Photo by Mari Madriz on Unsplash
First in an occasional series by Lily Gates, recently graduated from James Madison University with a double major in public policy and philosophy. We asked her to educate us on policy concepts that are on the newer side!
Making sense of what to do with the current political circus can feel overwhelming. Here are a few metaphors that can simplify how we think about ‘getting things done’ when it comes to moving public policy through a gridlocked political system.
Let’s start with windows. Picture this: you’re at an all-American baseball game (pre-COVID, of course). The batter walks up to the plate and prepares for the pitch. As the ball flies towards home, the batter has a narrow window of opportunity to connect. Swing too soon or too late and the batter puts a ball or strike on the board, or worse, an out. But a swing in the strike zone just might get him on base.
Joe Overton’s Policy Window isn’t too different from baseball. The theory was developed in the 1990s by, you guessed it, Joe Overton of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. It claims that politicians are realists: they may have high ideals, but they tend to support policies with the most electoral support. Which is to say, policies that are becoming popularly accepted by society. Policies that are too radical or not radical enough aren’t worth the fight since they aren’t in the window and, therefore, aren’t feasible. According to the theory, politicians play the game by looking for the window of opportunity and then taking a swing.
(Or, as my mother’s generation would say, “See a wave, grab a surfboard!”)
So where do the frames come in? If a policy doesn’t fit into the current window of opportunity, you could try to build support for the idea by socializing it via think tanks and advocacy groups. But it might be a long wait until the window shifts. Alternatively, you could reshape your issue, that is, explain it strategically in terms that fit the current window. This is what we call framing, and the approach refers to the way in which people communicate particular perspectives on an issue in order to appeal to different values. Savvy framing can allow many policies to become relevant in windows that otherwise would not have allowed for success.
Windows and frames go hand-in-hand, so let’s take a wild swing and consider how both processes are in play with the divisive issue to defund the police. For a lot of Americans this is not a new issue, but it remained outside the policy window nonetheless. George Floyd’s death and the widespread protests that followed, amplified by grass-roots activism on social media, opened that window.
Now what?
How this issue is framed will say a lot about its viability for success. For many supporters, defunding the police is shorthand for reducing reliance on law enforcement by re-allocating funding to community services. Framing ‘defund the police’ as a budgetary approach for dealing with institutional racism makes a policy that once seemed far-fetched significantly more feasible. The combination of a new window of opportunity, as well as some strategic framing, has given ‘defund the police’ an entirely new edge.
What do these policy theories mean for you and your interests? Identify the windows of opportunity, build grass-roots support and strategically frame your policies to make them relevant.
Wharton Policy helps firms, non-profits and governments reduce stakeholder conflict by finding policy space that works for them – and those who oppose them.