Overton Window

At any given moment the “window” includes a range of policies considered to be politically acceptable in the current climate of public opinion, with “acceptable” defined as something a politician can recommend without being considered too “extreme” or outside the mainstream to gain or keep public office. Overton arranged the spectrum on a vertical axis with policies defined as “more free” at the top and “less free” at the bottom, where “free” is defined as less subject to government intervention. When the window moves or expands, it means that ideas previously not considered politically acceptable have become so, and possibly that ideas previously considered acceptable are no longer.

The degrees of acceptance[3] of public ideas can be described roughly as:

Unthinkable
Radical
Acceptable
Sensible
Popular
Policy
The Overton Window is a means of visualizing which ideas define that range of acceptance by where they fall in it. Proponents of policies outside the window seek to persuade or educate the public so that the window either “moves” or expands to encompass them. Opponents of current policies, or similar ones currently within the window, likewise seek to convince people that these should be considered unacceptable.

Other formulations of the process created after Overton's death add the concept of moving the window by deliberately promoting ideas even less acceptable than the previous "outer fringe" ideas[4]. That makes those old fringe ideas look less extreme, and thereby acceptable. The idea is that priming the public with fringe ideas intended to be and remain unacceptable, will make the real target ideas seem more acceptable by comparison.