research in social psychology to show how this type of communication is prone to ‘opinion cascading’ and ‘group polarization,’ both of which threaten the ideal of a democratic polity where collective decisions are products of compromises stitched together by interlocutors holding heterogeneous opinions.
Argumentation scholars may take special note that the corrective Sunstein recommends to counter the politically corrosive effects of individualized filtering is promotion of debate forums that enable citizens to consider diverse viewpoints and deliberate constructively with interlocutors who may not share their own opinions or interests.
Is the academic debate community up to Sunstein’s challenge? The free wheeling argumentation found in switch-side policy debate tournaments held in the United States and Japan provides a basis for optimism. Complicating matters, however, is the fact that the international policy debate community itself looks much like what Sunstein calls a ‘deliberative enclave,’ with only limited capability to engage in public discourse beyond the comfort zone of its own circumscribed deliberative space.
This essay uses Sunstein’s challenge as a point of departure to revisit long-simmering questions about the pedagogy and practice of academic debating. Part one considers how advent of the Daily Me promises to redouble the political importance of argumentative praxis in a world of growing enclave deliberation. Part two revisits notions of ‘argumentative agency’ (Mitchell, 1998) and ‘debate as cultural performance’ (Suzuki & Morooka, 2000) in light of Sunstein’s challenge. Part three looks toward a future when competitive tournament debating and public debating come to be seen as synergistically reinforcing activities, not mutually exclusive modes of argumentative praxis.

1. Enclave deliberation and group polarization
Research shows that littering is contagious – people are more likely to litter when they see trash lying around, or when they see others littering in the immediate vicinity (Cialdini, Reno & Kallgren, 1990). Other studies of social influences on individual behavior corroborate this phenomenon. For example, Solomon Asch (1955) found that in a group matching game, a significant number of research subjects could be led to mistakenly match together two lines of clearly different length when Asch’s confederates, posing as research subjects, endorsed the erroneous answer.
These ‘cascade’ effects result in part from people’s tendency to construct behavioral norms by looking to situational cues, and also from their desire to ‘fit in’ as group members. Hence, it is not surprising to see cascade effects pronounced in homogeneous groups composed of people who hold common backgrounds, interests or opinions. Consider jury deliberations. Juries that begin deliberations with split opinions, but eventually reach consensus, gravitate toward compromise verdicts. However, when jurors start off agreeing about the basic facts of a case, further deliberation tends to swing the ultimate group judgment toward an extreme view held by one outlier juror (Brown, 1986). This theory helps explain damage award patterns in civil trials. Juries that begin deliberations split on guilt or innocence tend to impose moderate punitive damages, while juries that start out in agreement on guilt tend to undergo ‘severity shifts,’ veering toward the most extreme punitive damage award advocated in the group (Schkade, Sunstein, & Kahneman, 2000).
Sunstein (2000, 101) calls this ‘group polarization’: “If certain people are deliberating with many like-minded others, views will not be reinforced, but instead will be shifted to more extreme points.” When groups engage in ‘enclave deliberation’ – communicating exclusively with like-minded interlocutors, the polarization effect is heightened. This finding has serious implications for public argument, since it challenges the shopworn idea among liberal First Amendment scholars that “more speech is always better” (Chemerinsky, 1998). Group polarization theory turns this axiom on its head: “With respect to the Internet and new communications technologies, the implication is that groups of like-minded people, engaged in discussion with one another, will end up thinking the same thing that they did before – but in more extreme form” (Sunstein, 2001, 65). Argumentation plays a key role here, since according to Sunstein (2001, 68), “the central factor behind group polarization is the existence of a limited argument pool.” Enclave deliberation, coupled with group polarization, shrinks the argument pool and creates a paradox: as members of society communicate more, they grow further apart and become less capable of coming to terms with unfamiliar viewpoints:
The phenomenon of group polarization has conspicuous importance to the communications market, where groups with distinctive identities increasingly engage in within-group discussion. Effects of the kind just described should be expected with the Unorganized Militia and racial hate groups as well as with less extreme organizations of all sorts. If the public is balkanized and if different groups are designing their own preferred communications packages, the consequence will be not merely the same but still more balkanization, as group members move one another toward more extreme points in line with their initial tendencies. At the same time, different deliberating groups, each consisting of like-minded people, will be driven increasingly far apart simply because most of their discussions are with one another. (Sunstein, 2001, 66)
Sunstein’s balkanization metaphor is particularly telling, as group polarization theory suggests novel explanations for causes of ethnic strife in the former Yugoslavia. The received view holds that such strife is the result of long suppressed ethnic hatreds that were released when the lid of the Cold War pressure cooker flew off. Timur Kuran (1998) provides a different account, arguing that ethnic conflict in the Balkans is better understood as the inadvertent product of recent efforts by leaders to consolidate political power through propaganda campaigns designed to promote enclave deliberation and group polarization in Balkan society (see also Somer, 2001).
The notion that particular patterns of enclave deliberation can transform a relatively harmonious nation into to hotbed of runaway extremism and violence takes on particularly ominous overtones in light of Sunstein’s observations regarding the general proliferation of enclave deliberation. According to Sunstein, these patterns are cultivated by a media industry that caters to segmented audiences and an Internet culture that tends to be dismissive of opposing viewpoints. A study by Sunstein and former University of Michigan intercollegiate debater Lesley Wexler found that in a random survey of 60 Internet websites focusing on politics, only 15% provided links to sites of those with opposing views, while almost 60% provided links to like-minded sites (Sunstein, 2001, 59). These findings are consistent with Andrew Chin’s (1997) earlier survey concluding that “far from fostering deliberative political discourse, most of the surveyed Websites sought to consolidate speech power and served to balkanize the public forum.”
While critics generally laud Sunstein’s (2001) book Republic.com (see e.g. Labaton, 2001; Rubin, 2001), some commentators contest his stark empirical claims regarding the Internet and democracy. For example, Federal Communication Commission attorney Mark Nadel (2002) argues that Sunstein underestimates the amount of political cross-fertilization that takes place on the Internet. Sometimes, people even use customized information filtering to access the ‘unplanned, unanticipated encounters’ that Sunstein values so much. Further complicating Sunstein’s argument is the fact that several of the Internet companies he cited as driving the process of custom filtering went out of business before Republic.com hit bookstores (see Fallows, 2002).
Another notable qualification to Sunstein’s thesis is his stipulation that in certain circumstances, enclave deliberation performs an important social function: “A special advantage of ‘enclave deliberation’ is that it promotes the development of positions that would otherwise be invisible, silenced, or squelched in general debate. In numerous contexts, this is a great advantage; many social movements have been made possible through this route (as possible examples, consider feminism, the civil-rights movement, religious conservatism, environmentalism, and the movement for gay and lesbian rights)” (Sunstein, 2000, 111; see also Asen & Brouwer, 2001; Mitchell, 2004). Here, enclave deliberation provides those speakers who may feel excluded or intimidated in mass public spheres with opportunities to develop their public voices and to share their views with like-minded interlocutors. Yet, there is an important catch – while such activity has potential to enrich a society’s overall argument pool, “enclave deliberation is unlikely to produce change unless the members of a different enclaves are eventually brought into contact with others. In democratic societies, the best response is to ensure that any such enclaves are not walled off from competing views, and that at certain points, there is an exchange of views between enclave members and those who disagree with them” (Sunstein, 2000, 113).
The mechanisms Sunstein (2001, 26) isolates to facilitate such argumentative cross-fertilization are public forums: “As a corrective, we might build on the understandings that lie behind the notion that a free society creates a set of public forums, providing speakers’ access to a diverse people, and ensuring in the process that each of us hears a wide range of speakers, spanning many topics and opinions.” Exposure to assorted ideas and interlocutors, on this logic, moderates the tendency of deliberative enclaves to be echo chambers that incubate extremism: “[G]roup polarization is diminished, and depolarization may result, if members have a degree of flexibility in their views and groups consist of an equal number of people with opposing views” (Sunstein, 2000, 118). 

2. Argumentative praxis in a world of Daily Mes
Sunstein leverages his normative call for pursuit of heterodox public forums as a corrective to Daily Me-type enclave deliberation by drawing on the fieldwork of University of Texas political scientist James Fishkin. Fishkin’s (1995) “deliberative opinion polling” project brings citizens together for extended, focused deliberation on specific political issues. Sunstein is particularly impressed by the way Fishkin’s work shows how wide ranging argumentation can ameliorate group polarization effects:
Fishkin’s experiments suggest that group polarization can be heightened, diminished, or possibly even eliminated by seemingly small alterations in institutional arrangements. To the extent that limited argument pools and social influences are likely to have unfortunate effects, correctives can be introduced, perhaps above all by exposing group members, at one point or another, to arguments in which they are not antecedently inclined. Current proposals would do well to incorporate an understanding of these sometimes neglected facts. But the most important lesson is the most general: It is desirable to create spaces for enclave deliberation without insulating enclave members from those with opposing views, and without insulating those outside of the enclave from the views of those within it. (Sunstein, 2000, 118)
One weakness of Sunstein’s analysis is that he provides little explanation of exactly how and why free wheeling argumentation depolarizes group deliberation. This tendency to black box the process of argumentation is also evident in the specific prescriptions for promoting deliberative democracy he propounds in Republic.com. These prescriptions, which include reviving the ‘Fairness Doctrine’ and subsidizing public forums, “resemble retreads of older standard proposals. They lack the imagination typical of [Sunstein’s] other work” (Nadel, 2002, 835).
Argumentation theory may help fill this gap, by providing a thicker explanation of how cooperative deliberation can help steer society away from group polarization and toward mutual understanding of diverse viewpoints. Debate is, by nature, problem-solving communication, and it functions as an effective or even essential tool for identifying and dealing with the serious problems that we, as individuals or as a society, are faced with. 
‘Problem’ here refers not only to ‘trouble,’ but to choices that must be made in our daily lives and work settings. While issues confronting us include global population, famine, war, natural resources, and environmental disasters, we are often forced to make a choice regarding what schools we go to, what jobs we pursue, and with whom we marry. Thus, to learn debate as reasoned-decision making is relevant to many aspects of our lives. Since there are usually merits (that is, positive sides) and demerits (negative sides) to each choice, we need a good model to evaluate which side outweighs the other, and to compare one choice with another.
Debate also provides effective training in critical thinking. ‘Critical thinking’ means the ability to analyze information and ideas carefully and logically, from multiple perspectives. It is important for us to be willing to critically examine commonly accepted beliefs and claims. “Debate as a method of decision provides for the rigorous examination and testing of pertinent data and inferences through the give-and-take of informed controversy. Hence, properly employed, it is a means for arriving at judgments that are reflective and decisions that are critical” (Ehninger & Brockriede, 1969, vii; see also Suzuki 2002b).
If students do not learn how to think critically, it does not occur to them to ask relevant questions or to disagree with what teachers or other students say. As a result, many students have indifferent attitudes and do not even attempt to initiate or participate in class discussion of the course material. The practice of debate can stimulate such initiative by making students first aware, and then active, participants in their own education.
The critical thinking function of argumentative praxis helps explain how debate works as problem solving communication. Students gain opportunities to develop acumen in this form of communication by participating in interscholastic and intercollegiate debate competitions. These “laboratories for helping students understand and communicate various forms of argument more effectively” (McBath, 1975, 11) are designed to foster constructive disagreement and encourage argumentative innovation. There is evidence that participation in tournament competition increases debaters’ critical thinking acumen (Colbert & Biggers, 1985; Hunt, 1994). This research suggests that competitive debating may work as an antidote to the politically corrosive effects of customized information filtering and enclave deliberation isolated by Sunstein.
However, the political efficacy of competitive debating as a remedy for group polarization is circumscribed by the fact that such debating is itself an exercise in enclave deliberation – debaters mostly talk to themselves and to expert judges trained to understand them. In part, this isolation is the natural result of the specialized jargon and speedy speech featured in policy debate contest rounds. Given that “to the uninitiated onlooker, this style of debate reveals itself as an unintelligible charade, something like a movie-length Federal Express commercial or an auctioneering competition gone bad” (Mitchell, 2000, xvi), it is not surprising that most contest rounds unfold in obscure venues and go unnoticed by public audiences.
One should not be too quick to dismiss the value of tournament debating purely on the grounds that it unfolds in obscure enclaves. Such activity benefits greatly the modest number of debaters who are able to learn the game’s arcane rules and invest the substantial resources required for tournament travel (Muir, 1990; Panetta, 1993). Recall Sunstein’s stipulation – enclave deliberation is not intrinsically bad – it all depends on whether the walls insulating particular discourse communities are temporary or permanent. While it is true that insular deliberative groups can generate truly novel viewpoints on important issues facing society, such views can only deepen society’s overall ‘argument pool’ if eventually, such groups turn outward to communicate with those beyond their tight circle of members (Cox & Jensen, 1989; Weiss, 1987).
The theory of ‘debate as cultural performance’ illustrates one path for the academic debate community to bring Sunstein’s prescription into being. In this view, “debate is viewed as the place wherein the students encounter diverse ideas and voices” (Suzuki & Morooka, 2000, 313). This model of debating practice has potential to counter the centripedal drift of enclave deliberation by emphasizing the importance of audience engagement: “The goal of debate as cultural performances make the students look critically at familiar social issues and raise the audience’s consciousness about them, not to have the students participate in policy making simulation or prepare for competitive intercollegiate tournaments” (Suzuki & Morooka, 2000, 313). Such an audience-centered approach cultivates debaters’ ‘argumentative agency’ (Mitchell, 1998) – their ability to use argumentation skills to impact wider spheres of public deliberation.
Sunstein’s research shows how such skills are vitally needed in American society, and recent trends in Japan point to a similar need: “With the homogeneous-elitist model at an impasse, the Japanese are now setting their sights on its reverse image, heterogeneous-populist democracy. To this end, however, they are in dire need of civic practice of democracy, more precisely deliberative democracy. In practical terms, this means that they have to learn basic democratic skills, such as public speaking, debating; managing disagreements, compromising, and organizing and running meetings” (Ishikawa, 2002, 340; see also Suzuki, 2002a).
This prescription could be extrapolated to a world-wide scale, where radically heterogeneous populations are increasingly called upon by the inescapable reality of interdependence to cope collectively with political, economic, and social sea changes wrought by globalization. Richard Schechner, professor of performance studies at New York University, isolates three scenarios for how the drama of globalization is likely to unfold. First, he argues, “the boosters of globalization envision a Hollywood production full of high tech special effects starting American superheroes that dissolve national, cultural, and economic boundaries as they spread free market capitalism to every corner of the corner” (Schechner, 2002, 227). This is an optimistic vision that sees Americanization spreading around the world to stoke the fires of liberty and free enterprise.
On the contrary, the second scenario is rather pessimistic. Schechner (2002, 227) regards it “as the struggle of millions of individuals using the Internet as a global participatory forum creating new cultural myths battling against corporate conglomerates determined to privatize culture and copyright ideas.” This is a David versus Goliath story in the sense that seemingly powerless nations and individuals challenge powerful nation states and private enterprises.
The third and final scenario takes a negative view. Schechner (2002, 227) notes, “Opponents to globalization regard the fancy talk about ‘technology transfers,’ ‘free trade,’ and ‘democracy’ as a show staged to distract attention from what’s really happening: an ongoing process of accumulating and centralizing wealth and power.” Here, globalization rears an ugly head as the subtle vehicle of tyranny.
Given the three scenarios, what is the desired course of action to be taken? Should we slow down or even stop globalization? Or should we exert our efforts to promote globalization? Whereas some people say globalization is good, others say it is bad. Our answer is: Since globalization has both positive and negative aspects, it would seem best to sort things out though intercivilizational dialogues. By ‘intercivilization dialogues,’ we mean constructive public arguments cutting across the boundaries of race, religion, history, and geographic location.

3. The relationship between tournament debating and public debate
The historical roots of American debating practice are entwined with the tradition of deliberative democracy (Keith, 2002). In the early part of the 20th century, debate teams travelled on barnstorming tours to other campuses in order to debate in their hosts’ public forums. The rise of tournament debating after World War II triggered a dispute in the 1950s that pitted inward versus outward models of debating practice. Debate coach Nicholas Cripe (1957) defended an inward turn, emphasizing the value of tournament competition as a pedagogical site for students to engage in free wheeling argumentation. Cripe’s interlocutor Richard Murphy (1957) replied by urging that the outward focus of the day’s public debate programs be preserved, lest the debate community lose its direct link to the democratic deliberations of the times. 
Many of the same themes raised in the 1950s Murphy-Cripe argument on the value of “switch-side” debating continue to resonate in discussions of debate practice (see e.g. Hicks & Greene, 2000). This essay’s first author joined the discussion in the 1990s, arguing that an exclusively inward focus (‘purely preparatory pedagogy’) undermines the democratic promise of debating practice (Mitchell, 1998). This critique was based on the assumption that the simulation aspect of contest round competition risks instilling in participants a spectator mentality. A mass spectator mentality cultivated by exclusive reliance on inward debating models can position political actors perennially on the sidelines of public deliberation and emaciate democratic decision-making (see also Kauffman, 1991; Hollihan, Riley & Klumpp, 1993).
This criticism, although admittedly serious, does not argue for the abolition of tournament debating. What it suggests is that tournament debating must fit in with a total forensics program. If a director of debate (a) restricts the role of the tournament to the preliminary development of those skills for which tournament rigor is appropriate; (b) makes clear to his students that tournaments develop only some of the skills they will need for adult debating; and (c) supplements the tournament with diversified debating in speaking situations that emphasize adaptation to the audience, the tournament may play a most useful and practical role in debate training. (Ehninger & Brockriede, 1969, 306-307)
This vision of hybridized debate practice transcends the zero-sum perspective that pits tournament debating and public debating against each other as mutually exclusive options. In Sunstein’s terminology, such a hybrid orientation preserves debate tournament culture as a deliberative enclave, but ensures that its ideas eventually enrich society’s ‘argument pool’ by connecting it to wider spheres of public deliberation. Tournament debating skills are translatable to public forums and can enable some of the most valuable contributions to public sphere discussions. In what follows, we explore the translatability of six such skills: Panoramic argument vision, stasis distillation, on-point refutation, research, questioning, and topic selection. Our aim is to show how these various skills have dual applicability to both tournament debate and public debate contexts.
Panoramic argument vision. The competitive pressure of tournament competition encourages debaters view the world through a wide-angle lens. In preparation for tournament debating, it is crucial for debaters to anticipate their opponents’ moves. This requires learning a wide array of arguments that vary in both content and form. Further, the rigorous dialectical method of debate analysis cultivates a panoramic style of critical thinking that elucidates subtle interconnections among multiple positions and perspectives on policy controversies. This same style of thinking is extremely useful in public debates, where students are in a good position to grasp and convey multifaceted controversies to public audiences. This requires debaters to expect and respect the heterogeneity of public argument, both horizontally (across different viewpoints) and vertically (in layers of depth on a single topic).
Stasis distillation. The stases of arguments are made up of key points around which disagreement pivots. In the tournament context, an inverted pyramid dynamic embedded in the format of contest rounds teaches debaters to synthesize and distill their initial positions down to the most cogent propositions for their final speeches. Competitive advantages flow to those speakers proficient in locating the stases in arguments and choosing to focus on them in their rebuttals. In public debate, this same skill of stasis distillation has profound application, as one of the key challenges facing public debate organizers is isolating key decision points for public judgment. Public spheres are awash with information. Debaters can help audience members make sense of it all by distilling key points for discussion and thematizing them in the form of debate topics, public debate advertisements, and actual arguments offered during events.
On-point refutation. In the tournament context, it is most important for debaters to engage directly the arguments offered by their opponents. Judges in both policy and parliamentary debate have been known to vote against debate teams that fail to engage their interlocutors. In public debate, a similar attitude about the importance of on-point engagement can encourage direct clash on substance of issues.
Research. One of the most important skills in debate involves the ability to discover and produce evidence to support claims. In intercollegiate debate tournament competition, recent, credible, lucid evidence wins rounds. Advances in portable online research technology have accented the power of research in tournament competition as ‘mega-programs’ such as Northwestern and Emory build research combines to churn out evidence updates hourly at major competitions such as the National Debate Tournament. One notable principle regarding research in the tournament context is that evidence must be published prior to the contest round in order to be admissible into debates. Many of the same powerful research skills that produce competitive victories in intercollegiate contest rounds can be used to enter mosaics of proof into the record during public debates. During a 1999 public debate in Pennsylvania, a panel of student debaters asked a question to State Secretary of Education Eugene Hickok, showing that the secretary’s math didn’t add up in official projections of the coverage provided by his school voucher plan (see Suzuki, 2001). Since many members of the media were present, the students were, in effect, publishing new information on the school vouchers issue.
Questioning. The art of questioning involves listening closely to other viewpoints, identifying salient points of discussion, and directing discussion with carefully fashioned questions. In tournament competition, questioning during cross examination periods and points of information sets up points, locks in opponents’ positions, and clarifies one’s own positions. Translated to public debate, this skill enables citizens to perform a style of thinking in which they listen critically, not just accepting news and information at face value. There is a possible counter-model here to the free-for-all, “Battle Royale” style of debating featured on TV Asahi. A good question makes a double gesture. It expresses a viewpoint, but it simultaneously says “I am interested in what you are saying, and I will listen carefully to your reply.”
Topic selection. A great deal of energy goes into the topic selection process for American intercollegiate policy debate. Prior to a final national vote, topic area papers are written to argue for the importance of a general subject matter for debate and topic wording papers are written to suggest specific ways of crafting debate resolutions. The process is extensive because it important that the subject matter of intercollegiate debate competitions be interesting and significant, and also that the competition be made fair by virtue of a debatable topic wording, with roughly equal argumentative ground carved out for each side of the resolution. In a similar way, public debate resolutions set the agenda for public discussion, both in terms of general topic area and specific angle of emphasis selected in the wording of the question or motion.

4. Conclusion
Our brief analysis points to three tentative conclusions. First and foremost, recent trends call for redoubled efforts to pursue ‘debate as cultural performance.’ These trends include heightened group polarization in American society, Japan’s transition to a heterogeneous-populist model of democracy, and the general phenomenon of globalization. Debate as cultural performance invites students to look critically at familiar social issues and raise audience consciousness about them. Sunstein’s theory of public argument shows how such performances can encourage ‘group depolarization,’ as heterogeneous interlocutors use dialogic exchange to come to terms with unfamiliar or disagreeable viewpoints, and in the process, protect themselves from being swept up in the wakes of extremist informational and reputational ‘opinion cascades.’
Second, free wheeling argumentation has long been a staple of intercollegiate and interscholastic debate competition, where switch-side contest rounds encourage students to revisit settled perspectives and experiment with advocacy of novel viewpoints. However, the political efficacy of this form of enclave deliberation has eroded as the number of students participating in esoteric tournament competition has shrunk. If more audiences could be exposed to the idea-churning process that debate provides, perhaps some of the troubling polarization patterns isolated by Sunstein could be reversed. Indeed, the results of Sunstein and Wexler’s survey of Internet communication are striking in that far more websites provide links to like-minded sites than those with opposing views. Such linkage patterns not only minimize opportunities for interaction between conflicting opinions, but also militate against invention of third views as a result of interaction among heterogeneous interlocutors.
Debaters are capable of playing significant leadership roles in promoting exemplars of public argument that popularize models of constructive disagreement across social differences. However, motivating debaters to seize such leadership roles may require cultivation of ‘argumentative agency’ – reflexive awareness on the part of debaters that they can do more with powerful argumentation skills than win contest rounds.
An important cautionary point deserves amplification here. Sunstein’s stipulation that occasional enclave deliberation serves important social functions jibes with our own view that cultivation of argumentative agency in academic debate need not puncture the hermetic seal that preserves contest round advocacy as a safe space for argumentative experimentation. Rather, we agree with Sunstein that the social benefits of enclave deliberation can be maximized if group members adopt an iterative orientation that cycles between specialized, inward-directed discourse and general interest, outward-directed discourse addressed to public spheres of deliberation beyond the comfort zone of peer interaction.
Finally, our findings suggest several avenues of follow-on research. Empirical study of whether academic debating's enclave deliberation sharpens or softens group polarization within the debate community could constitute an important contribution to the body of literature surrounding Sunstein’s oeuvre. Such inquiry might endeavor to explain how debaters' opinions regarding topic areas shift over the course of a season that involves exposure to radically heterodox information and viewpoints. This sort of study would seem to be tailor made for the policy debate community, which is often described as the prototypical “laboratory of argumentation.”
Another avenue of follow-on research might profitably explore the viability of "hybrid" or "total" (Ehninger and Brockriede's term) forensic programs that mix tournament debating with public debate. The tentative hypothesis sketched in this essay is that since competitive tournament debating and public debating cultivate overlapping skill sets, the two forms of debate need not be arrayed as mutually exclusive modes of argumentative praxis. Many readers may find this conclusion counterintuitive in light of the significant differences between the two activities relating to the role of audiences, speed of delivery, and usage of specialized terminology. Further research might examine if these differences present insurmountable barriers that render Ehninger and Brockriede’s vision of a ‘total’ program anachronistic, or whether there might be other rationales for pursuing a hybrid model that couples debate tournament competition with public debate performance.

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