Abstract

The present work, The Politics of Reform: A Study of Institutions, Ideas and Individuals by John Raphael Karaagac, is a comparative study of reform in four states of the modern era--seventeenth century Spain, seventeenth and nineteenth century Ottoman Empire, eighteenth century France and late nineteenth century Britain. Each state, in the given period, faced an array of complications that were both international and domestic in origin. This work addresses the ways in which political leaders managed conditions; specifically, this work addresses the politics of reform, or "grand reform," in each state. ;The reform administrations were broadly comparable and constitute an important clue in understanding the political development of the states in question and, beyond that, the development of the international system of states. Moreover, the process of reform in each state conformed to a pattern: problem, diagnosis, corrective policy and eventual outcome. Though the details differed, the pattern remained a constant, and it is this constancy that allows for analogy across time periods. ;This leads to a number of general assumptions: reform is the product of problems; the interpretation of reform depends on value judgment; reform must be enacted by specific individuals; success is measured not simply by outcome corresponding to intention but by the more approximate standard of the benefits of action outweighing those of inaction. ;The work concludes with a number of generalizations on the course of reform policy and suggests a basis for historical comparison and further research. Nonetheless, the work makes no attempt to develop a general law of reform, as opposed to clarifying simple causal "mechanisms"; indeed, the work suggests a number of obstacles that make universal generalization difficult