The range of policies politically acceptable to the mainstream at any given time.
Named for Joseph Overton at the Mackinac Center. Its strategic use is the interesting part: advancing an unacceptable position can move the window even when the position itself never gains support.
In practice
- An advocacy group proposes something unacceptable, loses, and finds the previously unacceptable middle position is now moderate.
- A negotiator's extreme opening does not need to succeed to change what counts as a reasonable settlement.
- Further reading
- Wikipedia
- Subject
- Law & Politics
- Essay
- Competing accounts of how power works