Roy Lilley, in his daily mail on what is happening in the NHS, made some excellent points this morning.
In particular, he talked about the ‘Overton Window'.
As he noted (and I have edited this very lightly and merely for grammatical reasons so that the quotes flow):
This is no ordinary window. Not a casement window, nor a bay window. Nothing like a French window. It's not really a window at all. It's a metaphoric window; a window named after the American policy analyst, in the 1990s, at the Mackinac Centre for Public Policy… Joseph Overton.
He proposed that the political viability of an idea depends mainly on whether it falls within an acceptability range and not on the individual preferences of politicians. He scaled ideas as follows:
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unthinkable,
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radical,
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acceptable,
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sensible,
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popular and
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policy.
As he then noted:
The most common misconception is that lawmakers are in the business of shifting the Overton window. Wrong...
... politicians are actually in the business of detecting where the window is and then moving policy to be in-frame with it.
Public opinion… very important. Hence focus groups and people paid shed-loads to monitor social media… finding ‘the window'.
And as an example, he suggested:
… the Overton Window, the range of ideas the public will accept, is shifting on illegal migration. Opinion polls and political rhetoric respond to heightened media coverage, economic pressures and concerns over border control.
Once marginal-proposals such as, tougher enforcement or offshore processing, have moved toward the centre of debate.
I mention this for three reasons.
Firstly, Roy's mail is worth subscribing to.
Secondly, he is right about the Overton window.
Thirdly, and most importantly from my perspective, what Roy has to say explains why I am not a politician, but I am instead someone engaged in creating ideas that challenge the political consensus.
Roy is entirely right to say:
Politicians are actually in the business of detecting where the window is and then moving policy to be in-frame with it.
We can see this happening every day, and most particularly in the decline and fall of the Labour Party.
I, on the other hand, am not in the slightest bit interested in doing this. Instead, all I want to do is shift the Overton window. My goal is to change public understanding and to make ideas currently unacceptable into things that are both popular and policy. And, there is a very good reason for trying to do that. People could be vastly better off as a result.
I do not now, and never have, underestimated the challenge that this represents, but to waste time on politics within a framework of thinking that has been established by neoliberal thinkers and those who promote neoliberal ideas in the mainstream media is, in my opinion, to live a wasted life. To be meaningful, we have to shift the Overton window in ways that will benefit most people against whom the odds are otherwise stacked at present. That is what this blog is about.
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Chomsky ‘Manufacturing Consent’ also relevant about the media’s role in reinforcing the dominance of the power elite. Apparently robust debates but within rigidly defined tramlines – such as ‘but how will you afford it, who will you tax’ ‘there is no money’, ‘how will the markets view that?’.
‘But is there really no money?’ just cant be put – even as a mild query.
As some have pointed out, Harold Macmillan presided over an economy which was much more equal, and where public monopolies were publicly owned to the extent that he would now be dubbed as an extreme Corbynite.
The window has indeed moved.
All I would say Richard is that you are certainly man enough to move it – if anyone stands a chance – it’s you.
Politics that adapts itself around ignorance and short term self interest is not politics – it is capitulation and extinction.
Labour are managing not to observe public opinion in so many ways it borders on willful. Surely they can’t be that incompetent? They are simply dancing to another tune, and it’s not that of the public.
“…politicians are actually in the business of detecting where the window is and then moving policy to be in-frame with it”
Yes, this is what you would hope, but at the moment the only people who the Labour Government seems to be listening to are a small section in the financial world.
It seems that the views of the rest of the population can ‘go hang’!
The opinion polls show that the current government doesn’t listen and, more importantly, doesn’t correctly interpret the signals from the vast majority.
They seem to have failed in realising, or remembering, the basics of general elections, the majority win. The financial community don’t elect governments, but their self-interest rules, thus defining a policy that fails the general population.
This opens the door to those who use the period between elections who learn to hold up a mirror to society’s grumbles, wants and wishes and then offer to provide solutions. But the question that is then rarely asked, ‘will they actually then deliver?’, or ‘what will they deliver?’ This question seems not to have been asked of Labour.
This is what concerns me so much about Farage et al – and how linked to the policies we see in the US are they?
[quote]I, on the other hand, am not in the slightest bit interested in doing this. Instead, all I want to do is shift the Overton window. My goal is to change public understanding and to make ideas currently unacceptable into things that are both popular and policy. [/quote]
Realistically no-one who wants to change anything goes into politics any more – they join pressure groups or find a way to get themselves “heard” by advisers to politicians. Money can be helpful in this latter endeavour.
I have one criticism of his piece, in that he seems to be light on who sets the Overton window. He suggests it is public opinion, but does not elaborate on how the public gets to an opinion.
Who creates public opinion? The media, of course. And the media is controlled by business interests and politicians. Leaks and paper reviews all all used to get previously unthinkable ideas into the mainstream, so I would suggest that not all politicians are searching for the window – some are setting it.
The MSM…they set it for their far-right masters, in the main
Yes, politicians should be signposts, not weathervanes. At the same time, I do not agree with Roy Lilley’s assertion that, “politicians are actually in the business of detecting where the window is and then moving policy to be in-frame with it.” For example, most of the public are in favour of public ownership of utilities. Yet the government won’t shift on water and energy. And it delays and dilutes their supposed policy of public ownership of the railways. This government does what the wealthy, the big corporations, the arms manufacturers and what Israel all want. Their window looks out to the powerful.
Yep. I’m afraid politicians are mainly in the business of thwarting public preference on behalf of a few plutocrats.
I’m not sure that the Overton Window is dictated by public opinion or that “politicians are actually in the business of detecting where the window is and then moving policy to be in-frame with it”.
Certainly some other influence or darker forces are dictating policy on Palestine.
Politicians lie and deceive to secure power and then pursue their own agendas from there.
The MSM and its funders locate the Overton Window
So by extension then it is distorted and biased and, at best way, it has such a long lag as to be worthless as a policy making tool.
Earlier this year I read Joshua Zeitz’s book on Lyndon Johnson (‘Building the Great Society: Inside Lyndon Johnson’s White House’). I’d always felt that Johnson was a much maligned figure, not least because he was cast suddenly into the tragedy and shadow of JFK, and that overshadowed (and was a curse on) Johnson Presidency from the outset – and doubly cursed by Vietnam.
Zeitz’s book confirms all that. But it also shows what a politician whose skilled in the “art” of politics can achieve (the Civil Rights Act 1964; The Voting Rights Act 1965; Medicare; Medicaid; Headstart (from which we copied SureStart); and many environmental reforms and social and employment programmes for the unemployed and poor (many of which were copied in the UK). To quote Zeitz, it’s the story ‘…of how one of the most competent White House staffs in American history – serving one of the most complicated presidents ever to occupy the Oval Office – fundamentally changed everyday life for millions of citizens and forged a legacy of compassionate and interventionist government.’
Of course, this was before the advent of neoliberalism. It was also a time when politicians had little problem trying to answer the questions, ‘who gets what, when and how’, and then explaining why those choices had been made.
But the main point I wanted to make was it was also before invention of the supposed/claimed “Overton Window”, which is now as effective as the household analogy at constraining, or, more fundamentally, providing an excuse for why politicians have so little power (they claim) to do anything that doesn’t either fit into the “household” budget, or is viewable through the “Overton Window”, or both.
Combine these tropes with an MSM and social media that has become dominated by right wing/authoritarian populist ideas and flag waving – most of which has no basis in reality – and it’s no wonder the UK and many other countries can’t break out of the cycle of doom were now locked into. Sadly, we lack politicians with the courage and skills of a Johnson or the people who worked with him, who knew that government spending has nothing to do with being like a little house on the prairie, and would almost certainly have said, ‘Fuck the Overton Window’, too.
Thanks
Thank you for all your analysis of current issues ignored or misreported in the mass media. Much appreciated.
I believe the Overton window is not an accurate reflection of public opinion. It represents the establishment/media version of what the public ought to think, and is partly self-fulfilling. It gives the media the freedom to report that any ‘progressive’ idea is shunned by the masses.
The response to the creation of the new Corbyn/Sultana party seems to demonstrate that a significant percentage of British people want the window to shift far to the left of where it is today, of what the UK government will allow, or the MSM report.
Sadly, there is a massive and growing gulf between what people think and what they are told they should think (or are even allowed to think). Apologies for stating the bleeding obvious, but never since WW2 has any government so dramatically failed to carry out the wishes of the British public or so disgracefully suppressed dissent.
We appear to be at a turning point that could lead us to the destruction of the neo-liberalism that has plagued us for 40+ years. Will it be replaced by full-blown fascism? Or can we resuscitate democratic socialism? The Overton window today would suggest the former. May the British public wake up in time stop it happening.
As I have noted in a number of other responses, I agree with you. I think that the Overton window is shaped by public opinion, but that in turn is shaped by the mainstream media, which is in turn jumping to the tune of its billionaire funders, mainly from the far right. So, we reach the same point.
Therefore the Overton window is just a self-replicating feedback loop, and far from being a natural process, the inputs have an influence on the feedback. It is not a neutral process.
I think I disagree with what the Overtone window describes. It is a process where politicians focus on a coherent political message and abandon methods and theories which do not serve the ideology/objective of the politician. The aims and goals of the politician do not belong in an ‘Overton window’. The Overton window are the succesful methods which can bring about the ideas of the politician. This government has no aims/goals. The Overton window is no help to them.
The right is having much more success than the left in shifting the window in their favour particularly in recent years.
What we desperately need, as evidenced by this blog and many others, are spaces to debate things that matter to the majority of us which the political establishment and msm basically ignore or simply won’t mention. What the msm report or focus on is also a kind of Overton window, too. The BBC is often accused of being left wing and right wing and I have heard their answer to that proved they were impartial(!) when in reality pissing off all kinds is people doesn’t prove anything. My view is they are the mouthpiece of the establishment, they swing left in unimportant things and lean heavily but gently to the right in economic and political issues.
We don’t get half of what’s happening from the msm and they then present options to the problems powerful people create from a kind of list that must be acceptable to some figure or figures behind the scenes, people who are attached to power and of course big BIG money. Emily Maitlis after being booted out the BBC said they had a Tory at the heart of it vetoing or nodding what could be said. Quite frightening really. All completely and utterly undemocratic and lacking scrutiny but all rather acceptable too.
The Overton Window is rather chicken and egg then, the msm and politics tries to shape public opinion then reads that back into what they want to do and what becomes acceptable. Priti Patel wanted the RNLI to not rescue migrants in danger at sea and suggested the Royal Navy fire their machine guns over their heads. I think if that became accepted what would come next? I see it more as ‘pushing the envelope’, as in seeing how far the government, politicians and the establishment behind them can see what they can do and get away with by dangling things in front of the public and seeing what people say.
They’ve gone too far now and there’s panic in whether they should double down or start to step back. Stepping back means an admittance they are and have been wrong. Doubling down means continuing the amoral and unjust society that has seen up to 350,000 deaths through austerity and a continuation of that for no other reason than to increase the wealth and power of people who are happy or indifferent to those kind of outcomes.
“Politicians are actually in the business of detecting where the window is and then moving policy to be in-frame with it.”
This is not true of all politicians of course. Some follow the window promoted by other politicians. The demonisation of migrants is led by hard right politicians and it was Thatcher who established many of the neoliberal policies that shifted the window right.
It’s worth remembering what politics is – tension between interest groups, but politics has both leaders and followers.
I’m not at all sure the Overton Window is ever in line with public opinion.
It may be in line with certain newspaper editors’ or SPADS’ views, but not public opinion.
Eg: Labour’s “extreme” 2017 manifesto with fully costed spending proposals (Corbynomics…) which was actually very popular.
Israel is another topic on which public opinion is nowhere near the OW (as defined by LFI, CFI, CAA, BoD and Israel lobby).
Also – taxation of the wealthy – public opinion favours this, but the wealthy have the power to place the OW right where they want it – opposing such taxes (see any debate on inheritance tax, payable by a small minority only but assumed to affect >50% of the public).
The political stranglehold of neoliberal thinking on public opinion is collapsing so fast that democracy is being abandoned in favour of authoritarianism, so that the OW can be nailed in place on the far right of the electoral edifice, and all politicsl proposals marched through in handcuffs. Public opinion be damned, it doesn’t matter in an authoritarian oligarchy.
I think we’re agreeing – this is window is manipulated.
There was a window for nationalisation in 1945. Another for privatisation after Thatcher. Renationalisation is now possible. Widows opened, closed and then reopened.
In contrast, there was a scientific – practical, immovable and fairly rigid – window to seriously limit global warming. That window has now closed.
Word searches in this post and the responses for ‘climate’ ‘warming’ and ‘science’ have yielded ‘zero’.
Even so, if the ‘window creators’ or ‘influencers’ who participate in this sort of communication – if *we* wish to give the current – and future – young people a significant chance of a decent life then we have a heavy responsibility and duty to up our political activity … because the climate and environment don’t care about wealth or status. They do react to carbon dioxide and other emissions.
If we could better express our care for our children’s future, we could be clamoring for:
• A maximum 50mph speed limit on all UK roads from midnight on Sunday – to be rapidly followed by even lower limits.
• High taxes on heavier-than-necessary vehicles.
• No private aircraft to be allowed to take off or land in Britain.
• Progressively higher taxes on flights.
• Professor Kevin Anderson once made the point that if fast container vessels reduced their speed by 20% (one fifth) they would reduce their fuel consumption by 40% (two fifths). He said that the amount saved would be equal to the annual fuel consumption of ‘Russia’ ( I think).
• Limits to ownership of housing floor space.
o People like Professor Kevin Anderson of Manchester University’s Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research to have central roles in government.
o Immediately end all miliary support and flights in support of Israel and genocide.
o Making serious efforts to end wars and remove the causes of wars.
I need not go on. Are we waiting for more environmental catastrophes?
Much to agree with.
I appear to have opened a window! Thank you all for your opinions and discourse.
Thanks Roy! I much appreciate your work.
Thanks Richard, this is thought provoking. I will subscribe to him.
I think the point is useful, but a bit too polemic. I would instead say you can use what he says as a rubric to judge politicians by, similar to Alexandre Auguste Ledru-Rollin’s famous phrase:
“There go my people. I must find out where they are going so I can lead them”
Politicians _should be_ in the business of persuading people. Unfortunately, in recent times the ones that actually take this seriously have mostly been on the right in recent decades (Trump, Farage). Politicians who simply craft policy through focus groups or social media surveys (Hillary Clinton, Kier Starmer) are _terrible_ politicians, which is the most significant reason why the centre has ceded so much ground to the right.
Robin
The Overton Window is a small concept in a much larger agenda. Their ambition is nothing less than to shape and control reality. To occupy our minds with words, phrases, arguments, and debates of their choosing. To control cash flow and starve opposition of funding, resources, and even ideas. To exile and destroy the disobedient and ungovernable. To make those without their kind of wealth irrelevant.
They’ve been remarkably successful, if no less despicable for it.
Mostly I worry about the sort of person who finds these objectives desirable, and where their ambitions will take us next. If they aren’t stopped by worsening poverty, sickness, and death, or the destruction of climate and democracy, or the obliteration of individual thought and humanity itself, what’s next?
Is it just about becoming king of the hill, lord of lords? How much more are they willing to burn down to achieve what they want? It seems rather bleak to contemplate.
Thank you, and see the piece that I have just posted, which was part of my column in the National newspaper yesterday, where I think you will find some agreement with your sentiments.
I am coming to this late. So much above to agree with.
To my shame, I knew nothing if the term “Overton window” till recently – but I had described the continual ratchet to the right. It has continued.
We talk about useless politicians…. But this isn’t a requirement. The only ones with a conviction are from the right. They’ve been politically effective … And totally destructive. Is it possible to have “leaders” with a conscience…. Absolutely! Are they in Westminster? – not so far/yet!
But this self serving lot are not sustainable.
I live in hope.
But let’s
I understand your objectives and you do a great job. It is likely that you influence opinion amongst those that are receptive. The role of the MSM and its backers in framing popular ideas and thus policy is more than obvious.
My problem, which is not yours, is what can I do to make some kind of difference? How can people with views like mine get organised? An organisation would have to formed- call it what you like but it would not be able to avoid the dirty game of politics.
That is not a question I am well qualified to answer.
Except, for one thing that is, and that is, as I keep on saying, keep telling the stories. Unless we create new narratives, there is no chance of change.