Political science: Overton Window

<< The Overton window is the range of policies politically acceptable to the mainstream population at a given time.[1] It is also known as the window of discourse. The term is named after Joseph P. Overton, who stated that an idea’s political viability depends mainly on whether it falls within this range, rather than on politicians’ individual preferences.[2][3] According to Overton, the window frames the range of policies that a politician can recommend without appearing too extreme to gain or keep public office given the climate of public opinion at that time.

Summary

Overton described a spectrum from “more free” to “less free” with regard to government intervention, oriented vertically on an axis, to avoid comparison with the left-right political spectrum.[4] As the spectrum moves or expands, an idea at a given location may become more or less politically acceptable. After Overton’s death, his Mackinac Center for Public Policy colleague Joseph Lehman further developed the idea and named it after Overton.[5]

Political commentator Joshua Treviño has postulated that the degrees of acceptance of public ideas are roughly:[6]

Unthinkable

Radical

Acceptable

Sensible

Popular

Policy

The Overton Window is an approach to identifying the ideas that define the spectrum of acceptability of governmental policies. Politicians can only act within the acceptable range. Shifting the Overton Window involves proponents of policies outside the window persuading the public to expand the window. Proponents of current policies, or similar ones within the window, seek to convince people that policies outside it should be deemed unacceptable. According to Lehman, who coined the term, “The most common misconception is that lawmakers themselves are in the business of shifting the Overton window. That is absolutely false. Lawmakers are actually in the business of detecting where the window is, and then moving to be in accordance with it.”[7]

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window

For a while I’ve tried to explain this concept to my friends. Recently I discovered via Twitter that it’s found in political science.

Sometimes the problem does not really lie with the people running the government. Politicians can be severely limited in what they can do, especially in a democracy (tyranny of the majority). Some societal problems get blamed on the government a bit too much. Political capital, resources, etc., are limited, and unfortunately this means that concerns of a social minority is often rightly not prioritised (e.g. how would you feel if some other social minority gets all the attention).

Even a relatively popular idea can lie outside the Overton Window, if there is a high risk of losing the votes of a significant segment of the population who are prone to irrationality (e.g. religious people).

In a one-dominant-party country like Singapore, the swing votes often are held by irrational segments, which give them greater sway over some of their pet issues.

So even if the majority are supportive of one minority group’s concerns, they will not vote opposition simply because those concerns are not satisfied by the government.

On the flip side, a sufficiently large and irrational minority group can undermine some concerns shared by the majority.

In such cases, the task cannot be left to the government to fulfil such concerns. Society / individuals have to do it themselves.