Social:Overton window

Short description: Range of ideas tolerated in public discourse

This page is about the political concept. For the 2010 novel, see The Overton Window.

An illustration of the Overton window, along with Treviño's degrees of acceptance

The Overton window is the range of subjects and arguments politically acceptable to the mainstream population at a given time. It is also known as the window of discourse. The key to the concept is that the window changes over time; it can shift, or shrink or expand. It exemplifies "the slow evolution of societal values and norms".

The term is named after the American policy analyst and former senior vice president at Mackinac Center for Public Policy, Joseph Overton, who proposed that the political viability of an idea depends mainly on whether it falls within an acceptability range, rather than on the individual preferences of politicians using the term or concept. According to Overton, the window frames the range of policies that a politician may recommend without appearing too extreme, in order to gain or keep public office given the climate of public opinion at that particular time.

Summary

In the early 1990s, Overton described a spectrum from "more free" to "less free" with regard to governmental intervention, which he presented graphically on a vertical axis to avoid comparison with the left-right political spectrum. As the spectrum moves or expands, an idea at a given location on the scale may become more or less politically acceptable. Overton claimed that politicians typically act freely only within the "window" of those seen as acceptable. After his death, his Mackinac Center for Public Policy colleague, Joseph Lehman, further developed the idea and named it after him.

According to Lehman:

“ 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. ”

He presented the concept as simply a description of how ideas operate in public discourse, and not about advocacy of extreme policy proposals. In an interview with The New York Times, he said:

“ It just explains how ideas come in and out of fashion, the same way that gravity explains why something falls to the earth. I can use gravity to drop an anvil on your head, but that would be wrong. I could also use gravity to throw you a life preserver; that would be good. ”

The political commentator Joshua Treviño has postulated six degrees of acceptance of public ideas: "roughly"

• unthinkable
• radical
• acceptable
• sensible
• popular
• policy

On this basis, the Overton window comprises the politically possible ideas: those in the lower part of the list, from acceptable downward. Proponents of policies outside the window may then seek to expand the window, by highlighting their own proposals or others similar to them (or more extreme), or to shift the window by devaluing opposed ideas. Proponents of current policies, or similar ones within the window, might attempt to narrow the window by convincing people that policies outside the status quo should be deemed unacceptable.

Treviño emphasised that while this analysis originated on the political Right, and is mainly in use there, it is equally available to think tanks on the Left.

The concept of a shifting range of acceptability has been applied in areas unrelated to political policy, as far afield as neonatology.

See also

• Anchoring effect
• Argument to moderation
• Comfort zone
• Creeping normality
• Door-in-the-face technique
• Hallin's spheres – Theory of media objectivity
• Horseshoe theory – Posited similarity of the far-left and far-right
• Moral relativism
• Normalization
• Opinion corridor
• Paradox of tolerance – Logical paradox in decision-making theory
• Political spectrum
• Ratchet effect – Restrained ability of human process reversal
• Sanewashing
• Single-issue politics

Further reading

• Astor, Maggie (26 February 2019). "How the Politically Unthinkable Can Become Mainstream". The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/26/us/politics/overton-window-democrats.html. 
• Beck, Glenn (2010). The Overton Window. Simon and Schuster. ISBN 978-1-4391-9011-1. 
• Bobric, George-Daniel (2021). "The Overton Window: A Tool for Information Warfare". in Lopez, Juan; Perumalla, Kalyan; Siraj, Ambareen. ICCWS 2021 16th International Conference on Cyber Warfare and Security. Academic Conferences Limited. pp. 20–27. ProQuest 2505729645. ISBN 978-1-912764-88-4. https://books.google.com/books?id=BpgjEAAAQBAJ&pg=PA20. 
• De Salle, Adam (14 October 2020). "Rules of Censorship". https://medium.com/curious/rules-of-censorship-2893bc9b2e76. 
• Dustin, Moira; Ferreira, Nuno; Millns, Susan (2019). "Conclusion: Brexit, Gender Justice and the Overton Window". Gender and Queer Perspectives on Brexit. Gender and Politics. pp. 463–472. doi:10.1007/978-3-030-03122-0_18. ISBN 978-3-030-03121-3. http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/id/eprint/81422/1/18%20Dustin%2C%20Ferreira%20and%20Millns.pdf. 
• Dyjack, David (March 2020). "The Overton Window". Journal of Environmental Health 82 (7): 54. ProQuest 2366486194. 
• Krick, Jeanne A.; Feltman, Dalia M.; Carter, Brian S. (17 August 2023). "Buy-in and breakthroughs: the Overton window in neonatology for the resuscitation of extremely preterm infants". Journal of Perinatology 43 (12): 1548–1551. doi:10.1038/s41372-023-01755-9. PMID 37591944. 
• [The Lancet Planetary Health] (November 2021). "Moving the Overton window". The Lancet Planetary Health 5 (11): e751. doi:10.1016/S2542-5196(21)00293-X. PMID 34774112. 
• Lehman, Joseph G. (8 April 2010). "An Introduction to the Overton Window of Political Possibility". Mackinac Center for Public Policy. http://www.mackinac.org/12481. 
• Morgan, Daniel J (23 May 2020). "The Overton Window and a Less Dogmatic Approach to Antibiotics". Clinical Infectious Diseases 70 (11): 2439–2441. doi:10.1093/cid/ciz984. PMID 31605478. 
• Pilgrim, Mark (23 August 2006). "W3C and the Overton window". Dive into Mark. http://diveintomark.org/archives/2006/08/23/overton-window. 
• Talbot, George H (23 May 2020). "Widening the Overton Window—While Avoiding Defenestration". Clinical Infectious Diseases 70 (11): 2442–2443. doi:10.1093/cid/ciz990. PMID 31605475. 
• Valentim, Vicente (2024). The Normalization of the Radical Right: A Norms Theory of Political Supply and Demand. Oxford Studies in Democratization. Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/9780198926740.001.0001. ISBN 9780198926740. 
• Zbigniew Szałek, Benon (January 2013). "Some Praxiological Reflections on the So-Called 'Overton Window of Political Possibilities','Framing' and Related Problems". Reality of Politics 4 (1): 237–257. doi:10.15804/rop201315. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/360624634.