On a more practical level, recent policy debate cases have made a habit of including one or more contentions that do not directly relate to the affirmative thesis but are designed to preempt common negative attacks.
For instance, a team running a case often considered nontopical might devote 45 seconds of the first affirmative constructive to reading contextual definitions of disputed terms in order to frame the debate in a favorable light early on.
(Because topicality is a "meta-issue" it is traditionally omitted from the opening presentation of the case, although historically an introductory contention where the affirmative defined the terms of the resolution was much more common.)
Additionally, teams might decide to include "non-unique" contentions, where the information presented bears little on the overall affirmative argument other than to say that any negative disadvantage should have already occurred in the status quo.
Loosely defined as "critical" or "critical" such advantages tend to eschew traditional cost-benefit analysis, claiming either that there are philosophical problems with the status quo such as prevalent racism, heteronormativity/homophobia, patriarchy, militarism, which the plan can address, or that certain forms of analysis (for instance, Consequentialism) are on face immoral and should be rejected as possible tools to evaluate the affirmative case.
An example of the last type of "case" is the Socratic Flow that poses and answers known Inherency problems at the level of debate theory by winning only on Justification, and all else follows.
Pure policy debate harkens way back to minstrel songs and soliloquies found, for example, in the Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh, the saga of the trial and redemption of Socrates in virtue ethics, and incorporates ADA's emphasis on stasis theory from classical rhetoric to overcome stagnancy in the status quo.
In the case of c) above, it is argued that policy is different from many other instruments of government: protocol, treaties, the economy itself, "law enforcement", punditry and politicking, a certain class of "U.S. interests", societal norms, and so on.
A debater on the Negative could call for an outright overhaul of codified law that eschews the idea of and malediction about "criminal" statutes.