Reform means the improvement or amendment of what is wrong, corrupt, unsatisfactory, etc. The use of the word in this way emerges in the late 1700’s and is believed to originate from Christopher Wyvill’s Association movement which identified “Parliamentary Reform” as its primary aim.
Reform is generally distinguished from revolution. The latter means basic or radical change; whereas reform may be no more than fine tuning, or at most redressing serious wrongs without altering the fundamentals of the system. Reform seeks to improve the system as it stands, never to overthrow it wholesale. Radicals on the other hand, seek to improve the system, but try to overthrow whether it be the government or a group of people themselves.
Rotation in office or term limits would, by contrast, be more revolutionary, in altering basic political connections between incumbents and constituents.
Developing countries may carry out a wide range of reforms to improve their living standards, often with support from international financial institutions and aid agencies. This can include reforms to macroeconomic policy, the civil service, and public financial management.
Read more about Reform: Re-form
Other articles related to "reform":
... pressure groups such as Charter 88, Unlock Democracy and the Electoral Reform Society ... Commissions were formed to look into electoral reform ... Count Coalition currently brings together those groups advocating reform ...
... A note about spelling when used to describe something which is physically formed again, such as re-casting it in a mold/mould, or a band that gets back together, the proper term is re-form (with a hyphen), not "reform". ...
... A reform movement began in the mid-18th century ... Although the Whig party was ambivalent in its attitude to reform, some Whig leaders like Fox and Earl Grey raised the issue many times, but nothing was achieved in the face of Tory resistance ... Between 1815 and 1832 pressure for reform mounted steadily ...
... of the United Party and the Labour Party with the Reform Party in opposition ... The Reform Party, fearing that the Depression would give Labour a substantial boost, reluctantly agreed to form a coalition with United to avert elections ... By forming a coalition, United and Reform were able to blunt Labour's advantage, ending the possibility of the anti-Labour vote being split and the general election in December saw the United/Reform ...
... Birmingham rose to national political prominence in the campaign for political reform in the early nineteenth century, with Thomas Attwood and the Birmingham Political Union bringing the ... Lord Durham, who drafted the act, wrote that "the country owed Reform to Birmingham, and its salvation from revolution" ... the platform for his successful campaign for the Second Reform Act of 1867, which extended voting rights to the urban working class ...
Famous quotes containing the word reform:
“One point in my public life: I did all I could for the reform of the civil service, for the building up of the South, for a sound currency, etc., etc., but I never forgot my party.... I knew that all good measures would suffer if my Administration was followed by the defeat of my party. Result, a great victory in 1880. Executive and legislature both completely Republican.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“Short of a wholesale reform of college athletics—a complete breakdown of the whole system that is now focused on money and power—the women’s programs are just as doomed as the men’s are to move further and further away from the academic mission of their colleges.... We have to decide if that’s the kind of success for women’s sports that we want.”
—Christine H. B. Grant, U.S. university athletic director. As quoted in the Chronicle of Higher Education, p. A42 (May 12, 1993)
“All reform aims, in some one particular, to let the soul have its way through us; in other words, to engage us to obey.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)