How Radical Policies Seem Sensible : The Overton Window

Have you ever wondered how radical and unthinkable policies become acceptable to the public? How do US President Donald Trump’s claims of erecting a border wall across the southern border with Mexico or banning people from Islamic countries to travel to the US seem justifiable? How did ideas that were once considered a taboo, like Same-Sex marriages or Universal Suffrage, become a reality over time?

The Overton Window explains these developments. It refers to a range of policies and ideas that an elected official can support and campaign for without being reprimanded by their constituents. This “window of political possibilities” includes the popular policies that the people think are appropriate, and the policies outside it can be radical or unthinkable. A relatively obscure political science concept, ‘the Overton Window’ originated in the mid-1990s from the works of Joseph P. Overton, a libertarian think-tank official of the Mackinac Centre for Public Policy in Michigan, USA.

Figure 1: Source: Centre for New Zealand Progress

The Overton Window acts as a model to understand how changes occur in society over time and influence politics. It highlights the fact that politicians face limitations in the kind of policies they can support — they can only pursue policies that are widely accepted throughout society, as legitimate. These policies lie inside the Overton Window. While multiple other policy ideas exist, politicians risk losing popular support or being dismissed by the public if they champion them. These policies lie outside the Overton Window.

But the Overton Window can shift or expand - increasing or decreasing the number and type of policies that can be supported by the politicians. In other words, the popularity and support of policies can change with time. Yesterday’s radical and unthinkable policies can be today’s mainstream policies. Same-sex marriage and universal suffrage are examples of how social reform movements can shift the Overton Window. In fact, all social reform movements have to shift the Overton window to make progress. Sometimes politicians can move the Overton Window themselves by emphatically endorsing a policy idea lying outside the window. However, the window often moves in accordance with the slow evolution of societal values and norms.

Joseph Overton argued that the easiest way for politicians and people in power to move the “window” was to force people to consider ideas at the extremes, as far away from the window as possible. Because forcing people to consider an unthinkable idea, even if they rejected it, would make all less extreme ideas seem acceptable by comparison - it would move the “window” slowly in that direction. This is an interpretation of the negotiation strategy called ‘door-in-the-face’. Rejecting a large request in the first instance will make the respondent more likely to agree to a second, more reasonable request, the one that was initially desired.

Figure 2: Source: VoxEu.org

An alternative approach is to make existing norms seem extreme. In the Netherlands, traffic accident deaths slowly climbed while the country was being rebuilt from World War II until the 1970s, when one of those deaths was the child of a newspaper columnist. The columnist began writing a series of articles with the headline “Stop de kindermoord,” or “Stop the child murder”— an extreme reframing for an “accident.” This headline became an organization and thereafter, a movement, and today the country is one of the most bicycle- and pedestrian-friendly countries in the world.

Thus, the “window” can shift. Ideas can go from being unthinkable to mainstream policy. As the unthinkable gains traction, it becomes radical. As the radicals make noise, it becomes acceptable over time. Once the barrier of acceptability is crossed, the once-unthinkable idea comes to be seen as sensible. And, what seems sensible becomes popular, and is thus converted into policy.

Much like the columnist, politicians with large followings on social media can manipulate the public discourse; to shift the “window” to include their desired policies by vehemently arguing for them or their extreme versions.

In India, the Overton window has shifted dramatically to the right since the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government came to power in the 2014 elections; shifting what is considered normal and acceptable. Hindutva which until 2014 was a fringe idea has become the dominant force in Indian politics with individuals such as the Warrior Priest of Gorakhnath - Adityanath - becoming the Chief Minister of India’s most populous state, Uttar Pradesh, and legislations such as the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019 being passed in the Lok Sabha.

In the United States of America, Donald Trump by floating extreme policies (build a wall on the Mexican border, ban Muslims from the United States), has seemingly forced public debate sharply to the right where normal conservatives seem to be at the center rather than the centrists, who now appear to be left-leaning.

Similarly, Senator Bernie Sanders with his radical policies of Medicare-for-all, free college tuition, and an expanded social security net made him a fringe candidate in the 2016 presidential race. However, four years later in the 2020 Presidential elections, versions of these very policies have entered mainstream politics with both Democrats and Republicans arguing over them because the voters they are now courting are increasingly demanding for such legislation. “We have come a very, very long way in the American people now demanding legislation and concepts that just a few years ago were thought to be very radical,” Sen. Sanders said in an interview. The fact that people in America are now starting to term themselves ‘socialists’ or ‘democratic socialists’ is a testament to how far the Overton Window has expanded in a society that demonized the economic-left during the Cold-War against the Communist Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) in the 20th Century.

Milton Friedman may have summarized this idea by a quote in the preface to the 1982 edition of Capitalism and Freedom: "That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes politically inevitable."

Definitions:

Universal Suffrage: Giving the right to vote to every adult citizen irrespective of race, caste, ethnicity, wealth, sex, gender, or any other restriction, subject only to relatively minor exceptions.

Libertarian: A person who believes that people should be free to think and behave as they want and should not have limits put on them by governments; a free-market advocate.

Think-tank: A group of experts brought together, to develop ideas on a particular subject and to make suggestions for action.

National Democratic Alliance (NDA): The National Democratic Alliance is a coalition of center-right and right-wing political parties led by the Bharatiya Janata Party(BJP). It is the current ruling coalition in the Union government.

Hindutva: It aims to forge ‘One Nation (in One State), One Culture, One Religion, and One Language.’ A single ‘Hindu Nation’ for the whole Indian Continent must be ruled by the precepts of Arya Dharm, or Sanatana Dharma. Sanskriti icons, norms, and symbols, invoking cosmic and eternal beliefs of Vedic Law, must be reflected in principles on which this Nation must stand. Under this regime, a changeless social structure of the Four Colour Categories (Chatur Varnya), as manifest in varnas, reflecting the proper place of each birth (jat) or caste (jati) in its rightful rank and status — its strata of purity or impurity. Birth and Earth, Genomes in Sacred Blood and Molecules of Sacred Soil, determined everyone’s place and rank within an all-encompassing and cosmic ‘World Order’ (Vishwa Dharma).

Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019: The Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, 2019 seeks to fast-track citizenship for persecuted minority groups in Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan. The six minority groups that have been specifically identified are Hindus, Jains, Sikhs, Buddhists, Christians, and Parsis. The Bill aims to change the definition of illegal migrants. However, the Act doesn’t have a provision for Muslim sects like Shias and Ahmedis who also face persecution in Pakistan.

Medicare: Medicare is a U.S. federal government health insurance program that subsidizes healthcare services. The plan covers people over age 65, younger people who meet specific eligibility criteria, and individuals with certain diseases.

Socialists: Individuals who adhere to an economic, political, and social system that is based on the belief that all people are equal and should share equally in a country's money through government ownership and control of important businesses and methods of production.

Democratic-Socialists: Democratic socialists believe that both the economy and society should be run democratically—to meet public needs, not to make profits for a few. To achieve a more just society, many structures of our government and economy must be radically transformed through greater economic and social democracy so that ordinary citizens can participate in the many decisions that affect their lives.

Cold-War: Cold War was a period of geopolitical tension between the open yet restricted rivals: the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies. It lasted from 1947-1991. It was waged on political, economic, and propaganda fronts and had only limited recourse to weapons.

Communist: A person who believes in a society without different social classes in which the methods of production are owned and controlled by all its members and everyone works as much as they can and receives what they need

References:

The Overton Window, Mackinac Centre of Public Policy https://www.mackinac.org/overtonwindow

Overton Window - Explanation and Examples, Conceptually.org https://conceptually.org/concepts/overton-window

How Trump makes extreme things look normal, Vox https://www.vox.com/2017/12/21/16806676/strikethrough-how-trump-overton-window-extreme-normal

The door-in-the-face technique, Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Door-in-the-face_technique

Overton Window, Quartz https://qz.com/emails/quartz-obsession/1848715/

Stretching the Overton Window from Amit Shah to Shaheen Bagh, The Print https://theprint.in/opinion/stretching-the-overton-window-from-amit-shah-to-shaheen-bagh/365449/

How the Politically Unthinkable Can Become Mainstream, The New York Timeshttps://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/26/us/politics/overton-window-democrats.html

by - Rishabh Ahuja