A shocking event led to the dominance of a political faction that previously had just been one of several competing factions, because that faction’s basic vibe (that we should make use of American hegemony, and that rogue states are a threat to national security) was roughly supported by the event.
The response was substantially driven by elite judgements rather than popular judgement.
I think this is entirely correct. The Iraq War is one of the best examples of outside-the-Overton-Window policy change in recent memory.
In my understanding, the key trigger for the “Milton Friedman Model of Policy Change” is the Policy Community being surprised. At its core, the Overton Window is a set of norms enforced by this community. In the wake of crisis those norms aren’t enforced, so rather than shifting in some linear way, the window is temporarily suspended. Then, as Friedman said, “the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around.” Thalidomide is another great example of when the policy change in the wake of a crisis has little to do with the trigger other than a particular faction winning the narrative fight.
I’ve been meaning to write more about this, would any particular angles be helpful?
I agree with all of this—but also do think that there’s a real aspect here about some of the ideas lying around embedded existing policy constraints that were true both before and after the policy window changed. For example, Saudi Arabia was objectively a far better target for a 9/11-triggered casus belli than Iraq (15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi citizens, as was bin Laden himself!), but no one had a proposal to invade Saudi Arabia on the shelf because in a pre-fracking United States, invading Saudi Arabia would essentially mean “shatter the US economy into a third Arab Oil Embargo.”
FWIW I’d be interested in reading more concretely about what it means for an idea to be lying around, how fleshed out it ought to be, who big important supporters tend to be in those moments of crisis, etc.
Also when big policies get adopted in a crisis, what the mix tends to be between pushing policy ideas out to folks responding to the crisis, vs being solicited for help by those people because you’re already in their personal networks.
I think this is entirely correct. The Iraq War is one of the best examples of outside-the-Overton-Window policy change in recent memory.
In my understanding, the key trigger for the “Milton Friedman Model of Policy Change” is the Policy Community being surprised. At its core, the Overton Window is a set of norms enforced by this community. In the wake of crisis those norms aren’t enforced, so rather than shifting in some linear way, the window is temporarily suspended. Then, as Friedman said, “the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around.” Thalidomide is another great example of when the policy change in the wake of a crisis has little to do with the trigger other than a particular faction winning the narrative fight.
I’ve been meaning to write more about this, would any particular angles be helpful?
I agree with all of this—but also do think that there’s a real aspect here about some of the ideas lying around embedded existing policy constraints that were true both before and after the policy window changed. For example, Saudi Arabia was objectively a far better target for a 9/11-triggered casus belli than Iraq (15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi citizens, as was bin Laden himself!), but no one had a proposal to invade Saudi Arabia on the shelf because in a pre-fracking United States, invading Saudi Arabia would essentially mean “shatter the US economy into a third Arab Oil Embargo.”
FWIW I’d be interested in reading more concretely about what it means for an idea to be lying around, how fleshed out it ought to be, who big important supporters tend to be in those moments of crisis, etc.
Also when big policies get adopted in a crisis, what the mix tends to be between pushing policy ideas out to folks responding to the crisis, vs being solicited for help by those people because you’re already in their personal networks.