I have just added the entry reproduced below on the Overton window in the glossary, as suggested by a commentator yesterday.
Why is this relevant now? Because I think we do need to shift the Overton window, which is very badly off-centre at present and is moving in the case of many Tory policies into the area of unthinkable policy.
I would suggest that my last post was about the policy needed to relocate the Overton window.
So too might this comment this morning be about that.
The Overton window is named after Joseph Overton, the US think-tank policy specialist who is credited with creating it.
The theory originally suggested policy exists on a spectrum plotted vertically to prevent that there is a left-right orientation to the analysis. The spectrum as originally proposed was as follows:
- Unthinkable
- Radical
- Acceptable
- Sensible
- Popular
- Policy
The idea was, however, inevitably used to describe the left-right spectrum and so became in that context:
- Unthinkable
- Radical
- Acceptable
- Sensible
- Popular
- Policy
- Popular
- Sensible
- Acceptable
- Radical
- Unthinkable
Overton suggested that it was the job of think tanks to identify the range in which policies existed and to then promote ideas that then shifted policy in the direction that they wished to promote.
The term is more generally used to describe where the centre of opinion is located on a left-right spectrum, the consensus being that the neoliberal era has shifted it markedly to the right with the ‘Overton window' being located as a result some way from the midpoint in the noted range.
When viewed in this way as a spectrum the term ‘policy' makes little sense and the term compromise might replace both popular and policy. The results is this range:
- Unthinkable
- Radical
- Acceptable
- Sensible
- Compromise
- Sensible
- Acceptable
- Radical
- Unthinkable
The centre ground is not ideological in this perspective, but is instead focussed on the management of consensus.
Although the term is often used to describe politics in general it may be more useful to use it as an analytical tool to address particular issues and to consider where public opinion is on that topic. For example, the issue of whether the state should subsidise public schools with tax breaks could be plotted in this way, moving from yes it should through various conditionalities until the point where subsidy should not be supplied is proposed and the possible mechanisms to shift opinion could then be explored. This was the way in which Overton imagined that his idea might be used.
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The Overton window offers a spectrum that assumes the pointer is measuring from a fixed point. It isn’t. Think of the window, not as a window in a house; but as a window on a moving car. The spectrum is not written on the landscape, but on the glass on the window.
Neat
Could the Overton Window include a ‘corrective’ that addresses the move to the right of UK politics? I would suggest that the degree of inequality in society could be used to reposition the centre of the spectrum of left-right politics. As inequality increased, so the Overton Window would move rightwards. I don’t think anyone thinks that a totally ‘equal’ society is possible and, even if it was, would be successful. The question becomes “how much inequality is acceptable/efficient for the good of society?” Then, the actual degree of inequality that exists at any time is tied in to the political system and can be compared with other measures of ‘progress’ and would require justification – which it doesn’t at the moment.
There’s always a problem with that word, “Unthinkable”. It has no meaning, really. Which limits further the extent of the Overton Window.
Ludwig Wittgenstein in Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1922):
“The aim of the book is to set a limit to thought, or rather — not to thought, but to the expression of thoughts: for in order to be able to set a limit to thought, we should have to find both sides of the limit thinkable (i.e. we should have to be able to think what cannot be thought).
“It will therefore only be in language that the limit can be set, and what lies on the other side of the limit will simply be nonsense.
“The world is my world: this is manifest in the fact that the limits of language (of that language which alone I understand) mean the limits of my world.”
Genocide *is* thinkable.
Or as my father said, “No State will give you the education enough to find out how you are being oppressed.”
I’m going to defer to Clara Mattei and her book ‘The Capital Order’.
Mattei examines how the economy and the state role in the economy has been handed over to ‘experts’ to depoliticize these issues and make the handling of them look objective and their ideas presented as a ‘natural order’.
The same reasoning could be applied to think tanks and their output. In fact I think I’m against thinks tanks because if a politician does not own what they believe and cannot explain to the voter how it will be achieved themselves then we don’t want that sort of politician who needs to be told what they are doing by think tanks or ‘political advisers’!
And I must take issue with the Overton window itself. From what I’ve read above Overton is doing exactly what the any good reductionist Neoliberal does and claiming that somehow there is a static point in time that can be used to sum something up and be exploited or conveys some ultimate objective truth that policy should be played to.
Now really, come on? Given the amount of information and dis-information out there I would say that we are looking at ‘moments’ not ‘a moment’ in public opinion as much as we do in sectors of the economy. There are ‘windows’ – not ‘a window’.
The best way around this if we are trying to change things is to think through what you are doing in broad clear principles and then do what the fascists do – repeat yourself over and over again, never mind public opinion which is the epitome of capriciousness anyway, until your message hits home.
I think Overton should be buried really. It comes from a ‘Think Tank’ environment – the most important bit of the title is the ‘tank’ bit – thinking contained within a square box of limited size and depth, cut off from the real world, hidden.
A silo in other words. Your glossary entry should at least acknowledge these problems in my opinion.
Send me some redrafting….please
You know how to get me
Me and my big mouth – OK – I’ll give it a try.
There are many people for whom their perception is different from reality. I think of people who say they would never vote Labour because of the unions or Jeremy Corbyn, but when you speak to them about what the unions and Corbyn stand for, are in near agreement. Or they equate socialism with communism.
I think that most people are reasonable IF you can have a decent conversation with them, and the media has no interest in that.
Most people are left of centre in very many ways
They just don’t seem to realise it
I like the idea of including Overton Window in the glossary as a phrase that is used regularly without people necessarily understanding what it means. Though personally I think that politics is far too complex and nuanced to be described in just one, left-right dimension.
In the same vein, might one include Dunning-Kruger? It captures the phenomenon of recent years of ‘we’ve had enough of experts’ accompanied by ideological politicians and media pundits pronouncing on complex topics as though they have deep expertise. Brexit and Covid being two prime examples.
Added to my list
It is very long….