A proposal first circulated as satire is claimed to reappear as a serious position and then as policy.
The proposed sequence is that satire establishes a position as thinkable by stating it in a form that carries no cost, after which the distance to advocating it has shrunk. It is a plausible account of how the range of acceptable positions moves, and it is almost impossible to test, because the satirical proposals that went nowhere leave no trace and only the confirmed instances are remembered.
In practice
- A reduction to absurdity offered against a policy is cited approvingly two years later by its supporters.
- A list of predictions kept from the start would settle this, and the people who cite the law have not kept one.
- Possible explanations
- The proposed explanation is that satire states a position in a form that costs nothing to hold, which makes it thinkable, after which the distance to advocating it is short. The Overton window names the same movement from another direction.
- In its favour
- Cases exist in which a proposal first circulated as parody was later argued seriously, and the mechanism connects to well-studied work on how the range of acceptable opinion shifts.
- Against it
- It is stated about one political side, though the mechanism is not side-specific, and nobody has counted how often satire is followed by advocacy against how often it is simply forgotten.
- Standing
- From Berg's numbered set, first codified on his blog in 2005. Berg states it about one political side; the mechanism, if real, is not side-specific. Compare the Overton window, which describes the movement without the satirical starting point, and note the selection problem: the jokes that did not become policy are not recalled.
- Subject
- Law & Politics
- Essay
- The paradoxes of democracy and the quips of partisans