Introducing reform endurance: immovable objects and irresistible forces

In Chapter 1, I ask a simple question: How is it that some policy reforms come to endure politically, while others dwindle and disappear? While a lot of scientific knowledge is available on passing and enacting policy reforms, there is little focus on what happens next. In short, we know very little about what happens to major reforms over time. This chapter introduces and interrogates the idea of reform endurance through a series of real-world examples before examining how reform endurance can be studied. The principal argument of this book is that reform endurance is about managing the twin challenges of preservation and adaptation. This refers to the continuation of reforms as originally ‘designed’, and the need to adapt them for use in contexts that may differ in important ways from those in which they were originally designed. The chapter ends with an overview of the how the monograph will unfold.