The Overton window is a concept in political theory, named after the former vice president of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, Joe Overton,
who developed the model. It describes a "window" in the range of public
reactions to ideas in public discourse, in a spectrum of all possible
options on an issue. Overton described a method for moving that window,
thereby including previously excluded ideas, while excluding previously
acceptable ideas. The technique relies on people promoting ideas even
less acceptable than the previous "outer fringe" ideas. That makes
those old fringe ideas look less extreme, and thereby acceptable.
Delivering rhetoric
to define the window provides a plan of action to make more acceptable
to the public some ideas by priming them with other ideas allowed to
remain unacceptable, but which make the real target ideas seem more
acceptable by comparison.
The degrees of acceptance of public ideas can be described roughly as:
- Unthinkable
- Radical
- Acceptable
- Sensible
- Popular
- Policy
The Overton Window is a means of visualizing which ideas define that
range of acceptance by where they fall in it, and adding new ideas that
can push the old ideas towards acceptance merely by making the limits
more extreme
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