Word
Overton window
The range of policies the mainstream will accept at a given time; ideas outside the window are politically impossible until the window moves
Examples
Ten years ago the policy was fringe; today both parties have a version of it. The Overton window moved.
The think tank's strategy was never to win this election but to drag the Overton window two clicks over.
Origin
An eponym for Joseph P. Overton of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, a Michigan think tank. He sketched the idea in the mid-1990s to explain what think tanks do; colleagues named it after his death in 2003, and the term escaped into general usage.
How it connects
The word gives the boundary a name, and names the man who mapped it.
This word appeared in The boundary of the sayable, the Involves connection for August 23, 2026, which asked: Why do impossible ideas become policy?
Check yourself
Which claim uses the concept correctly?
Politicians mostly choose from ideas already inside the window; activists work to move the window itself.. Right. The window is social, not legal. It moves, which is the whole point of the concept.
What the sources establish
The concept was developed in the mid-1990s by Joseph P. Overton of the Mackinac Center and named for him posthumously.
Sources
The Overton Window (Mackinac Center for Public Policy), The concept, the spectrum of acceptance, and the history of its naming